Indra

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Mate: What a thing it is to pray for death. Family: --- Occupation: Warrior

Artwork: Album

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If asked, Indra will not speak of the place he came from or what he has done. His tale is, admittedly, simplistic in its own way-- But he has told it once and only once, to Avon-Kei and his mate when he arrived on Nocte's doorstep, and he'd rather not tell it again.

Indra was born to one of the oldest, largest clans in the Shifting Expanse. Their history was rich with tales of heroism and servitude to the Stormcatcher, and this filled the minds of each and every young dragon to be born into their midst. Like the rest, Indra was taught to have complete faith and unshakable loyalty to his deity, to live and die by his design. In the beginning, this sustained him through the trails he was to endure; it simply didn't last long enough.

He was taken from his nest, barely more than a hatchling, and began training as one of the clan's elite warriors. Oh it was a position with much grandeur and he took pride in being selected to carry on the proud traditions their clan upheld. He worked tirelessly to hone his craft, outclassing many of his fellow trainees, and soon he was enlisted in their order and sent to battle.

Except that swiftly he came to realize that it was not "battle" warriors like himself were being sent to. Those quick and silent, their accuracy overriding their brawn, they were set to a different and far more sinister task than brutely defending the clan's borders. It was their job to weed out the weak and the faithless, to kill those who opposed their leader or, stars forbid, the Stormcatcher. Indra tried to instill in himself the belief that this was all in the name of a greater good, the Stormcatcher's word unflawed and absolute.

One day he simply could not deny any longer the reality that he could not remember what his hands looked like without blood on them. The lives he had taken were countless and faceless, blurred corpses that haunted his dreams, and he could bare it no more. He dreamt of death. A sea of bodies and a single blade just before him, waiting to be lifted into his hands. He could cut down another empty carcass, soak himself once more in innocent blood, or he could take the cruel edge to his own throat and let justice be done.

Honor had been beaten into him since his youth. Indra thought on it mockingly now, for his mentors' obsession with the concept was purely hypocritical. There was no honor in what he did, or in how the clan in its entirety chose to live. They were as depraved and evil as those they preached against, perhaps moreso because they simply turned a blind eye to their own atrocities. Indra thought it a pathetic irony that of all of them, he was the one incapable of just one more dishonorable act.

If he could not kill himself, he supposed, he would merely have to find someone who would. Someone who wouldn't care for who he was or if he deserved what was coming to him, who would simply tear his throat out and have done with.

It was murmured behind hands when others thought he was not listening, or that a killer like him were too stupid to understand, that there existed a weapon. Something crafted by skilled hands, meant to be the ultimate champion of their clan. A living, breathing thing whose only desire was to maim and kill with little concern for itself. Indra often wondered bitterly if they realized they already had an entire army of such creatures, or if they were growing tired of dismissing suicides as happenstance.

He sought this weapon, and though it took weeks for him to find its location, he pursued it relentlessly. Each life he took in the meantime only furthered his drive, his desperation to end his own pathetic existence and ultimately be done with. His inner thoughts became a mantra of how it would all be over soon, he would repent for his crimes and finally be allowed atonement in death.

The act of sneaking into the laboratory was disarmingly easy. It was nearly unguarded, what dragons had been stationed about easily dealt with by Indra's skilled hand. Did they simply not fear that whatever they would containing would get out, or was it hubris that they thought nothing could get in? It didn't matter to him. By morning he would be dead, if all went to plan, so into the darkness he plunged, trailing through the rooms and the halls until he found what he was searching for.

Of course... all did not go to plan. Not at all.

Indra hadn't been shocked by the contents of the rooms he passed. The corpses were a given, the machines were expected, the blood and gore was all half cleaned and likely left to be wiped away in the morning. He knew what kind of clan this was, what their "science" looked like. But somehow, somehow he hadn't thought that things would ever be taken this far. Some part of him was still naive enough to believe that innocence was meant to be cherished and not abused, that there was still some good. Somewhere.

The "weapon" his clan had so pridefully crafted was little more than a child. It stared up at him with big, seafoam eyes, gaunt body a collection of misshapen bones and angry sores. Indra stared into its face, and it stared back at him until its little jaws parted ( sharp teeth. Like a collection of broken glass in its immature mouth. ) and it cried out.

Some part of Indra recognized the sound as a child's cry, almost questioning, nearly innocent. Except that it came out low and scratchy, like a snarling beast rather than a weakened babe, an Indra recoiled.

It was amazing that after all he had seen and done, he still had the stomach to double over and be sick. Maybe he was foolish. Maybe he was still wrapped up in the deceitful dreams of grandeur and heroism. Maybe he'd simply hoped that even in this awful place, an innocent might remain an innocent, even for a little while.

All thoughts of his own death had fled his mind. How could a child be a killer? Even if he saw the blood beneath its talons, and the flesh caught between its teeth, he could not imagine ever asking something so selfish of something so young. He felt ill again, sick with himself more than anything else. He hadn't even thought of the feelings of the supposed "weapon", just sought it out for his own desperate uses.

Indra might have stayed there, shaking, so fundamentally broken he could no longer function, if the little dragon had not cried out again. He lifted his head, and haunted eyes watched as the tiny creature reached out for him, straining against its bindings to try and crawl its way towards himself. It had been tortured, maimed, deities only knew what else done in the name of "progress". And still, it trusted a stranger enough to try and reach him.

The killer didn't think. He tore the "weapon" from its shackles with as much gentility as he could, his hand still shaking, his eyes now frantically checking the doorways as if at any moment someone might appear. They might. He hadn't cared for timing or being discovered when all that had been meant to happen was his own death, but this was different. His time was running shorter by the second.

Indra fled into the night, the tiny dragon bundled into his arms. He'd never planned to run. He had nowhere to go, no escape route in mind. By morning they would be hunted, if they weren't already, and Indra had no idea how to care for a child. None of this had been part of the plan.

He still desperately wanted to die.

By the time he stopped running, the light was gracing the desert sands and whatever mechanics were around them were humming to life. The child squirmed in his arms and Indra forced himself to keep moving, to think of nothing but moving forward. But he was exhausted, and in pain. He'd had to fight his way out of the kingdom, kill whatever dragons he passed on he way out. Friends. Comrades. All because he still had enough kindness in him to save a child.

It was almost laughable, so much so it made him want to cry.

Indra collapsed to his knees, staring up at the empty sky above, wondering just what he was trying to accomplish. Tears ran rivers down his cheeks, arms still clutching at the child as if there were answers in his tiny body. He couldn't be sure how long he sat there, only that the crunch of hooves on sand was what shook him free of his own mind.

A centaur stood by him, massive and imposing, but something in his eyes seemed to comprehend more than words could ever say. He offered no words, only extended his arms, and Indra understood too.

He forced himself to his feet, carefully laying the tiny "weapon" into the centaur's arms. He held the little one just as close as Indra had, but far more gently, and the child slept on as if nothing had changed. Indra stared at him a moment, his tears silent now.

"...Take care of him." he said softly, his voice a broken mess to match whatever shreds were left of his soul. "Take him as far away as you can. I'll draw their attention... they can't ignore so many bodies."

He spared one last touch to the child's brow, and then consumed by self-loathing, Indra fled once more.

He wasn't wrong. The kingdom chased after him like bloodhounds after a wounded beast, enraged by his betrayal and the line of corpses he'd left in his wake. Indra never slowed, each time exhaustion claimed him he thought of the centaur and his new charge in his arms, and how if he died here, they would go after him next. He kept moving, never stopping.

He was hunted across the Ashfall Waste and the Windswept Plateau, until finally his wings carried him over open waters. The Sea of a Thousand Currents was unrelenting and unforgiving. It pelted his exhausted body with harsh gales and harsher rain, cracks of thunder echoing from the heavens in angry roars. Perhaps it was the Stormcatcher, some part of him mused cynically.

It's possible he might have washed up on the shore of the Tangled Wood, or dragged himself beneath the cool folds of darkness, or maybe someone had pulled him from the sea. He was too fatigued to clearly remember, his thoughts all a blurred mess for days before he lost consciousness. He woke dry and warm in the healer's den. The Pearlcatcher who greeted him upon waking smelled of flowers and for the first time he felt something akin to peace, if only for a moment. Ming-Ku, as was the Pearlcatcher's name, assured him he was alright and not to worry himself over imposing. He was not the first dragon to arrive battered at their borders.

The leader of the clan, a dragon young in visage but older than the earth beneath their feet, came to see him some time later. Avon-Kei, accompanied by his mate and his third to command, all listened to the story of how Indra came to be in this place. He spared no detail, recounting the lives he could remember taking and those he could not, the blurred spaces of bloodshed in between he couldn't be certain were a reality or a terrible dream. Part of him wanted to be punished for it all, cast out or even killed.

Instead, Avon-Kei offered him only kindness. A place to lay his head and regain his strength. Whether he desired to remain or leave after he was well enough to stand on his own was his own decision, and that was more than anyone had given him before. Oh the desire for his own death had not left him, in fact once he was recovered Indra's first course of action was to seek out any way he might sacrifice his own life for the sake of this kind clan. Nothing made itself apparent, and so he went on living.

He became a Warrior of the clan, for killing was all he knew, and he found himself not alone in his checkered past. Warriors, Archivists, it did not matter who you were. No one came to Nocte without a burden, however small, and their numbers were a collection of oddities who had all found a niche within the shadowed borders. On good days, Indra considered if maybe one day he'd find a similar kind of happiness.

Then the dream would come. The sea of corpses and the single blade, and he'd know he was a fool.

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