undercoverdragon » Lair » Lohak

Lohak

(#45405754)

Level 1 Wildclaw

Familiar

Radioactive Slime

Energy: 0/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

5.36 m

Wingspan

6.24 m

Weight

678.01 kg

Genetics

Green
Wasp

Forest
Alloy

Swamp
Glimmer

Hatchday

Sep 22, 2018
(5 years)

Breed

Adult
Wildclaw

Eye Type

Nature
Uncommon

Level 1 Wildclaw

EXP: 0 / 245

STR

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Offspring

Biography

LOHAK

from
Genesis Dawn
chapter 6

It was in this manner—the manner in which Glicht did nothing whatsoever except lead the way southeast—that Lohak divulged all the secrets of the MEQ in which Gene might have any interest at all. Glicht tried not to listen, himself, tried to focus on what exactly he would do once they reached Novrom, but the words were difficult to ignore when the desert laid out so quiet and empty around them. It was as though the two of them were the last folks left on all of Nara, with nothing to accompany their walk but scrabbling reptiles, distant flapping wings, and the relentless heat of the Sun’s torment.

Glicht stopped them for short breaks every now and again, and made sure to keep Lohak on track for rationing his own water and food. Slowly, the endless plains and valleys of dirt gave way to thick, knuckled trees and patches of green shrubs, and he had to start navigating around hills too tall for them to climb.

What Lohak talked about unceasingly was a sort of life that Glicht hadn’t had much cause to consider. A bounty hunter by trade, he and Haavra had only ever concerned themselves with criminals and their habits, and no wanted criminal would go on this way in excited tones, listing paper after paper, cross-referencing personal letters with published works, receiving grants and invitations to study historical documents in foreign kingdoms with sharp-eyed guides hovering over their shoulder. In Glicht’s experience, no one ever got this worked up about something that wasn’t the winning roll of a dice game with a big pot.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the theories out there,” Lohak said, as the sun finally began to sink closer to the horizon. “We’d spend days reading them together, me and the MEQ team. Gratek’s favorite was the sea mammal theory. Honestly! Sea creatures have been the feature of so much scientific study up to now that anyone with any passing knowledge about them would laugh the sea mammal theory out of the room, but there are entire societies!” He turned to walk backward, as he’d done more than once that day, in order to make certain that Glicht understood his point. “Societies, Glicht! Reams of people who truly believe with their whole heart that you all came from the water. Now, we know we did—and you did too, very likely, thousands and thousands of years ago, but to have crawled up from a beach half a millennia ago and then simply stride across an open plain and offer to do business with us as if nothing were amiss? I wrote two hundred thousand words debunking that theory, and I gave it to Gratek as a Xlocketak gift. She keeps it folded up and on her person at all times, so she can take it out and cheer herself up with it whenever she needs to.”

Glicht spoke then for nearly the first time all day, feeling he needed to capitalize on the short silence while it lasted.

“Why the mudder hand on your pack?” he asked.

Lohak glanced at him, and Glicht saw his smaller arms relax and fall to his sides. Shells never actually used those arms for anything; he was given to understand it was rude to handle things with them in public, like they were too personal. Mostly they were only used for gestures to make up for their expressionless faces. Glicht wasn’t too sure what most of the gestures meant, and particularly not that one.

“It’s sort of an inside joke,” Lohak said awkwardly, tilting his head to one side and glancing up at the sky in thought. “It was… oh, several years ago. My birthday. I had only recently joined the MEQ team, and I wasn’t sure if they liked me, and they all bought it for me together. The fact that I… well… it’s hard to explain. With most anyone else, it’d be an insult. But for me, with these people… I don’t know. It was the first sign that they really understood me. That I’d be a good fit with them.”

He grunted. The more Lohak spoke, the less sense he seemed to make.

“I think it’s very noble, what you do,” Lohak said then. He said it so plainly, as though it were a continuation of what he’d just been saying. “Catching bad people and stopping them. Rescuing me. I’d never be able to do anything like that.”

“Can’t see you as a bounty hunter,” Glicht agreed. “Your mark’ll hear you talking long before you could find them.”

Lohak looked surprised, with his eyes wide and his antennae fanned out behind him, and then he broke out into laughter, the sound stretching out into the faraway plains. Glicht frowned, watching him; he hadn’t meant it as a joke.

“I can’t argue with that,” Lohak said when his laughter died down. “Oh, it would be terrible. I’d probably be talking about them, too. ‘Have you seen Slonden around? Is he a friend of yours? Did you know he’s killed people? I don’t know how many, but I understand it’s all very heinous!’”

A chuckle forced its way out of Glicht at the image. Lohak, bright green with wide, innocent eyes, gesturing with all four limbs at a mudder wearing a vest with no shirt underneath, paused in the middle of mucking a stable.

Lohak adjusted his pack with his two larger hands. It almost surprised Glicht, how well he was taking the strenuous activity. “It makes me wonder,” he said. “How does a person wind up in that career?”

“Could ask you the same question.”

“Oh, no, it’s very straightforward for me. There’s simply nothing I could have been other than a scientist. Nothing. I’m always asking questions—my mother likes to say that my first word was a question. I grew up reading books and getting thrown out of classrooms for challenging the teacher. Of course I would latch onto the world’s biggest mystery, wouldn’t I? Where else would I be?”

Glicht half-shrugged. “Ain’t far from my own story.”

“Well, that just begs more questions, doesn’t it?” Lohak said, but Glicht met his eyes with a look that closed the subject. Now wasn’t the time to get into his personal life, much as he had one.

So the shell said, almost without missing a beat, “Most everything does, for me. Begs questions, that is. When I was studying for my specialization, I had one professor—he still works at Daketch University—who’d said he would answer every question we asked that he knew the answer to, no matter what. I brought a huge list to his office, and Nara’s eyes, he did try his best, but every time he paused for breath I had about a hundred more. We talked almost all day.”

Lohak kept talking then, as he’d done before, this time detailing the exploits of his curious childhood. Glicht thought this time that the shell might actually have been doing it on purpose in order to spare him the need to talk about his own, but if so, it struck him as a decidedly strange thing to do.

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Exalting Lohak to the service of the Icewarden 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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