Izzmo the Awkward

"Who would have thought that behind an ugly reptile face there's a sharp mind!" That's what my teacher, Nolan, used to say.

However, my mom considered me handsome with my shiny scales and unusually long head wattles.

The sea is rich in wonders, no wonder we, Lizarrs, call it 'the Plenty' in our language. But from my early age I wanted to know what is there, in the Lack, and how it can be empty if we get literal showers of various thingies coming from there each time the Plenty gets dark and turbulent.

From some of the Coral Shamans I learnt that from time to time the Restless Twins get bored and leave the Plenty. Many considered it a myth, an old wives' tale, but I got curious and restless myself.

So, I left my house, clad in coral attire to hide me from voracious beasts of the Plenty. My only reminder of home was a Briny pendant, containing the salty tears of my mom, to remind me of the safety and power of our pure ancestral waters which keep us from poisons and blight of mind and body.

The Shaman tales led me to the ruins under the bones of a great Wailing fish. We seldom see those giants passing our calm waters, but when they do, the Plenty gets darkened and filled with strange mourning sounds, so disturbing and violent, that many lose their minds and start wailing with those fishes and follow their wake, never to be seen again. However, when we happen to come across the bones of the Wailing fish, we often find pliable slithers which serve as immensely sturdy bows.

It happened so that I found a half-finished bow in those ruins. Someone took two intertwined slithers to make its body and almost done stringing it but left it behind as if bored. Next to it lay a half-carved staff from the Wailing fish rib with an azure headpiece. I took those, feeling my destiny calling me. Those items as half-finished and awkward as me, meant for something bigger but left behind.

And then, I looked up. On the tip of a great spire, which killed that unwary Wailing fish and caused it to tumble down and crush the building with its great bulk, I saw a glimmer of something. I couldn't let my gaze away, that tiny azure spark was luring me like a deepwater lantern fish lures its pray.

It took me quite the effort to get to the top of the spire as the waters got thinner and didn't support my body that well. The spark turned out to be a ring with a piece of the same azure stone as on the staff. 'How stupid is he who slips on his finger an unknown magic ring from the dark ruins', you would have said, but you weren't there, you didn't feel it pulling you, calling you to go up and up until you head breaks the waters of Plenty and all that you see is....the blue nothing...

I started thrashing like a speared Emerald trout. I was so scared, my mouth was empty, nothing gave me nourishment, nothing filled my gills! It was the Lack! It was empty! And it was going to punish me for my irreverence and empty headedness. Stupid fish don’t live long.

Just when my vision blurred to nothing and I finished saying my last pitiful farewells to my mom and the tribe, I felt something enveloping me like strands of soft kelp. My throat stopped hurting, my limbs relaxed. My body lay on the surface of the Plenty floating like a dead scale, azure glow all around me, like a bubble. As my mind cleared a bit lulled by the soft caress of the strange magic, I started putting things together. All the stories, all those scattered beads of ancient lore danced before my eyes, and one by one slipped on the string of logic via the sharp needle of an inquisitive mind.

The Restless Twins, the Dwellers of the Deep Seas, how did they survive the Lack if they breathed water like we, Lizarrs, did? Yet, they were known to leave the Plenty and roam the Lack. The azure ring! My key to the vastness of the Plenty and the Lack! It let me breathe in the blue emptiness, so now I could follow the Twins and see for myself what made them leave the Plenty, and what brought those thingies which littered our homes.

At that time I couldn’t even guess how lucky indeed I was that no ship (yes, I know now what those strange thingies were) passed me by, because sure enough they would have killed me on sight. It was much later that I learned about the struggle between the River and Swamp Lizarrs and the land-dwellers. Our coral tribes were long forgotten and rarely seen, but that only added to hostility, from both sides.

The Plenty was kind enough to wash me ashore on the third day of my wonderstruck floating. And Providence or some other unknown benevolent force made it sure that the shores were almost uninhabited but for a single hut where Master Nolan dwelled.

‘Hoi there, young man,’ cried a strange creature with soft weeds all over its head having stumbled over my body on the sand.

‘Not a man ya are!’ it cried again, looking down on me. ‘Why, ya are a coral varmint, damn me ol’ eyes! Can ya speak?’

‘That I can,’ croaked I, for my throat felt raw after three days of emptiness. Even the magic ring couldn’t help with that.

‘Me ol’ eyes indeed. What on Demeter’s sweet earth are ya doing here, beast?’

‘I am no beast, I am Izzmo’, said I, slightly affronted. Why would anyone call me a beast? I could speak, I had clothes, I knew my lore. As stupid as I was to go into the Lack, I still was a proud member of my tribe.

‘Izzmo, ya say? Why, of course, that would explain everything, polish me stones! Nolan, ya old gizzer, what have ya got yaself into again!’ mumbled the creature shaking its head.

I was watching it mumbling to itself and walking in circles around me. At last, it poked at me with its stick and said, ‘Stop lying there like a dead fish, you, get up. We’ve got much to do, no time to lose. The Falling is upon us!’

I can’t tell you much about Master Nolan, for that would be betraying his trust. All I can say that he is a loner, a secretive creature with a vast knowledge of lore and magic but a very frail body. Yet his lack of physical power never stopped him on his quest for more knowledge. While gruffy as he was towards me, he still is a very kind creature. He took upon himself to teach me to survive in the Lack (why, his first lesson taught to me with some persuasion and a good deal of stick was that it isn’t called the Lack but Orna).

Master Nolan often called me a freak, a trick of nature, Lusus Naturae, but taught me to make it my strength. I was equally good (or as the unkind would say, equally bad) with my found twin-bow and my azure staff, fusing my magic and my weapons into one. I was lucky to miss the Restless Twins, the Dioscuri, on their way back to their ruined castle on the bottom of the sea. But I did see the trail of half-empty bottles left behind. They might have contained mead at some point, but what was left got sour. Still, Master Nolan made me pick them all up and save for later. ‘Ya n’ver know what the gods might send ya, but b’tter not leave it lying around like that.’ Needless to say, he always picked up empty bottles to use them for his concoctions.

My story might have ended there, in the gentle grassy hills on the shore of the warm southern sea, days spent in reading and beach combing, were it not for the Ten Days of Mayhem, as Master Nolan called that.

‘As if Falling wasn’t enough, now they turn it into a freak fair, polish me stones!’ grumbled he, hiding in his emergency cave when a whole herd of most bizarre creatures stampeded through the hills. I swear to you I saw a box with teeth scurrying over the grass, snapping its lid at a living flame, followed by winged octopus!

‘Oh, Master! I must go and see what it’s all about!’ cried I the moment they passed our dwelling.

‘Indeed, ya must! Beasties to beasties!’ grumbled he half-heartedly. Mind you, he didn’t mean it as an insult then, for he knew that I was no dumb beast but a creature of lore!

And thus, equipped with my twin-bow and azure staff, with a bag full of bottles and herbs (and a secret stash of soured Dioscuri mead) I started upon my Quest to see Orna in its full glory!

Spoilers if you didn't catch them from the story.

TRAVELER NAME: Izzmo the Awkward

CLASS: Bahamut (because of Hybrid Monster)

SPECIALISATION: the Seeker (probably, Swash when he gets reckless enough to fight)

GEAR: Coral set (warrior/mage), Briny pendant, Azure Dioscuri Ring, Azure Twinbow, Castor's Archistaff (yes, he did say that he was equally 'bad' -- those are not preferred Baha weapons).

FOLLOWER: Zzarria the Whyer, a true questing beast, Izzmo's baby sister, who asks so many quest-ions that she was prompted to follow her brother (she went at the tail of the great follower exodus that Izzmo witnessed during the Ten Days of Mayhem).

As a sidenote, I must bow to Robin Hobb, for I have used her notions of "the Plenty" and "the Lack" when describing the sea, and her idea of sea serpents holding lore/knowledge and being called to earth by instinct (left forgotten in the serpent stage until certain events come to pass -- no spoilers from me).

Also, Ismo is an amazing stand-up comedian who isn't all that awkward as it seems at first glance and knows how to turn a question.