Orion

ORION
Arcane Rep

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Twisted in body and mind by Arcane's radiation, this dragon has changed dramatically throughout his life. He is not cruel or unjust, though he is certainly not nice. He often flits between flight of fancy in a manic craze so quickly that one may think his blood is made up of energy drinks and pure sugar. His movements are often clunky and robotic, as if he is simply not a dragon. He is completely blind in his eyes, relying on his Fallout apparel and Familiar to guide him, though he's already incredibly self sufficient.

He completely avoids walking if he can, preferring to hover and fly just like his god does. He has developed vision that relies upon the presence of radiation ever since his blinding.

This dragon radiates an immense amount of radiation. This radiation is deadly to all life forms who have not evolved or adapted to Arcane's unique type of radiation. He practically glows, with all the fallout particles coating his skin and clothes. This being the case, he is a rather lonely dragon. He fills this space with constant experiments and manic energy, beleiving that as long as he is distracted, manic, or focused on a task requiring his attention, that he won't ever really need to talk about his feelings.

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There is something quietly stirring in the dark, inky sky. Murky clouds hang overhead, hiding the true nature of the night, and faint pink stars twinkle in what remains visible. At the great center of the grove is a twisted, gnarled form that seems to resemble a tree trunk from far away, but upon getting closer it is in fact a chrysalis. A dangerous chrysalis.

Its form within has slept for years, and the crinkled material resting on the outside of the chrysalis has not been disturbed. No wind blows, and the cobwebs forming overtop the bare trees have not moved. The area reeks of radiation, yet crystals have not formed protectively over the ground, which is barely identifiable as grass. This place is forgotten and toxic.

Many years have passed: it seems like forever to what is inside the chrysalis, but in actuality it was only five. Small cracks are peeling at the edges, and material finally starts falling away. Feathers and shell, highly saturated with radiation, fall gently to the ground as the chrysalis slowly peels open, revealing a heavily armored Nocturne, still and frail like a quiet bird on a tree.

He moves slow, he is quiet. Normally Orion would have moved very fast after being released from his suffocating little prison, but this molt feels different. There is something he is not used to, and he cannot quite grasp it yet as he unfurls himself at last. A sharp tilt of the neck, and the heavy clattering of the armet snaps him awake at last.

There are things around him. He can see. Points of view are opening up on his wings as he shuffles blindly. He is awake but unaware of how much noise he is making – the clatter of his armor disrupts the trees and makes them rattle more, the bark starting to snap off of them. He believes it is the wind, but it is only his own body thumping feebly against them. The armet clatters again, and his point of view shifts up to the sky, where the clouds ominously roll and curl.

At last, he stretches out, another loud shake causing the two trees to completely collapse. Orion recollects where he is, several thousands of miles away from the coast of the mainlands of Arcane territory. The earth stirs as he moves more and he comes to the realization that this molt is different from everything else he has ever experienced so far.

For a dragon whose entire body has rotted away, replaced with the buzz and stir of irradiated magic, he still keeps the feeling of organic and lively within him. He does not feel artificial, nor does he feel like a monster. Now, his sight is not blurry, and he can feel where he is. I have sight, finally, he realizes. I can see. I’m not blind anymore.

Perhaps his body has responded to the need for sight, as dragons need this sense to function. Sight is a necessity. The world cannot be seen without eyes, and the world therefore cannot be perceived without eyes. Orion remembered – he had gotten by without sight for most of his life now. But now, he could see the world around him. He could see the stained, pink sky, wrought with dye like a cloth soaked with water. He could see the shattered splinters of the trees.

His wings flittered and shuddered. He adapted himself slowly to the world above, taking it in, then looking at what was in front of him. From the moon hanging above the inky sky down to the ground that looked both dry and spongy at the same time, everything was simply wonderful to behold and take in. Orion couldn’t tell what he was feeling. It was some mixture of both wonder and disappointment – disappointment that right now, the world couldn’t be any emptier. No one was around for him to look at and watch the look on their face curl as he approached them.

A small puddle of water was nearby. Then again, it could have been some type of liquid fallout, but that didn’t matter to him. Orion stumbled and fluttered over to it, looking at his body. The armet and every other piece of shaggy clothing hanging over what remained of his ‘organic’ Nocturne body was there, but his wings were covered in eyes – and one massive pink iris floated just in front of the hollow holes in his armet.

“Interesting,” came the low, guttural rumble of his voice, as he watched his vision flutter, the soft glow of radiation coming off of the island making some things vanish into blackness. His vision seemed to change as the world around him did. He would need to spend a lot of time getting used to this, he was sure. But it wasn’t something he couldn’t take for a test drive. Lofting his wings, he prepared for takeoff...

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The sky came up to his level. He found himself drifting, finding the pink breeze feeling more visible than it had before. Was he simply an empty vessel, drifting amongst the wind? Or was he more, was he fluttering away into the sky to become yet another particle of ash? There was little to be said about how or what he was, it was a point to test his new abilities as he had every other time he escaped from the confines of a chrysalis.

Folding in his black feathers, his eyes did not blink. He became a thin plane of flight, the edges of his wings sharp enough to cut the sky and leave red trails along the clouds. The moon hung thin, ominous as he took his plummet towards the artificial sea, each drop of water looking more like fruit juice than real ocean tide. At the last moment, the plane opened and wings spread wide, the thin parcel feathers waving silently over each blade of wind.

His eyes felt little compared to the mere rush, the idea of becoming a slave to the wind as he flew. He could see everything now, was the only difference. He could see how artificially beautiful the radiated world around him truly was. The waves, the sky, each blade of seemingly fabricated grass was special. He could catch his reflection in the water and stare at the world as if it were a painting in his mind, projected onto another dimension.

The flight continued. He bobbed and waved with each dive and fall, each rising up feeling more natural than it had before any previous incantation he could’ve had. There was little to be felt for his sense of lost purpose and what he really was underneath layer after layer of radiation, but he no longer cared. He was whole. He could see and do whatever he wished with his new senses and knowledge.

The only thing to fall off of his shell were the regrets of his past, for not being able to think of he was supposed to be. He was trailing along, seeking out his destination among the sea of pink that extended out forever both above and below him. What was there to think of, to say or do? What was life to him, but nothing more than a few strings of thought at one time?

He grumbled softly, the island soon leaving his plane of vision. The last shreds and fibers of his chrysalis prison had fallen away a long time ago, and he was much too exhausted to think about those past five years. Yet, they drifted through his head. He was asleep. He should not have remembered what had happened through all that time, and yet, the faint whispers of memory echoed in his head.

Five long years had passed. He could slowly remember each and every thing that had happened while he was sealed away. First, the months even before the first year, he was walking every single day, feeling his body get heavier and buckle under the toil of his legs dragged across the ground. But he did not yield. Orion needed the perfect spot to bury himself and dig away, so that he could get up and feel lighter than air once more. Arcane was always lighter than everything.
Then, those months went by, and soon he was sealed away. Moths did much the same thing – after gorging themselves on food not nearly worth the effort to transform, they would bury themselves beneath the leaf litter and spin great cocoons, only to emerge months or years later as winged beings that could fly. Only a food would have equated his new wings and vision to that type of change. Orion was used to this routine. It was not being stuck, nor was it gradual evolution. It was maintenance, pure and simple.

After he collapsed in the the hole he’d put an hour or so into digging, digging only claws scraping at the ground feebly, he was asleep. Asleep, cold, and without knowledge of how long or what would happen while he was out. Five years could have been ten, or twenty, or seventy. It didn’t matter to him. And, it did not matter how cold his soul became, the lack of arcane life translating as a cold that pierced his whole body while he fell, heavy and quiet.

The first year, no one came. The second year, a couple explorers came, but they paid him no mind, only to search for the wildlife that was scattered around him. An unlucky sort quietly whispered and murmured, pointing at the fibers of his cocoon hanging from a tree, but the others laughed and quietly pulled them away, leaving them eternally without the knowledge of the world beyond the world.

Then, on year three, visits were infrequent as people murmured in all sorts of tongues while they passed, their voices quiet, their souls warm, their bodies light but never lighter than his own. Orion heard only the abstract, their tones, their piercing laughs and cries, while the world rotated around him. The rest of the time he was away blurred into one, but the voices did not get louder or any more irritating than they had already been. He didn’t care.

So, when he roused himself from sleep, he should have expected something different. He should have expected his hate for the world for disrupting his silence and his twisted world to go up, for some kind of unworthy bitterness to rise within him. But, while the winds’s purple petals slid in between every twisted feather, he felt only quiet contentment. His breath was easy, as he drifted away into the vastness of the Arcane sunset.

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Lore by Lizardfish