My Name

His body had fallen away.

No. 

Not fallen away, but grown light. Like a leaf floating down a gentle stream. Or a soul being drawn into the heavens.

The stars spiraling overhead enhanced that illusion, though Kysis knew his eyes were closed. He was seeing with more than sight now. It was a borrowed experience, and one over which he had no control. His mind whirled about, skittering like a termite through a vast mound of space and time. In the span of a tail flick – or perhaps a long sunrise – Kysis saw his life laid bare. Sixty-three years scoured and judged. Some of the memories were dim, fuzzy, quiet. Others were completely dark yet busy with noise and heat.

The image of a desert road lingered longer than the rest. This memory was a vivid one. Recent.

Armed and armored kobolds with long spears bristled around him. He could smell his own blood. He could hear the commotion in the human village behind him. Scales cracked and spears snapped as he fought once again. The kobolds were strong. Determined. But small.

They didn’t stand a chance.

A bloody battlefield. A long recovery. A few warm hands. Many words - kind ones, perhaps. 

Kysis wondered what it amounted to. But that thought too was torn from him, turned about, and scrutinized. More memories flashed – some of battle, others of peace. Then came the faces, some blurred, some half-remembered, none that lingered. 

Simple travellers along his life’s road – or so the scale-less would say. 

Suddenly Kysis was growing heavy. The weight, like a stomach full of raw boar meat, pulled him down, down. Out of the past, out of his memory, into his body once again.

Kysis’ orange, black-flecked eyes opened slowly. His narrow pupils dilating to adjust to the dim and ethereal light that surrounded him. The young siska breathed deeply, slowly, his naked chest heaving with each breath. 

As his eyes adjusted, Kysis looked up at the domed ceiling of carved rock. He was in the Hykon’s grotto, sitting cross-legged in the middle of a small island lit by gently glowing moss. The island lay at the center of a circular pond with waters as still and clear as glass. Luminescent corals shone like pale wildfire in its depths, illuminating fluttering schools of blind fish and tiny translucent newts.

Kysis sensed the intense gaze boring into him and turned his head to the side respectfully, peering over his shoulder. The stone causeway leading to the cavern’s exit stretched out from the island just behind him, guarded on the far side by two hulking adults with painted scales.

“Do you see?”

The voice was akin to the shaking of the earth, the roar of the open ocean, or the distant thunder of an approaching storm. Perilous and wise. Vast and unknowable. Ancient and immediate. Kysis turned back to face the owner of the voice, keeping his gaze low. He had met clerics before – scale-less ones at least – and had found them both wise and gentle, but never intimidating. Not like this.

This meeting had already gone far beyond what he had expected.

“Do you see? Answer, tokay.”

Kysis blinked in surprise. The fact that the Hykon was still referring to him as a juvenile didn’t bode well. But he was confident that his years of preparation would bear him out. Kysis reluctantly raised his eyes to meet those of Taskaraztis, the eldest Hykon of Sunken Bask. 

Even seated the old siska towered over him, his eyes – one dull and clouded, the other still bright and fierce – gazing down at the tokay in judgement. Half-shed scales clung to his body like cobwebs in the rafters of a forgotten castle, contrasting with the gleaming gold and silver of his many piercings, tail-bands and bracelets. Old bones hung around his neck, and his waist was wrapped in intricate braids of furs and hides.

“Ksss I saw the past,” Kysis ventured. “My life from hatch to present.”

Taskaraztis breathed in a long sibilant breath and leaned forward, as if expecting more. Kysis instinctively drew back, unsure of what else he was expected to have seen. 

“And what else?” the Hykon prompted.

Kysis blinked pensively, taking a long moment to think. “My rya?” he eventually guessed.

“Your rya is for me to judge and not for you to see or comprehend,” said Taskaraztis, leaning back with a long hiss. Kysis bobbed his head, though he didn’t fully understand. He had spent the last six decades defending his colony’s borders, fighting raiders targeting scale-less towns, and much, much more. All for the purpose of preserving stasis – the harmony in which his people existed with the people and the world around them. To preserve stasis was to earn rya, and to earn enough rya made one an adult. It was the entire reason for his meeting with the Hykon this day. 

Once he was recognized as an adult, he would be able to move freely within the colony’s core, to have a mate, and eventually, to challenge the Sair for leadership of the Bask. Rya was everything, and Kysis had traveled the borders of his colony’s influence relentlessly to accumulate what he saw as a massive amount of it.

“What is your judgement?” he asked, forcing himself to sit up and face the old mystic before him.

Taskaraztis drummed the claws of one hand across the thick scales of his leg, the slow, deliberate tap-tapping signaling his impatience.

“What would your judgement be, tokay?” he rumbled.

“I have done as I was taught,” Kysis replied without hesitation. “I have grown strong and protected the stasis. Lived as a siska should.”

“As a siska should,” Taskaraztis repeated. “A strange thing to say.”

Kysis blinked slowly, nervously, unsure of how to respond. The Hykon’s claws continued to tap away as his gaze intensified. The young siska kept his nerve as best he could until finally, Taskaraztis closed his eyes and leaned back. 

“Your rya is greater than most other tokays,” he said. “But you made sure of this before coming to see me, yes?”

“Ksss, I wanted to be sure I had enough,” said Kysis.

“You do.”

Kysis felt his chest swell and he couldn’t help but let out a low rumble of satisfaction.

“You are a strange problem, tokay. The opposite of many other young ones.”

The Hykon’s words deflated Kysis immediately. Still tokay? He curled his claws, confused and frustrated.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“No. Understanding a problem requires seeing a problem, tokay. And you do not see.”

Kysis’s chest heaved, and a long, dissatisfied hiss leaked from between his jagged fangs.

“What do I not see?” he bit, forgetting his place in his anger and raising his head and locking eyes with the Hykon. Taskaraztis gazed back at him, his one good eye hooded dismissively.  

“Many things, tokay. Some things that lie plain before you, and some that you never found at all.”

Kysis balked, it wasn’t like a siska to be so evasive with their speech.

“You riddle like an eyra.”

Taskaraztis let out a rumbling purr of amusement. 

“Do you dislike eyra?”

Kysis flicked his tail, taken off guard by the question.

“I… ksss… they – they are what they are. I do not dislike them.”

“And humans?”

“I… do not dislike them.” 

“Yet you have both fought to defend them, and killed them while defending others,” said Taskaraztis, widening his eyes.

“To protect the stasis. It was never, ksss, personal. The scale-less cannot help but fight and cause chaos, it is how they are. I – ksss – we, do what we can to stop them from going too far. From disrupting the stasis.”

“Would you have fought another colony, if it warred with us?”

Kysis balked. “Siska would not. We know better.”

“There is a difference between knowing better, ksss, and being better, tokay,” Taskaraztis closed his eyes and lowered his head. “That is the first thing you do not see.”

Kysis let out a quiet rumble, at a loss. The Hykon lifted a hand, his claws stretching towards the intricate carvings etched into the stone floor before him. There were many figures depicted, all arranged in ascending spirals - siska, humans, naz, eya, elfkin, thirapsi, and many others from migrants, to godborn, to animals.

“The scale-less are not like us,” he said. “They overflow with purpose – swim amongst it like fish in the water,” he gestured to the fluttering schools in the pond around them. “They attach themselves to each other, to places, to things, and to ideas like moss to cool rocks.”

“It is why they are so violent with each other,” Kysis nodded. “They attach and possess jealously. They assign themselves purpose blindly, with no thought to others.” 

Taskaraztis nodded, conceding the point.

“Yes, that is true,” he said. “But we can grow... attached as well. Find purpose, tsay, in people, places, and things.” 

Kysis flicked his tail. It was true yes, but not equivalent. Not as he had experienced it at least.

“It is not the same as the others,” he said.

“No,” Taskaraztis conceded once again. “But the scale-less are not the same as each other, either - have you not seen, tokay? Each race feels in its own way. There is human love, eyra pining, siska tsay - many ways that each of us sentient creatures explain the way we belong to and within those who surround us. Perhaps you are right, we do not, ksss, connect as intensely as some others. But that does not mean that we should not feel at all. That we aren’t meant to find tsay. Do you see?”

“Yes, we have our tsayina,” said Kysis, hesitantly. 

“We?” the Hykon tilted his head to the side. “What are your tsayina, tokay? Tell me.”

“My nestmates, the Bask, my halberd,” Kysis replied without hesitation.

Taskaraztas rumbled mightily, his tail lashing across the floor.

“Any siska would be tsayina with their Bask,” he hissed. “And where are your nestmates, ksssss?”

Kysis felt a small twinge, deep in the pit of his stomach. But that wound was old, well healed, and near-forgotten.

“They… all died in the wilds, before our seventh year,” he said.

“Yes. And since then, the only tsayina you have found is a tool of death.”

Kysis straightened, curling his claws, anger smouldering behind his eyes.

“It has been with me for many years,” he growled. “A reliable companion.”

“And when its edge is worn down and its handle cracked and splintered, you will throw it away. Ksss. Like your memories of your nestmates.”

The smouldering anger ignited.

“What else would I do!” Kysis roared, his claws raking against the floor, drawing shallow furrows in bare stone. “I cannot use feelings for a thing that is gone! I cannot despair like a grieving human widow. And I would not if I could! Kssah! How do such things help me grow stronger? Earn rya?” he locked eyes with the growling Hykon, unafraid. “You tell me that purpose, attachment, and emotion are what make the scale-less chaotic. But you also look down upon me for not seeking out tsayina and, ksss, dwelling on tsay for what is past! Why?”

Kysis glared at the Hykon defiantly. If he was to be denied adulthood, he at least wanted to know what he had done wrong, what made him unworthy. He had lived exactly as his nest-mother instructed - become strong, defended the colony, protected the stasis of other places. How could this old siska still call him tokay given these accomplishments?

But as Taskaraztis gazed back at him, Kysis began to falter. The grotto darkened, and the Hykon seemed to grow. The rumbling growl grew louder, until the walls of the grotto shook. The cool water rippled and loose pebbles trembled. Kysis lost his nerve and averted his eyes as his elder leaned close, opening his fang-filled mouth as he did so. Kysis looked behind him, but the guards were gone. He looked back in time to see the jaws of Taskaraztis - suddenly as wide and treacherous as a mighty dragon’s - open wide and lunge towards him. 

“No!” Kysis roared, screwing his eyes shut and lashing out with his claws.

But suddenly, there was only silence, and his claws stuck nothing but empty space. Kysis tried to cry out once more but no sound came forth. He realized that his chest, which had been heaving with panic a moment ago, wasn’t moving. In fact, he didn’t have a chest anymore. He went to tap at his body with his claws, but they were gone too. He tried futilely to move any part of himself, his thoughts racing.

Had the Hykon killed him in anger? Bitter thoughts flowed through his mind as Kysis floated in a void.

Do you see, tokay?

What? Kysis’ eyes popped open as the Hykon’s voice echoed in his mind.

Blinding light flooded his vision and the sound of birdsong and falling water poured into his ears. Kysis narrowed his eyes as they adjusted to the brightness, and the world came into view. 

He was standing now, not sitting or floating. And the Hykon’s grotto was gone. An open and well-tended jungle surrounded him. He knew it instantly - he was very close to Sunken Bask. Had the Hykon moved him outside magically? He took a step forward, relieved to feel the soft dirt and leaves beneath his feet, and moved towards the sound of falling water. As he walked, the Hykon’s voice rumbled through his mind once again, as clear and present as if he walked beside him. The voice was calm, washing against Kysis like a cool wave on a sandy beach.

From feeling, and embracing tsay comes memory. True memory, not only recollection of days, and numbers, and tasks.

A sense of urgency enveloped Kysis and his pace quickened.

Memory is a siska’s greatest tsayina. 

Kysis sprinted through the jungle, parting ferns and brushing aside vines as the sound of cascading water grew louder.

Memory is woven into who we are, and weaves who we will be.

A final fern parted and Kysis skidded to a stop on the edge of precipice. 

Before him, a circular depression several hundred meters wide stretched out in the midst of the jungle, dozens of small streams cascading over its edge. The water tumbled down many times Kysis’ height into the crater-lake below. The young siska hissed in relief - this was Sunken Bask, his birthplace. Stone dwellings, worked caves, and sandy nurseries lay upon the side of the crater wall and the large island in the center of the lake. The forms of many siska moved about below, going between the sun-drenched exterior and the cooler caverns hidden beneath the water and within the cliffs that made up the bulk of this siska stronghold.

Kysis looked down upon his once and - hopefully - future home in wonder. He had seen this sight only a few hours ago, on his way to meet the Hykon, but it was welcome nonetheless. But, as his gaze crept over the Bask, he noticed something strange. There weren’t nearly as many dwellings or nurseries as there should be. And there was more water in the lake than he remembered. He focused his eyes on a nursery on the closest edge of the island, the very spot he had been hatched. There were many adults gathered there, all standing quietly around the sand bed as if watching for something. Kysis waited too, realizing that Taskaraztis hadn’t spoken for a long while. As he waited, he stared curiously around the Bask. He was certain now - though this was Sunken Bask, it was not the Sunken Bask he knew. 

His eyes were drawn back to the nursery, and the crowd around it. He blinked, and suddenly he was among them.

Kysis hissed in surprise, jostling a nearby adult half-again his size. He bowed his head in apology but the older siska didn’t seem to notice. Kysis followed his gaze toward the sand bed, and the five proud clutches of eggs that had been half-excavated near its center.

Kysis watched as one of the eggs trembled. A chorus of rumbles and hisses rang out around him and he looked up to the adults, who were all watching, rapt. Their eyes shone. The sound of an eggshell cracking stole Kysis’ breath. He looked towards the precious white sphere just in time to see a tiny snout peek forth.

I remember my pride in the first hatchlings of Sunken Bask.

The Hykon’s voice returned, and Kysis blinked again. This time he was on the crater edge, looking down at a still corner of the lake. There, a nest-mother lay basking on a rock while a dozen hatchlings froliced in the water around her. 

I remember the churning water as they swam free in the deep pools.

Kysis watched the playing hatchlings, enraptured. Kysis hissed softly as he began to understand. 

He was in a memory - the Hykon’s memory. But... it felt so real. 

He tried to reach out a claw towards the hatchlings but his arm grew heavy and his vision clouded. This time Kysis tried to fight to transition, but it was futile. He was torn from the pleasant memory like a dead leaf from a twig in the midst of a windstorm. He blinked again, wincing as he was thrown roughly into the next.

The young siska picked himself up off the bloodstained ground in the middle of the Bask’s island. The sun was hidden behind a grey cloud and the crater-lake was shrouded in darkness. Many adults rested on the stones around him, most carried weapons, many were injured. Kysis looked around the Bask. There were no nurseries or dwellings, only the dark caves that lined the edge of the crater. Bodies littered the cliffs, floated in the red-tinged water, and piled in many places upon the island. Some were siska, but most were the twisted and broken bodies of demons.

Kysis smelled the air. The lingering scent of death magic and fading red souls mingled with the tang of siska blood. 

I remember relief when this colony was born. The smell of blood and iron as we destroyed the demons here and became tsayina with this warm place. 

The sun found a crack in the clouds, and Kysis joined the others in gazing up into its welcome heat. But before he could find comfort he was torn away once again.

This time he was cast down onto a cold ledge. 

He wiped snow from his face as he peered over the edge of a cliff to look down upon a mountain pass. A long line of hundreds of siska marched below, each one laden with a heavy pack. Goanna mounts trudged sluggishly beside them, and an army of eyra blocked the pass at their rear.

I remember uncertainty in the journey that took us here. Over the mountains, cold ksss-snow beneath our feet, eyra weapons at our backs. 

The tempest took him again and now Kysis was in the doorway of a stone hut of siska make. Outside was a small settlement in the midst of a jungle he didn’t know. Many of his kind were about, but almost all were tokays younger than him. Some were speaking comfortably with others - humans, no, elfkin? Kysis looked closer. No, they were different. True elves perhaps? 

The young siska curled his tail - just how old was Taskaraztis? Was this…

I remember relief when our people finally learned of true peace and I found my purpose. 

The old Hykon’s voice compelled him to look inside the stone hut. Within, three young siska sat quietly, facing an elven man in clerical robes. One of the tokay seemed familiar.

My first meditation, my teacher. 

Kysis found himself drawn to the elf’s warm, proud smile. But the next instant the world went dark once again. Kysis waited for light to return, but the only sensation that greeted him this time was a great weight atop him and the overwhelming smell of blood and churned mud. He clawed out in panic, pushing against the mass atop him. He swam through a slick, scaly pile until his head burst to the surface.  

I remember the shame of Dead Bask. The Old Sairs ripping each other apart. Ksssoh. 

Kysis climbed from the pile of savaged siska bodies and looked around in horror. The sunset was red and he stood halfway up a small hill in the midst of a clearing. Hundreds of dead surrounded him. At the foot of the hill stood ragged gangs of tokay and hatchlings - a few females stood amongst them, trying in vain to calm their charges. They were all staring at the grizzly scene, rare horror stamped upon their reptilian features. 

Kysis’ gaze was torn from them and up to the crest of the hill, where a single, hulking adult male stood with his chest heaving and his claws dripping blood and viscera. He remembered his nest-mother’s lessons. He knew who this was.

I remember The Last of the Old Sairs, standing alone on a hill of flesh and blood. I remember the desperation. The way he forced our old ways to die.

Another blink and Kysis flinched. But this time the transition was gentle. Hazy. Half-remembered?

He stood in the midst of a great city plaza, before a small delegation of eyra and elves. He sensed movement behind him and his eyes widened as he glanced back over his shoulder. Behind him, a mass of siska were walking cautiously from out of a bright sphere of shifting light. Their scales were dusty and cracked, the outline of their bones showed beneath. Their eyes were dull. They looked down upon their small, scale-less hosts with complicated expressions, then up at the clear blue sky with wonder and relief.

I remember The Day the Sky Cleared. 

Kysis' breath caught in his throat. He looked behind the group of siska migrants to see the strange metal portal that surrounded the sphere of light through which his people had travelled. 

A Rift Gate. 

He stood in awe and beheld the day his people had been saved.

I remember my first steps into this world. The silence of my elders. The hope for our future. The dread that we would repeat our past.

Kysis’ body was lifted from the paved courtyard and drawn towards the rift. He didn’t fight it. He knew what came next, what this ancient elder of his had witnessed. He wanted to see it. He passed through another hazy transition.

Kysis’ feet touch down on sand and rocks. A harsh wind heavy with dust stung his eyes, and an opaque sky glowed dull red above him. He could barely make out the source of the glow beyond the haze.

I remember the Old Sun – our people’s eldest tsayina. 

“This place was…” Kysis said quietly, taking in the desolation around him. He bowed his head in reverence. In remembrance. 

The ruins of a great city poked out of the barren land. Amidst a few cobbled together shelters, gaunt and downtrodden siska eked out a meager life. Kysis took a step towards them, but felt something crack beneath his feet. He looked down at the half-buried bones of a hatchling.

I remember my nest-mates, my sisters and brothers. I remember helplessness. 

Kysis looked up hesitantly towards the hovel. There he saw a female half-heartedly pushing a chunk of dirty meat against the unmoving mouth of an emaciated hatchling while his nest-mates looked on. Their expressions were dull, hopeless. Resigned. 

I remember them starving. Dying. I remember the sorrow of a world made bare by the maw of our greed.

Kysis crouched close to the ground, wrapping his tail about his knees as he watched his ancestors share out their pitiful meal. The tsay he felt for them, and for this place, was undeniable. As was the shame it evoked within him. Gently, Kysis closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he was back in the grotto.

Taskaraztis sat before him, his hands and claws still tracing the stone etchings. Kysis swallowed hard, unable to bring his eyes even close to meeting the Hykon’s. He could hardly believe the journey he’d just witnessed.

“I remember tokay,” Taskaraztis rumbled, quietly, sadly. “Because I choose to feel. And to let those feelings weave me. And that weaving – the fang-sharp memories of those people, places and times – they make me who I am.”

Slowly, he lifted his hand, gesturing towards Kysis. 

“Who are you, tokay?”

“I…ksss,” Kysis began, beginning to see what the Hykon was getting at. “I cannot hope to match your memories. The things you have seen.”

“There are very few, of any race, who could. But that does not matter. And it is not what I asked.”

“I did what was expected of me,” Kysis hissed. “What nest-mother taught. I did as my elders did! What I was told to do!”

“And if I name you an adult, and there are none left with the right to tell you what to do… what then? Tss,” the Hykon flicked his tail dismissively. “Who would you be but the warped echo of other voices? And what would stop you from falling to the desires of your base soul? Squirming along any path you could because you never learned to walk on your own. Never cared to weave yourself from your experiences and what they make you feel.”

Kysis growled low, his frustration mounting once again.

“Tell me this, tokay. What are we, as siska? How would you describe us as a people? Speak.

“We are peaceful.”

“Ka! A hatchling’s understanding. Peaceful? No, siska are not best described as peaceful.”

Taskaraztis leaned towards him and Kysis couldn't help but cower as the grotto darkened slightly once again.

“We, tokay, are dangerous. In the deepest meaning of that word.”

“I do not believe that,” Kysis said, his gaze fixed on the stone floor.

“Truth does not require your belief!” the Hykon roared. “Think, tokay! We stripped bare the world of the Old Sun without direct intention. We tore ourselves apart and rebuilt our culture claw by scale! We hunt demons. We slay tritons. Dragons will not fly over our Basks! When the Reaving came and reshaped the world, we shrugged it off like shed skin!”

The ancient siska let out a long sibilant sigh, and then seemed to deflate. The soft coral-light returned as he shrank back as if exhausted. He turned his one bright eye to Kysis.

“And you are misguided enough to call us peaceful. You are blind to more than just yourself, tokay.”

Kysis’s claws cracked the scales of his palms. He had nothing left to say. But Taskaraztis wasn’t finished with him yet.

“Peace is not a state of being that one can reach. It is a choice. A choice. One we reach through understanding the world around us. By understanding when and how we must act to protect it. And by understanding our place within it. If you do not feel tsay, if you have no tsayina, then what reason do you have to protect anything? What use have you for peace?”

“Because I know it is the right thing,” Kysis breathed.

“Ksss, knowing is not good enough, tokay.”

Kysis ran his tongue against his teeth, utterly defeated, and the two of them sat in silence. 

“Have you thought about the ki you would choose if you became an adult this day?” the Hykon asked after a long while. “Or was it a detail unimportant to your single-minded journey?”

“I…” Kysis rasped, dread building up within him. The depth of his inadequacy becoming painfully clear. 

A tokay was meant to choose a new ki - a new part of their name - once they were made an adult. Kysis couldn’t remember the last time he had considered what his would be. It had become an afterthought.

“Your rya is impressive, and you are powerful enough to be considered an adult,” said Taskaraztis. “So, if you can tell me your name, now, I may reconsider. So tell me. What are you called?”

Kysis opened his mouth, trying desperately to think of his past, to dredge up the tsay in his own hazy memories. To find what he would call the person who had lived that life. His life.

“Do you need an example?” said Taskaraztis. “Then I will tell you my name. I received Tas, from my sire. Kar, from my egg-mother. Az from myself, my journey, and my purpose. And Tis, from the people I have resolved to guide. Such is my weaving. Each ki given differently. Each representing tsay and tsayina within me,” he took a long breath. “Now, tokay, tell me the name that your tsay, your memories, have woven.”

Kysis lifted a hand to his head and his mind buzzed as if it were filled with angry bees.

My name.

Where was it? He thought back, grasping for the ki that fit his sparse weave for a strong memory - any memory! 

After many long moments the buzzing lessened and he latched onto the image of a warm day in a young patch of sea-side forest. His nest-mates were roasting eel over a bonfire. He was standing at the edge of the jungle, staring out across the beach over the wide ocean beyond - to the horizon.

He was looking forward, always forward. Rarely at what surrounded him. And never within. 

He remembered looking back at his nest-mates. They were calling out to him, calling him… What were they calling him?

The young siska slouched as the memory concluded and he gained his answer. He closed his eyes and folded his arms before him in resignation. He looked up into Taskaraztis’ searching eye.

“My name… is Kysis,” he said quietly.

“Yes, it is,” the Hykon rumbled in acknowledgement, and the tokay’s heart broke.

“And you, Kysis, have failed your trial.”