Jace
(#27389327)
Level 1 Fae
Familiar
Shatterbone Vulture
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 0/50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Ice.
Male Fae
Expand the dragon details section.
Collapse the dragon details section.
Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
0.8 m
Wingspan
1.28 m
Weight
0.92 kg
Genetics
Sky
Cherub
Cherub
Sky
Butterfly
Butterfly
Sapphire
Glimmer
Glimmer
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 1 Fae
EXP: 0 / 245
STR
5
AGI
8
DEF
5
QCK
6
INT
8
VIT
5
MND
8
Biography
|
___________________Jace___________________
The Cold |
|
 |
Jace wasn’t born a slave. But he was never free either. His first memory was one of incredible fear, and from that day onward, it owned him. There was nothing else before the fear...except maybe the cold.... The worst part was that it hadn’t even been inflicted by an enemy. It had been one of their own. An Ice mage. She had been losing control of her powers, and the clan had been trying to help her. As it was, they nearly exterminated themselves instead. The sorceress’ magic took control of her one day. She burst from her confines and stormed onward in a rush of mindless destruction. The guards fell before her like mown wheat as she stalked into the inner confines of the lair. Jace was in daycare then, and he remembered the nursemaid turning around, her eyes wide with fear. She pushed him and some of the other toddlers before her, urging them to flee even as she gathered the smaller ones into her arms. She was small and old, yet still she tried. “Run, children!” she cried as the wall behind her started to crack. “Run! Run!” The wall came down. It might’ve been a mercy if it’d crushed her. As it was, Jace looked back and saw the nursemaid swallowed by a flood of ice, along with the children she was carrying. The look on her face as her last cry tore into a scream of pain, and the pitiful wails of the children...Jace saw how the ice stabbed into their skin and then out again, like needles. An older boy dragged him away at that point, but when he closed his eyes he could still see them; their shrieks drove into his mind like nails. He never found out how the Ice mage was extinguished, and he didn’t care. Although Jace and his family all survived the onslaught, Jace didn’t escape unscathed. After that day, the slightest gust of chill wind made him quake. When winter came that year, snowflakes swirling from the sky, he broke down in mindless terror, screaming ceaselessly. It took three medics to hold him down so they could force a soporific down his throat. It put him to sleep, but it did not take away the fear. His clan tried to help him. They asked around for people who could possibly ease his phobias. They described his intense fear of ice and snow...and someone heard.... They came to the clan one day, spoke to the leaders. “We are scientists,” they claimed, “and our specialty is the rehabilitation of those possessed by fear, as your little boy is. We have former patients in our ranks, real success stories—feel free to talk with them, ask them questions about our facility. They’ll assuage any...ahem, fears you have.” Jace’s clan was tired of having to care for him. Tired of his constant screaming. Tired of his fear. Those are hard truths, but they must be faced. Otherwise, perhaps they would have been more suspicious about the facility’s location. How long it had been in operation. The nature of their methods. When Jace would come home. As it was, they handed him over without much thought. By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late—Jace and his “caretakers” had seemingly disappeared; no leads were found and those who had seen them pass wouldn’t speak of them. The clan leaders wrung their hands as Jace’s parents bellowed in grief. The trail had gone cold, and they would never see their son again. ~ ~ ~ The clan had entrusted Jace to what they’d thought was a rehabilitation center. Instead, they sent him straight to hell. Even before he saw it, the scientists made him drink...things. They put him to sleep, and each time, it became harder and harder for him to wake up...and remember. Except... “Tell us about the Ice mage, Jace,” they always entreated him. “Tell us.” So he did. Sometimes he wanted to talk about his family, his friends, but they shook their heads. “No, tell us about the Ice mage. The ice.” And so he did...until one day that was all he could talk about. He sat there, stunned that he had forgotten everything else. “My parents,” he wanted to say. “My friends...” But only the wall remained, falling before an onslaught of ice. There was nothing else but the cold, the fear. “The Ice mage came through the wall...” he babbled automatically, like a broken record, as his captors smiled. Soon enough, they reached the Facility. ~ ~ ~ Jace opened his eyes to a room of cold steel walls. Cold...It was cold! “Help!” he screamed. He huddled in the middle, shivering violently—they’d taken away his clothes, and he felt the cold seep into his skin. Into his bones...It would burst out again like knives, he knew it would! The scientists heard him, certainly. Don’t think that they didn’t care....They did, but for an entirely different reason. When they entered his cell, it wasn’t to help him....No. They used him. They tested him day after day, deaf to his sobs and screams for mercy. When it became too much, he begged for death...but they didn’t stop. “The ice is within you, Jace,” they told him. They even smiled at times. “Can’t you feel it? It’s trying to burst through your skin. It wants to get out....” Then he would scream, but in terror this time. They left him a mirror, and when he saw himself in it, he broke the glass, but that only made it worse as his reflection multiplied, staring up at him, mocking him. He had once had dark hair. But fear had turned it white—as white as snow. Worst of all, his eyes, previously Nature-green, had lost their vibrancy. They had grown pale...like ice. It was true, then. The ice had invaded his body. And soon enough, it started to burst out.... ~ ~ ~ Jace was not alone in the Facility. There were other unfortunates, mostly children who had been stolen away, subjected daily to their worst nightmares. The scientists made no attempt to conceal their presence, and the walls were thin enough so the subjects could hear one another’s screams. Fear feeding on fear and engendering more fear.... And one day, the cycle was broken when the fear was subsumed by rage. They called him Desire, but on that day, he became the embodiment of Destruction. The magic they had ignited in him burst forth. Like a surging storm, it battered the walls of the Facility. The metal crumpled like paper, and the poor experiments cried out in fear, and then relief, for at last, many of them were free. There was no such reprieve for the scientists. Desire hunted them down one by one, made them suffer in the most extraordinary ways. Bones shattered, appendages removed...Jace cowered underneath a sheet of metal, shivering violently. Ice crystals burst from his skin in shimmering waves. They did nothing to shield his vision as Desire systematically dismembered a scientist in front of him, ignoring the man’s screams for mercy. As the man, too, had ignored their screams for mercy, not so long ago... And then it was done. The other boy stared at Jace for a moment, his eyes blazing with fury. Jace thought for certain he would be next...but Desire turned away. He stormed off through the wreckage and then was gone. By morning, Jace was on his way, too. He remembered only the Ice mage and the Facility, but these were memories not worth keeping. He still recalled, distantly but surely, that this was not the way he was supposed to be. He needed to find a cure. ~ ~ ~ Jace had spent some years in the Facility, and he’d heard bits and pieces about the outside world. He was turning into a cryomancer and thought that perhaps he could consult the Southern Icefielders....But the thought of all that snow, that cold, nearly made him break down. He fled to the Ashfall Waste instead, seeking the pyromancers’ aid in beating back the ice. He caused quite a stir when he arrived: a boy, nearly grown, stumbling out of the smoke, leaving behind a trail of ice crystals. His pale hair and eyes shone in the gloom. He could barely speak; the cold was too intense and made him stutter. When he did manage to form words, his voice was hoarse from the long days of screaming. The pyromancers shrank back warily at first, but then they saw the pain in his eyes. He held his hands out to them; his trembling fingers spoke of deep desperation. They took pity on him. They wrapped him in warm furs and put him next to their furnaces. He would have leaned against the scorching metal if he could have; such was the cold permeating his body. The cold, he had learned by then, never, ever went away. The pyromancers could do nothing for him. “There is nothing we can do for you,” they admitted to him, “and we are sorry.” Jace nodded despondently. He would have been content to stay there, next to the warmth and the light. But the pyromancers’ next words chilled him deeper than the ice ever had— “We have decided to send you to an Arcane clan based near the Observatory. They have agreed to study you in an attempt to find a cure.” They noticed that Jace was trembling but thought nothing of it—Jace was always trembling. This time, however, it was due to stark terror. Arcane. Observatory. Study. He knew it was absurd; the Facility had been in the Shifting Expanse.... But supposing some of the scientists had escaped? What if they had regrouped in the Arcane lands? They could be asking around, hunting for their former subjects...to study them in an attempt to cure them.... They’d said that before, too: “Let us have your boy. We’ll do our best to cure him....” Well, they’d certainly cured him; the cold was no longer his worst fear. Jace would’ve laughed at the irony, but the laughter had died inside him long ago. Instead, his thoughts oriented on one word: escape. The pyromancers gave him free run of their lair, and Jace trudged outside. From where he was, he could see all the way down to the harbor. Wind whipped around the ships, unfurling their banners, and Jace squinted at them. He had an inkling he would be safe...somewhere in the north.... A residual memory, or just intuition? The feeling grew stronger over the next few days, and one afternoon, when Jace heard the clan leaders quietly discussing when to entrust him to the Arcane researchers, he went into action. He fled the lair with only the clothes on his back. The pyromancers had given him heavy leather boots, gloves, and coats to mask his curse, and these served him well as he scuttled down to the shore. He looked like any other metallurgist hurrying home for the night. He found a ship in the harbor. A barge with a purple banner, bound for the Tangled Wood...It was in the right direction. Jace burrowed in among the cargo of glimmering metal ingots, trusting them to hide him from view. And there he stayed as the barge completed its slow journey northwards, towards the darkness of the Tangled Wood. ~ ~ ~ It was nighttime when the barge paused for the night. It was dangerous to travel through the Tangled Wood after dark, but Jace didn’t care. He slipped from the hold and crouched upon the mossy shore. Something pulled his gaze northeast....He didn’t know what it was. Before he could ponder further, he heard the crew approaching. He fled into the trees before they could discover he’d stowed away. He was beginning to realize how unwise his flight was. He’d brought no food, and though there was water aplenty in these swamps, he was getting dreadfully hungry. Two days later, he still hadn’t found enough food or a safe place to stay. He was beginning to feel lightheaded, as if his soul was about to drift away....He thought that wouldn’t be so bad. At least then, there wouldn’t be any pain or hunger. Perhaps it would be cold....But he felt that nowhere else could be colder than inside him—or the cell he’d been imprisoned in. He curled up between some tree roots and soon fell into an exhausted slumber. Although his dreams were a blank gray mess, the cold continued roiling inside him. It started snaking out, garlanding the trees in frost flowers and sending curlicues of ice over the ground. ~ ~ ~ “Procel, this isn’t funny anymore!” Akihiko turned around. He glared into the darkness, glad that his clothes hid his trembling knees. An eerie little titter sounded out of the shadows, but nothing else appeared. Akihiko stormed away, trying to make it seem as though he didn’t care....After some time, though, his shoulders slumped. Procel had been haranguing him again, and he was at his wits’ end. He’d left the Hidden Haven in an attempt to get some peace....It seemed to have worked. He put his hand on a tree trunk for balance. “What the...?!” he gasped, flinching back. Cold...It was cold! ”Ice? It isn’t winter yet....” Then he saw it: ice festooning the trunks, the leaves. “Procel?” he called out again. “This isn’t our territory; you can’t play here....The Shadowbinder will be angry.” He moved cautiously into the woods. The phantom didn’t appear, and he began to doubt that Procel had caused this mess after all. Sure enough, he soon found the source: a boy curled up on the ground, blanketed by a layer of ice. Akihiko could see his eyelids fluttering; he was still alive! Akihiko turned back to the lair. He screamed, “Help! There’s somebody here—” The ice cracked. Jace sat up in surprise, ice tumbling down his face. He stared fearfully up at Akihiko, but the next words stopped him short— “Hey, are you all right? Oh, thank goodness, I thought you were dead!” ~ ~ ~ At last Jace had a place to stay. The dwellers of the Hidden Haven were peculiar folk themselves, and they matter-of-factly gave him new clothes and a warm room. They didn’t seem to have any interest in studying him, and for that Jace was deeply grateful. But they were curious, of course they were. People with afflictions like his didn’t show up every day. They questioned him gently about his origins, but he clamped his lips shut and wouldn’t speak. They looked at him in understanding and left him alone. Most of the dwellers avoided Jace because of the intense cold coming off him. That was fine. He didn’t really want to talk to them, either. Other dwellers were similarly antisocial; one of them, Norzaren, took special pains to stay away from the larger clanmates. He seemed curious about Jace, though. Snowflakes sometimes swirled down from above Jace’s head, and Norzaren tried to catch them one day. “Snow,” he buzzed as a flake melted on his tongue. He would have giggled, but then he realized Jace was staring at him, and so he scuttled away. He didn’t mean to bump into Jace a few days later—it was an accident. He was flitting around the lair again, probably spooked by something else, and he collided with Jace. Norzaren instinctively tried to push him away— White, everything was white...and so cold....Walls of steel, screams echoing off of them. Again and again, till Norzaren felt his head would burst with the sheer force of it. He turned—and there was Jace. Shackled to a steel table, surrounded by a team of researchers. They stabbed him with instruments that glittered with the same icy light; they were so cold, vapor wafted from them. Jace’s skin was already bruised from where frostbite was beginning to set in. “It will get out, Jace; you can’t hold it in forever,” the scientists taunted him. Norzaren tried to pull them away, but his hands passed through their bodies. He stared in horror and pity as Jace began to sob. His tears crystallized upon his cheeks.... And there was Jace, grasping his wrist here and now. “You saw,” he gasped. Norzaren started to squirm, and Jace let him go. He’d left an icy handprint on the younger boy’s sleeve. “S-Sorry...” he chattered. “You weren’t...I...I d-didn’t want anyone to...see...” “It’s OK.” “Huh?” Jace blinked. He stared at Norzaren in surprise. “It’s...It’s scary,” Norzaren agreed. He shuffled his feet. “Bad people everywhere. But they’re...gone now.” He spoke with complete gravity, and there was a firm set to his jaws, his chin. His eyes were dark with memory. And now Jace realized—he wasn’t the only one who’d suffered through unspeakable horrors. There were others, too.... There were those who understood. “Here...safe. Everyone is nice.” Norzaren looked up at him earnestly. “I like snow!” He was smiling now. There was nothing mocking or pitying about it; he really meant what he said. He’d been through some horrid stuff, same as Jace had. But if he could smile, then maybe Jace could, too.... “I don’t like snow much,” Jace admitted, “but that’s OK. Some people...They don’t like fire, too, I guess. So, uh...What do you like, li’l guy?” ~ written by Disillusionist (254672) all edits by other users
Quote:
Stepheroth
Born on a moonless night, His fate was sealed. To live with a curse- Lifted only at night, He struggles to find The one whos right. A companion on his side Lessens the burden of the curse. For they'd see him As nothing but him. Perhaps they're the one, Perhaps they're right. If only they had survived. Now no one knows Who is right. ~by silverein~ |
Click or tap a food type to individually feed this dragon only. The other dragons in your lair will not have their energy replenished.
Feed this dragon Insects.
This dragon doesn't eat Meat.
This dragon doesn't eat Seafood.
This dragon doesn't eat Plants.
You can share this dragon on the forums by either copying the browser URL manually, or using bbcode!
Exalting Jace to the service of the Shadowbinder will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.
Do you wish to continue?
- Names must be longer than 2 characters.
- Names must be no longer than 16 characters.
- Names can only contain letters.
- Names must be no longer than 16 characters.
- Names can only contain letters.