Kirk Tabris

The darkening clouds twisted above him, forming a spiral into which all the world seemed to be drawn, like an ominous vortex suspended in the red sky, ash and cinders floating up from the burning city below him, silent winds drawing them ever upwards into the pursed but ever hungry maw of the clouds. Before him loomed the Archdemon, ragged and wounded, its tainted blood spilling from its mutilated body in heavy splashes with its every bellowing breath, the soldiers who had caused those wounds already long dead and gone, their corpses already fallen from the crumbling spire upon which Kirk and the Archdemon stood.

His allies dispersed to other conflicts and now unable to reach him, Kirk was alone and trapped with this corrupted behemoth upon nothing more than a glorified stone pillar, whose foundations shook with carnage and chaos all around them. The Archdemon opened its mouth letting loose another breath, the creature having no strength left to roar, blood spurting from between sharp teeth even with this simple action. Its breath reached Kirk in a gust, washing over him as unintelligible whispers roamed over him and licked every inch of his armored but totally vulnerable being. His bow had been lost to the fiery expanse below him and he was weapon-less, yet the Archdemon did not attack as it had or should, only watched him with accusing eyes.

The accusation hung heavy over him; that he had not become the monstrous warrior he thought, that the power he had wielded was not his to command.  Those eyes beckoned him forward, and he stepped towards the Archdemon as called, the beast lumbering forward to snare him within its jaws, its limbs giving out as it did, body slumping, then collapsing under its own weight, its sharp teeth not even coming close to the elf. The Archdemon’s eyes watched him, expecting pity, searing with the insatiable desire to kill, but those were not the eyes that had watched him for so long. He knew who had watched him, who had shaped him to be a thing of dragon’s blood and cultic ritual; he had known ever since those eyes had left him. He was no longer a product of their machinations. Instead he would accept the gift that was to be his long before he had become a Warden,  

Invisible arms draped around Kirk and something deep within the blonde elf surged up, the scene before him igniting in ghostly flames of gleaming gold, the Archdemon consumed in an instant as the world below the spire was illuminated; the cheering faces of his troops lit as they stood upon the conquered ruins of Denerim.  

Kirk awoke with silent start, the smell of linen filling his nostrils as he buried his face in his pillows, finding the sunlight pouring through his window too bright for his sleep ridden eyes to bear.

“Come now my Lord, it is morning and you have duties to attend to. The Alienage doesn’t govern itself” chided his maid as she finished drawing back the curtains in his room. Kirk groaned, his face still buried in his pillow as the sounds of his small estate, awake and busy, clambered up the stairs and into his room.