Sabik

Many a story starts with the protagonist waking up somewhere new, without any memories of where they are or even who they were before getting there. A cliche to be sure, but one that gives the character no reason to avoid the call to adventure. Sabik has collected hundreds of such stories, all stored in the same, easily-accessible place, so that he can dump those books on the floor and spit on them whenever he feels like it.

To Sabik, those books feel like an insulting parody of his own life. He did genuinely wake up face-down one day. But unlike the characters in those stories, he knew exactly what he was. Nothing. He didn't have a history to remember. He wasn't even a dragon. All he was was waste magic, torn off of someone else and shaped into a dragon for some Eleven-forsaken reason. Left with nothing but a foreign thought in his mind that told him his name was Sabik, that he existed now (and he should be thankful), and he should make the best of it.

Well, whoever had created him hadn't thought things through. Being formed of raw magic is terrible. Sure, he doesn't have to eat or sleep. Instead, Sabik has to be focused constantly, channelling magic just to hold his form together, or risk dissipating into nothingness. It's sort of like having to hold your breath for your entire life. Except Sabik doesn't know what breathing is like, so perhaps not.

When Sabik arrived at Clan _______'s island he was barely a month old, not that anyone would have noticed because he'd always looked like and effectively been an adult. But the dragon who'd created him hadn't gifted him a lifetime's worth of worldliness, so while he did know he should find a clan, he had no idea what to do next. Panicking in that very discrete way that only fae are capable of, Sabik racked his mind for anything he did know. Before long, he decided that he knew books existed. Maybe there'd be a book that could tell him what something like he was should do next! The clan had a library, so he flew there and began arbitrarily reading the first books he found.

After a few days somebody noticed Sabik, and politely told him that he needed to leave the library every once in a while, for his own health. (Apparently that had been a problem among the local dragons.) They even offered him a room if he planned on staying for a while, which Sabik accepted for the sake of trying new experiences. Said room was of reasonable size, but completely empty; even the chalcedony walls were smooth and undecorated. Not that Sabik needed somewhere to sleep, but he didn't like the emptiness of the place – it reminded him of himself in a bad way. So he grabbed a hatstand from another room in the fortress, slowly dragged it down the hallways, and set it up in the middle of the room.

And that was where Sabik found his passion for interior design. Well, not really. But it was a defining moment in the saga of being Sabik, for it was the first time he'd made an actual change in the world. This was his room, so the hatstand would stay there until he moved it. The hatstand confirmed his existence. And as long as he was around, it would stay there.

Sadly, the hatstand wouldn't tell Sabik what to do, no matter how much he asked it. So it was back to the books for him. Much of the library's collection was on how to cast spells, which Sabik didn't dare try in case doing so undid him. Others were fictional stories, and yet others were long treatises on the local wildlife. Not one book or scroll that he read described something like what he was. Until eventually he found one that... sort of was. Some long-gone scholar's retelling of the story of the Arcanist's creation.

As far as that scholar was concerned, the Arcanist was a being of pure magic, created in the aftermath of a reactor explosion. That was commonly accepted, but the scholar went beyond that by suggesting that the Beastclans were the remnants of the creatures that created the reactor, and thus the Arcanist. Sabik thought that idea was interesting, mostly because he felt that anything related to the concept of the reactor was interesting. He wasn't really sure why, beyond the connection to his own creation. He'd have to go ask some Beastclans to see if they had a reason for him. Regardless, it'd be nice to spend some time away from the sort of people who might try to use him to fuel a spell or two.

Since then, Sabik's become quite the ally to the Beastclans. In order to get whatever knowledge about the reactor they might have, he does all sorts of tasks for the various clans, making him way more like the protagonists of those cliche stories than he'd like to admit. No one knows how much he's actually learned, as he sure hasn't told anyone. He doesn't really interact with the rest of the clan, preferring the company of Beastclans to dragons. About the only thing Sabik does in Clan _______ is reserve room upon room for himself. In each of these he'll arrange a couple of unrelated bits of furniture and then never let anyone use the room again. Nobody gets why, but as long as there's still other space left for dragons who actually want to use it nobody cares.

In truth, Sabik has learned quite a bit about the reactor. Not enough to build it, yet, but he's getting there. How he'll recruit the veritable army necessary to build it is another thing, but he'll answer that question when he gets there. The Source deep within the lightning flight seems promising, if far away. But whatever Sabik decides, he knows what he'll do when he completes it. Being made of pure magic, it's possible for him to put himself inside the reactor. He's not really sure what'll happen when he does that. Maybe he'll become a second Arcanist. Maybe he'll be totally annihilated. Everyone else will probably die, but that's a given. Sabik's not particularly pleased about that, but he can't think of any better way to let the universe know he exists. And just maybe, the reactor will turn everyone else into creatures of pure magic too, That'd be nice.