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Character: Raemos
Stage: Apprentice
Luck: 7 (as of Dec 22)
Dragon: 4 Fekarat, 1 ysali dragon

4 wins, 1 loss

+ 22.5 exp
+ 4 Luk
+1 LUK exp
+ 6 Sharp Claws
+1 Ysali orb

Needs 1500 words

Raemos loved taking his morning walks in Serenia. The air here was lovely. The morning air of the desert was crisp and chill and dry, and the air of Taliuma was tinged with water and salt and other and less-savory scents. Tukyere's air was indescribable, as full of overwhelming variety as its people. Here in the Serenia countriside, it held the soft scents of grass and growing things - clean, living scents that soothed Raemos's slightly frayed nerves.

Travelling always upset him a little - it was the combination of the boat and the wagons, and sometimes scrutiny and unpleasant fellow passengers. In addition, though, he had had a quarrel with his father the night before. He avoided fighting with his father whenever possible.

Raemos thought the world of his father: Mallew was a great man, a skilled bezerker, and a strong person. Raemos wanted very little more than his father's approval, other than to be like him someday. Approval, though, was something that continually eluded him. Raemos loved Mallew – he was his father, after all, the only man in the house other than Rae himself, if he dared be presumptuous enough to call himself, barely 12, a man. Raemos often wondered if Mallew loved him in return. That was nonsense, of course. Fathers loved their sons. Fathers cared for their sons. But maybe if Raemos hadn't been born the way he was, maybe then his father would take him under his wing more. Maybe if he wasn't a Soudanan horror, a wingless freak among angels, then Mallew would love him as he loved Vona.

Raemos took a deep breath of the morning air, savoring the scents of early winter. Hay and floral scents still lingered on the breeze from the late fall, and they were punctuated now by the sharp smell of frost. Such thoughts about his father and himself were distractions. Perhaps they were true, but even so they ultimately did not matter. What did matter was what Raemos would do about them.

Raemos walked along the pleasant farmland property that one of Vona's friends owned. Raemos wasn't sure what excuses they had used this time for not staying in Ashen city to visit Vona, or who had made them. He had long ago lost track of the polite lies and excuses that kept him away from Ashen city and from the discovery of his twisted, foul self.

The visit had, thus far, been pleasant. His disguise had held, and Vona's friends were very nice people. Only the fight with his father marred the visit. It had started about something so odd that Raemos thought that his father must have helped himself to their host's liquor cabinet again. He didn't even know what he had done to make his father snap at him while he was catching up with Vona over some tea and light dessert. “Why couldn't he be more like his sister?” his father had asked.

He couldn't be like his sister. Vona was Vona. That was all. When she had said as much, the argument had gone downhill and grown progressively heated. Raemos usually was the cooler head in the family, the soothing force among high tempers, but he had felt confused and offended. He would happily change anything about himself to be more like what his father wanted, but Mallew hadn't said how or even what bothered him this time. How could Raemos fix something when he didn't know what to fix?

Thankfully, the walk dulled the return of his frustration. Father had done this before, and would do it again, and Raemos just had to be forgiving of the poor man. It must have been hard to raise a wingless disgusting freak like himself. He just had to show his father that, despite everything, he could make him proud in some way. But how?

A shape darted out of the trees in front of him, gliding to another tree with a chatter. Raemos grinned as he recognized the adorable and sharp-clawed fekarats. He had an idea - he knew how to make it up to his father and, maybe, impress him. He hurried back to the house to get the gear he would need: He was going to go trapping.

Only his mother was awake by the time he left again, still early. Vona had developed a later sleeping schedule - a city thing, he assumed - and Father was likely sleeping off the drink. He told his mother what he was doing and she wished him luck. Whatever he was planning, she hoped it worked: she wanted her husband to at least appreciate her son. He walked out of the house with some trapping materials and a day pack. Raemos had done some trapping before - it was a way to get meat and furs to trade from the desert when the herd wasn't ready for another round of slaughter or shaving. His father had taught him, and had been very good at it. Maybe thought the boy, if I show how adept I am and bring back some fekarat pelts, meat, and claws, he will give me some praise... Praise from Mallew was a rare thing indeed. Raemos would settle for a manly nod of appreciation, or even a 'huh'. He wasn't very picky.

Raemos stalked quietly into the fields, checking the area for signs of fekarats. He had never been taught how to hunt them, but having seen one, he could assume that others were around. He found a suitable looking tree and set up the traps, baiting them with some irresistible fruit, nut, and honey bait. He then left them alone - the key in any trapping scheme - to gather some vegetables. Vona's friends were wealthy and well provided for, but it would be good to have some wild Serenian vegetables from her friend's lands to bring home. It would add variety and fond memories to their meals for a time. Plus, it was an opportunity to explore, and Raemos rarely passed such things up. It was a trait he had gotten from his mother.

He had gone a ways away from the trapped tree, and could no longer see it across the lush, grassy plains. He felt as though something was watching him as he walked through the idyllic and silent fields. He turned suddenly at a rustle in the brush, then dismissed it as an illusion or, perhaps, a creature going about its business in the grass. He crouched to inspect an interesting striped mushroom, intending to sketch it to show his mother later.

Suddenly, he heard a harrowing roar behind him. He turned, his haste causing him to overbalance and fall over briefly as a great beast's claws crushed the mushroom he had been observing and came to a graceful landing a few feet away from him. He drew his sword and scrambled to his feet, taking in the smooth, sleek, reptilian form.

It was a dragon!

He steadied his nerves and hands as it turned to look at him, stalking closer, its movements calculating and predatory. He moved too, slipping into the swordsman's stance that his father had taught him, the old dented sword that he practiced with at the ready. The dragon attacked, and he parried, slashing in and scoring a line of imperfection along the dragon's smooth hide. He did not waste the second he had been given, his mind automatically working through the routines his father had drilled into him on quiet days out on the ranch. He had never used them in battle before, but it was as if his muscles moved on their own.

He drove the dragon back as it bled from a deep cut in its chest, catching a claw to his arm as he blocked the dragon's retort. The dragon hissed and spat, a gob of viscous and hissing fluid splattering a foot away from Raemos's shoe. He watched as it dissolved the plant it landed on, imagining with a chilled heart what would have happened had it struck him instead. He turned quickly as the dragon, trying to take advantage of his distraction, came for him, its maw wide and dripping. Its jaws were massive, larger than Raemos's head and full of sharp teeth and foul, unspeakable odors. He held it open, struggling against the beast. Finally he found an oppurtunity and, before he realized what he was doing, he had plunged his sword up into its skull. He ducked away as the dragon crumbled to the ground. It disintegrated into dust, leaving a shimmering orb in its place.

Raemos, panting and wounded, picked it up and studied it. It felt different from the other orbs he had collected, the ones from the ambush he had weathered that other fateful visit to Serenia. Those orbs had the feel of crisp, clear sunrises and sunset-stained clouds. This orb felt like magestic trees and growing things and the rich scent of wet forest mulch. A different clan, then. Ysali? He turned it over in his hands, remarking at the cool smoothness of the dragon's soul.

He had killed a dragon. Intentionally. He smiled to himself, feeling very proud of himself. Surely this would change his father's opinion of him for the better!

He decided it was time to go back and check on the traps. Three shook with their struggling burdens, who had come for the bait and would never leave. Two traps dangled emptily, untouched and one trap was broken, it bait removed - it had fallen on the ground and released the fortunate occupant inside.

He took down all the traps, ending the caught fekarat's lives quickly and cleanly, as he had been taught. Just as he was about to leave, he heard a chittering and looked up to see a fekarat, a piece of the broken trap still looped around its paw. He smiled and laughed, silently congratulating it on its good fortune as it scurried away. With his catch - unexpected and otherwise - in hand, he made his way back to the friend's house.


(1684/1500 words)