12th of Frost, 4622
Tenderness.
A great deal of tenderness seized him while he lay there, breathing the bitter air of the cavern.
He'd begun to stir, and with his stirring came motion. With motion, came soreness, and with soreness came pain.
His messy lips curled as his head rolled to the side, alleviating the pressure on the back of his head.
His groan came muffled, as though he spoke underwater, or as though his ears were clogged.
Reflexively, he lifted his left claw to brush away the obstruction, but only found a flash of pain, a warning. The scales of his face cried out in anguish at his touch.
Arkash hissed a muffled cry, and at last, forced his eyes ajar... But only managed one.
Scorch marks littered the walls of the cavern, black scars with smoldering rock at the epicenter of each blast. Pale meat and amber fluid dripped from many a crevice; a substance Arkash knew to come from inside the keeper of the Derelict.
The more he roused, the more his mind woke, and the more his body began to report the extensive damage to his form.
Tears welled in his eye as the pain of his bones gradually set.
Slowly, he began to sit up. He dragged his right arm to prop his upper body as his mind almost fully woke.
His head lifted, and before him lay the smoking crater of the Strigoi's neck; everything above it had been completely obliterated, strewn about the cavern it once dominated.
Arkash began to smile and breathed a sigh of relief. Painfully, the scales of his face stretched at the motion. "Finally," he jaggedly whispered, muffled in his own ears. "I got 'im, Fay..."
Short-lived was his victory, as his eye shut to hold back the waterworks. Stricken, Arkash pulled his good knee to his chest and pressed the unmarred right side of his face into the tattered green fabric. There, he cried.
The still silence of the battlefield lay undisturbed by so much as a sob as the Rath bled his grief.
His own breathing made it difficult to hear anything while he stayed balled up like that, and so, the hand upon his shoulder caught him off guard.
Quickly, his head snapped in the direction of the touch, and his teary eyes settled on Izzy with her lantern to illuminate it from the floor. He hadn't heard her coming, hadn't seen her with his face in his rags.
Her voice was muffled, but he saw her mouth the words 'oh my God'. More words followed, and with the expression she bore, it was obvious they were of concern for him, but he couldn't read her lips, not that quickly.
Both her hands came to hold him by the shoulder until her eyes fell upon the dripping stump of his arm. She let go, reeled her reach a foot or so, and held still. Arkash shook his head.
"I've 'ad worse" he whispered through the burn in his throat, sniffled, then wiped his wettened cheek dry with the remainder of his sleeve.
He could almost fully hear her scoff at the remark, but all the words to follow were muffled. Arkash didn't bother trying to read her lips as he stared on at his mangled leg. "Can't 'ear 'ew," he spoke dismissively. "Ears clogged," he said with a point of his claw.
To that, the human gently turned his head by the chin to look at her, then gasped. Arkash watched as the color drained from her skin, the horror with which she reeled from his visage. He frowned.
The pain there, on the left side of his face, coupled with the tightness and the blindness, had told him that the state of it was bad. Just how bad was up in the air until Izzy's reaction informed him. "That bad, huh?"
She nodded.
Arkash nodded sullenly and looked away from her again.
"...Can 'ew help me up?" He asked with a glance at the carcass of the Strigoi. "I can 'eal the superficial shit if I feed," he explained in brief.
The girl nodded, then carefully took hold of the broken Rath under his arms and lifted with his collaboration. His arm was over her shoulders then, his weight all on one foot. Steadily, she walked him to the corpse with an obvious limp. "Tha's good," he said, "let me down."
As instructed, she let the Rathor down, and Arkash leaned the majority of his weight into the iron shell of the gargantuan centipede. The creature was incredibly strong, its potency would help him recover a great deal, he planned. "Fanks," he spoke with a glance of his blind side in her direction. "My kit..." he began again. "Can 'ew fetch it while I'm eatin'?"
Unseen by the Rath, the girl nodded again.
Her footsteps were unheard, but Arkash got the affirmation he sought when the light of her lantern withdrew.
Kneeling on the Strigoi, the creature that had taken her, Arkash breathed deeply through his nose to fill his lungs. After a moment of recovery, he wrapped his claws around the dripping, jagged stump of his arm and let his cardinal features bloom with all the burning cold of his teeth as he began to feed on the softest fleshes of the war machine.
Sometime later, Arkash was about halfway through eating the cadaver of the gargantuan Strigoi... And in typical Dranoch fashion, still hungered.
The plating was too thick to chew through, so he tossed the scutes of chitin aside in a large pile, not unlike the shells of oysters.
In his claw was one such plate, which Arkash ravenously scoured for meat. His nose was pressed flat to the interior, dragged uncoordinatedly from groove to corner in search of scraps to consume. Every time he found something, he plucked it clean from the plating and snapped it between his jaws with little thought or effort.
A lot of his burns had long since healed over, but not in a fashion that was at all sightly.
Gnarly scars of bubbly, stretched, warped flesh covered most of his body, and his scales and osteoderms melted together in various places. The stump of his arm had healed over, and the blood he'd lost had been restored. His bones were a bittersweet tale, for they'd healed, but not all of them had healed in the correct position.
Without concern for the state of his body or the world around him, Arkash mindlessly fed on the meat of his foe.
Flexing the toes of his mangled leg proved ineffective. There was no sensation below his knee, which was rather obviously dislocated. Sinew Thread Arkash remedied in his head as his eye moved to the burns along his arm. A gentle rotation of his wrist saw his bones shift beneath the warped scales. Sinew Foam, carving sickles he formulated.
And then his claws were on the scales around his eye. Beneath the gnarled scars, he could feel his eye moving. With his good eye closed, he could see the darkness it beheld, the faintest flickers of color. The hidden eye, he hoped, had just been melted shut and didn't need to be replaced or repaired.
Then, of course, was the matter of his new arm. He would have to build it fully from the bone up, marrow, nerves, tendons, muscles, tissue, skin, scales, and claws.
How he would manage with just one arm was beyond him. If it came down to it, Izzy would probably be willing to learn Briomancy to help him... But then the question became whether or not he wanted someone as clumsy as Izzy to help operate on him.
"Might 'ave'to put together a throw-away arm," he pondered aloud, then rolled his jaw to pop his ears.
The muffled hearing, he was blessed to have cured with his feeding alone.
Not long after Arkash had pondered the competence of his companion, her scent filled his nostrils. Not long after that, the flicker of her lantern could be seen from the hall's doorway to the cavern.
When she came into view, Arkash offered her a wave of his claw.
She squinted in his direction, then hesitantly waved. "...Where'd the bug go?" She asked. A motion of his head directed her to the pile of discarded chitin. She lifted her lantern in its direction, then widened her one eye in disbelief "I was only out 'a couple hours!"
"I was hungry," Arkash explained lightheartedly.
"You're always hungry," she returned with a roll of her eye.
A second later, they laughed together for a few breaths. She closed the rest of the space between herself and the Rath as their laughter died, then presented him his doctor's bag.
He received it with his claws, then set it down at his side. A reach of his hand came his silent request to be helped up, and Izzy managed to heave him to his feet with one hand and a backward lean. "...It's over then?"
Arkash nodded, then collected his bag from the floor. Izzy was under his arm again promptly, there to guide him to the stone table he motioned to. "Mostly," he spoke in earnest, somewhat softly.
"Mostly?" Asked the human.
Arkash nodded again as he brought himself to sit on the table, then lifted his mangled leg to its surface with some help from the girl. The long silence between them yearned to be filled; it put pressure on the Rath. "...Well," he began and cleared his throat. A deep exhale flared his nostrils before he shook his head. "I dunno- I thought that if I killed that thing, the Strigoi, I'd feel better."
Izzy nodded a little, then bent down to make herself eye-level with the Rath. "...Do you feel better?"
The Rath nodded a little despite the state of his body, but it wasn't without the watery glisten of tears in his eye. "Yeah," he began through the burn in his throat. "But I still miss her."
Tenderness.
A great deal of tenderness seized him while he lay there, breathing the bitter air of the cavern.
He'd begun to stir, and with his stirring came motion. With motion, came soreness, and with soreness came pain.
His messy lips curled as his head rolled to the side, alleviating the pressure on the back of his head.
His groan came muffled, as though he spoke underwater, or as though his ears were clogged.
Reflexively, he lifted his left claw to brush away the obstruction, but only found a flash of pain, a warning. The scales of his face cried out in anguish at his touch.
Arkash hissed a muffled cry, and at last, forced his eyes ajar... But only managed one.
Scorch marks littered the walls of the cavern, black scars with smoldering rock at the epicenter of each blast. Pale meat and amber fluid dripped from many a crevice; a substance Arkash knew to come from inside the keeper of the Derelict.
The more he roused, the more his mind woke, and the more his body began to report the extensive damage to his form.
Tears welled in his eye as the pain of his bones gradually set.
Slowly, he began to sit up. He dragged his right arm to prop his upper body as his mind almost fully woke.
His head lifted, and before him lay the smoking crater of the Strigoi's neck; everything above it had been completely obliterated, strewn about the cavern it once dominated.
Arkash began to smile and breathed a sigh of relief. Painfully, the scales of his face stretched at the motion. "Finally," he jaggedly whispered, muffled in his own ears. "I got 'im, Fay..."
Short-lived was his victory, as his eye shut to hold back the waterworks. Stricken, Arkash pulled his good knee to his chest and pressed the unmarred right side of his face into the tattered green fabric. There, he cried.
The still silence of the battlefield lay undisturbed by so much as a sob as the Rath bled his grief.
His own breathing made it difficult to hear anything while he stayed balled up like that, and so, the hand upon his shoulder caught him off guard.
Quickly, his head snapped in the direction of the touch, and his teary eyes settled on Izzy with her lantern to illuminate it from the floor. He hadn't heard her coming, hadn't seen her with his face in his rags.
Her voice was muffled, but he saw her mouth the words 'oh my God'. More words followed, and with the expression she bore, it was obvious they were of concern for him, but he couldn't read her lips, not that quickly.
Both her hands came to hold him by the shoulder until her eyes fell upon the dripping stump of his arm. She let go, reeled her reach a foot or so, and held still. Arkash shook his head.
"I've 'ad worse" he whispered through the burn in his throat, sniffled, then wiped his wettened cheek dry with the remainder of his sleeve.
He could almost fully hear her scoff at the remark, but all the words to follow were muffled. Arkash didn't bother trying to read her lips as he stared on at his mangled leg. "Can't 'ear 'ew," he spoke dismissively. "Ears clogged," he said with a point of his claw.
To that, the human gently turned his head by the chin to look at her, then gasped. Arkash watched as the color drained from her skin, the horror with which she reeled from his visage. He frowned.
The pain there, on the left side of his face, coupled with the tightness and the blindness, had told him that the state of it was bad. Just how bad was up in the air until Izzy's reaction informed him. "That bad, huh?"
She nodded.
Arkash nodded sullenly and looked away from her again.
"...Can 'ew help me up?" He asked with a glance at the carcass of the Strigoi. "I can 'eal the superficial shit if I feed," he explained in brief.
The girl nodded, then carefully took hold of the broken Rath under his arms and lifted with his collaboration. His arm was over her shoulders then, his weight all on one foot. Steadily, she walked him to the corpse with an obvious limp. "Tha's good," he said, "let me down."
As instructed, she let the Rathor down, and Arkash leaned the majority of his weight into the iron shell of the gargantuan centipede. The creature was incredibly strong, its potency would help him recover a great deal, he planned. "Fanks," he spoke with a glance of his blind side in her direction. "My kit..." he began again. "Can 'ew fetch it while I'm eatin'?"
Unseen by the Rath, the girl nodded again.
Her footsteps were unheard, but Arkash got the affirmation he sought when the light of her lantern withdrew.
Kneeling on the Strigoi, the creature that had taken her, Arkash breathed deeply through his nose to fill his lungs. After a moment of recovery, he wrapped his claws around the dripping, jagged stump of his arm and let his cardinal features bloom with all the burning cold of his teeth as he began to feed on the softest fleshes of the war machine.
Sometime later, Arkash was about halfway through eating the cadaver of the gargantuan Strigoi... And in typical Dranoch fashion, still hungered.
The plating was too thick to chew through, so he tossed the scutes of chitin aside in a large pile, not unlike the shells of oysters.
In his claw was one such plate, which Arkash ravenously scoured for meat. His nose was pressed flat to the interior, dragged uncoordinatedly from groove to corner in search of scraps to consume. Every time he found something, he plucked it clean from the plating and snapped it between his jaws with little thought or effort.
A lot of his burns had long since healed over, but not in a fashion that was at all sightly.
Gnarly scars of bubbly, stretched, warped flesh covered most of his body, and his scales and osteoderms melted together in various places. The stump of his arm had healed over, and the blood he'd lost had been restored. His bones were a bittersweet tale, for they'd healed, but not all of them had healed in the correct position.
Without concern for the state of his body or the world around him, Arkash mindlessly fed on the meat of his foe.
Flexing the toes of his mangled leg proved ineffective. There was no sensation below his knee, which was rather obviously dislocated. Sinew Thread Arkash remedied in his head as his eye moved to the burns along his arm. A gentle rotation of his wrist saw his bones shift beneath the warped scales. Sinew Foam, carving sickles he formulated.
And then his claws were on the scales around his eye. Beneath the gnarled scars, he could feel his eye moving. With his good eye closed, he could see the darkness it beheld, the faintest flickers of color. The hidden eye, he hoped, had just been melted shut and didn't need to be replaced or repaired.
Then, of course, was the matter of his new arm. He would have to build it fully from the bone up, marrow, nerves, tendons, muscles, tissue, skin, scales, and claws.
How he would manage with just one arm was beyond him. If it came down to it, Izzy would probably be willing to learn Briomancy to help him... But then the question became whether or not he wanted someone as clumsy as Izzy to help operate on him.
"Might 'ave'to put together a throw-away arm," he pondered aloud, then rolled his jaw to pop his ears.
The muffled hearing, he was blessed to have cured with his feeding alone.
Not long after Arkash had pondered the competence of his companion, her scent filled his nostrils. Not long after that, the flicker of her lantern could be seen from the hall's doorway to the cavern.
When she came into view, Arkash offered her a wave of his claw.
She squinted in his direction, then hesitantly waved. "...Where'd the bug go?" She asked. A motion of his head directed her to the pile of discarded chitin. She lifted her lantern in its direction, then widened her one eye in disbelief "I was only out 'a couple hours!"
"I was hungry," Arkash explained lightheartedly.
"You're always hungry," she returned with a roll of her eye.
A second later, they laughed together for a few breaths. She closed the rest of the space between herself and the Rath as their laughter died, then presented him his doctor's bag.
He received it with his claws, then set it down at his side. A reach of his hand came his silent request to be helped up, and Izzy managed to heave him to his feet with one hand and a backward lean. "...It's over then?"
Arkash nodded, then collected his bag from the floor. Izzy was under his arm again promptly, there to guide him to the stone table he motioned to. "Mostly," he spoke in earnest, somewhat softly.
"Mostly?" Asked the human.
Arkash nodded again as he brought himself to sit on the table, then lifted his mangled leg to its surface with some help from the girl. The long silence between them yearned to be filled; it put pressure on the Rath. "...Well," he began and cleared his throat. A deep exhale flared his nostrils before he shook his head. "I dunno- I thought that if I killed that thing, the Strigoi, I'd feel better."
Izzy nodded a little, then bent down to make herself eye-level with the Rath. "...Do you feel better?"
The Rath nodded a little despite the state of his body, but it wasn't without the watery glisten of tears in his eye. "Yeah," he began through the burn in his throat. "But I still miss her."
Image source.
