Bio Fik

"Wake up Fik! You've been sleeping WAY too long!"
"Tuk?! I thought y--
"Don't be silly! We're together FOREVER!"

Fik Luhk was born to a lower class husband and wife in the slums of Markad of Greater Cinera. A runt, by the average sense, his traversal through the world of Midlight would be destined to be a difficult one. His father, a desolate drunk and beholden to the bitter taste of posca, held little pride for his diminutive son. Fik would not grow to possess great athleticism or brawn. He would not excel with a blade and evolve into a great warrior. Fik's tiny shoulders would not prop up and raise his family's social standing and so his father, enslaved to the bottle, would in turn make a slave of his son.

Fik's life in the harbor of Markad peforming menial servitude was tumultous at best. Lacking the physique and fortitude to make quota, Fik would often draw the ire and contempt of his superiors. Beaten, degraded, and often sent to the slave quarters without supper; the days began taking it's toll on Fik's health. All was not bleak, however, for Fik was befriended by another slave. A boy his own age named Tuk. If Fik was scrawny, Tuk was anything but, rotund and portly, Tuk had the strength to complete his work to an acceptable degree; but was still the recipient of many jokes cruel and condescending in nature. Thus the two connected with one another on some level, and their bond quickly strengthened day by day. Tuk did not care that Fik would rather draw a picture than learn how to properly hold a dirk and Fik did not care that Tuk would rather partake in a pie rather than a push-up. It was this acceptance of each other that helped each other through the passing months.

It was on a sweltering night in mid Tulcas that, again, saw Fik reprimanded harshly and dispatched to bed with an empty stomach. As he lay in his perspiration, welts, and bruises; a conglomeration of shouts and wails rang through the evening heat. Curious, but unsettled, Fik slipped out of his room and into the approaching night. He happened upon the backs of a crowd positioned shoulder to shoulder and frenzied with an amalgamation of anger and trepidation. As Fik pushed through the crowd, the clamor of the audience, the crack of a whip, the engraged bellowing of the man whom wielded it, and the sobbing of its victim; all served to deafen his ears. Breaking to the front of the mob, Fik's face went pale and his mouth dropped as his eyes surveyed what was before him. Tuk was kneeling, his wrists held captive in a pair of iron manacles. His head hanged, his face turned downwards as he stared at two small loaves of stale bread that lay in the mud before him. Tears filled his eyes, as a whimper escaped his lips each time the whip of his accoster bit into his flesh. Each tormentful scourge seemed to sap the life from Tuk, piece by piece, and it was becoming apparent that Tuk would not live to see the sun break the horizon in the morning. The realization comes to Fik then, that Tuk had stolen an extra portion to bring to him that evening. Powerless to alter the course and incapable of saving his only friend, Fik turned and ran....and ran.

Fik kept running, through the slums that bore him no love and, out of the city that thought him to be worthless. The clouds in the inky black night sky suffocated the stars' lights from existence, the darkness shrouding visibility with its oppression. and still Fik ran. Filled with determination to rid himself of that dreadful place for good, Fik's pace never slowed. Choked by emotion, and with his own tears rendering his vision blurry, Fik breached the perimeter of a forest. Branches and foliage assailed his face as if they were the digits of an agitated creature protecting it's home. It was then that Fik's small foot found a root, seemingly grasping upwards from the dirt, that sent Fik flailing downwards until his head met the cold dense surface of a stone. Fik's vision went red, a blanket of crimson, before burning to a bright white and eventually fading to a void of black.

"Wake up Fik! You've been sleeping WAY too long!"
"Tuk?! I thought y--
"Don't be silly! We're together FOREVER!"

Fik opens and shields his eyes from the overwhelming light that cascades over him from the sun. Something feels amiss to Fik. His senses feel dulled, and he struggles to think clearlybut he can hear Tuk and that calms him to a degree. The creaking of wheels register into his ears as a wagon pulled by a oxen labors arduously along a well-travelled road. Fik peers up to see a middle-aged man and woman looking back at him. The man addresses the boy he has taken up along the way.

"Now there you are. We weren't sure you were going to come out of it. It's only by Ereal's own blessing that my wife found you when she did when she went foraging for nuts and berries before we broke this morning." The woman offers a warm smile before the husband continues to Fik. "We don't rightly know who you are, or where you're from, but judging by your clothes and the condition of your person we can offer a guess as good as any. Lay back and rest, we're nearly to the Republic of Iridine. Something tells us you'll get on considerably better there." The man pauses before asking, "Say, what's your name boy?"

Fik props himself up on his elbows and puffs his tiny chest out towards the man and his wife thanking them before answering, "We're Fik and Tuk!"

The man and wife slowly turn their heads to each other, the visage of their faces awash in confusion. They mouth to each other what appears to be: .....What? before turning their focus back to the road ahead of them. A great city sprawls in the distance, stretching across the horizon like an embrace that feels both welcoming but also filled with intrigue; and thus Fik and Tuk have arrived to Iridine.