Stryga

Stryga’s memory often fails her. There is little that she remembers of the clan that her newest owners claim abandoned her. She doesn’t remember being alone. She remembers…the strength. Visions of what she supposes a living dragon would refer to as her “peers” being built alongside her, each emerging from thick slates of marble. Fields of broken stone and gunpowder through which she trudged ever forward, the debris failing to stick to her slick surface. The sounds of explosions, racket, noise, rattling the earth about her and shattering those built in her image, but never herself. Her weight sailing into flesh over and over again, until it lay still and flat. Blood. An occasional chip or two knocked loose by a lucky shot, each collected to be sculpted into a new being; “offspring”, none quite as strong as their originator and soon felled in the skirmish.

The desperation of her surroundings.

Losses.

Her peers built out of weaker and weaker materials until they were nothing more than pebbles.

There was a day where Stryga used the limited mobility in her neck to appreciate her surroundings, only to find that she was the only one of her kind remaining. She studied her claws. Worn to nubs. Riddled with lichen. She could not move enough to study the rest of her body. She had once been able to. Stryga couldn’t remember when that was.

The closest thing that Stryga knew to a loving touch was the handiwork of a chisel. Failing that, she looked for comfort in her own strength. Both had been absent for so long that she doubted them to have even been real to begin with. She had not been the infallible warrior that protected her clan tooth and claw for years when her newest owners found her. She couldn’t understand why they had taken her in to begin with, but her mouth calcified by age, she was unable to protest.

They began to undo the effects of age from the comfort of their clan, and that was where Stryga began to learn of her fate. This new clan claimed that she was abandoned, usually in a tone of pity that irritated her. She did not ask for their help, and would have shunned it if given a choice in the matter. What did they know of usefulness? Her clan didn’t abandon her. She failed to serve a purpose to them, and their resources so limited, could not attend to her continued maintenance. The privilege that her new stonemasons wielded like pokers to speak so of her creators, fuzzy as their memories might have been to her, irritated Stryga.

Stryga remains a work in progress to this day, the extensive damage done to her body by both time and battle keeping her stationary. She is unsure of what her fate will be when she is done. Will the clan ask her to fight for them? Part of her wants to reject any such offer.

The other part of her softens at the thought of once again being useful.

(artwork done by @wrevle)