[sat] Arkyn

The last clutches of winter withered away when Mishka was born. In the cold lands in the north of Skeonne, the fair-haired boy was the youngest of four children. Dina was the eldest daughter, followed by Elena and Erast; two twins that bore strikingly similar brunette hair and hazel eyes. Mishka was the last to follow, two years younger than Elena and Erast, and five years younger than Dina.

His formative years were uneventful, growing up in the city of Ponnan, ice skating with his older siblings was a frequent occurrence. Dragons were an even more frequent occurrence in the town. There was never a moment where Mishka was not being told to be careful and not get underfoot one of the large creatures. Their father would often sit his youngest son along the back of his own Snowfarre and tell him tales of their adventures together. Despite their father leaving for long periods of time to serve as a soldier, the youngest boy would often smile, even when Elena and Erast played teasing pranks on their baby brother, or when Dina would purposely smudge the latest cake batter she was making along the bridge of his nose. Life was blissfully uneventful, and Mishka felt keen on keeping it that way.

At the age of ten, his father took him and Erast on a hunting trip north into the mountains surrounding Ponnan. He had dealt with frost, snow, and ice before, but the rugged terrain of the mountains was a new challenge for the boy entirely. For his brother, it was the second yearly trip he had taken. Erast offered to hold his hand as they hiked up the mountain, and watched their father load his crossbow and take aim at the deer. At the top, the boy had spied a strange trail leading further through the mountain paths. Mishka snuck away then, curious and perhaps a bit too confident, found himself at the mouth of a cave. Something tugged him forward, like a peculiar thread tied to his heart urged him into the darkness.

Within was nothing but stone, or at least that was what it looked like. The boy stopped before the large mound of rocks, staring until a single, bold eye opened before his face. A Dragon.

Emil was what he named it, for how the beast had sprung up with such an extreme intensity that the floors shook and Erast could be heard shouting for his brother. Their trip back down was an exciting one, village folk coming to greet the hunting party and congratulate the boys on their successful trip. There was extra congratulations for the youngest son. The night air soon filled with boisterous laughter and the smell of rich stew.

Their father returned to the army soon after that, bidding his wife and his children goodbye for now as he and Erast would first travel to the northern temple where he had trained. Erast wanted to train as a fellow knight, which prompted his father to bring Erast to the fortress up high, a place where warrior priests like himself had done their schooling and proven themselves in the art of battle.

In two years' time, Mishka and Emil had followed.

Training as a warrior priest was a much different experience than the one Mishka had growing up. There was no more time for ice skating, and there was no one to hold his hand when hiking up the mountain either. His mentor, Gavriil, was strict but not unkind. The man was much older, much older than Mishka’s father of course. Gavriil had retired here to be an instructor, and was pleasantly surprised with Mishka’s own persistence and developing skills with divine magic.

Years passed, and the boy and dragon grew inexplicably close. Emil was the perfect foil for Mishka’s growing maturity. Where the man fretted, the Bastion brought a levity to the pair, encouraging and playful to the point where Mishka had no choice but to shove his dragon with a heart full of mirth to get back to work. Eventually, in the ever towering fortress, the blond man took trial and proved himself in combat, proving himself worthy of the title Warrior Priest; the title Cleric. The youngest son had grown taller in the seasons that had passed, his dragon, Emil, having grown impressively large, even as a Bastion as well.

The son graduated from the temple in the following autumn, taking with him Gavriil’s final words, a keepsake - two matching toy soldiers - for Gavriil’s children, and a promise to remain devoted to the gods they worshipped. Joining the army had been an endeavour that Mishka started on since he was a boy, and now he served alongside his brother and father as Ponnan prepared to take the Liluth mountains.

Tensions had always been high with Ponnan. The city and its people were inherently distrustful of outsiders, and the need for minerals and resources was enough to spur Ponnan to declare war upon Idayrth over them. Mishka was to be deployed in a few months' time.

As a fully fledged adult, Erast had taken it upon himself to introduce Mishka to the local pub. The man quickly became enamoured with a dark haired barmaid. Her name was Veronika. Between marching to Liluth and sending letters back home to Veronika, the two eventually made the promise to get married once the mountain range was taken.

The march forward lasted weeks, months, until they had finally come upon the foothills of the mineral-rich Liluthian mountains. It was an uphill battle from the start, the terrain was rough and their opponents seemed to have some familiarity with the land. Mishka and Emil fought alongside each other, mowing down the opposing force with great sweeping wings and bludgeoning with the might of his god behind his hammer.

But all things must come to an end.

“I’m sorry, Emil.”

A warlock picks through the aftermath.

Bodies litter the floor where the gnome stands, and they direct their accompanying Snowfarre to drag some of them into the makeshift carrying net for transport.

They fly Northeast towards the laboratory.

Emil follows.

A blond man wakes up alone on the table.

The air is musty and stale. Very little light shines down from the high and arched ceiling of the laboratory. He shifts and feels something snap within his chest. A spring. Another cavity opens in his chest, one where his heart would have been, but something brass and heavy has replaced it.

His eyes are cloudy as they scan the room. A thick layer of dust has settled over countless sheets of paper. In the corner lies a ransacked and rusted pile of armour. The plate is so dented and battered that the chestplate is unwearable. He raises a hand to his chest, no air leaves his lips as they trace over the precise stitching over top the scarred tissue.

The man swings his legs over the edge of the table. There’s blood on the floor, it runs somewhere into the darkness that he cannot see. He doesn’t want to go investigate. There’s a pitiful excuse of a candle on the desk he bumps into. His legs are shaky and weak with use so he holds on to the edge. Upon further rummaging, the telltale feeling of a match finds his fingers.

There is light.

The match is struck, and the dim blue light is replaced by the warm glow of fire.

Upon closer investigation, a diary is found on the desk. Its pages are old and yellowed, and the binding of the spine is weak and brittle. It was held open for too long. Inside are incoherent ramblings of raising the dead and schematic diagrams of the human body. Clockwork parts are drawn over where the lungs, the liver, and the heart should be. In the center of it all is a neat drawing of a crystal.

His head is foggy, reading through the paged entries. It feels like someone has opened the top of his head and gutted everything inside.

Another quick pass over the desk reveals two toy soldiers, though, one of them is missing a head. He pays no mind to them, only furrowing his brows as a pressure builds in his head.

The name Arkyn is referenced several times in the diary. Is this his diary? Is this his home? Why did he just wake up on an operating table? He turns to the end of the book and finds several pages have been ripped out. A shiver runs down his spine and he - Arkyn, he supposed - looks to the haphazard pile of armour and cloth in the corner. Taking the candle with him, Arkyn sets it down beside the pile of scrap metal. There’s a neatly folded, albeit moth bitten and faded yellow tunic beside it. Beside the plate is a chainmail set with an under-layer of gambeson. Both are bloodstained, the chainmail has several rusted parts and broken links, and the gambeson, horrifyingly, has a large hole in the chest matching the plate.

Arkyn dons it all the same. It takes several minutes to shuffle himself back into each piece, fingers fumbling to close the clasps, hands almost dropping the heavy chain that goes overtop. With each piece of armour that he puts on, a strange sort of reassurance fills him. A comfort in cloth, wrapped in old iron.

There is an empty spot where his heart is supposed to be. The pain f̴̳̖͇̓́́͆̎̓̾͠e̷̟͙͂̾͝s̴̡̧̨̛̛̠͎̦̞͈̝̪̤̭̟̪̿̂̔̈́̊̍ͅt̶̙̻͔͎͐́̌̿̔̏͌̽ȩ̸̛̊̆̆̌͐̾̌̀́̚͠͝r̵̤̬̥͚͙̳̭̲͚͕̺̠̜̦̫̀̓̑̈́̌̓͠͝s̵̨̡̢̬̙̥̗̰͖͉͓̙̩̈́͌́͒̒̅͐͆̔͒́͜ͅthere.

The candle burns dangerously low, and without a holder for it, Arkyn is forced to grasp it in the palm of his hand. He can feel the warmth of the flame and hot wax through the thin layer of unbroken candle. It doesn’t hurt, strangely enough. He finds that concerning.

He decides that the only thing he can do now is go up. The laboratory looks to be underground, but a skylight high up in the ceiling suggests that the surface is somewhere up there. The man finds some stairs, climbing up two flights before the wick meets his skin in a pool of hot wax and he drops the candle remains with a curse.

The ground shakes beneath his feet. The walls rumble as something large wakes.

The same rumbling dislodges something in a nearby closet. The door swings open and out falls a rusted warhammer and shield. The hammer hits the ground with a loud, metallic, CLANG. The shield looks mildewy and a bit weakened. With his hands now free of holding the candle, Arkyn hefts the hammer and shield into his possession in preparation to meet whatever beast has just woken up.

The light pierces his eyes much harsher than it did in the laboratory. But what’s more alarming, is the sight of an enormously large Bastion dragon standing guard at the gate. Arkyn holds the hammer with a vice grip as it roars, but he cannot bring himself to swing at it.

His knees feel weak as another wave of crippling emptiness rushes over him, pulsing through his chest. The dragon seems to feel it too, and it roars again, this time in agony. It looks angry, swinging its tail around, causing rocks and rubble to fall. The movement seems to have been the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back as the old pillars of the laboratory finally give way and collapse.

Two large clawed hands reach for him and wrap him to the scaled body of the beast. Four wings curl around them as the beast hurtles down the mountain away from the shifting rock and snow. It chases them down the mountain, and after decades of sleep, the dragon loses its strength to take off.

They skid down the remaining foothills, tumbling and rolling to a halt just outside a small fishing town.

To any onlookers, they look dead. The dragon laid there, in its arms was a man in bloodstained mail. Arkyn heaves a breath that he does not need, and the Bastion growls a rumbling warning. Whether it was to him or to the approaching footsteps he did not know.

“My name… is Arkyn”

There is an empty spot where his heart is supposed to be. The pain f̴̳̖͇̓́́͆̎̓̾͠e̷̟͙͂̾͝s̴̡̧̨̛̛̠͎̦̞͈̝̪̤̭̟̪̿̂̔̈́̊̍ͅt̶̙̻͔͎͐́̌̿̔̏͌̽ȩ̸̛̊̆̆̌͐̾̌̀́̚͠͝r̵̤̬̥͚͙̳̭̲͚͕̺̠̜̦̫̀̓̑̈́̌̓͠͝s̵̨̡̢̬̙̥̗̰͖͉͓̙̩̈́͌́͒̒̅͐͆̔͒́͜ͅthere.

The dragon feels it too.

TBA