[Melnibonean Wanderer]

Preface: This is my first attempt at writing from a nonhuman perspective. The purpose of this piece is to establish a Vaik character that is alien, yet...something whose actions we can interpret through a human lens?







The Entropy Hellkite broods where the fires of Vurakkedi’scalderas meet the burning rivers of tar winding through the firelit jungleswhose leaf-veins glow with a turgid redness. A molt of lichen, moss and fungisway and ignite in the volcanic winds blowing down from the calderas. I standat the bank of a ruptured vein inviting me to partake of its blood of burningtar before I leave the present for the convergence of past and future. Withinthe blood I shiver as scales shift and ducts open to add fire to the fuel of mykiln. Breaking the surface I catch the scent of my materials—soft, dark shellsconcealing viscera charged with the land’s lava—and feel as if I am one with myartist’s tools.




Scales of brimstone and blood seething with lava cling to mytools, defying the lava elemental stalking my three-chambered volcano. Anunstable incarnation of rotllava, bloodlava and vitallava, it appears as adragon whose flared hood reveals flaming egg-things that hatch humansmanipulating the three lavas to create the catalyst for the first dragon'signition. This is the ignition that consumed the stability of the barren domainof the Talgharkor. From this ignition the cosmic dragon laid a clutch of eggsin great firestorm. The elemental dragon burns them away, and their soulslinger in my three-chambered volcano, prey that my tools cannot kill. So Icontinue to hunt the mechanisms that these humans use to create the draconiccatalysts.




Buried within the ridge of raised scales running down myneck, my tools appear as rows of spikes. Beyond the hilt of the tools, theirphase blades remain as a gaseous red haze that clings to the three chambers ofmy volcano and feed their fires. From these fires, my blood remains liquid andmaintains the entropic consumption of raw materials unfit for my kiln. For thecycle knows that the Entropy Hellkite's fires are hidden behind a prison ofcold fire, the mountain’s blood turned to stone, and the Hellkite’s fuel rippedaway by the Naga. It is a thirst that I feel crackling within the red haze ofmy kiln, a thirst for the Naga to experience the freedom of consumption andignition offered by my phase tools and kiln. Freedom from the Hellkite Tyrantsthat have been hardened to igneous by the Talgharkor. Entropy is kindlingwithout a catalyst.




Consumption is found in my phase tools, but I am troubledthat I feel the hunger of my tools moreso than the ignition of my kiln sculptedfrom the lava rock of my tail. It is a disruption in the cycle of life anddeath guided by entropy: life from the kiln, death from my tools. There is nofreedom for the Naga that I take into my kiln. Freedom is an overgrown calderawhose vines ensnare me and whose thorns tear through my mountain-skin,releasing lava that fails to fire the thorns. Yet as the red haze gnaws free mythree-chambered volcano to guide it down the lava flows to my tail, I my tonguetastes the unhatched.




These unhatched are strange at first—sandstone shells andlava-scent than the materials that sent me to that embodiment of my forge andnow follow me to the place where past and future mate to birth the present--andwaiting for them to free me, my tongue lashes their crevices and tells me thatthey are driven toward consumption. One of the materials has a taste ofconsumption disguised as ignition. My tools shift to gas and slid free. Solidagain, I find them soft and beneath the layers, the strength valued by theNaga. vitallava clung to the glistening bands beneath their soft shells. I findthe familiar traces within their bones and blood: iron and heat, and my tools shiftfrom rock to blades of molten lava. In the end I burn my broken works in shameand give the ashes to the molten veins of the Entropy Hellkite. I need adifferent sort of kindling than my fellow Vaik: the dead metals valued by theseunhatched—humans, something insists, they are humans and are a differentmaterial providing kindling for your catalyst-hunt. Some give it when I presentthem with broken works, some because they call my kind their magical ancestors.







I am closing on that realm beyond Vurakkedi, for in the lavaI have navigated past and present. Emerging, I feel my fires dampen as thepiles of dragon ash turn to souls and join their forgemates. My materials’ ironprostheses glow red and orange amidst the dragon souls. A steady hiss of the dragonsouls mating, feasting, creating, consuming and igniting their works is carriedalong by the red haze to my forge. To either side the unhatched (humans) speakof steel works, industry, and steam.




Now I prepare to take more kindling—the dead metals-- fromthe unhatched (humans) in the bayous, those places where the catalystcomponents roam. My tools slide free, phase solid. My work is interrupted bythe materials’ words—those of steel, steam and industry rather than therattling hisses now, the pleas of the Nagas for a Chaos Warp. The dying hisses,those of the Entropy Hellkite seeking to spark the dead kindling thatsuffocates it so that a new Entropy Hellkite erupts and sets the HellkiteTyrants ablaze.




My finished works fit into the kiln, and pressing forward Icome to the chunks of frozen time imprisoning the other dragons. Slitheringaround the edges, bound by jagged outcroppings, the Naga continue to burn withthe ignorance of larvae. Atop the crypts of time, the dragons and our stolenmachines that took them as materials and, through entropy, forged them into theHellkite Tyrants.




The image of the crypts is seared into the walls of mythree-chambered volcano. It lingers even as I navigate the branch-roads of themarsh city by digging the three-clawed digits of my feet into the wood,balanced by my blade-tail and forward thrust of my upper body. Taking the deadmetal after speaking my findings to an unhatched using a Vaik talon totranslate for another unhatched, I leave the unhatched that reeks of sweetfire-kissed carrion--greed without vision, for I have seen this in the MikrofajMolt that allow the raw allure of rotlava to obscure pursuit of the ignitioncatalyst-- and venture toward the Entropy Hellkite, now hardened igneous and steadilycalcifying from the Aven-sent winds.



Glossary

Molt - A Vaik shaman. There are three Molts based on the three types of lava

Makrofaj Molt - Vaik that deal in rotlava, specifically the newt-wurms found in the border regions between the bayous and burning tar rivers of Volrasarki.

Mikrofaj Molt - Vaik that deal in vitallava, specifically the fungi found in the border regions between the jungles and firevein jungles of Volrasarki.

Lava - A Vaik term for the liquefied remains of the dead elder dragons buried under Vurakkedi.

Unhatched - A catch-all term from the scale-less inhabitants of the plane (on which Vurakkedi is the northernmost continent)

Dragon Souls - Vaik term for perpetual mists lingering in the borderland between volcanic Vurakkedi and the frozen Cryode region.