6th of Frost, 120
As the new season dawned, so did a new Arkash. It was early in the morning, dark too. There was almost no one out in the streets that Arkash prowled; most of them were still asleep, no doubt. it was for that reason that Arkash carried his loaded rifle on his back and his handgun on his hip in plain sight. He didn't intend to be spotted, and he needed his weapons to be accessible. His position suited him well.
That was to say, his position would have suited him well if not for the snowfall. Frost in Lorien was always lethal, and Arkash struggled to go long without siphoning the warmth of a fire. In his younger days, he would be pinned to the hearth, unable to leave the house or general ambient glow of the flame through all the season of frost. But as he grew, he became bigger and heavier. His body learned to retain heat for longer, and Arkash learned to dress properly.
That didn't mean he could spend the entire day in the snow, gods no. At best, he had a few hours. It was enough to move from point A to B, shop, even forage a little, but not enough for an all-day outing. Thankfully, his destination that day had fires on the inside, little checkpoints between his activities. But then, he expected the air there to be warm, anyway. In one of the darker stretches of Lower Nivenhain, Arkash took a left at the alley of a worn-down dilapidated building and proceeded into the pitch-black darkness that veiled his way. The light of the moon wasn't with him on that venture, but he knew it saw him all the same.
As he approached the door, he opened the lever of his pistol and fed a shell into the chamber. Afterward, he closed the opening and put the weapon on his hip before he arrived at the tall wooden door that rested cut into the alley wall. He'd walked there almost without caution, for he knew that among the people of Lower Nivenhain, he was an Apex Predator. He'd become a mage, a good shot, and truly a wonder with blades. What was more, he had two arms and eyes again. One of those eyes could see further than he ever could before. Anyone that decided to attack him would surely regret it in due course.
So, he lifted his claws to knock on the door heavily, following the pattern he was taught. After that, he stepped back and pulled down the scarf of his cowl to expose his face. As the tall iron slider pulled back, Arkash smiled with his whole and repaired face. "Arkash?" Boomed a low voice from above as the eyes within settled on him. "Is that you? You look different."
Arkash held up his claws and turned them over as if to flex his new arm. "Yeah, i'ss me," he spoke in his usual croak. His smile faltered as the slider shut, and a series of locks were undone on the other side.
"The boss 'as been looking for ya! God, wait 'til 'e sees this!" Spoke the jastai before the door finally swung open. Arkash bowed his head and entered the room. He stood at the top of a tall staircase of stone and shook the snow from his leathers while the man fiddled with the locks behind him.
"I've been lookin' faw Kai, too," he spoke as he lifted his pistol to the jastai's head with one hand and braced his arm for the recoil before pulling the trigger. A booming pop sounded and bounced off the walls a dozen times over before it faded. The force of the blast knocked the Jastai to the wall headfirst, then followed to the floor with a hefty thud. Arkash furrowed his brow into a glare while he watched the man fall, then exhaled through his nose. Calls and yells echoed from the staircase below, and the rath focused his sense of smell on the direction. The sawteeth were rallying, confusion was running rampant.
Arkash took a knee beside the body, then began to pull and focus his ether on the gaping hole in the Jastai's head. With his brow furrowed, he began to form a blade made entirely of blood, but it wasn't sharp. That was where Suffuse came in handy, as he applied the quality of all the knives and sharp things he'd ever been cut with or cut others with, the quality of a fine edge, sharpened and pressed. The shortsword took full shape in his claws, and he sheathed it at the hip. A moment later, he crafted a dagger and suffused the same property to the blade. Both were sheathed at his hips while he readied his rifle, and disabled the safety.
It remained attached to him by the sling, as he'd need to quickly discard it after firing the first round. So, he descended the stairs without care for stealth or caution. They knew someone was there anyway, what good would hiding do? As he approached the door, he gripped his rifle tight, and as he turned the corner, he quickly took aim at a charging shortsword-wielding human. A squeeze of the trigger blew a hole the size of the man's head in the human's chest and sent him to the floor in a spiraling spin. "IT'S ARKASH!" someone cried from the gathered gangsters as several men charged him at once.
Arkash furrowed his brow, he really was so easy to identify. Gripes aside, he had pressing matters to attend to in the form of angry mobsters, whose friend he'd just killed. So, in one motion he dropped his rifle at his side, only to have the stock catch on the sling, then drew his shortsword and dagger alike before weaving beneath the overhead slash of one of his ex-peers. A quick dash forward saw him cut a chunk out of the man's side with a spray of warm red. He couldn't focus enough to leech from the wound, as most of his attention was on the thrust of the trident that was aimed at his side. In a quick flick of his body, he knocked the trident upward and drove the point out of harm's way, then as quick as a flash, he closed the gap and thrust his dagger upward into the man's heart and lungs.
A twist ripped the weapon from the man's chest cavity, but he had no time to spare on sending the man to the ground as two swordsmen pincered him. At once, he sprawled and gripped the wooden floor with his claws. In a dexterous and coordinated flex of his body, he spun full three-sixty degrees and cut through the legs of both his opponents. The three hit the floor around him as Arkash peered through his human eye, and caught sight of a human loading their crossbow. At once, Arkash dropped both his blades and swung his body to fling his rifle into his grasp. The bolt still hadn't cooled down, as was indicated by the pin that remained tucked into the weapon.
As he looked up from the gun with one eye shut, he spied the crossbow aimed at him. Just a split second later, the bolt launched toward him. Arkash dove aside and rolled over one of the floored gangsters, and the bolt embedded itself in the floor. Only one of the four people he'd cut down was dead; the other three suffered extreme blood loss from severed arteries and deep wounds.
Soon after the firing of the first bolt, more crossbow were aimed at him from the darkness of the proceeding hallways. They knew not to get close to him, it seemed. Hissing, Arkash rolled back and gripped the body of the man he laid on. He couldn't evade all the bolts, but he could block them, he hoped. The moment he lifted the bleeding, screaming man, the crossbows fired and flung their bolts at high speeds, only to pierce the body of the man he held in several different places. Unfortunately for Arkash, one of those spots happened to be where his arm rested, and the piercing bolt stuck the scales of his arm. He reeled at the pain and bared his teeth, but the bolt came free on its own, as the strike was more of a shallow stab than anything serious.
The click of his weapon heralded that the golem was ready to fire again, so Arkash dropped the body, spun the rifle back into his claws, and ejected the shell before taking aim. Simultaneously, the forward glide of the lever loaded the proceeding shell into the weapon and primed the mechanism to fire. The pull of the trigger ignited the payload in the loaded shell and propelled the projectile at extreme speeds. That same projectile rode the force of the blast and pierced the lung of his target at speeds that the eye couldn't register. The resulting force shattered the bones in the area and knocked the body to the floor.
The rest were on their way to reloading their crossbows before the boom sounded. That deafening blast echoed off the walls and shook in the chests of those around him. Again, he dropped the weapon and sprung off the ground. With his claws extended, he ran at the group in the hall.
Image source.
