13th of Frost, 4622
One thing, Arkash found he didn't appreciate about his mechanical arm, was the taste. After surgery, it was normal to find his hands coated in varying degrees of blood. Arkash often licked his fingers clean when he was given time alone, but the metal of his new arm almost soured the taste of the coppery tang with something... More muted.
Nonetheless, Arkash finished off the discharge of his veins with a few lashes of his forked tongue, dressed in his robes, and then headed out the hall after the human with her scent on the air.
Carrion took up the same space as the scent he followed, but with a twist, for when Arkash turned the corner of that room, he found Izzy, sitting at a table with a half-eaten carrot in hand. Upon that table was a bag of hemp, soaked red toward the bottom.
Arkash blinked, then cast his gaze on the girl, who took another bite of the carrot with a crunch. "Oh hey, your eye was alright after all," she said with a smile.
Arkash shook his head. "It was dead, had to replace it," he explained, then looked back to the bag. "That's not an animal."
"It's not," she said in defiance, she wouldn't spoil the surprise.
Curious, Arkash stepped toward the table and opened the top of the bag. Sitting atop a pile of crudely butchered limbs was the bloody, severed head of a raider, staring up at him.
His mouth watered at the sight, and he looked up at the woman with admiration. She smiled and then bowed her head as if to offer it to him.
"You did this?" Asked the Rath.
"Yeah; guy was running some vegetables to his clan. I wanted them."
"How...? I thought you were..."
"Squeamish?" She swallowed. "Nah, I'm over it."
He laughed, and she smiled with some degree of cynicism. "Just like that? You're fine with a mess?"
She nodded in response. "Don't hold back for my sake." Again, she motioned to the bag. Did she mean to watch him eat?
Smile maintained, Arkash propped his tail end on the chair opposite her, then dragged the bag off to the side to leave a smear of blood across the stone surface. "Well I appreciate it, thank you," he said as his Cardinal features began to flare and unfurl. From the bag, he fished for some piece of the bandit that wasn't his head and retrieved a bloody, torn-up arm. Izzy had done a number on the man, Arkash realized, as a lot of the wounds were inflicted when he was still alive. "Cheers," he offered with a raise of the arm.
To that, she raised a fresh carrot, and both ate. She watched him all the while, eye affixed to the parts of her kill as they passed his burning teeth, and disappeared forever. "Was it hard?" She asked with a nod to his general direction. "Replacing your eye," after she swallowed.
"Nah," he lied with a shake of his head. "Well, a bit." He bit off another part of the arm with as much ease as the carrot that Izzy enjoyed, lined it up with his throat, and swallowed without chewing. "I learned a lot about eyes... Did you know there are like seven different parts that make it so you can see?" There was also the matter of stress, as the whole experience had left him unhinged for a good while there, but Izzy didn't need to know that.
She nodded a little and looked off to the side. "So you didn't know how to do it..." She hummed as she bit off another piece of her carrot and appeared to think as she chewed and swallowed. "How'd you stay calm?"
Arkash laughed as he swallowed another chunk of bone wrapped in meat. "...Well, I didn't but I wasn't going to tell you that."
"I mean that's understandable. You'd thought the surgery was just going to be a matter of replacing the eyelids, right? Turns out no, the whole eye." She nodded as she finished off the vegetable, and set the carrot top beside the other. "That'd stress me out too."
Arkash nodded a little at the admission, then looked at her again. "Well, I'm glad for the experience. Now I can say for sure I can, you know," he spoke with a nod to her, then fished another piece of food from the bag.
She laughed a second, then shook her head. "Why do you think I said no, Ark?"
It was something that had caught him off guard; why would anyone blind person refuse a new eye? "Honestly, no idea. Only thing that makes sense is that you think I can't do it."
She shook her head. "I know that even if you didn't get it the first time, you won't stop trying until you get it right or I pretend it's right," she grinned. "You're sweet like that. No, that's not why I said no."
Arkash furrowed his brow and swallowed his next mouthful. "...So, why?"
"Because I already have an eye replacement, just not a typical one."
Arkash lowered the meat from his bloody maw without biting. "...What'chya mean?"
She seemed to grin with her teeth as Arkash offered his interest. "I'll show you," she said, and lifted her dotted eyepatch to reveal a brass implant in her eye socket, the glass of the display was cracked in one part, but the framework was intact. It was clearly artifice for some effect, but did it function?
"Looks broken," He spoke after he relented his squint.
"Rude," she said as she left the eyepatch raised. "Well, it is, but it works differently from how it was designed."
"How?" He asked before his next bite, eyes affixed to the construct.
"Well, it was a regular prosthetic eye, but now it's strickened; it's a Relic, just like your gun was." She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms across her chest. "It doesn't see the world, but it does see ether."
Arkash's eyes were wide as he swallowed the chunk of meat. "...You can see magic?"
"Yeah, but I can't see anything else. Can't even see the eyepatch, just the ether past it." She motioned up with her head. "The eye patch is just so people don't get suspicious; the Relic really is useful, makes it easy to find magic users, makes me invaluable to raiders, well, the ones that manage to secure Strickening Chains."
Arkash was quiet and masked his silence by snapping off another chunk of the raider's leg.
"It's also how I could tell that you failed the Nightfall initiation," she explained. "I could see the Umbralplasm in your veins at the time."
He gulped another hefty chunk of meat, and his neck bulged a little at the size. "...At the time? It's not there anymore?"
She shook her head.
"But I still can't cast," he lamented.
"It's not in your body anymore," she explained. "The research I've done on it suggests that the Umbralplasm clogs the soul somehow; it needs to be removed from there to unlock magic for the individual... You were a mage before the nightfall initiation? How many marks?"
"Just one," he explained. "It was... Kinda forced on me, not something I asked for."
She rose a brow. "Don't stop there, dude. Who gave it to you? What mark?"
He looked at her a moment, lips dripping blood. "...Blood Magic," he answered.
"Shut up," was her immediate reaction. "You're not joking? Holy Shit, Ark! You're a fucking Vandikar?!" She leaned into the table with a mixture of shock, horror, and intrigue.
"It's part of why it's... Easy to operate on myself. I've been opening my skin for a long time." He nodded. "...Is that a deal breaker?"
She sat back in her chair, gaze fixed on him. "I don't know," she said. "I hate mages, hate them to death... But..."
"...But what?" His heart beat hard in his chest.
She was quiet, she looked away from him and pursed her lips as she brought her arms back to cross. "...I don't know, I've had a great time with you, we've had a lot of adventures and I think we work well together."
"Izzy," he said as he put the leg on the table. "I hate humans," he confessed and stood up, and she blinked quickly in surprise. "Your entire kind, all of you, stuck up and so full of yourselves. You pretend you're special, convince yourselves that your comforts and conveniences are more valuable than anything else in your short lives, and walk all over everything else that doesn't provide you that comfort. All my life your kind has spat on me, beaten me, called me names, and prosecuted me because I'm different; because I'm scaly and funny-shaped."
"Well, magic took everything from me," she said. "I was screwed from the start; initiated in brand, then oath. I was the family's failure, couldn't do anything right with magic. So, they tried Nightfall, lost all of 'Ulen's gifts'," she said with spite, "and was outcast from everything I've ever known. My own family wanted to kill me because I couldn't use magic." She also stood up, opposing the Rath. "Every mage is a pompous, arrogant cunt that thinks they're better than everyone else, afforded the mercy and favor of some asshole God. It's not all humans, Ark, just some of them."
"There are no mages in Lorien, every human I experienced was just that: all human."
"Well they're just fucking assholes, Ark. I've never treated you that way, I'm sure I'm not the only human who's treated you with an ounce of respect, I mean, come on."
Arkash nodded. "That was kinda my point; I've had nothing but shit from everyone who shares your race. And I know it's not all mortal races because elves are fine to me. The life I lived, more than almost anyone, I have a reason to hate specific people... But I still see individuals. I know not every human is the same and I can see past that. I can see the people underneath, separate from this entity that hates me." He watched her for a moment, she was quiet, a single eye fixed solely on him. "I'm trying to say I like you, Izzy, you're the spitting image of the creatures that chased me, beat me with pipes, and carved my scales with knives... But you're not those creatures to me, you're Izzy, and you're my friend."
She teared up a little, her eye glistened in the lamplight. "Arkash," she sniffled. "I feel the same way! You're not like the mages I've met, I don't see you that way!" She wiped her eye clear with her sleeve and Arkash blinked the tears from his eyes in unison.
He stepped around the table then and offered his hand. "So it's agreed? We'll make exceptions for each other?"
"Yeah," she accepted his hand without hesitation. "It's a deal," she said, only to catch her breath as Arkash pulled her close, and wrapped his arms around her. There was no pain, no suffocating, crushing grip, just the tenderness of his hold.
One thing, Arkash found he didn't appreciate about his mechanical arm, was the taste. After surgery, it was normal to find his hands coated in varying degrees of blood. Arkash often licked his fingers clean when he was given time alone, but the metal of his new arm almost soured the taste of the coppery tang with something... More muted.
Nonetheless, Arkash finished off the discharge of his veins with a few lashes of his forked tongue, dressed in his robes, and then headed out the hall after the human with her scent on the air.
Carrion took up the same space as the scent he followed, but with a twist, for when Arkash turned the corner of that room, he found Izzy, sitting at a table with a half-eaten carrot in hand. Upon that table was a bag of hemp, soaked red toward the bottom.
Arkash blinked, then cast his gaze on the girl, who took another bite of the carrot with a crunch. "Oh hey, your eye was alright after all," she said with a smile.
Arkash shook his head. "It was dead, had to replace it," he explained, then looked back to the bag. "That's not an animal."
"It's not," she said in defiance, she wouldn't spoil the surprise.
Curious, Arkash stepped toward the table and opened the top of the bag. Sitting atop a pile of crudely butchered limbs was the bloody, severed head of a raider, staring up at him.
His mouth watered at the sight, and he looked up at the woman with admiration. She smiled and then bowed her head as if to offer it to him.
"You did this?" Asked the Rath.
"Yeah; guy was running some vegetables to his clan. I wanted them."
"How...? I thought you were..."
"Squeamish?" She swallowed. "Nah, I'm over it."
He laughed, and she smiled with some degree of cynicism. "Just like that? You're fine with a mess?"
She nodded in response. "Don't hold back for my sake." Again, she motioned to the bag. Did she mean to watch him eat?
Smile maintained, Arkash propped his tail end on the chair opposite her, then dragged the bag off to the side to leave a smear of blood across the stone surface. "Well I appreciate it, thank you," he said as his Cardinal features began to flare and unfurl. From the bag, he fished for some piece of the bandit that wasn't his head and retrieved a bloody, torn-up arm. Izzy had done a number on the man, Arkash realized, as a lot of the wounds were inflicted when he was still alive. "Cheers," he offered with a raise of the arm.
To that, she raised a fresh carrot, and both ate. She watched him all the while, eye affixed to the parts of her kill as they passed his burning teeth, and disappeared forever. "Was it hard?" She asked with a nod to his general direction. "Replacing your eye," after she swallowed.
"Nah," he lied with a shake of his head. "Well, a bit." He bit off another part of the arm with as much ease as the carrot that Izzy enjoyed, lined it up with his throat, and swallowed without chewing. "I learned a lot about eyes... Did you know there are like seven different parts that make it so you can see?" There was also the matter of stress, as the whole experience had left him unhinged for a good while there, but Izzy didn't need to know that.
She nodded a little and looked off to the side. "So you didn't know how to do it..." She hummed as she bit off another piece of her carrot and appeared to think as she chewed and swallowed. "How'd you stay calm?"
Arkash laughed as he swallowed another chunk of bone wrapped in meat. "...Well, I didn't but I wasn't going to tell you that."
"I mean that's understandable. You'd thought the surgery was just going to be a matter of replacing the eyelids, right? Turns out no, the whole eye." She nodded as she finished off the vegetable, and set the carrot top beside the other. "That'd stress me out too."
Arkash nodded a little at the admission, then looked at her again. "Well, I'm glad for the experience. Now I can say for sure I can, you know," he spoke with a nod to her, then fished another piece of food from the bag.
She laughed a second, then shook her head. "Why do you think I said no, Ark?"
It was something that had caught him off guard; why would anyone blind person refuse a new eye? "Honestly, no idea. Only thing that makes sense is that you think I can't do it."
She shook her head. "I know that even if you didn't get it the first time, you won't stop trying until you get it right or I pretend it's right," she grinned. "You're sweet like that. No, that's not why I said no."
Arkash furrowed his brow and swallowed his next mouthful. "...So, why?"
"Because I already have an eye replacement, just not a typical one."
Arkash lowered the meat from his bloody maw without biting. "...What'chya mean?"
She seemed to grin with her teeth as Arkash offered his interest. "I'll show you," she said, and lifted her dotted eyepatch to reveal a brass implant in her eye socket, the glass of the display was cracked in one part, but the framework was intact. It was clearly artifice for some effect, but did it function?
"Looks broken," He spoke after he relented his squint.
"Rude," she said as she left the eyepatch raised. "Well, it is, but it works differently from how it was designed."
"How?" He asked before his next bite, eyes affixed to the construct.
"Well, it was a regular prosthetic eye, but now it's strickened; it's a Relic, just like your gun was." She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms across her chest. "It doesn't see the world, but it does see ether."
Arkash's eyes were wide as he swallowed the chunk of meat. "...You can see magic?"
"Yeah, but I can't see anything else. Can't even see the eyepatch, just the ether past it." She motioned up with her head. "The eye patch is just so people don't get suspicious; the Relic really is useful, makes it easy to find magic users, makes me invaluable to raiders, well, the ones that manage to secure Strickening Chains."
Arkash was quiet and masked his silence by snapping off another chunk of the raider's leg.
"It's also how I could tell that you failed the Nightfall initiation," she explained. "I could see the Umbralplasm in your veins at the time."
He gulped another hefty chunk of meat, and his neck bulged a little at the size. "...At the time? It's not there anymore?"
She shook her head.
"But I still can't cast," he lamented.
"It's not in your body anymore," she explained. "The research I've done on it suggests that the Umbralplasm clogs the soul somehow; it needs to be removed from there to unlock magic for the individual... You were a mage before the nightfall initiation? How many marks?"
"Just one," he explained. "It was... Kinda forced on me, not something I asked for."
She rose a brow. "Don't stop there, dude. Who gave it to you? What mark?"
He looked at her a moment, lips dripping blood. "...Blood Magic," he answered.
"Shut up," was her immediate reaction. "You're not joking? Holy Shit, Ark! You're a fucking Vandikar?!" She leaned into the table with a mixture of shock, horror, and intrigue.
"It's part of why it's... Easy to operate on myself. I've been opening my skin for a long time." He nodded. "...Is that a deal breaker?"
She sat back in her chair, gaze fixed on him. "I don't know," she said. "I hate mages, hate them to death... But..."
"...But what?" His heart beat hard in his chest.
She was quiet, she looked away from him and pursed her lips as she brought her arms back to cross. "...I don't know, I've had a great time with you, we've had a lot of adventures and I think we work well together."
"Izzy," he said as he put the leg on the table. "I hate humans," he confessed and stood up, and she blinked quickly in surprise. "Your entire kind, all of you, stuck up and so full of yourselves. You pretend you're special, convince yourselves that your comforts and conveniences are more valuable than anything else in your short lives, and walk all over everything else that doesn't provide you that comfort. All my life your kind has spat on me, beaten me, called me names, and prosecuted me because I'm different; because I'm scaly and funny-shaped."
"Well, magic took everything from me," she said. "I was screwed from the start; initiated in brand, then oath. I was the family's failure, couldn't do anything right with magic. So, they tried Nightfall, lost all of 'Ulen's gifts'," she said with spite, "and was outcast from everything I've ever known. My own family wanted to kill me because I couldn't use magic." She also stood up, opposing the Rath. "Every mage is a pompous, arrogant cunt that thinks they're better than everyone else, afforded the mercy and favor of some asshole God. It's not all humans, Ark, just some of them."
"There are no mages in Lorien, every human I experienced was just that: all human."
"Well they're just fucking assholes, Ark. I've never treated you that way, I'm sure I'm not the only human who's treated you with an ounce of respect, I mean, come on."
Arkash nodded. "That was kinda my point; I've had nothing but shit from everyone who shares your race. And I know it's not all mortal races because elves are fine to me. The life I lived, more than almost anyone, I have a reason to hate specific people... But I still see individuals. I know not every human is the same and I can see past that. I can see the people underneath, separate from this entity that hates me." He watched her for a moment, she was quiet, a single eye fixed solely on him. "I'm trying to say I like you, Izzy, you're the spitting image of the creatures that chased me, beat me with pipes, and carved my scales with knives... But you're not those creatures to me, you're Izzy, and you're my friend."
She teared up a little, her eye glistened in the lamplight. "Arkash," she sniffled. "I feel the same way! You're not like the mages I've met, I don't see you that way!" She wiped her eye clear with her sleeve and Arkash blinked the tears from his eyes in unison.
He stepped around the table then and offered his hand. "So it's agreed? We'll make exceptions for each other?"
"Yeah," she accepted his hand without hesitation. "It's a deal," she said, only to catch her breath as Arkash pulled her close, and wrapped his arms around her. There was no pain, no suffocating, crushing grip, just the tenderness of his hold.
Image source.
