80th of Frost, 4621
Through the shifting sands, Arkash pressed onward. The sun had risen to a point that the world below had grown intensely hot, at least where Arkash roamed. The sand burned his feet while he walked, and his basalt carapace felt almost too hot despite the cold blood in his veins.
Time and time again, Arkash spied the horizon beneath the fabric of his burlap headwrap and found a mirage over and over again. The shimmer of the ground beneath the intense heat, the promise of water Arkash knew to be false. His superior sense of smell helped him exceptionally well to decipher what was real and what was not. There would be no water, he resolved. That was okay, he didn't need it. A body of water would have been the shortcut to relieving heat, he imagined, but he was far from dehydrated.
Maybe a rock would suffice? Some large body of stone that would drink the heat of his scales as quickly as the sun bombarded his body with its energy? No, he'd dealt with worse. He hadn't the time to stop and rest. He pressed onward, believing he would be fine.
Again, he adjusted the burlap wrap around his head and pulled the small visor he peered through to shelter his eyes from the harsh rays and lowered the wrap from his lips to breathe a lungful of the surrounding scents. Nothing, he found naught but the endless rolling sea of sand. Peering into the distance yielded a blurred mix of yellow and the pale blue of the sky, some vague shapes of hills that he could not decipher the distance of. Sight wasn't his strongest sense, and so he relied heavily upon the sense of smell to guide him.
He paid little attention to his eyes while he trudged forward, and instead smelled his way through the desert. It was just as well, as the intensity of the heat seemed to rob him of his focus, and his mind drifted while he trudged.
Vesper, another Rathor he'd met while hunting a band of mages in the wild, a man he'd initiated in Blood Magic, was still out there in Valtoria, he imagined. They'd had plans to do more before the seventy-fifth, before Arkash was made to flee. He wondered if the other Rathor thought he'd abandoned him; if he'd dismissed Arkash as a waste of time and gone ahead without him. It had been some week or so since they saw one another. If it were him waiting for Vesper, he would have believed his friend to abandon him, too. As similar as they were in their values, he wouldn't have blamed the cat for thinking the same.
Raphael, the man Arkash had served for the better part of a season, had discovered his true identity, his possession of Blood Magic, and his blight. Once he'd finally convinced the Rath to initiate him in his coveted Mark, the winds changed. He initiated Arkash in Nightfall, just to try to kill him immediately afterward. Arkash hadn't been prepared for the attack, and he was badly wounded in the exchange of blade and magic. Worse yet, his blood magic had vanished. He tried as hard as he could to force the manipulation and sway of the black blade at his hip but found no such luck.
Then there was Asphodel, a woman he'd met there in the Badlands when he'd fled Valtoria. She was good to him, saved his life while he bled against a crag. She fed him, watered him, and sheltered him in her own home. It might have been a cave, but he was still grateful. Despite his gratitude, Arkash was distant. To be treated with such kindness after a lifetime of rejection and cruelty was uncomfortable.
Vesper's flirting ended in his awkward attempts of reciprocation and the potential creation of a new enemy. Raphael's kindness ended in his attempted murder and the permanent loss of his magic. Asphodel's hospitality ended with his guilt and discomfort in the idea of being treated with any degree of respect and care.
All those different people he knew, nothing good came from mixing with them, he realized.
Was he destined to wander Atharen alone?
Was there no one in the world he would stand by?
His thoughts were stolen by the stir of a scent nearby, and he lifted his head to its source with a squint. There, in the sea of yellow, Arkash saw patches of green, some brown. Trees? He squinted again as he tried to bring himself to focus on the shapes and colors. An oasis, he realized. The smell of freshwater, insects, fresh glucose on the leaves of the foliage. It was real, he knew it was.
The closer he got, the more potent the smells became. Lush greens, soaked sand, the nectar of desert flowers… And corruption. He paused in his advance while the oasis was on the cusp of becoming clear and focused in his short-sighted gaze, then exhaled deeply through his nose. Corrupted dust storms raged in the Badlands and poisoned the water. He could already smell the foulness of the surface before him. Did he still waste his time approaching the thing? The foliage would provide him relief with their shade, he believed.
So, he closed the rest of the distance with the oasis and stopped when his clawed foot met with some unseen solid in the sand that sounded a hollow thunk.
With a furrow to his brow, he looked down at the spot, then peered over at the Oasis, not far from where he stood. After peeling his gaze from the sight, he took a knee in the sand and began to sift through with his claws in search of what he’d found. More than once, his rifle slipped to catch on the sling at his side, and Arkash eventually pulled it from his shoulder to set it on the ground.
Buried shallow in the sand was a human skull, he discovered. With a furrow to his brow, he pulled on the formation of calcium to pry it loose but instead found the starting columns of a spine attached, some loose collarbone also came uprooted from the sand. Was there a whole person buried there? A furrow of his brow saw him consider for a moment or two.
His side was still wounded, and though bones wouldn’t provide much in the form of sustenance, he believed he would at least be able to heal some of the damage with the marrow. After convincing himself it was worth his time, he began to dig out the sand with his claws, and pulled a number of bones from the dried sand. He found old, worn rags that made up some type of beige garment, almost robe like and largely intact. Woven around that was some sort of strap with the remnant of a metal buckle at the end, worn by the shift of sand.
Curiosity built within him while he continued his archeological digging. As more and more bones came free from the hold of the ground, so too came more garments and rags that he couldn’t identify. He wondered what certain articles of material were used for; he hadn’t seen clothing of the like in greater Daravin, or in Lorien. Around one of the dry pieces of finger bone was a worn brass ring with some sort of rough stone in the set. His brow furrowed while he inspected the sanded jewelry, then set it atop the rest of the clothing he’d accumulated while he proceeded to pick apart the remains of the body.
On one side, he set the bones in a pile, and on the other, he folded neatly a pile of clothes, garments, and accessories for the sake of salvaging some usable clothing. A third pile was created for things he believed to be too damaged and worn by the running sands and the passage of time.
When he was finally done, he sat on the pile of clothes, which helped keep his body from the burning sand, and began to break up the bones of the mystery cadaver. The marrow was still largely intact, to his surprise. Though it was old and dry, he still ate it without so much as a second thought. Quickly, the shattered fragment of calcium and marrow dissolved in the pit of his stomach.
Time seemed to roll by while the chewed on fragments of bone and marrow, drooling maw latched tightly on the hardened frame of some long-dead wanderer. He didn’t know it, but he entered some sort of haze while he sat there and chewed. The billowing winds of the sands receded as his awareness muffled, and the rustle of the granules withdrew into the background. Arkash found peace while he ate, and as the bones became easier to bite through, he found his hunger alleviate just a little. It was as though his curse had granted him mercy all of a sudden, and his jaws became more and more capable of snapping through bone, until they felt like the crunch of hardened, brittle bread under the press of his jaws.
The pain in his side withdrew, alleviated quickly by the amplified regeneration he gained. He breathed easily, and drank the air with lungs that felt almost bottomless. A deep breath through his nose saw him shudder and then exhale as the fresh quills on his back and forearms rose to stand on end, and he shivered pleasantly as the wind blew through them.
When his eyes opened, they shined deep red beneath the misty haze of his gaze. Caught in the euphoria of his evolution, Arkash stared on, lost to the sensation of satisfaction for the first time in more than a year of starvation.
Through the shifting sands, Arkash pressed onward. The sun had risen to a point that the world below had grown intensely hot, at least where Arkash roamed. The sand burned his feet while he walked, and his basalt carapace felt almost too hot despite the cold blood in his veins.
Time and time again, Arkash spied the horizon beneath the fabric of his burlap headwrap and found a mirage over and over again. The shimmer of the ground beneath the intense heat, the promise of water Arkash knew to be false. His superior sense of smell helped him exceptionally well to decipher what was real and what was not. There would be no water, he resolved. That was okay, he didn't need it. A body of water would have been the shortcut to relieving heat, he imagined, but he was far from dehydrated.
Maybe a rock would suffice? Some large body of stone that would drink the heat of his scales as quickly as the sun bombarded his body with its energy? No, he'd dealt with worse. He hadn't the time to stop and rest. He pressed onward, believing he would be fine.
Again, he adjusted the burlap wrap around his head and pulled the small visor he peered through to shelter his eyes from the harsh rays and lowered the wrap from his lips to breathe a lungful of the surrounding scents. Nothing, he found naught but the endless rolling sea of sand. Peering into the distance yielded a blurred mix of yellow and the pale blue of the sky, some vague shapes of hills that he could not decipher the distance of. Sight wasn't his strongest sense, and so he relied heavily upon the sense of smell to guide him.
He paid little attention to his eyes while he trudged forward, and instead smelled his way through the desert. It was just as well, as the intensity of the heat seemed to rob him of his focus, and his mind drifted while he trudged.
Vesper, another Rathor he'd met while hunting a band of mages in the wild, a man he'd initiated in Blood Magic, was still out there in Valtoria, he imagined. They'd had plans to do more before the seventy-fifth, before Arkash was made to flee. He wondered if the other Rathor thought he'd abandoned him; if he'd dismissed Arkash as a waste of time and gone ahead without him. It had been some week or so since they saw one another. If it were him waiting for Vesper, he would have believed his friend to abandon him, too. As similar as they were in their values, he wouldn't have blamed the cat for thinking the same.
Raphael, the man Arkash had served for the better part of a season, had discovered his true identity, his possession of Blood Magic, and his blight. Once he'd finally convinced the Rath to initiate him in his coveted Mark, the winds changed. He initiated Arkash in Nightfall, just to try to kill him immediately afterward. Arkash hadn't been prepared for the attack, and he was badly wounded in the exchange of blade and magic. Worse yet, his blood magic had vanished. He tried as hard as he could to force the manipulation and sway of the black blade at his hip but found no such luck.
Then there was Asphodel, a woman he'd met there in the Badlands when he'd fled Valtoria. She was good to him, saved his life while he bled against a crag. She fed him, watered him, and sheltered him in her own home. It might have been a cave, but he was still grateful. Despite his gratitude, Arkash was distant. To be treated with such kindness after a lifetime of rejection and cruelty was uncomfortable.
Vesper's flirting ended in his awkward attempts of reciprocation and the potential creation of a new enemy. Raphael's kindness ended in his attempted murder and the permanent loss of his magic. Asphodel's hospitality ended with his guilt and discomfort in the idea of being treated with any degree of respect and care.
All those different people he knew, nothing good came from mixing with them, he realized.
Was he destined to wander Atharen alone?
Was there no one in the world he would stand by?
His thoughts were stolen by the stir of a scent nearby, and he lifted his head to its source with a squint. There, in the sea of yellow, Arkash saw patches of green, some brown. Trees? He squinted again as he tried to bring himself to focus on the shapes and colors. An oasis, he realized. The smell of freshwater, insects, fresh glucose on the leaves of the foliage. It was real, he knew it was.
The closer he got, the more potent the smells became. Lush greens, soaked sand, the nectar of desert flowers… And corruption. He paused in his advance while the oasis was on the cusp of becoming clear and focused in his short-sighted gaze, then exhaled deeply through his nose. Corrupted dust storms raged in the Badlands and poisoned the water. He could already smell the foulness of the surface before him. Did he still waste his time approaching the thing? The foliage would provide him relief with their shade, he believed.
So, he closed the rest of the distance with the oasis and stopped when his clawed foot met with some unseen solid in the sand that sounded a hollow thunk.
With a furrow to his brow, he looked down at the spot, then peered over at the Oasis, not far from where he stood. After peeling his gaze from the sight, he took a knee in the sand and began to sift through with his claws in search of what he’d found. More than once, his rifle slipped to catch on the sling at his side, and Arkash eventually pulled it from his shoulder to set it on the ground.
Buried shallow in the sand was a human skull, he discovered. With a furrow to his brow, he pulled on the formation of calcium to pry it loose but instead found the starting columns of a spine attached, some loose collarbone also came uprooted from the sand. Was there a whole person buried there? A furrow of his brow saw him consider for a moment or two.
His side was still wounded, and though bones wouldn’t provide much in the form of sustenance, he believed he would at least be able to heal some of the damage with the marrow. After convincing himself it was worth his time, he began to dig out the sand with his claws, and pulled a number of bones from the dried sand. He found old, worn rags that made up some type of beige garment, almost robe like and largely intact. Woven around that was some sort of strap with the remnant of a metal buckle at the end, worn by the shift of sand.
Curiosity built within him while he continued his archeological digging. As more and more bones came free from the hold of the ground, so too came more garments and rags that he couldn’t identify. He wondered what certain articles of material were used for; he hadn’t seen clothing of the like in greater Daravin, or in Lorien. Around one of the dry pieces of finger bone was a worn brass ring with some sort of rough stone in the set. His brow furrowed while he inspected the sanded jewelry, then set it atop the rest of the clothing he’d accumulated while he proceeded to pick apart the remains of the body.
On one side, he set the bones in a pile, and on the other, he folded neatly a pile of clothes, garments, and accessories for the sake of salvaging some usable clothing. A third pile was created for things he believed to be too damaged and worn by the running sands and the passage of time.
When he was finally done, he sat on the pile of clothes, which helped keep his body from the burning sand, and began to break up the bones of the mystery cadaver. The marrow was still largely intact, to his surprise. Though it was old and dry, he still ate it without so much as a second thought. Quickly, the shattered fragment of calcium and marrow dissolved in the pit of his stomach.
Time seemed to roll by while the chewed on fragments of bone and marrow, drooling maw latched tightly on the hardened frame of some long-dead wanderer. He didn’t know it, but he entered some sort of haze while he sat there and chewed. The billowing winds of the sands receded as his awareness muffled, and the rustle of the granules withdrew into the background. Arkash found peace while he ate, and as the bones became easier to bite through, he found his hunger alleviate just a little. It was as though his curse had granted him mercy all of a sudden, and his jaws became more and more capable of snapping through bone, until they felt like the crunch of hardened, brittle bread under the press of his jaws.
The pain in his side withdrew, alleviated quickly by the amplified regeneration he gained. He breathed easily, and drank the air with lungs that felt almost bottomless. A deep breath through his nose saw him shudder and then exhale as the fresh quills on his back and forearms rose to stand on end, and he shivered pleasantly as the wind blew through them.
When his eyes opened, they shined deep red beneath the misty haze of his gaze. Caught in the euphoria of his evolution, Arkash stared on, lost to the sensation of satisfaction for the first time in more than a year of starvation.
Image source.
