As Esther spoke the last words of her wish, she suddenly saw her reflection... change.  In an instant, it was no longer the same person looking back at her.  Involuntarily gasping with shock, she found herself studying her reflection closely... but it wasn't any different.  She was still the same person she'd always been.  She couldn't find anything in her face that didn't match the image in her memory.  And yet... she'd been certain she'd seen<em>something</em>change.  And it hadn't changed back.<br/><br/>Further contemplation was interrupted as suddenly Billy got... well, Weird.  But much more so than usual.  Throwing his arms up to the sky, he reared back his head and shouted a word.  A word that made the world shudder like thunder and drums.  But by the time he was done speaking it the word was gone from the memory of everyone present.  They all remembered it had been spoken, remembered the feeling of thunder, of impact.  But the actual word itself was simply a blank space in their minds.  Somehow, though, they all instinctively knew it was a Name.  Capital N.  The name of something... immense.<br/><br/>Before the echoes had died down, Billy's summons was seemingly answered.  Moving with seemingly unnatural speed, thick black clouds spread across the previously starry sky, deepening the night until the whole world seemed to consist of just the circle of light around the campfire.  And then Billy's tattoos started to move.  There was no mistaking it this time: the serpentine forms crawled along his arms and up to hands... and kept going.  They partially separated from his body, stretching their heads and necks towards the foreboding sky.<br/><br/>Billy spoke, shouting to the heavens... or to whatever was occupying them at the moment.  "By my power as the Emissary I decree: Esther Wilmington has accepted the Bargain!  Take her into you, as she takes you into herself!"  Suddenly he lowered one of his arms, stretching it - and the serpentine creatures - towards Esther.  She felt something she couldn't see jerk at her hand, and suddenly her arm was pointed towards his.  One of the serpents, seeming somehow flat and three-dimensional at the same time, met her eyes... and then leapt.  In an instant it crossed the space between Billy's arms and hers and was slithering up her sleeve.  It had no weight, but she could FEEL it; wherever it touched her skin immediately felt ice cold.  The freezing trail twining around her arm and to the small of her back - where she assumed the tattoo had come to rest - lasted only a moment.  Then it began to quickly warm; rather than returning to normal, however, it continued to heat until it was the warmth of a lover's caress - a lingering and entirely too pleasant feeling all along her arm and back that took long seconds to fade.<br/><br/>Billy had moved on to the remaining three, asking for another volunteer, but Esther barely noticed.  In the wake of the tattoo's sudden... attack?... she found herself feeling very introspective.  Something had changed inside her, she realized.  Her old outlook on life - petty and spiteful of the world - seemed harder and harder to hold on to.  What was the point, she realized?  The trials of life no longer had any grasp on her.  There was nothing to be spiteful about anymore.<br/><br/>It was an incredibly liberating and dangerously intoxicating feeling, but it brought a chill to her spine.  For Esther realized that although it had been a small and hateful part of her, what she had given up was part of her humanity.<br/><br/>((OOC: Esther has lost the human trait Full of Bitterness (2d3).  She has gained the supernatural trait Always Gets Her Way (2d12).  Esther is now a transhuman and her character sheet has been updated accordingly; the full ramifications of this change are not yet apparent.))