The Natural Order of Things

Funnily enough, the only stories that Ferre Fawkes didn't believe were the ones he created.

He dreamed of a fiery end, the forces of nature converging on the physical realm, smothering it like one might snuff a candle. He dreamed of incessant thunder. He dreamed of a shattered future where the skies burned red, where relief lay only in departure.

And he told no one. Ferre could not afford to sell off his credibility like that. The only reason he was tolerated in Aurandren was his storytelling — he was of Pendrin lineage, and the Pendrin were known quite well for their way with words. To lose his voice would be to lose himself.

Ferre stood slightly awkwardly at the end of the Boardwalk, leaning on one of the wooden uprights. The Boardwalk spanned lengthwise across Aurandren, smaller paths branching from it at regular intervals. Aurandren had no proper roads — it was anchored a few miles off the northern shore, and so its buildings and landings were linked by winding bridges, which all linked back to the Boardwalk.

This landing had come to serve Ferre as a sort of getaway. Though he hated the water, he cherished the solitude. He was not accustomed to a busy city life, having spent most of his years wandering between rural towns and isolated outposts, and an empty landing was a thing of rarity.

Ferre shifted his weight to his other leg, pausing to tug his coat a little tighter. His hand gripped the crossbeam beside him, knuckles white, as though he feared that letting go of it would send him crashing into the depths.

He did. From the knee down, his left leg was gone, a sturdy wooden staff in its place. It rested comfortably, if a little crookedly, upon the worn boards below him, but it wasn't built to hold steady. Ferre was not a rich man. The false leg was more of a balance.

In Aurandren — in fact, in most of the country of Cinnen — such a falsity would not be acceptable. Human bones were of such high value here that anyone short on them was generally looked down upon regardless of their reason. Ferre didn't like to think about that. He wore trousers that fell to the ankle, and sturdy boots that could easily hold the prosthetic in place.

Ferre had come by his disability in a deceptively welcoming suburb of a distant kingdom, though it was so distant now that even he with his Pendrin memory had a hard time bringing it to the surface. Perhaps he had done too good of a job blocking it from his thoughts for the months after it had occurred. He knew that it had been the most painful thing he had ever experienced, and that was the end of the memory.

Unfortunately, his hands were more difficult to conceal. Though their bones were small and quite useless to an Osteovore, they were still bones — or, at least, they had been. Ferre's right hand was intact, though severely scarred, and the left was missing its natural fifth and fourth fingers, which had been replaced with wooden ones, tightly secured with a crude harness.

Ferre was, self-admittedly, a bit of a mess.

He wore a glove on the left hand at all times, as well as on the right when acceptable, though this forced him to eat and write in private - both hands functioned decently, if not perfectly, but he could not risk showing them in public.

The sun was beginning to descend, having peaked several hours ago. It crawled towards the horizon in lethargic determination. Ferre envied it. He, unlike the sun, could not hide anywhere.

He gazed down at the roiling ocean, just inches below the Boardwalk at high tide, and wished he could stoop down and Draw from it. One reason Aurandren's aquatic location was so desirable was its close proximity to such an incomprehensibly large source of energy — the water itself. Normally, when Drawing energy from his surroundings, an Osteovore had to take great care not to drain too much, as it would be much harder to properly restore afterwards. With this vat of pure, thunderous, infinite energy below him, Ferre could Draw enough to power him for days or even weeks without disrupting the flow of the water at all.

With a long breath, Ferre had a prod at his Charge and was rather surprised to find it nearly dead. He hadn't realised that Stabilising for such a short amount of time would burn his Charge down so quickly — though he should have expected it, as Stability was a third tier Enhancement; the more different bones went into an ability, the higher its tier, and therefore the higher the energy cost. Stabilising, which would ease the strain on his legs as he stood or walked, made use of three bones: skull, sternum, and vertebra, or mind, heart, and balance. Though Ferre was well learned in Osteovorism, and was at no shortage of powders, it was personally straining to Enhance on higher tiers for long periods of time.

Ferre turned away from the water and headed back towards the main Boardwalk, keeping his Stability at low power. Surely one of the merchants along the way would sell something he could use, if only for a while.