ChaosRipjaw
How We Roll Winner
Jun15
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A cold dawn drapes the borderlands in a thin shroud of frost, the world itself holding its breath. From high above, the land is a tapestry of scars—broken earth, withered grass bowed beneath the weight of another winter. A battered road winds between empty fields, tracing a slow path to the house at the world’s edge.
The manor rises from the mist: stone walls cracked and pitted, old battlements crawling with moss, banners long since bled of their color. In the gray half-light, its silhouette is less a fortress than a mausoleum, bearing the memories of men who never returned.
Mist drifts through deserted courtyards, pooling around statues no one visits and doors left unlatched. There is no music here—only the wind keening along the ramparts, and, somewhere distant, the hollow ring of a smith’s hammer, beating time for a house that forgets how to die …
Bren wore festival colors well. Streamers and banners rippled from open windows; laughter spilled from taverns, mixing with the bright chaos of market hawkers and the rhythm of distant drums. The scent of roasted meat and crushed fruit drifted on the summer air, and for a time, the city seemed untouched by anything as grim as war.
Somewhere in the mosaic of movement, a ripple formed—a hesitation, the kind of shudder that moves through a flock before a storm. The cobbles shivered, so faintly at first it might have been a trick of the mind. Yet as the tremor deepened, those nearest the source stepped aside, old instincts answering before thought.
He strode into the avenue without haste or malice, yet the space seemed to rearrange itself around him. A shadow tall as any banner—armor catching the sun in brief, savage flashes. Twin pauldrons, shaped like snarling dragon skulls, glared from his shoulders; at his waist, a carved idol winked between the plates of his harness. The bone-white mask that devoured the lower half of his face left only his mismatched eyes visible, molten gold and deep blue, cold and unreadable.
Blades bristled from his arms and back, each edge throwing off a different glint: the serrated armblades curving forward, the hooked and barbed edges barely missing the jostle of market-goers. A peddler with a basket of apples flinched away, pulling her child behind her. One blade clipped the canvas flap of a merchant stall—metal rasping against rough cloth, leaving a clean line that set the vendor’s jaw trembling, though no complaint rose.
Festival music faltered, just for a moment, as Drakesthai passed. Then the city found its voice again, determined to drown out whatever shadow had crossed its threshold.
For Drakesthai, it was only another gate, another crowd to part. His footfalls pressed deeper than most, and the ground’s subtle tremor felt as natural to him as breath. The wicked blades on his forearms and attached to his back seemed to hum, each weapon heavy with its own presence—a choir of steel eager for new stories, new scars— and perhaps, new compatriots.
He did not pause to gawk at the banners or the golden festival sun. His eyes flicked only once to the high walls of the arena, looming above the rooftops, before settling on the road ahead. The city opened before him—whether in welcome or warning, he could not say.
For the Weapon Reaper, both were the same.
The crowd thinned as he pressed deeper into Bren, each step sending new ripples through the market’s rhythm. In a hidden pocket of his highlander’s frostmane collar, he withdrew a battered parchment—creased, stained, marked with a spidery geometry that seemed half-riddle, half-threat. The map’s paths twisted and rejoined in impossible angles, towns annotated not by name but by coordinates and cryptic sigils:
Traverse the ecliptic by half again the angle of the stone’s shadow; proceed where the fourth root of the city’s latitude intersects the phase of the waning moon…
There were diagrams in the margins—spirals and polygons, even a sequence of numbers that might have been a cipher, or a joke. Somewhere near the center, in blackest ink, was scrawled: To the heart of convergence, where blades are weighed and fate bends: BREN.
Below, a single phrase, sharp and laconic: “The Elemental Championships—eightfold contest, for those with claim and cause. Victors earn the Lords’ favor. Others—leave only bones and stories.”
He had almost laughed the first time he’d read it—some relic of a dying mind, he’d thought. Yet here, among the city’s anticipation, he felt a low, eager pulse stir beneath his ribs. A contest of killers. A harvest of champions.
Weapons.
For a heartbeat, images flickered: A helmed warrior from the North, his lance shattering in Drakesthai’s grip; a mask-faced assassin in the ruins of Onax, her daggers now an elegant pair of talons mounted on his right arm. The bitter cold of a tower, the Vesperi, where mages screamed curses as he stripped the last blade from their grasp. Their voices still followed him, carried by rumor, by vengeance, by grudges that stalked a longer shadow than any festival could dispel.
He wondered, with no real fear, if one or more of those old enemies had followed him here. The thought was almost pleasing—a test of worth, a chance for more trophies.
A merchant bumped into him as he navigated a corner. The main right blade — Rend — brushed exposed steel against his thigh. He ran a thumb along its stylized edge, feeling the subtle vibration, as if the weapon purred at his touch. Of course, the blades were merely blades; mastercrafted, finely wrought blades, but very much non-sentient.
But as a connoisseur of weapons, so to speak, Drakesthai liked to think of his weapons as more than mere tools.
Easy, now. Patience. There will be blood soon enough.
He shifted his posture, the rest of the arsenal answering in their own ways: Ruin’s edge gleamed, severe and expectant; Spinescourge twitched with anticipation, eager for resistance and the taste of bone. Gnawer seemed to ache for the next weak link to tear, while the Talonstrikes seemed to vibrate, almost playful, hungry for an opening. The throwing blades rode his back, quiet but not forgotten, their weighted promise thrumming along his spine.
Drakesthai moved on, the map tucked away, anticipation a quiet storm at his core. Let the city watch. Let the hunters come. The Weapon Reaper had arrived.
Gray dawn presses against the ancient gates, their iron teeth streaked with old rust and chill dew. She stands before them, wrapped tight in a heavy cloak, her figure painted in the wan half-light. She is the last outpost of order—posture taut, eyes shadowed with sleepless calculation.
Her lips are set in a line that might be determination, or doubt.
Will he come? her stance seems to ask, even as her gaze rakes the barren horizon. She is the kind to expect disappointment; every line of her face says as much.
He stalked through the sunlit labyrinth of Bren, but his mind was already on the shadows ahead. Among the rumors he’d gathered, one thread tangled again and again—mages. There would be spellcasters among the contestants, undoubtedly. Some with flames at their fingertips, others wielding wind, or warping the flesh of the world with a word.
Drakesthai was not fool enough to dismiss them. He’d crossed blades with the arcane before—felt the sting of aether on his skin, the strange, cold bite of cursed steel. Mages were never predictable, and many had died thinking distance or ritual would save them from raw, patient violence.
Yet the risk only kindled his anticipation. A harder hunt. A test worth the scars.
On his arms, the weapons seemed to sense the coming challenge. Serrated blades flexed minutely as he moved, edges keen for spells to chew through. The armblades vibrated—one eager, one cold and calculating. In his mind, they whispered their own hunger, an eager pulse beating in the steel.
Show us what magic can do. Let’s see whose legend is sharper.
He found himself smiling—just barely, a hint of pleasure beneath the mask—as he strode toward the arena gates. For Drakesthai, the promise of sorcery meant only another set of trophies waiting to be claimed, and a new story to carve into the bones of Bren.
Each footfall is deliberate. Seismic. The earth answers grudgingly. Feeble sunlight snags on curved blades and jagged armor, on the bone-white mask that devours the lower half of the giant’s face.
Halberds come up with a ringing chorus. “Who goes there? Halt!”
He had just rounded the last of Bren’s gilded plazas when the confrontation found him. Two city guards, spears at the ready, blocked his path. Their armor was bright but their eyes were wary.
“Halt! Weapons are forbidden in the inner quarters during festival—state your business and disarm.”
He slowed, the tremor of his steps sending ripples up through their boots. Drakesthai met their gazes with the flat indifference of a predator at rest.
“I go where I please,” he replied, voice low beneath the mask. The guards tightened their grips, but hesitated—one eyeing the twin dragon-skull pauldrons, the other the bone-white mask. Blades bristled at his sides, their reflections catching in every shield and window. The street quieted, people drifting back, a hush settling over the nearby stalls.
Her voice cracks across the tension, sharper than steel:
“You would raise your weapons to him? That’s no stranger at the threshold. Lower your weapons.”
The guards faltered. Blades and stonelike armor glinted menacingly as the giant strode forward, the air soaking through with palpable killing intent.
“Now!”
Before the tension could crest, a trio of officials hurried into view—city colors on their sashes, sweat glistening on their brows. The eldest stepped forward, clearing his throat with more courage than he felt.
“That won’t be necessary, sirs. This one—” he glanced, swallowing, “—is expected for the Elemental Championships sign-ups. Is that correct…?”
Drakesthai tilted his head, offering a single nod. “It is.”
Relief flickered across the official’s face. “Then… if you’ll follow us, sir, we’ll see you processed properly.”
The guards stepped aside, glad for the excuse, eyes never leaving the blades as Drakesthai strode past.
Behind him, the city’s murmurs grew—whispers curling like smoke:
“Did you see the size of him—?”
“That’s the one from the old stories—Draco Mori…”
“Weapon Reaper, they call him. Look at those arms…”
“—I heard he takes the blades of everyone he kills.”
He paid them no mind. Festival cheer tried to reclaim the street, but everywhere he passed, the crowd remembered how to be afraid. Drakesthai walked in silence, the officials flanking him with nervous, respectful distance, escorting him toward the sign-ups office—his shadow stretching long behind.
A hush falls, broken only by the wind and the slow, relentless approach.
He steps from shadow into the pallid light, pausing just within the gate’s embrace. There is no hesitation in his stance—only a glimmer of something unreadable behind the mask. His gaze flicks from Saelistra, to the guards, and back again—measuring, weighing.
For an instant, the lines of his mouth shift beneath the mask. A smirk, perhaps. Or perhaps it is only a trick of the dawn.
“Still standing watch, Saelistra?” rumbles Drakesthai. “Some things never change.”
The sign-up office was a stark box of stone and sunlight, its windows smeared with dust and festival banners tacked haphazardly over ancient cracks. A long wooden desk, scarred by years of impatient gauntlets, separated entrants from the row of clerks and their ink-stained ledgers.
Drakesthai’s shadow swallowed half the floor as he entered, the city officials peeling away with hurried bows. The clerk assigned to him—a wiry man with spectacles perched low on his nose—barely looked up. If the array of jagged blades and bone-white mask troubled him, he didn’t show it; his pen moved with the steadiness of a man long since numbed by spectacle.
“Name and element?” the clerk asked, voice bored, already scribbling in a ledger.
Drakesthai considered. “What element would you guess?” His tone was deadpan, eyes unreadable behind the mask.
The clerk, unfazed, gave Drakesthai a once-over: the massive build, the dusty boots, the arsenal gleaming at every motion. “They say it’s not about looks, but…” He tapped his pen on the page. “You don’t exactly scream ‘Wind’ to me.”
Drakesthai snorted—a sound somewhere between amusement and derision. “No magic. No omens. I put no faith in stars or spirits. I’m told some men live by the tides or the moon.”
He flexed his foot with deliberate care. The stone floor shuddered with a soft thump—a Seismic Stride, barely more than a tap for him, but enough to send dust drifting from the windowsills and the clerk’s stack of papers skittering sideways.
The clerk raised an eyebrow, adjusting his spectacles. “We get all sorts, but you might be the first to rearrange the furniture. Very… earthy of you. I suppose that’s the sort of grounding the Lords like.”
Drakesthai rolled a shoulder, letting his blades shift and catch the light. “They’re metal, too—maybe that’s close enough to earth. They like to be close.”
He tapped one of the blades, almost affectionately. Rend’s edge gleamed, and for a moment, the clerk looked away, unsure whether to laugh or wince.
The clerk shuffled his papers, clearing his throat. “Everyone’s got something heavy to carry, I suppose.” He watched Drakesthai, pen paused midair.
Drakesthai shrugged, a comical gesture that made the draconic heads that were his pauldrons look like they were chuckling silently. His voice was low. “It adds up.”
There was a pause. The clerk’s pen stilled, hovering over the paper.
“Your name?” the clerk prompted, softer now.
“Drakesthai.”
The pen scratched. “Surname?”
The silence stretched—a rare, palpable hesitation. For a heartbeat, the whole room seemed to hold its breath.
“Who are you waiting for?” one whispers, eyes darting to the distant, empty road.
“Is it the enemy? The armies?”
Saelistra’s reply is measured, careful—almost gentle, but laced with iron. “Not the enemy, no. They will not reach us for quite some time.”
The dawn light is as weak as the hope in the air; that is to say, it is very, very dreary. Oppressive, weighing down on the soul. And the mist seems to swirl.
Will he come?
She breathes one word. “Family.”
Finally, almost grudgingly, Drakesthai spoke: “Morian.”
The clerk’s pen slowed, his eyes flicking up with a flicker of surprise—just enough for Drakesthai to notice. But whatever the man thought, he kept it to himself, marking the name with a neat, final flourish.
“Thank you,” he said, voice returning to that practiced neutrality. “Earth. Drakesthai Morian. You’re signed in.” He closed the ledger and gestured to the waiting room beyond.
Drakesthai nodded, the moment already gone, and strode onward—leaving the dust and the weight of names behind him.
He sat in the quiet antechamber, the distant clamor of Bren’s festival dulled to a faint murmur through stone and banners. The waiting room was clean, almost reverent—no windows, only a narrow bench, and a single shaft of sunlight angling through high glass.
Drakesthai ran a thumb along the edge of Ruin, the blade humming in anticipation—a resonance echoed by every weapon at his side. Rend urged him forward, eager for the first strike; Spinescourge crooned, savoring the promise of resistance; Gnawer itched to tear, while the Talonstrikes whispered in playful, taunting staccato. Even the throwing blades weighed in—hungry, circling, longing to be loosed. Their voices rose and tangled, a familiar cacophony in his mind: Claim what’s yours. Test their steel. Break the next challenger and—
He gestures, slow and unsteady, toward a small, battered box on the table beside the bed. Its lock is tarnished, the wood gouged with old scars.
“Take it.”
Drakesthai steps forward, lifts the box in one broad hand. It feels heavier than its size would suggest. But also light enough that he knows it does not contain much. He turns it once, twice—testing the weight of both wood and expectation.
He does not open it. Instead: “What’s inside?”
Kaeroth’s lips thin, the words dragging out like old wounds. “The Morians’ salvation.
“Our salvation.”
His grip tightened, knuckles paling beneath the gauntlet.
Rend seemed to whisper, Ignore the old man. The only prize is what you take for yourself.
Ruin was colder, Don’t lose focus. You know why you’re here.
He let the old, easy certainty wash over him—trophies, reputation, the promise of a new blade to claim.
But the memory of the box lingered. Something deeper. Something he hadn’t chosen.
The call came—not a spoken word, but a ripple of presence through the waiting hall. Drakesthai rose, the weight of his arsenal a familiar drag on every motion. The distant festival faded behind thick walls as officials herded the chosen down torch-lit corridors, boots muffled against ancient stone.
Silence gathered, oppressive and sacred. The hallway’s dull gray stones soon yielded to gleaming copper, polished bright as a forge’s heart. Light—impossible, directionless—flickered over every surface, throwing back warped, amber reflections. His own silhouette fractured in a hundred places along the walls; every blade and spike multiplied, a phantom menagerie of violence.
The air grew warmer. The faintest metallic tang clung to every breath. Drakesthai’s steps rang out sharper now, each footfall echoing with a deeper promise—of purpose, of reckoning, of ritual. The copper beneath his boots seemed to pulse in time with his heart. Somewhere far below, gears stirred—a mechanical heartbeat beneath the flesh of the world.
He reached the end of the corridor. Before him, an iron door, plain and unadorned, glowed at the edges with a dull, steady fire. No crowd noise reached here—only the whispering breath of competitors at his side and the relentless, thrumming hush. The anticipation was a physical thing, settling on every shoulder.
The locks clicked. The doors swung wide.
A short bridge stretched out over open nothingness—above and below, the emptiness seethed with interlocking gears, monstrous and unmoving, suspended by no visible force. The floor of the arena, hammered copper, stretched ahead, scored and marred by old battles. Shattered bronze fragments scattered in the glow, the debris of other ambitions.
He stepped onto the bridge, his bulk barely contained by the ritual pace. Each stride was measured—predatory, unhurried, as though daring the ground itself to yield. Molten light flowed through the air above the pit, glinting off the spikes of his mantles and the white bone of his mask.
Then—tick. The gears above turned, slow and inexorable. The floor beneath seemed to melt and flow, rivers of molten metal seeping out to the edge of the world before narrowing and solidifying with a final, brutal certainty. The echoes of that motion shivered along his legs, through every socket and rivet.
He inhaled. The air oddly wasn’t that much hotter, despite smelling of scorched copper and something older, like the inside of a forge left to cool for centuries. He could almost taste it on his tongue, even through the facemask.
In the heart of the arena, an amber prism hung suspended, rotating with silent promise. Its fractured glow played along his blades—each one hungrily reflecting the light, each one whispering for attention.
“And so begins the Trial of Flux. Fight or die, adventurers, but let the Elemental Championships begin!”
The voice was everywhere and nowhere. The weight of it pressed the crowd into silence, and for an instant, even the weapons stilled.
Drakesthai’s gaze swept the other bridges. He counted the figures, measuring each in the prism’s unearthly light, cataloguing them, one by one, as if sorting through an armory for the perfect instrument.
The first was a monstrous silhouette, all sinew and scaled hide, feathers quivering along its spine. Storm-gray, streaked with veins that seemed almost to glow, its tail lashing low to the ground. Its claws—long, sickle-curved—spoke of killing power, and the way it shifted its weight told him it was built to leap, to rend, to tear. A predator, through and through. Drakesthai’s pulse quickened. Not a weapon he could claim, but a worthy rival for steel all the same.
The second was a shrunken figure draped in layered, battered armor—old, worn, yet etched with patterns that caught and split the light into gold. Lines, cracks, and a scarf bright as a sun’s corona. The man beneath moved with the careful economy of someone for whom every step was chosen; no wasted motion, no bravado. An old killer, perhaps. In one hand, a rifle—ornate, runes gleaming. Other weapons bristled at his belt, all kept close. Pragmatic. Dangerous. But tired, perhaps. The sort that survives not by strength, but by wisdom and whatever faith keeps the bones moving.
Nearer to the edge, a wiry man in black and gray—thin, unsmiling, eyes darting beneath the brim of a battered cap. His armor was patchwork, cobbled from many places, and he moved with the nervous energy of someone who never expected to win a fair fight. Small weapons at his belt—a dagger, a compact crossbow. Pouches, maybe for poison, maybe for tricks. A scavenger. Vulture, not wolf. Dangerous only when the rest are bleeding.
Opposite, a woman—or something close—stood in robes of deep emerald, swathed in scales that flashed red and gold. Her right hand was not a hand at all, but a talon, draconic and bright. She bore a staff, metal and marked, and vials gleamed in bandoliers across her chest. Her stance was theatrical, poised—half-mage, half-showman. The glint in her eyes, and the way she rolled her shoulders before stepping forward, marked her as someone who expected others to look at her and burn. Showy. Red scales and vials, pyromancer, maybe? The sort who brings their own fire to a slaughter.
Drakesthai rolled his shoulders, the Twin Reapers, Rend and Ruin, curving forward to frame his stance. The copper floor, still steaming, seemed to welcome the weight of his challenge.
He stepped from the bridge, clawed boots clanging on the flat copper floor. The arena’s heatless heat shimmered, the crowd somewhere far above erupting into a fever of anticipation.
The glowing creature sporting talons roared, a howl that echoed across the arena.
Drakesthai raised one hand, Rend and the Talonstrikes flashing menacingly as they swept forward, catching the glo//w of the heated forge light.
“Let the Lords mark witness—or look away, I couldn’t care less. I am Drakesthai Morian, though some of you may know me as the Weapon Reaper. Step forward and show me if you carry a weapon worth the taking—or if you’ll just leave me disappointed,” he called, voice low and measured, every syllable resonant against the stone and metal.
His eyes—one gold, one blue—met each combatant in turn, cold as the edge of the world.
The chorus of steel in his mind fractured with a giggle, one eager, one cruel: So many new friends to make …
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