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Kevrin
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My name means 'beloved'. That's what I'm thinking as I stare up through the rubble over my craggy, beaked face. My name means 'beloved', and somehow in my mind, that has something to do with the fact that I'm alive right now. That's a little funny. It hurts to be alive. Heavy pieces of ceiling are crushing my body, and my entire brigade is dead. But I remain 'beloved'. What a joke.
I'm still contemplating that when someone hauls me up from the rubble and starts to brush off my clothes with gentle thwumps. I hope for just a second that another comrade has survived. I know it can't be someone from the shadow division. It's their job to save bodies from outside their division, not lives, and the shadow division invariably does their jobs to exact specs.
The hand brushing the dust and grit off of me is remarkably efficient, because it's feathered. The feathers are long, black and shiny, going all the way up the Avian's arm to disappear under his sleeve. Unlike me, he's covered in them. But then, unlike me, he's probably not a full half haerphitl. His yellow eyes peer out of his black feathered face with kindness and curiosity. It's strange to look at him, really - he looks like all the other Avians typically do, the crow-like visage and all. My hair is sandy and I've only half a beak to me. Still, there's enough flukes like me amongst our kind to not make my appearance seem that strange to him. It's much stranger to humans, most of whom view anyone with features like mine, even only half a beak and a few stray feathers, to be the telltale marks of a monster.
Now, I know for a fact that I'm the only beaked dude in Jhe h'Akribastes's forces, unless there's another in the shadow division that he's hiding away, and I've just ruled out that this person could be shadow division. I let him brush me off. I smile, the skin of my cheeks dimpling around my odd half-beak. He slaps me on the back, laughing.
"Nothing to it, eh? Got yer head on straight? Battle's cleared out from this section, and we're withdrawing to let the Shrouds handle the rest. Shock troops are kinda useless when the rest of the buggers are hidin' in the walls. Hey, you take any of em down when they got you?" His big yellow eyes are trusting, happy in fact. Hey, he just saved a man, and I have no division-identifying marks on my clothing. Why would an Avian be Armed? Of course I must be his comrade. Good thing my Arms like to stay concealed beneath my clothing. Nothing says 'I'm too special to be on your thug labor forces' than a pair of supernaturally sharp chakrams.
I grin. "Three. And a half." It's the truth. I killed almost four of his comrades as the ceiling took me down. The fourth could have died from blood loss afterwards for all I know, but I like to only count direct kills. It's more honest that way.
He punches me on the arm, then checks to make sure that arm isn't injured. It is, just a bit, but I don't wince. "Good on ya. Show those bloody Armed Radian bastards what our kind can really do!"
I grin. "Yeah, when it's not a ten-to-one bloodbath like they tried to kill us off with. 'Ey...where am I, even? My direction's all thrown off and I'm still dizzy as Hell. Can't say they got me that bad but the ceiling's something else in this here Palace."
"No worries, no worries. I'm headed back to base." He heads off, lending me a shoulder. I drape an arm over his back and lean. I'm actually a little unsure of whether I could walk on my own just now. "Terrain's all weird for me anyway. Used to bein' in the air, ya know? But Windbirds ain't no good indoors, and that Xaillyndesse bastard seems to think we are, so. I'll be glad when we pull outta this place, really. Hate operations like this, hate workin' for the stuck-ups in Lyiannethe. Cade's usually got fun errands for us to do. He sent you out on anything interesting lately? Hey, I don't even know your name, so forgetful I am. I'm Djardrik."
"Kevreck." Kevrin's not an Avian kind of name. You can thank my parents's romanticism for it. They wanted to leave me something I'd cherish. Can't say that it's failed in that, though. Hey, at least they left me a name at all. Avians tend to have to name themselves or each other since they're almost always orphaned. My father was a rare sort who actually kept his inexplicably beaky kid. My mother was flighty by nature, being a wind spirit, so I can't really blame her for not being around too much. I'm still lucky to have had parents raise me, instead of grow up in the streets or worse. "I've mostly sacked supply ships out in the Niytherian sea. Nothing so famous as what's in ballads, sorry to say. Plenty of action, though, and the wind's simply fabulous. Storms like you've never seen." Now, Jhe h'Logos was saying something about me maybe making some time for Poet training. Can't say it'll ever happen, but I did just make all of that up.
Djardrik grins. "Aye, the sea's wonderful. Only really been around the woodsy lands, m'self. More companionship, what with all the animisms and spirits and such." It looks like we might be closing in on their camp. I recognize some beaked silhouettes from afar, along with quite a few other interestingly-shaped people.
Oh boy. Reunited amongst my kind. I feel all tingly.
Really, though, the Judge has prepared me for this eventuality. It's why I stay out of prominent notice, and why I don't wear a uniform or badge showing my allegiance. I'm useful to him as a spy because I look like a freak. It's not something that hurts me, nor something I'm ashamed of. It simply is the reality of my existence. Perhaps I don't mind it because I know it's not why I was allowed to become Armed. Jhe h'Akribastes wouldn't waste something so holy as Arms on someone he considered to be a throwaway pawn. He has always respected me, and defended me against those who've condemned me for having a "peckerface", as his son Gerald once put it. (He got a sound reprimand for that, much as he apparently was just joking. The Judge's sound reprimands often leave slow-healing bruises.) It's funny, considering how much 'my kind' condemn the Judge and the Armed for slaughtering so many of their numbers.
Ah, here we are then. Yes, I can see how most of these would have come from Cade's branches of the world. There's creaky wagons, old and worn, hung with odd charms and decorated with strange warped sigils. There's many beasts of burden about, some strange and not like horses at all. More like the cross-mating of unlikely animals, like a mule with a dung beetle. I spot a flock of windbirds tethered off in a corral to the side of the camp. Of course - they're the favored Avian mount, even now. Djardrik helps me over to the infirmary section of the encampment, where a few healers are working on the injured with some very arcane methods indeed. I sit through some strange energy work, after which I feel a lingering dirtiness coating my aura like a fine mist. I'm not sore anymore, though, my dizziness is gone, and I can walk straight.
I tip my hat to the healer who assisted me. "Aye, thank ye. Anywhere we can get some grub here yet?"
"You're the good idea bird today. Come on, let's get on the cooking pot before there's a line!" Djardrik grabs my elbow and pulls me over to the cooking pot. After that, well, we chit-chat. Turns out Djardrik's beaten most of the fellows here soundly at dice games, thus engendering an overall dislike towards him. He was thrilled to find someone that could tolerate speaking amiably with him. I say I'm one of the soldiers who only arrived here lately, which is entirely true.
As we speak, I inspect where supplies are getting carted back and forth, what sorts of creatures are moving about, and how well-fortified this little base is. It's almost not worth taking. These guys are obviously just pawns for the Kommissar - his elite troops are doing the real work in the Palace right now. Djardrik and the rest of these boys won't be here for much longer. When it comes to the Palace being secured, this isn't an integral resource.
However, when it comes to tracking the movement's of the forces of Nul, I've basically found myself a treasure trove. I even see some elusive Arachne-kin. Those spider-people usually stay close to Nul's physical location and are rarely seen in the areas of the living.
"Those guys? Err. Creepy bastards. Dunno what they're here with us for. Didn't see em out in the battle. Don't care to be on their type missions either, so... hopefully none of it involves us." He frowns. "We took a lot of the animism spirits in the Palace over this way, and the Arachne-kin were there to receive them, come to think." He shudders. "Ugh. Don't really like to think what that might mean. Hope we get sent somewhere else soon. I don't like staying in one place for too long as it is."
I slide my beak sideways, the best attempt I can make at biting my lip. "I don't like to think of dryads and nymphs and such getting hurt on account of my actions." It's the truth, regardless of how he perceives it. We tried valiantly to defend those poor creatures from harm, and now they've been drug off. For what purpose would someone take them?
He shakes his head. "Ain't nothing to be done about it, chap. No one takes in Avians and the other strange folk - Nul's sort of people are the only ones who'll give us a job and not kill us on sight. When your only possible world is that world, you have to live by that world's rules. Else just die, and why even be born if'n you're gonna do that?"
I nod. "It seems strange, though. That we'd be born only to break the Law, only to be outcasts and miscreants. I don't see as how someone should be forced to only do ill in the world." That's what I thought about, before the Judge took me in. And then, oh how much I learned. "It seems like there should be another way, you know?"
Djardrik snorts. "The world's the world, and there's no other place we'll be in it. No sense wishing for things what don't exist. I do a good job at what I'm told to do. Maybe in the next life I can be human, and one of the men who slaughtered our kind can take my wretched place here."
I sigh. "Well, our job's done here, in any case. You think they're bringing the animism spirits where we're going next? I always like being around 'em."
He thinks over that one. "Hm. Well. Don't say as I know, but I hear some of us might be part of the escort for the Armed what got captured. They're stowed over there in those wagons. Can't help but think that the few extra wagons are for the dryads and nymphs."
I try to conceal my surprise, then decide that letting it show gives away nothing. "We actually got a few of em? I must have been knocked plumb out for most of the battle then. They actually alive?" I recoil a bit at that last part, but inside I'm a bit hopeful.
The Avian grunts. "Check fer ye-self. Nul and the Kommissar take both corpses and live 'uns. The wagons are enough to hold even the living for now, however that's possible. Don't really trust the charms on those wagons, though. Hope I'm not escorting them. If one is alive, they'll kill every last one of us when they get out."
I nod, then rise, brushing off my clothes. "Wanna come with?" I grin.
He looks at me like I'm daft, then shrugs and rises. "Ey, why not, I say. Die today, die tomorrow, what's the difference?"
I'd ask him why he'd go on and work for Nul if there's no difference, but I imagine that conversation might lead into trouble's path. We head off to the wagons, which are parked rather close to the camp, and oddly unguarded. Peering between the bars set in the back, it's obvious they're all dead. My heart sinks when I see Clark. He just joined the Armed, and we were becoming fast friends on this mission. Then I spy his left wrist and have to suppress a grin.
"...Huh." Djardrik squints. "Why're they all missin' hands? Can't just be an accident. Specially since the cuts look way too clean for that sort o' thing."
They're clean all right. I recognize the mark of Arms. Looks like the shadow unit left behind corpses they couldn't drag away in time and took hands instead. Not anyone's preferred means of being dragged back to Radia, but it'll get the job done. As it is, I'm getting just a bit nervous that no one is here to do the service for me when I'll need it. "...Weird Armed death custom, I suppose. I don't see any Arms on 'em - maybe their Arms did it. Nasty weapons that move of their own will... maybe they just eat chunks of their Armed." I feel a prickle of annoyance from Dram and recieve a lingering hint that Buidhe could make that a reality. I mentally remind my Arms that we're encouraged to spread outrageous rumors about the Armed so as to preserve our secrets.
Djardrik shrugs. "Can't say as I know. Jhe Xen's own lucky human troops get to destroy em on the spot. Don't see why we're the only ones who've gotta drag their spooky dead corpses around instead. And then watch the things all the way to Nul." He frowns. "Not the first time I've seen an Armed corpse headed down the supply chain, either. Wonder what the fuck they're doin' with em."
I shrug. "Not really our business, huh?"
"Yeah, well, just cuz it looks like it isn't doesn't mean I don't wanna know." He shudders. "Just think. The Judge on our ass again. I was in the first Avian battle against the Armed, you know."
I raise an eyebrow. "You don't look it."
"Got more than human and a drop o' animism in my blood. Don't really know what, though. Seems to keep me pretty long-lived." He looks up at me, and I'm struck by just how haunted his eyes are. I've only heard about the battles - and the most details I know, I know from other Armed. It's different hearing it from someone on the other side who was there. "I was just a kid. Ran before it really even started, like a lot o' the teens did. We didn't know what we was doin' there, and the feeling of hundreds of Armed approaching... ghastly. Like Death walking to your door with gravestone in hand. So we watched from far back, then turned our feathered tails when the slaughter was over and they started hunting up in the brush and the woods for any stragglers. They're deadly, fucking deadly. I don't want to be anywhere near them." He glances at the wagon. "In fact, only reason I stayed here was 'cuz we've been talkin 'bout things others might not like to listen in on." He looks a little nervous. Ahh, the familiar face of mutiny - how I know it well. I saw it in every mirror before I signed my life over to the Judge. "Hey, you know what? If we disappeared now, nobody'd ever know or care. They don't bother countin' us. No one in Nul's forces rises up in 'em if they're Avian. Those folk call us birdbrained and don't let us command a thing."
I nod. "Where would we go?"
He looks to the side, shifting his beak askew like I did earlier. The classic thinking pose. "We're as good as dead here, I think. I mean, anywhere else is better. I just got... I just got a real bad feeling, you know? Intuition, instinct, whatever you wanna call it. So you pick, I'll follow - it doesn't really matter."
"Right." I look to the distance. "I've got a crazy idea, then. Wanna grab some Windbirds?"
He looks worried for a moment, and then it passes. I don't know if he trusts me that much - I think he's just desperate. He shrugs. "Might as well. Surprised nobody else flew outta here yet. Let's go, man."
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