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Character: Suluksati
Stage: Keinova
Luck: 26 (as of Dec 24)
Creature: Kiandri Dragon x 5 (lvl 25, Luk 10)
Success Rate:
6-100

Win: 5
Loss : 0

Total:
+ 125 exp
+ 5 Kiandri Orbs

Needs 1200 words

Once you got away from the cities and trade routes, Eowyn was a land of solitude, broken only by the whispers of the desert winds and by mirages that taunted the eye. It was a land made for thinking, just you and your own mind for endless miles of sand. Suluksati often went to Eowyn - it was wild and untamed, full of dragons s of all sorts, from Ysali to Gaili, that she had to protect. Only the dragons of light and dark (and the dragons of ice) were foreign to this land.

So was she, an Aedaun, was also foreign to this wild place. Yet she felt at home here in the Malro Desert, with only sun and sand as company. Solitude was a hero's trademark, and she had been raised to be a hero since her hatching. Aedauns, or at least her clan of them, were expected to uphold justice and righteousness and be warriors for the goddess Seren. For her coming of age, she had to go to a place, sacred for both her kind and for Aedaun dragonkind, and watch Seren's grace bless the land as the sun rose. It had been a remarkable experience.

So. It had to have been some time after that that she had found the quest that would consume her adult life. She wondered why it was so hard to know, for sure, when she had decided that she would be the Defender of Dragons. She knew, though, that it almost required her to be alone. No others believed as she did. To them, she was insane - or so the more gracious ones claimed. She had been called many things by this time - the names did not hurt her anymore. That was what she told herself, anyway.

She did know why they thought so harshly of her. The broken and deserted remains of a caravan in the clear, ozone-tinged air of the desert were an excellent illustration. She went over to investigate, sniffing at the deliberate lightning marks on both wood and animal carcass, and the singed quality of the ashen remains of the Oblivionites that must have run this train of wagons. Lightning strikes meant Kiandri, and the claw marks were too large and strong to have been drakein. Dragon, then. This caravan had been destroyed by dragons.

Suluksati was saddened as she wandered through the wreckage looking, to her great shame, for food and water that had been left. It was wrong to steal from the dead, and wronger still to steal to support a quest to protect that which had killed them, but such morals had worn thin over time. She found some dry and rotten meat and some water, hidden in a canteen under some of the ashes and ate among the remains.

Death was inevitable. Immortality, figurative or literal, was not among Suluksati's delusions. She knew she would die, likely sooner rather than later. She took risks and threw herself at problems. One day, it would be too much. She would push her luck too far. She would die. She could hope that her life made a difference, that she had started something in the minds of the young. Maybe she had planted a seed of thought that might eventually change the world. But would it matter, in the end? She would be dead and gone and never see the world she hoped for - with all elements in harmony as they had been in the beginning, with dragons and Magescans and Drakein living in peace with each other. A world with no more hunts.

Looking out at the carnage of the caravan, though, she knew it was not just the hunter's minds that she needed to change, but the hunted as well. She wondered if there was any hope for either party.

But of course there was. She had to believe she could change things. Otherwise, what was the point? She opened the canteen and, holding it in her jaws, she tipped it up to drink from it. Her feathers crackled with static electricity as the welcome water washed down her gullet, and she wondered at it. Normally, in the Malro desert, her feathers would become full of sand, not of electricity. She put down the canteen and shook her feathers out, not happy with how they fluffed in response. She looked like one of those fluffy bird things that the Magescans kept as food.

Suluksati would never claim to be the sharpest drakein ever, and she didn't mind it too much. Leave the brains to everybody else, let her protect those who she wished to protect. Even she was a bit dismayed, though, when she failed to notice the Kiandri ambush until the dragons leapt from their hiding spaces and were upon her.

They were so fast! She had barely brought up her light shield, when a blur of a claw skittered off of it, drawing sparks of both light and lightning. They circled her, darting in seemingly at random from every angle and then dodging away whenever she tried to counter. Finally, annoyed, she flashed with a brilliant and piercing light and took to the sky, hoping to escape their claws as well as her own.

The Kiandri, though, were used to bright flashes in their electrified desert existence. It's magical, holy nature kept them at bay, but they were soon in the air, in pursuit of their prey. With roars and lighting magic, they converged on her, hoping to flank her and then shock her out of the sky. She knew that, fast as she was, she could not flee them in their own homeland. She banked and, with a complex movement of her wings, flipped herself around to face her pursuers. With a cry of woe, she spewed forth a blast of light, hitting one full in the face. She followed up with aggressive clawing, ramming into it in the air and slashing three red, deep, marks across its neck. Blinded, battered by light energy, it fell from the air, hitting the ground with a crack and a whisper as it disintegrated away. Its compatriots circled around her, but they did not have the caution in their eyes that Suluksati sought. There was no way into these dragons hearts and minds - her words would mean nothing. One fired lightning at her, glowing in the clear, darkening sky, and she barely dodged, her wing feathers singed. She corrected her balance, firing another light bolt at the dragon, but with the death of the day her magic too was weakening. Sharp claws grabbed her tail and began to pull her towards its sharp-fanged maw. She turned on it with a scream, her tail glowing as her magic healed it, attacking the Kiandri dragon's head. No more mercy, no more grace, just survival. She had to survive. She had to try. She struggled with the dragon for a moment as it thrashed and clawed at her, sending streams of her blood into the desert dusk. A lucky strike drove her claws into its brain and with a gurgling shriek, it fell away, disintegrating.

She attacked the two behind her, looping around them with her adrenaline-found energy to slash at their bellies as her own wounds healed with her dimming magic. Her claws struck sparks on their hard scales, and she could feel the shock of the electricity that ran through their bodies. She was between them when they tried to bring her down, their claws crackling with electricity as they reached out to touch her and shock her into a fatal descent into the jaws of their comrade, previously hidden, below. They succeeded.

Electricity raced through her synapses and sinews, and her body spasmed painfully as she fell. Her magic fought to catch up, healing even as she crackled with the heat and light their magic. Magical power - or sheer desperation- saved her from death. She banked in the air, somewhat scorched and shaken, and fell upon their waiting confederate. She duelled him in the air -- He was faster, but she was strong, tearing at his wings, his back and, with some maneuvering of her own twitching wings, his heart. With a dying roar, the dragon fell away and was gone.

She longed to land- her muscles screamed with a lasting pain and spasmed at random moments. But landing would mean making herself vulnerable to more lightning. She had to make them stop.

"I meant you no harm!" she called up to the two that flew above her, "Please. If you desist, I will spare you! I will leave you in peace."

The dragons only laughed. Their prey was weak and at their mercy. It was trying to bluff them, even. How silly. Three of their own had died, but they had been weak too. They would take this false dragon down. No problem.

If she could not stop them with words, Suluksati knew she would have to stop them with violence. She flapped her pained wings powerfully: once, twice, then a third time, rising suddenly into the warm desert air. She was at her limit – she would have to end it quickly. She summoned all her magic to her, dimmed as it was, and, with intense focus, blasted it all at one of the dragons. It hit, and the dragon shimmered with light before like a candle, it went out, disintegrating away into nothing. She could feel the spiritual drain of the absense of her magic weigh heavily on her, but one dragon remained and she could not rest yet, though she knew she needed to.

She brought forth the last of her strength and attacked, barrelling into the dragon with the desperation of smaller prey, using her mass as a weapon. She drove her claws deep into its flesh so that she could latch on like a parasite. She bit at its neck, her claws scoring deep marks in its hardened hide as it struggled at her, wounding her with its own claws. Finally, though, her teeth gnawed their way to their mark. Hot blood coated her feathers and they fell, the dragon and her, to the sandy desert ground. The dragon's disintegration softened her fall, and she collapsed into unconciousness in the indentation of its passing.