> “I am not my father’s mistake!”

> -Someone you know, perhaps.

Flames shaped the East and it in turn made forms of the beasts, giving them names and limbs to bind their tongues and restrict their reach. It was useless, of course, and for their final defiance they were burnt from history, not even their ashes remaining.

Save for one, the endling who was but a babe, but old enough to realize he was the last. With the shadows cast from burning cities, he fled, and into infinite lands he traveled. But not once has he forgotten, and now his eyes were set upon a prize greater than all the other.

The coming of the Fire’s Heir.

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His name did not matter, but still others ask of it. Even now, as the endling slurped his noodles and enjoying the broth, he was still bothered by the unending chatter coming from the woman he had just met. It was a virtue of his people to remain polite even past the point of reason, and he had hoped she would see reason and understand the reason why he’d completely ignored her past their initial encounter.

But one cannot step into a dragon’s nest and expect to find common sense, it seems. She had quickly introduced herself as ‘Tracy with an I”, which she proved by pulling out a white board and a marker out of nowhere and writing ‘Tracy’ clearly with a ‘Y’. The endling put the strange woman out of his mind, but she refused to stay out of his sight. Her questions were varied and rapid, but mostly revolved around “What’s your name?”, “What are you doing here?”, “Can I touch your abs, just for a little bit?”, and most curious of all, “What’s wrong?”

Clearly, she was an empty-headed fool, and the endling resolved to ignore her, finishing his meal and walking up to the register to pay his meal.

“Hey, wait up, I’m still eating mine! Please pay for me too, I’ve never actually eaten here before!” The woman shouted from her seat, which drew curious eyes to her and the endling. The man of the hour was tempted, sorely, to be a little less polite just this once, but he nodded at the cashier and took out more coins than he was expecting to part when he entered the noodle place.

He was out by ten steps before Tracy zoomed to his side like a bat out of hell, and flashed him her now all too familiar smile. She orbited the endling all the way back to his temporary lodgings; a motel undergoing repairs after the fourth overflow flooded everything and brought garbage and treasure in equal measure. The owner’s luck summed up to zero as all the newfound wealth he got was then spent to keep his business afloat. Now, only strangers and the desperate call the motel home.

“You’re back. Why the fuck are you back?” The motel’s owner barked as he held out a hand for the mandatory entrance fee. The endling had no patience for such greed and made a show of pulling out his sword.

“Damn it, don’t fucking do that.” The motel owner snarled while taking back his hand. “I run a business, not a charity. And who’s this floozy?”

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"Stuff your face hole, Michael. I’m here for the stud, not the dud.” The woman made a gesture with one of her hands that the owner returned two-fold.

“Here’s some free advice for you kid. Don’t get involved with this two-bit-“ The motel owner’s rant was stopped by a playing card embedding itself into the wall just behind him. The endling stared at the card, and then at the woman beside him, who looked the picture of plausible deniability with her smile and eyes clear of guilt.

"Here’s your card. Don’t lose it. I don’t got the money to hire a locksmith to bust you out.” The plastic chunk landed with little fanfare into the endling’s waiting hand, and with a final raspberry blown by Tracy towards the motel owner and the finger he in turn gave her, the endling left the reception area.

It took a fair bit of talking and threats of physical violence, but the endling managed to dissuade Tracy from spending the night with him. He let out the day’s burdens with a groan as he crash-landed on his bed. In such days, thoughts of abandoning his revenge to live out a normal life surfaced as they always did. He has heard all the arguments, the rhetoric, the evidence and the fallout of what his path would reward him with. Truly, the Retribution Fields did not lack for those who are wronged in some way.

And still he has not strayed, though said seed has not yet to bear fruit in any way. Against any single dragon, the endling was confident he would come up on top, but against the entire race, and all of their allies and those that profited from the lizard’s continued existence? He’d be a mote of dust caught by the sunlight, burned like his people was and forgotten forever.

Caught in emotion, the endling thought to shed his clothes, but he wasn’t taking any chances when it came to the cleanliness of the motel’s sheets. He’s tried of course, to cast several variations of cleaning wards and spells, but still a taint pervaded the sheets that made his skin crawl. Or perhaps that was simply the nature of Blood Falls that seeps into all that called it home.

The endling could not understand it. The gore, the spectacle, the casualness with which everyone here treated death. Even the dead did not give so much as a whimper as their once-compatriots grounded them down into powder, or harvested their parts for furniture, or all the creative ways that the endling found he could not give words to that the inhabitants of Blood Falls so gleefully commit constantly.

He turned to regard his sole true companion, whose shine dimmed, but never dulled as a semblance of night rolled over his part of the blood-soaked city. Within their holster, they seemed unremarkable, but the trail of bodies left behind spoke of the guns’ power and the endling’s skill. Sometimes, the endling thought it could hear his weapon’s thirst for bloodshed, though such delusions fade quickly once the heat of battle has cooled down.

Today was a bust, as usual. No one of importance called Blood Falls home, and the messengers of the Godhome never linger for long. They consider the stench, the sight, and the cacophony of lesser beings the sin they must bear in service to their masters. Even with the barrel of a gun shoved inside one’s mouth, still a smug smirk crept its way into its face as though knowing the endling would never carry out his threat, too afraid to reap the consequences of his actions.

Perhaps that would be the case, were the endling someone that cared about such things. That messenger’s gray matter joined its like in a smear that looked like so many others in Blood Falls. No one cared, and scarcely a minute passed before the scavengers came and ripped the remains for all they were worth before scampering away.

No one respects the dead.