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 Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 11:07 pm
The Kirunian Mountains, home to the Kirunian people who are ruled and commanded by the Exile of Climate, Jikrae'neindir Noel'ti Sundran Veroeski. A military fortress of total and complete defense, Jikrae's Kingdom is situated on a ledge one thousand feet above the plains below him on one four thousand foot mountain, which is perhaps the shortest of the eight mountains that make up the entire Kirunian Mountain Chain, the tallest of which reaches almost forty thousand feet into the skies.
It is a temperate region, slightly cold due to Jikrae's affinity to cool temperatures and his control over the climate. The winters can be harsh, but the Summers are often very hot as well. Thirty Kirunians live in hollowed-out caverns reaching deep within the Mountains, mining iron and copper and granite. The inside of the mountain is composed primarily of azul noce, a type of glistening black granite, which comprises most of the walls of many of the rooms in the caverns. The caverns are not haphazardly carved, however, and the edges are straight and fine, as though cut by some divine, perfect creature.
Outside the Caverns, there are two paths leading off of the ledge, which is one thousand feet from the mountainside to the edge at the center, and becomes narrower as it extends. There is a wall blocking the Eastern Path, which leads to the base of the mountain, lined with military machines capable of cutting down almost any army sent to conquer Jikrae's people. The wall is eight feet thick at the edges, and even thicker near the center, and is over five hundred feet across, with two guard towers on either edge. It is made of azul noce granite, stone and mortar, with iron supports spread at critical points within the mixture.
The Western Path, which leads to the Mountain Peak, is overgrown with coniferous trees, with a large pine grove at its edge. Jikrae and his people consider the pine grove to be very relaxing and calming, and so they blatantly refuse to use any of the trees comprising its border for tools, fires, or supplies.Kirunian Culture Description Kirunians: The Kirunian Nationality is one of hard work and loyalty. There are thirty members of it, with all of the original eleven members having passed from life of age. Quris was the first, over thirty years ago, and Kitoky was the last one, having only died a week previous to Chapter Two's beginning. Jikrae, rather than erect standing structures and fortifications, has chosen to carve his Kingdom into the tough granite and limestone walls of the Mountain. He did go through with his original idea of constructing a Fortress on the Western side of the Cliff to block off any invading armies, a single stone-and-mortar wall over eight feet thick, spanning from the steep mountainside to the edge of the Mountainside, measuring in at over five hundred feet across. The wall, complete with two Guard Towers, is lined with twelve trebuchets, twenty ballistae, and one Shrapnel Launcher on each Guard Tower. The final weapon was a design that Jikrae spent three years designing, utilizing a stone bowl to hurl sharpened rocks and metal over short distances at very quick speeds, literally eviscerating enemy forces. Behind the Wall, within the Mountainside, construction has just recently begun on mining a rich vein of iron and copper ores that was found in the Mountains. Armor and Weaponry are about to make a major quality leap for the Kirunians. Culture: The Kirunians are hard and dedicated workers. Jikrae leads them by helping with everyday work when he is able, and they have begun to become more and more militaristically capable. Jikrae, expecting a War to be soon on the Horizon, has built upon the incredible physical strength a life of mining has endowed on his people and begun to lead them in Military Drills. He has trained a new assassin to replace the long-dead Maikau, and has given him permission to use Jikrae's personal alchemical laboratory in order to experiment with new poisonous substances. Technology: The Kirunians are technologically advanced. Without realizing it, they have all the necessary ingredients for basic explosives, minus the saltpeter that resides in the Deserts far away from his Kingdom (since the Desert region around the Mountain would have cultivated itself by now). Jikrae, in his own personal mining operations (which only he uses) has discovered a fairly large deposit of mercury, dubbing the substance quicksilver for its resemblance to silver and the way it dripped swiftly from his hands when he tried to hold it. It took virtually no time for Jikrae to understand the highly toxic properties of the neurotoxic substance, but he has not yet revealed the discovery to any of his people. They are constantly working on new weapons designs, such as mobile Guard Towers. They have discovered that they can create armored transports for themselves by putting large hollowed out squares of cloth on wheels and connecting something like an ox yoke to an axle connected to the tires. These primitive vehicles are still powered by mundane means, such as oxen, mountain goats, or even Jikrae's own incredible strength. Jikrae has only recently discovered the use of his Cape, when an argument broke out between him and one of his Smelters, Gurof. Gurof was becoming increasingly dissident, and when Jikrae rose from his Throne imposingly, his Cape fell within Gurof's line-of-sight, causing a flicker of fear in the man. Jikrae noticed it, and began to test it out. The argument ended with Gurof returning gratefully to the mines. Ideology: The Kirunians live on a philosophy of undeviating loyalty to each other and their leaders. Over the course of two generations, there has not been a single fight, murder, or assault committed by any member of Jikrae's Kingdom, and Jikrae is firm in his belief that nothing could break that pattern, for he still utilizes fear in order to keep the more rebellious of his people in-line. He has made it very clear that anyone who breaks the law will be met with a punishment equal to whatever offense they had wrought upon Jikrae's people. Thieves were stripped of many of their worldly possessions. Anyone who attacked another person would be forced to fight Jikrae (not to the death). Anyone who murdered another Human would be slung mercilessly off the Mountain Cliff to die on the rocks below. So far, Jikrae had not had to enact any punishment amongst his people, but he was not making idle threats. Other: A Basic Map of Jikrae's Kingdom.
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Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 11:08 pm
It took Jikrae fifty years to discover exactly what his armor did to him. It took Jikrae fifty long years to discover exactly what his armor was made out of, and it took him fifty years to discover that he was capable of much more than simple running.
The pouldrons were the last part of his armor to fall to the ground, their metallic spikes clattering softly against the lush mountainous grass outside of the entrance to his Kingdom. Foxglove blooms were sprinkled around every few feet, the purple flowers breaking the monotony of the simple green blades of grass that represented the majority of plantlife on the ledge.
To the East was the same forest that Jikrae had known since he'd arrived, except that the trees had all grown massive, most of them towering over thirty feet. His people, whom he had named the Kirunians, sometimes cut down trees in case they needed support beams for the mines inside the mountain, but it was a rare occasion indeed when that was necessary.
To the West was a path down the mountain, overgrown with weeds and trees, and blocked off by a thirty foot wall made of stone, mortar, and brick, carried over the course of twenty years from inside the Mountain. The wall was eight feet thick, and it spanned over five hundred feet across, stretching from the vertical gradient of the mountainside to the end of the ledge Jikrae's Garden had originally been on.
No longer did Jikrae's people choose to dwell outside under the open sky, however. They had long-since carved their way into the interior of the mountain, discovering many things that were different than their previous lives. The only members of his Kingdom who were outside now were the three people acting as Lookouts on the wall; one on the battlements of the colossal structure, and the other two each in their own guard tower.
The wall was lined with twenty ballistae and twelve trebuchets, giving each of Jikrae's people one weapon in case they ever needed to defend. In each tower, there was a strange weapon that looked similar to the trebuchets, except it utilized a large stone bowl filled with sharp rocks and metal shards to bring down enemies. Those two would be operated by the two members of Jikrae's Kingdom who would find no weapon of their own on the wall. Jikrae, of course, wouldn't need a weapon like that; if anyone ever attempted to invad his Kingdom, he'd be on the other side, brutally attacking any individual who got too close to the wall.
A single vault carried Jikrae high into the air, up and up and up until he found himself overshooting the wall he had hoped to land on. He was several meters above it when he finally reached the apex of the small hop and began to fall. He landed noiselessly on the battlements next to his General, who had been named after the original leader Jikrae had chosen, who was long-since dead.
"Judros, seen anything yet?"
Judros was used to Jikrae's surprise appearances, and he tried not to flinch when Jikrae's powerful voice reached his ears. He turned quickly and saluted by slamming the large iron tower shield in his right hand into the stone battlements and standing as straight and still as possible.
He looked upon Jikrae, who did not resemble the form he often showed when he was wearing his armor. Beneath the incredibly heavy metal, he was simply wearing a pair of tanned leather pants, and was barefoot, with a green-dyed leather shirt with short sleeves. He still wore his cape and leather mask, but aside from that and certain features that couldn't be removed, such as his horns, he looked drastically dissimilar to the Jikrae who had found himself face-down in the sand of the Desert half-a-century ago.
"Nothing, Jikrae!"
"Good. I'll send out someone to relieve you and the other two. You'll still have an hour of mining to do before your working day is up, though, so don't think you can slouch!"
Jikrae meant it almost as a joke, and indeed, Judros did crack a smile. Jikrae made sure that all of his people worked at least ten hours each day, leaving eight hours to sleep and six hours to relax. They were usually allowed to do it in any form they wanted; if they wanted to work for an hour, relax for an hour, and then work again, they were allowed that freedom. Still, every day saw most of Jikrae's subjects working at least twelve hours of their own accord, and Judros usually stayed in the mines long after that.
Jikrae watched the storm clouds with a detached interest, noting that they would miss his Kingdom by at least twenty miles. The storm was clearly one of incredible strength, and while Jikrae would likely claim credit for the phenomenon if it ever became necessary, he could not have hoped to conjure up such a powerful entity.
He hopped off the mountain peak, lifting himself almost eight meters into the air and sailing out over one hundred feet to the south, toward the ledge his Garden had been on half-a-century ago. Now his people lived inside the Mountain, but the Kingdom was still considered to be 'situated on the ledge.'
The drop was over three thousand feet, and Jikrae felt himself plummeting faster, faster, until it wasn't possible for him to speed up any more. His eighty-pound body had the effect of a small meteorite when he landed purposefully on the path just to the west of the wall.
A small crater was left where Jikrae landed when he stood up straight, grouped with several others that were scattered on that path. It was almost eight feet deep and seven feet in diameter, with hundreds of rocks and pebbles scattered around it and inside it. If anyone decided to invade Jikrae's Kingdom, they would have to traverse that treacherous terrain while being shot at from the walls.
A leap carried him up above the wall, and he landed softly on the other side. The Sun was setting below the horizon now, casting his Kingdom in an eerie shadow. Three soldiers would remain on Guard Duty throughout the night and well into the morning. Those three were pitied by their peers, for they were going to miss the night's exhibition. He picked up the armor that he had discarded earlier, donning it easily.
Jikrae stepped past the open archway and into the well-lit hearth of his home; of the home of all of his people. It was Jikrae's Throne Room, carved into the azul noce granite of the mountain, a gray-black combination of incredible, shimmering color. Every piece of furniture in this room was connected to the ground; rather than be carved from a block of granite separated from the ground, everything here had simply been carved along with the room.
The craftsmanship of Jikrae's people was unparalleled. At no point in the room was there a jagged edge or a rounded corner. The decorative carvings etched into the back of the throne were flawless. Over the course of fifty years, this room and four others had been cut into the mountain, but no other matched the sheer beauty of this room.
surrounding the throne on three sides were eleven sarcophagi, each one holding a different member of the original eleven people who had lived in Jikrae's Kingdom. The final one, Kitoky, had been the youngest when Jikrae arrived and had been the final one to die, having passed away less than a week ago. Three coffins lined side-to-side were on both the left and right side of Jikrae's throne, all carved just as carefully as the rest of the room, and three of them were set tip-to-tip behind the throne. The remaining two, holding the remains of Zifro and Kitoky, were set diagonally at each back corner of the throne.
Torches lined every inch of the room, giving it plenty of light, though there was little more to look at other than the throne and the coffins of the original eleven members of the Kirunian Kingdom. The throne was little more than a chair carved from stone with small armrests and two pillars that rose from either side of the back. From each pillar a square flag was flown, displaying the foxglove plant set against a background that was divided horizontally between purple and green, respectively on the top and bottom.
Jikrae walked North through the entry-way of the room, and turned left from the center of the Throne Room. Then, he turned South again after he had cleared the threshold of the main entrance. There was another archway there that led into the dormitories, which was his destination. Within the dormitories, twenty-nine people waited, cheering as their leader entered. There was one more room to the West of the dormitories, which was where this night's display would take place.
"Ready for today's fight, Maikau?" Jikrae asked his Assassin after the cheering had died down. The lightning built up challengingly as Jikrae discarded all of his armor once again, tossing all the pieces nonchalantly onto a nearby feather-stuffed mattress.
Everyone present was silent, but Jikrae could see they were ready to give another tremendous cheer. "Absolutely, little Jikrae," Maikau laughed.
Jikrae imitated an annoyed snort at Maikau's insult, but he was laughing in his mind. Maikau stood almost three feet taller than him, so it was no surprise that the tall man should take a shot at Jikrae's height. This was a common event, and during these fights, verbal abuse was permitted, even if the target was Jikrae'neindir. The crowd cheered at Maikau's response, but died down when they realized Jikrae was about to speak.
"Call me that if you will, Maikau, but imagine how painful my punches will be." The crowd laughed at they followed Maikau and Jikrae through the West archway into a large dome-shaped room.
"Oh, I don't think I have to worry about that. I'll just push you away before you get close enough to land a punch."
"We'll see," Jikrae responded calmly, before a single leap carried him the fifty-foot distance to the opposite side of the dome. Most people would have thought this to be an easy fight, but if there was one thing Jikrae had realized very soon after Maikau was able to fight, it was that his reflexes were extraordinarily fast. Jikrae would not use his inhuman strength here, and he promised to react accordingly to any hits that Maikau managed to land. This was bound to be an interesting fight, despite Jikrae's vastly superior agility.
Maikau had more dexterity, agility, and speed than any other Human Jikrae had ever known. Granted, he hadn't known many, but if any Human could match an Exile's speed and reflexes, it was Maikau. This man was going to be Jikrae's prime assassin until the day he died, and he was bound to be good at his job.
Jikrae struck first, giving no quarter to his opponent. He pivoted to his right and crouched slightly, launching himself to Maikau's left in an instant. Jikrae watched as Maikau stood perfectly still, arms at his side, eyes staring forward, yet with his face lined with the kind of triumphant attitude that showed Jikrae that Maikau knew where he was and what he was trying to do.
Jikrae twisted himself around so that his legs hit the granite wall of the domed Arena and he launched himself directly at Maikau, flying through the air like a hornet, far too fast for Human eyes to perceive. When he reached Maikau, he found himself flying much further than he expected; Maikau had ducked the attack, but had made no attempt to retaliate.
Jikrae allowed his legs to touch on the ground, spraying pebbles into the air as he slid slowly to a stop. By the time he got his bearings, very close to one of the rock walls, Maikau was already making an attempt to attack him. Jikrae only barely managed to catch a glimpse of Maikau's fist hurtling at his right temple, and he quickly hopped upward, launching himself far above Maikau's assault.
He tried to land on Maikau as he fell, but the Human managed to step out of the way before gravity could pull Jikrae downward. Jikrae felt the force of a knuckle cracking against a nerve cluster in his back, with enough force to topple a Human. Jikrae, however, wasn't about to let the match finish that quickly. Rather than fall forward, as he should have, he collapsed backward, sending Maikau sprawling and giving himself enough time to recover.
He rolled backward onto his feet, using the momentum to carry himself into a jump and backflip over Maikau, who still seemed slightly dazed by Jikrae's unexpected and rather unfair tactic. Jikrae barely jumped in order to bring himself to even-height with Maikau, and tried to throw a punch at the same nerve cluster that Maikau had just attacked, but his target swiveled around, turning the tables on the Exile when he dodged Jikrae's punch and threw one of his feet at Jikrae's larynx.
Jikrae blocked that kick with his other hand, and attempted to trip Maikau unsuccessfully, for his opponent dodged backward before Jikrae's foot could connect.
The crowd was divided between the two. Faith had little place here; people weren't expected to cheer for Jikrae simply because he was Jikrae. They were told to cheer for whoever they wanted to win more, and quite a few of them were applauding the fact that Maikau had lasted more than thirty seconds against the Exile, which was three times as much as any of them could even hope to claim.
"Stop playing around, Jikrae!" Maikau jeered with a smirk.
"I could ask the same of you, Maikau. You could have landed three crippling attacks by now, but you passed them by."
The two fighters were at a standstill now, both with their hands in front of them in a defensive stance, with their heels pointed inward at a right angle for balance, but neither was attempting to attack the other.
"I wouldn't want to leave any lasting injuries on our glorious leader," Maikau called back. Despite the fact that the two were only a few feet away from each other, both of the fighters wanted to crowd to hear their conversation.
"The feeling," Maikau crouched again, "is not mutual!" he rocketed into the air, turned himself, and when he crashed into the ceiling, he vaulted downward with all the strength that he had, knowing that Maikau would dodge the attack, which would almost surely have been fatal. He turned himself back again so that he would land on his feet, prepared for Maikau's inevitable counter-attack.
As expected, when Jikrae landed on the solid granite floor Maikau was several inches out-of-range. Jikrae had hardly begun to stand straight when a kick to the back of his neck put him face-first into the ground. He was unhurt, but Jikrae was aware that such an attack would have killed a normal Human. The fight was lost.
Jikrae rose slowly to his feet, knowing the mistake that he had made. Maikau was a better fighter than he by far, and given the strength and agility of an Exile, he would have been a one-man army. Maikau had an innate ability to sense his opponent's intentions that Jikrae had never felt, and it was how he had known that Jikrae had expected a kick to his chest, as opposed to an attack from behind.
The crowd was going wild, yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs, the booming noise echoing and growing at it bounced off the circular walls. Jikrae turned abruptly, hoping to surprise Maikau, but the man didn't flinch. He knew that Jikrae wasn't going to break the rules of the duel. Maikau had won fairly, and Jikrae wouldn't betray that by continuing the fight.
Jikrae held out his hand to shake Maikau's, and added in a quiet tone, so that the crowd couldn't hear him, "You beat me twice, Maikau. You have got to teach me how you know where I am when you can't see or hear me."
"It's simple," Maikau said in a joking tone that was borderline condescending, "I just look at your eyes and know what your intentions are."
Jikrae frowned behind his mask, knowing that Maikau had to be lying, since Jikrae's eyes couldn't be seen behind the crimson lightning. They existed, yes, but they were masked completely. Jikrae still believed that there was some sort of trick or technique behind that power Maikau seemed to have, but he didn't know what it was.
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Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 8:35 am
((Meh, I think this post ends far too abruptly, but I thought about it and it was the easiest way to do it without revealing too much while still making it painfully obvious to anyone looking.))
Jikrae's eyes fell upon the landscape like glass, the lightning gone from his eyes as he stared in horror at the scene. They were just two pure-white orbs, glazed over and reflective, but still seeing everything that a regular Human eye would, along with many things that Human eyes could not. The orbs swiveled back and forth as his terrified gaze swept across the land in front of him, taking in every detail as terror slowly turned to anger.
What he was looking at were the carcasses of a herd of over three hundred musk oxen, every single one of them killed and left to rot on a narrow pathway two thousand feet directly above the ledge that held Jikrae's Kingdom. Goats were the primary food of the Kirunians, and while they could deal with the loss of this herd and many others, this was still an atrocity that Jikrae found himself furious over.
Jikrae was wearing every piece of his armor, along with his fear-inducing cape. He hadn't passed anyone or anything on his way up the path, and while another Exile could likely have done this and then fled the Mountains by simply leaping off the side, this didn't look like the work of any Exile. Every ox had only one wound, identical to the goats around it; every single one of them had a slashed throat. The path was practically flooded with their draining blood, and Jikrae would be surprised if quite a bit of it didn't make it all the way down to his Kingdom. Jikrae was efficient, more efficient than anyone he knew, but even he wasn't that skilled.
There were two explanations as to what had happened. Either something extraordinarily fast had killed all the oxen before they could stampede away or defend themselves, or the oxen had allowed themselves to be systematically eliminated. A crimson spike jumped from his left eye where his pupil should have been, followed by a similar effect from his right eye. The glassy substance was suddenly broken when a movement from the edge of his vision caught his attention, and as though all of Hell were being released from his mind, torrents of crimson lightning lashed out violently from his eyes, many of the bolts reaching almost three feet long.
The armor kept him from jumping more than a few feet at a time, but it didn't keep him from running several times faster that a Human, and as he bolted past the field of Musk Oxen corpses, he saw the same shape again. He assumed that he had just caught a shadow of some creature, but there was something wrong about it. The shadow was cast to the right, toward the setting Sun. Jikrae noticed that, but he paid it little attention. All he knew was that he had the culprit close-by and that the perpetrator would pay when Jikrae caught him.
The shadow disappeared behind a large boulder on the steep mountainside, and Jikrae knew that he would catch the creature. He had spent the last fifty years on this planet climbing almost every day, and no Human (and in his mind, not even another Exile) could match his skill at that. Jikrae leapt upward to that spot, noting that since he couldn't see the creature climbing the mountain, it must have still been in that spot, hiding behind the rock.
But there was nothing there. Jikrae glared around, his face pulled into a menacing scowl that was hidden behind the crimson lightning and his purple mask, but no matter how angry he was, the only thing that he could find behind that giant rock was a gopher hole.
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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:38 pm
Too much was at risk for Jikrae to slow his breakneck pace even as the incline of his steps became much steeper and he began to ascend the path that led to his Kingdom. He knew it was unsafe, and that haste had the potential to slow him down dramatically if he slipped on a rocky edge. The pathway was narrow, and rose at an angle of almost thirty degrees, and though Jikrae would emerge unharmed from even the worst of possible injuries sustained from falling, he was not keen on beginning the climb anew.
He saw the massive wall first, and one powerful leap just barely carried him over it, weighed down as he was by his armor. There was a small gate built into the wall, but it had to be opened from the inside and Jikrae had no intention of waiting for his people to arrive and assist him when he had a sinking feeling that they were in mortal danger.
As he touched on the top of the battlements of the wall, causing a small crack in the stone, he noted that there were no sentries standing guard on the wall, which Jikrae did not allow under any circumstances. He fell off the other side of the wall, unlatching a quadruple-bladed axe from a horizontal clasp on his belt, its five-foot haft falling easily into his hand, with two blades on either side of the magnificent weapon.
He hit the ground with a loud thump and, without hesitating, bolted for the massive square archway that marked the inside of his Kingdom. The Throne Room, as far as he could see, was deserted. That was also uncharacteristic. As the Sun fell beneath the horizon, it was likely that most people had finished their work for the day but had not yet gone to sleep, and many people came to admire the Throne Room on a daily basis, showing reverence to the eleven sarcophagi that marked the graves of the original eleven members of Jikrae's garden.
His grip tightened around the two-hundred pound axe in his hands as he turned just past the first corner into the dormitories. The crying was the first thing that alerted him to the presence of people inside, and as he finished the 180 degree turn past a four-inch thick wall of azul noce granite, he noticed the blood.
It was a trail of sickly, pallid liquid, tinged sanguine by the black rock beneath it. It led from the mines into the dormitories, and Jikrae knew what he was going to see even before he averted his view from the blood to the scene inside the dormitories.
It was obvious that Maikau was mortally wounded. There was too much blood on the ground for him to survive this ordeal, whatever that ordeal was. Every other citizen of Kirunia was gathered around him and--
Jikrae's axe fell from his limp hand as every part of his body went numb. His legs worked themselves automatically, painfully taking those last few trudging steps to view two bodies, one on a bed and emitting labored, pained breathing through a punctured lung and a stomach that was torn open. That was Maikau, his incredible willpower keeping him alive when he should have been dead.
The other was not breathing. There had been no chance for the dead man laying on the ground next to Maikau, who had clearly been attacked by the same thing that had injured Maikau. However, the strikes against that corpse had likely killed him instantly, as his throat was slit open almost from ear-to-ear, with his head lolling off the the side, sheared almost completely off. Judros' spine had been completely severed, leaving only the back skin of his neck to connect his head and shoulders.
Maikau didn't look at Jikrae; his eyes were almost glazed over, but he still acknowledged his Leader's presence with a choked, bloody cough and a few stuttering words.
"We were...were att--" here he broke into a fit of coughing, spitting up more blood as he turned suddenly onto his side. Jikrae knew that the man couldn't possibly have much blood left; certainly not enough to power his body. He absolutely should have been dead, but he soon rolled back onto his back and continued, "attacked by two shadows...in the mines. They...they attacked Judros, and I tried to help, but I drew Judros' attention away from them and one of them sliced his throat open....I used my daggers to drive them off...I had them coated in...coated in quicksilver, I did. But they jabbed through my chest and sheared my...my stomach open with just their bare hands..."
"Hold on, Maikau," Jikrae said hopefully, his voice trembling audibly, "This isn't quite your time to die."
Jikrae slammed his hands onto the strings that bound the two halves of his cuirass together, unwilling to spare the time to untie them individually. Time was short; if Maikau died, Jikrae was certain that there could be no hope for him. But while he was alive, maybe there was a chance that he could be saved. Meanwhile, Maikau was emitting more choked laughs, as though he knew that Jikrae was wrong. Nevertheless, he didn't fade yet, almost like he was humoring the Exile's desperation.
Jikrae knelt down to the front half of the chestplate and reached toward a small silver amulet that was embedded into the iridium metal, plucking it out haphazardly. He held it tightly in his gloved right hand, pressing it against his forehead and practically praying to the Talisman that had been given to him at the Stone Council meeting fifty years ago.
"Craftsman, please come now, now, now! I need your help!"
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