0hzarks » Lair » Desmond

Desmond

(#10041180)

He/Him | Mercenary Trainer & Hatchling Nanny

Energy: 43/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

6.35 m

Wingspan

5.82 m

Weight

380.5 kg

Genetics

White
Tiger

Caribbean
Shimmer

Grey
Underbelly

Hatchday

Jan 25, 2015
(9 years)

Breed

Adult
Wildclaw

Eye Type

Lightning
Common

Level 25 Wildclaw

Max Level

STR

124

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Tropic
Cloud

Offspring

Biography

D E S M O N D

High Clan Protector

B I O G R A P H Y

War is hell. But then, you already know that.

Maybe you imagine the lines of soldiers on the battlefield. Battle standards flying high. The clash of swords and flashes of magic. Something…glorious, perhaps. A service to your deity.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

Imagine this, instead. Chaos. The dying screams of friends and foes. Metal splitting scales and flesh. A metallic smell: Blood. The ground is slick with it, your feet are slipping on gore and bodies. The frantic beating of your heart, dulling out all other sounds…

This is the reality I have lived through.

I was young, when it first started. My parents, adventurers through and through, had their first brood away from their clan. Two males: Me, and my older brother, Exodus. But they couldn’t stop to take care of us, no. Instead, they took the easy way out. They sent us to serve the Stormcatcher.

I was raised into fighting. It is all I have ever known. My brother and I trained as a team, sparring every day under the eyes of our deity’s officers. Of course, the Stormcatcher didn’t have time for us, either. We learned the hard way that in an army, you’re one unit of hundreds. You’re not special; no one cares who you are, who you were. You’re a pawn to be played, like a chess-piece. No one has time to take care of you, so we took care of each other.

“Desmond," he said one day, while we were sparring, "I fear death."

"Everyone does," I said back.

"No, I mean I fear what happens after death. Is there an afterlife? Do we just...fade away? We’ve killed dragons, you and I. Are we damned? I don't know. I don't want to find out.”

"You won’t," I said. "We'll get through this…together."

There is a fact that soldiers will not tell you about war. More often than not, it’s a waiting game. You could have a week of constant vigil, silence on the battlefront, and boredom begins to set in. Then an explosion of action as the enemy launches their attack, and an hour of adrenaline and blood. It’s our responsibility to always be ready for that pivotal hour, but on that terrible day, we were not.

The battle of the month was Fire versus Lightning, over some insignificant patch of land that the fighting had long stripped of life. Back-and-forth warfare: Each side would invade and hold the area for a few days, then the other would launch a counterattack and push them out. So on and so forth. Dozens of lives, lost with no true gain; the futility of eternal war. Exodus and I were assigned to patrol duty in some outpost on the fringes: Low-priority, low-risk, grunt work. Or so our officers thought.

The time was just after sunset. The sky was orange and black, the perfect colour to hide the Fire ambush headed straight for us.

The heavy infantry struck first. Armoured Imperials and Guardians swooped low, on the wing, strafing the outpost with volleys of firebreath. In the initial chaos, stealthy Fae and Spirals slipped in and wreaked havoc with swift daggers. At least, that’s the story our superiors told us later. We had been out on patrol when the attack happened, and returned to a blazing beacon where there had once been a building.

“Search for survivors!” our squad leader roared. Our 5-dragon patrol didn’t have time to register anything like horror or fear. We split up and fanned out.

I picked through the ashes of the outpost, sidestepping charred bodies and burning debris. The sight of it was gut wrenching, but worst of all was the smell: Rancid as carrion, mixed with ashes from a bonfire multiplied a hundredfold, it left a bitter taste on my tongue. Many of the dragons I had talked to, trained with, were barely recognizable with their blackened scales and agonized postures, preserved forever by rigor mortis. When it came down to the battle itself, ranks mattered little. Death does not discriminate.

“Des—”

A wheeze, barely recognizable as a word, rose from beneath a stack of fallen beams. I was there in an instant, harnessing strength I had never known to shove the debris away. Lying beneath was one of the senior officers, a tough old Ridgeback who even the Stormcatcher himself feared to cross. She tried to lift herself up, but collapsed, breathing hard. I rushed to support her.

“No, I’ll be fine. Listen to me. Those Fire blackguards are still in the area. They’ll be hiding in the ruins, using our own as bait, waiting to prey on any medics who try to help the wounded…”

No sooner had she said that than a scream shattered the silence.

The Ridgeback shoved me away, but I was already running, my feet skimming across embers without the slightest sensation.

The corpse of a Guardian lay in the very epicenter of the ambush, and a dead-eyed Spiral coiled atop it, a bloodied knife in claw. Beneath her lay a white-and-blue figure, staring in disbelief at the gash on his throat.

By some primal instinct, I ripped an axe from a fallen soldier and flung it at the Spiral. Suffice to say, she would never again take another soul.

My rage seemed to evaporate then, and I hurried to my brother’s side, one talon fumbling to support his head, the other pressing down hard on the wound, just as we had been taught.

Exodus’s eyes were unfocused, fixed on some point beyond me. His breathing was harsh and shallow, and every breath seemed to force more blood onto my claws. “Am—I dying?”

I could feel his heartbeat in tune with mine, dulling out every other sound. “No. No, Exodus. You’ll be fine. Listen to me. You’re going to be alright. Medic? Medic! Dustoff on me!”

Every second seemed to drag on for minutes. My claws were slippery, yet I dared not look down. I kept my gaze locked on my brother’s face, watching it tense up in agony.

“I don’t want to die,” he coughed out.

“No, no, don’t move. You won’t, I promise. Medic! Where are you?”

In that moment, he seemed to relax. “Don’t lie, Des. You’re too obvious for that.”

When the medic finally arrived, it would be to a scene of two brothers lying beside each other, covered in blood. They would be hard-pressed to tell who was alive, and who was dead.

_{Tropic and Cloud,

The Stormcatcher has asked me to express his regret that your son, Exodus, died in service to the Lightning flight, defending the Shifting Expanse against a Fire incursion.

Please accept my deepest sympathy.

Pyroclast, First Officer of the Stormcatcher’s Army}

As with all things, life must go on.

The massacre demolished Lightning morale. The Stormcatcher gave the word to retreat from Fire lands, and where we had once been advancing, we were now just barely holding our ground against further invasion.

I was reassigned, alone, to Storm’s Bastion, one of the largest and most well-protected fortresses anywhere in the Shifting Expanse. Every day I saw someone new; it was impossible to memorise all the faces that passed through those gates. Yet one face still stands out in my memory: A cheeky grin that said ‘I’m ready for anything’.

In every army, you will find those who just want to live, and those who live for glory. She was the latter.

Her name was Arma. It’s been decades, maybe half a century, but I can still see her striking pitch-black pelt and red eyes. Yes, she was a Plague dragon. But no one who questioned her loyalty to the Stormcatcher escaped without a scratch or two.

She was a rebel with a cause, and that cause was fame. She craved recognition, she chased titles; she wanted Sornieth to know her name, and whisper it in reverence. She was always first in line to volunteer for a mission, and she wore a suit of battle armour adorned with the trinkets of her fallen foes.

Somehow, that overzealous eye caught my own. It was she who made the first move, asking the standard ‘who are you’, ‘what’s your name and rank’, ‘why did you join the force’. She seemed to take my silence as a personal challenge, and to that end, she came back every day with ever more questions: ‘how do your parents feel about you’, ‘where were you assigned before this’, ‘is there someone waiting for you at home’.

“No!” I broke at last, turning back to snarl at her. “My parents cared more for their job than their own offspring. My brother died in my arms. I have no one left!”

Arma stopped. Her permanently fierce expression seemed to soften. She wrapped her tail around me, and in my ear, she whispered the words that changed everything.

“You have me.”

From that day on, I found her seeking me out on purpose, whether at the mess hall, before an assigned patrol, even before lights-out, just exchanging small, innocent talk. She would leave gifts in the strangest places: I’d lie down to sleep and knock my head into a box of dried meat. There would be cloth patches on my desk, obviously torn from an enemy’s uniform, and fresh-cut lilies lying neatly across my gear.

“A lot of dragons think it’s weird,” she said one day, as we were eating in the mess hall. “‘Oh, aren’t those funeral flowers?’ ‘Who died?’ But lilies are my favourite flower. I think they’re beautiful. Far as I’m concerned, that’s the best reason there is to like something, even if no one else thinks the same.”

And so it went on for the next few weeks. She laid siege as if to a walled city, and day by day, I felt my defenses wearing down. When I finally leaned into her embrace, we both knew who had won this battle.

“We’ll teach those Fire scum what-for,” she said, preening down my crest. “We’ll avenge your brother…together.”

I awoke one day to find the entire fortress in an uproar. Chattering recruits yielded no useful information, so I set course straight for the one dragon I could rely on.

I found her pushing her way to the front of a crowd, where a decorated officer stood with a clipboard in talon.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Arma turned to me with her signature grin. “They’re asking for volunteers. The brass’ve tracked down Umeni the Crimson to Fort Conflagrant, and they want someone to go in and turn this whole war around!”

“Umeni the Crimson!” One of Fire’s most senior generals, her death would almost certainly turn this war around. It should have been exciting news, and yet…

“But she’d be heavily guarded,” I said. “It’s a suicide mission.”

“I know! That’s why I’m going!”

The ambient chatter around me plummeted to silence. Her words echoed in my head, dredging up frenzied memories that screamed and bled in my peripheral vision.

“Arma…” I was nearly shouting over the roar of blood in my ears. “It’s too dangerous.”

Her smile faded. She looked me right in the eye. “That’s why I’m going. I know I can do it, Des. I just know it. And think of the stories they’d tell of me. Maybe for decades! You understand, don’t you? This is my moment.”

I saw Exodus, dying in my arms, his last breath shuddering in terror turned quiet acceptance. I saw the burnt corpses lined up in the medical bay, all casualties of some distant deities’ squabbles. I saw the exact moment I found the love of my life, my one light in a long series of unfortunate events.

“I…”

Yet I also saw something far worse: The look of defeat on Arma’s face, knowing she had let the opportunity of her lifetime pass her by.

To truly love someone is to let them go, even if you know they won’t return. So I let her go.

“I’ll be rooting for you. Knock her dead.”

The news arrived the very next day, delivered by a courier who was practically dancing in flight.

Umeni the Crimson found dead in her bed. No mention of an assassin whatsoever. The Fire flight knew how to clean up after themselves.

But the war effort was saved, and that was all the Stormcatcher’s legions cared about.

As the soldiers toasted and celebrated, I sat alone in my bunk, staring at the open window until the imprint of its light had seared itself into my eyelids.

I can’t do this anymore, I thought, and thus, my decision was made.

With celebration came the inevitable alcohol, and in the drunken haze that permeated the barracks, I packed my few possessions in a knapsack. I passed empty offices in broad daylight, sentries in a drunken stupor, off-key singing behind closed doors. But my determination never wavered, not even as I passed under the gazes of propaganda posters, our stern deity glaring down at us in pen and ink.

Desertion is punishable by death, you know, and of course I knew that. When my officers came to their senses and found my empty locker, they would be out for blood. I had to leave the Shifting Expanse, maybe even travel across Sornieth, or they would find me and deliver the Stormcatcher’s wrath.

As I reached the door to freedom, something small and white caught my eye. Pinned to the door, exactly at a Wildclaw’s eye level, was a single fresh lily, its petals still vibrant with life.

I did not, could not, say anything. I plucked it down, careful not to even bend the stalk, and placed it in my bag. Then I took off into a clear blue sky, and never looked back.

Those first few days on the run were one long adrenaline rush. Every bush hid Lightning spies, every night there were dragons lying in wait to pounce. I hunted and scavenged for myself, steered away from clans and towns, avoided dragons with even the slightest hint of Lightning coloration. I took the long route, into the Sunbeam Ruins, through the Tangled Wood, on paths so old that the dirt was cracked and overgrown with weeds.

I dared not stop until I crossed the border into the crimson scar of the Plaguebringer’s wasteland, where all criminals and runaways came to disappear…one way or another.

The rest of the story, I think you know. Your clan, the one you call the Clan of Songs and Scars, found me unconscious in the Abiding Boneyard after a raider ambush. Ironic, isn’t it? For a soldier such as I to have survived so many battles, yet fall prey to petty bandits. They showed me kindness I had never known before. They took me to their healer; they patched me up, well, as best they could…all without any expectation of payment or favor.

But as a soldier, you learn to honor special favors, and this was one of them. I decided to join them, and here I am, telling my story to you today.

So what’s the moral, you ask? Well, I’ll be honest with you: There is none. Not every story needs a moral; life is not some divine prose dictated by our deities, all its plots and pieces laid out perfectly.

That’s enough of storytelling for one day, I should think. All you hatchlings watching me with your bright eyes and innocent smiles: Go gently into that good night, rest soundly, know your loved ones will wake up beside you the next morning. And I will be here, ready to teach you the art of combat, that you may one day fight for a cause you believe in. In this wild world of conflict and heartbreak…you have me.

Just don’t wake me before sunrise, if you rascals know what’s good for you.

Bio by Ethiera!

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Exalting Desmond to the service of the Plaguebringer will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.

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