Itami

Relations

---

Mate: None
Close Friends: Reoni,
Enemies: Nimbus

---

Personality

---

Itami is strange, to say the least. Some say that he sold his soul to eliminate his ailments; others say that he's performed ritual sacrifices. Only Reoni knows what he actually did, but he seems empty of emotion, similar to Trill. He never jokes around or breaks down, steadfastly neutral and uncaring. Don't tell him your problems. He doesn't care.

---

Background

---

Do you want to hear a story, friends?
The Bonesmith makes shadows from corpses, they say. Strange legends indeed.

---

Tip, tap went the hammer, and Itami was pleased. He was doing well today, carving his shadows from bone. It had been some effort to get down to them, of course, but he preferred not to dwell on the ghastliness of that task. He would much rather reminisce on his current work, on the work of coaxing darkness from the palest of whites.

He called himself the Bonesmith, and with good reason. When his clanmates slept, he went for the hammer and chisel, sought the corpses of the deceased to do his work. The shadows surrounded him as he began each night, cheering when their comrades began to burst through, weak and slicked with marrow. Multifaceted eyes gleamed down at him, and he always felt some pride when they complimented a particularly skilled bit of handiwork. His job was not a simple one.

Some days, when he wearied of the craft, he would wander the world of dreams and death, watch the dance that Spectre led. His children whirled there, clad in blood and bones once more, laughing when the living stumbled. They were as graceful as stags, as light as hares, as beautiful as the glint of the stained glass on the walls and the dark gleam of the floor. He never joined in, however. The Bonesmith dared not risk his craft for a petty waltz. No, he came to watch, to know who he would be carving the darkness from in a night or two. It was always someone.

The shadows called him sometimes, called him to a special duty of his. The hammer and chisel in his hands for the night, he would follow, and he would find a child lying helpless. Nyss was always there, her own entourage of shadows restraining the child. Once, he'd been put off by the notion of drawing shadows from those still alive, but no longer. The screams meant nothing, and they always faded when his children sent the child to the great dance and stole their body, walked in the clothing of a dragon's flesh and bone, hid among the living. It was a simple matter after that to suture over his work and send his children on their way, off to expand and proliferate in other clans. His own clan sent them away with glee, glad to eliminate the competition.

One shadow-taken child, though, did not leave. Nimbus stayed, and his own children grinned at Itami from behind ruby eyes. The Coatl became a ringleader of the shadows, commanding them, hunting with them, killing with them. Even in the ballroom, he became more confident, more graceful than even Spectre, more special than Nyss's dark beauty. Nimbus was something else, something not of this world, something beautiful and terrible and altogether deadly. Itami had made something new, and he was afraid that it might be his own destruction. Was the Bonesmith needed when there was a spinner of the dancing shadows?

Now, though, none of it mattered, as he was lost in his craft. Carving, carving, he delved, lifted shadows from their cradles and set them free. He barely felt Nimbus's hungry eyes on his back as he worked, didn't notice the craving in the dragon's eyes. Tip, tap went the hammer, and Itami was pleased.

At least, he was, for a time. The prod of a claw on his shoulder set him off his rhythm, and he whirled to face Nimbus with a hiss and a glare. All he received in return was a laugh and a taunt.

"Why aren't you working, old man?" Nimbus purred, prodding Itami again. "Are you growing senile? Slow? Do your hands creak and crackle?"

"I'd work if you left me be," the Bonesmith growled, turning around and lifting the hammer, only to fling it at Nimbus when he felt another jab on his shoulder. The child was intolerable. He has the nerve to duck the attack, and his hammer missed completely.

"Are you going to get that, Bonesmith?" Nimbus asked, laughing again. "Or are you done for the night? I could take over, if you'd like."

"No, it's quite alright," Itami hissed, standing and stumbling over to his hammer on sleeping feet. "You're not capable of such a task."

"Maybe I'm not," Nimbus ventured, "but I have watched you, Bonesmith, and I am capable of orchestrating something far more beneficial to me."

"And that would be?" the Bonesmith asked, his hardened body freezing in alarm, anger thrown to the wind.

"Your death, Itami," Nimbus said, and the shadows came from above, frothing and grasping, seeking a death.

It would be a battle for the ages, to be sure. Tip, tap, slip, slap went the hammer, and Itami was pleased at the whoosh of contact with his children, his broken children. Slip, slap went the hammer, and Itami missed, hit, was hit. A wing went first, sagging suddenly at a touch, feathers wilting and floating in the air as he whirled, left, right, parrying and pushing and battering his creations back, back. Slip, slap went the hammer, and Itami fell to his knees, wheezing and panting, swallowing the trickle of blood on his lips. Slip, slap and the hammer fell to the earth, the owner convulsing on the soil with a strangled cry. Over it all, Nimbus stood, dark feathers barely ruffled by the violence before him. He was the lord of blood, the king of bone, and he knew it. He took the tools into hand, peered down at the dying Coatl before him, shook his head at the spectacle.

And tip, tap went the hammer, and the Bonesmith was no more.

---

Gallery

---