Fodder for the Earth
[This is entirely @rrrawrf-writes‘ fault, because we can’t create minor character without them becoming fully-fleshed and adorable. So have some relatively unimportant backstory for two unimportant characters that I adore. Boar is @rrrawrf-writes‘, and Jyyr is mine. This is from my Wolf at the Gates universe/her Bannerworld universe, because there are no rules here. Content warnings for wartime violence.]
Jyyr never wanted to be a soldier.
He had made that abundantly clear when the group of ‘recruiters’ first found him in Rivercrest. He had told them exactly where they could stick their letters from the crown. Cordell may have been at war, and maybe they were seeking mages to help, and maybe a metal mage would have been extremely helpful to their efforts against Eola, but he didn’t care. He was a craftsman. He bent metal to make sconces and horseshoes and jewelry, and he offered to craft them swords and arrowheads, but that wasn’t enough. They wanted him in battle. And he couldn’t bend away a rope noose, or a casual threat against his family that made their swords rattle in their scabbards.
So Jyyr Darbinyan went to report for duty. A leather set of armor left something to be desired, as did the military-issue weaponry, but that didn’t bother him as much as it bothered him to see the others suited in it. He could turn away arrowheads, bend swords, curve knives back on their owners, but the men around him, they–
They felt like fodder for the earth.
“You know, if you keep making that face, it might get stuck that way.”
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