Kutkh

Alexi's Avatar is a mysterious and mutable, primal creature, somewhat alien in its mentality and appearance. Kutkh and Alexi are extremely close, perhaps unusually so, and the Avatar has assumed several different bestial appearances over the course of his lifetime. Named for the trickster raven of Slavic folklore, Kutkh is a wellspring of magical knowledge, largely concealed through Alexi's own personally enforced limitations. He is his primary teacher in the absence of any formal Order in his life, but Kutkh holds his secrets dearly, and Alexi is well aware that what he sees, and what his Avatar actually is, are two very different things.

Early Days
Kutkh first appeared to Alexi in the form of an imaginary companion, his only recourse for friendship in his very early childhood. A shadowy whispering voice - half his own mind, half his true soul - encouraged him to small acts of ritual violence, prodding him to Awaken. Fortunately, Alexi Awakened when he was mature enough to cope with it, at seventeen, during the course of torturing his own father to death.

Initially, Kutkh was a raven-like bird which constantly leaked a red ichor from its feathers and often appeared in his dreams as a carrion bird, typically crouched on a sacrifical tree by a muddy pool. As Alexi grappled with his own Will in the face of his natural psychopathology, the blood eventually ceased, and Kutkh became less grotesque, with the mindscape changing to that of a temple atrium, and then an inner vault.

When the Fall occurred in the Dermal Highway New Orleans chronicle, Alexi's soul kept its raven shape, but became steadily darker until it was a wraith-like figure, bleeding black. A transformational experience with Elijah cracked apart the worst of Alexi's own internal shell, and Kutkh became amorphous, and then materialised into his current, most stable form - a frigidly cold, blue-black draconian creature, which only seems to get larger over time. He holds this shape in The Missed Cue chronicle, and remembers all that transpired, but being a creature of the labyrinth, Alexi can rarely see the soul's memory.

Future Directions
An ambitious soul and mind together, Alexi and Kutkh have a very strong connection to the concepts of Singularity, the Void, and Force. The rogue Hermetic's avatar has been insistant lately, pushing him towards developing some mastery over space and dropping obscure hints about the labyrinth of their mind. Alexi has a brilliantly detailed mindscape which he wanders as a sort of virtual reality, interpreting the symbols as he goes. Kutkh makes full use of this, and may be pressing them in a particular direction.