The Apostle's Powers

I've never really put into the story what, exactly the Apostle's powers are. I did that for a reason. It's to make her more mysterious, and to keep you wondering what she might be capable of.

First is the mystery of what, exactly, she is. She is both genetically engineered, and a Heretic. This means that one of her parents was a Demon summoned into a human body, and the other was a human. This is where her tail and wolf ears come from. Additionally her genetic material was altered at the moment she was concieved to make make her more suggestable to commands and less able to think for herself. This also changed her eyes to normal human eyes rather than beastlike eyes like normal Heretics. She is stronger and faster than a normal Heretic, capable of greater understanding, and has greater endurance, but she still falls victim to the wasting sickness her kind is plagued with.

She was raised in an environment where she was kept in a cell, not given clothing until she earned it,a nd studied nothing but how to kill people and hone her natural abilities. She never learned what a family was, or what a friend was. She doesn't understand social relationships and has no clue what love is, or how children are born. She doesn't even really understand the difference between men and women. She has never known happiness or comfort, or the warmth of a loving embrace. She doesn't understand what these things are. The first time she ever felt anything even remotely close to pleasure was when she was drinking the blood of a human. It was so foreign to her and so completely different to anything she had ever felt before that it hit her that much harder, and caused a very strong addiction.

Her anger at being forced to kill her own kind allowed her to break the genetic programming that the Council imposed on her to make her more docile toward them and more accepting of their orders. It allowed her to begin thinking for herself and plotting her revenge. Seeing how docile and willing to follow orders the other Subjects were made her even angrier. The fact that she was the only one that seemed to have any clue that what they were doing was wrong made her hate the Council even more, and in turn, that hatred helped her continue to break free of the genetic manipulation.

Once she proved herself to be the Apostle she was taken to a place on the World Closest to Perdition where the walls of reality are thin and one can see into Perdition itself. Perdition is a place so far removed from the center of the universe that even the radiance of God cannot reach it. Those who serve Cain will be cast into this place after the last day. It is currently the place where Cain is imprisoned. She stared into Perdition and Cain stared back. The genetic manipulation that was performed on her made it possible for Cain to transfer a part of his consciousness into the Apostle, changing her from a genetically altered Heretic into something more. He melded with her creating a new being entirely that he could influence completely from his prison.

The Apostle has several powers that are unique to her alone.

First, she can see into the souls of any human and see the darkness that dwells within everyone. She uses this ability to guilt people into doing her bidding.

Second, she can influence the emotions that a person is feeling to some degree. This is one of the ways she is able to so easily convert people to loyal followers of Cain. She asks them to pray, and then causes them to have an emotional response that they find hard to ignore as coinsidence. She is able to use this ability on many people at once without much effort.

Third, she can transfer the seed that Cain planted in her that allows him to directly control her into any person that she comes into contact with. These people can then be completely controlled by Cain, and can pass the seed on to others. With enough followers bearing the seed an entire world can become populated by nothing but puppets controlled by Cain. This power evolved from the joining of the Apostle's genetically manipulaed body and mind, and the seed Cain planted in her. The seed caused a change in not only her, but the seed itself, which gave birth to the ability to pass the seed on to normal people without the genetic manipulation she was born with.

There are defenses against the Apostle's power. Any person with a strong will can resist all of these powers. Free will is something that can never be taken from a human being by force. It can only be taken away when it is given up by those who do not value it, or themselves enough to hold onto it. Those that are weak-willed, everyday people that would rather not have to think for themselves are basically boned, to put it colorfully. If you don't want to resist, you aren't able to, and some people would rather be told what to do rather than thinking for themselves. Unfortunately, those people number far more than they should in our day and age.