LUKA MRAVINSKY
TWENTY-FOUR ❈ INFERNI THE ORDER OF SUMMONERS (ETHEREALKI)
There is something to be said for those children who are born with fire playing at their fingertips, the language of flames the first thing on their tongue. In some villages, those children are revered as Saints -- their touch, their bones, their mere essence the subjects of deification. In other villages, the whisper of children who lived in such existence brought about nothing but sorrow, ruin, and damnation. There had been a time in Luka’s life where he had once thought himself to be the former, a boy with the possibility of becoming a Sankt. With these thoughts he smiled, lips curving into something so cherished that even the sun itself seemed to fall in love with him a little bit more. If the sun itself did, was it then no surprise that everyone else did too? It was a known story in his little village, how he was beloved by all. None could resist the eyes that seemed to have a perpetual propensity for melancholy that tugged at the heart. Few could sneer at the soft voice that could have made statues weep in adoration. So young and already the world anticipated so much greatness from him, on these features of the soft-hearted boy and these features alone. His mother would press her lips against his temple, knowing that perhaps, just perhaps, she might be kissing a Sankt. His father would cup his son’s face in his hands and press his lips to his forehead, murmuring a quiet reminder that became his last words: Sankts are not born, Luka, they are made. Some Saints -- however -- some Saints are born to burn.
This was a lesson that one could only learn by running their fingers through the ashes that they themselves had created -- with their flame and their fire. It was something that he had been warned about, something that his parents had begged him time and time again, hands clasped and voices alternating between pleading and stern, not to do. But the flames called for him to make use of them like demons call for men to commit heinous sins. So many had thought his voice a thing so sweet, as beautiful, they whispered, as the seawhip’s song. But Luka knew the whisper of temptation to be so much more enticing. That was what sparked the flame, one that he bid to rise ever higher, for he so longed to see it dance and sigh like all living things. But fire, he realized, is a greedy thing -- and it knows nothing but the language of ruin. One he was well-versed in. As the months past, Ravka knew the great fire as something of a tragic phenomena. A whole village wiped, save for the few survivors that managed to escape with their memories as potent and telling as the scars that they wore. But Luka? The hailed Sankt? He knew it to be the day where grey ashes stained his hands in the place of blood. It was the day he knew that the druskelle should have burned him at the stake when they had their chance. Then, and only then, would his village have had it’s Sankt..
As it is, Saints are gluttons for suffering -- so it was that Luka indulged himself in it too. The intimacy he had once shared with fire became foreign to him, the liveliness of the spark nothing more than a cause for revulsion. He wandered like a forlorn ghost, a phantom of the countryside of Ravka. One of the many orphans waylaid by the war wrought throughout the country. It was as if his tongue was leaden with the ashes of those who had perished at his hands, his eyes seeing nothing but the ghosts of those he had murdered for the sake of reveling in the flames. He spent so much time in the company of ghosts, it was a wonder he did not become one himself. There were those who certainly thought him to be something haunted rather than human. A demon rather than a deity. He had waited for Death to come and press its relieving lips against his, but such a thing, he knew, would be much too kind for the likes of abominations of his kind. Fate seemed to think so as well, for as soon as he thought he would feel Death’s welcome embrace, his damnation pressed their fingers to his wrist. He had been so ready to burn at the pyre, yet this soul thought it necessary to put out the flames -- or rather, bring them back, roaring with life.
Ashes to ashes. Death to life. Life to death once more. It is the only cycle that Luka has ever known -- one that stemmed from the abomination that is his existence. It is fitting, then, that he should live in perpetual disgust at the prolonging of the breath in his lungs, feel nothing but revulsion at the flush in his cheeks. Sad little soldier boy, his comrades whispered behind his back, eyes seeing nothing more than the beautiful boy steeped in his own tragedy. Tragedy that they knew not of, but were more than happy to fabricate from the whispers they were able to glean. They knew he preferred the ache of broken skin than the welcome warmth that fire left in its wake. The warmth is deception to his skin -- lies, lies, lies. Imagine, then, what he feels whenever he feels the heat of the flame lick his skin like the most intimate of friends -- teasing him like the most decadent of feasts to a starving thief. Imagine then, the horror he feels as the ghosts rise from the sparks, dancing and hissing, cackling as they figures flicker in and out of the flames. He does not tell of the fear he feels when the flames rise up like ghosts from their graves, taunting him more effectively than any demon ever could. How he longed to purge such damnation from his soul -- but what was he to do when his soul was birthed in it?
CONNECTIONS
ARSEN TARASOV, VALERIAN PETROV & SHONA YUL-JUN: Glutton for suffering and glutton for chaos. His brothers-in-arms indulge him in both, being the war-bred children that they were they were well-verse in the language of trials and tribulations -- whether it be enacting them or bearing them upon chafed shoulders. Truly, he had thought that the upward curve of his lips would remain something unseen, a mystery to those who encountered him. Yet with a few short quips from Shona, a few rogue verses from Arsen, and completely unironic observations from Valerian he felt laughter spill from his lips like wine from a drunk man’s cup. Of course, he immediately loathed himself after, but slowly and surely the concept of happiness did not seem so foreign to him -- yet it was something he still thought himself to be undeserving of. But, for so long as breath swept past his lips, who is to say laughter would not find its way there too?
AARVAS RAI: There is nothing worse than a person who uses religion, thinking that everyone belongs to the same salvation. What words they exchanged with each other have never been kind, Luka’s usual passive demeanor turning into something more suiting to a pyro such as he. Words become weapons and these weapons are only meant to cut. They believe themselves to be blessed by the Saints, a creature revered by nature and they delude themselves into thinking that everyone preaches the same story. But Luka has lived, Luka has died, an Luka has learned. Yet they seem to care nothing for the trials that have taught him damnation was woven into each and every Grisha’s bones, no, they only seem to think that they can save him from his own demons. The demons that he, himself, created because of the abominable curse that he carried. Woe to you, little evangelical Sankt, for there are those who are not above cutting the words from your mouth.
RHEA TERESHKIN: She is more wolf than woman. The way in which she circles him, knowing him to be a beaten and weak prey with her teeth bared in a leery grin. They say that he is mad for thinking that a small doll like her could ever be anything other than a lady. But he sees the sharpness in her smile, the wily glint in her eye in the few moments that they pass each other. He has had, of course, of what is demanded from some of the more unfortunate Grisha of the court, how they’re beckoned for like tasty morsels by the highest of the Ravkan aristocracy. How he laughed when he had first heard -- they thought their little soldiers to be something lesser, yet they still demanded them for the beauty, for the pleasure of it all. Little does this little soldier boy know that she does not want him for the pleasure, so much as she wants him for the pain.
LUKA IS PORTRAYED BY RICHARD DEISS & IS OPEN.
