Seven years after the Mage King was proclaimed dead, the Kingdom of Arcadia saw much change. But in a village as quaint and remote as Motsven, change did not come quickly, evil conquered or not.
Though Motsven enjoyed an existence largely unchanged over the years, it too, was susceptible to rumors of the evil king's feats. Between shearing sheep and patching roof tiles, the villagers would fill the silence in with gossip.
"The late king was a damned genius, you hear? He alone pioneered magitech, the bastard did."
"Oh shush, would you? The Divine Light don't take kindly to those devil tools or any praise sung to that evil man. Be warier of your tongue, you fool."
Even seven years later, the Evil Blueiron Mage King was still a popular topic of conversation.
This king was called many things in both life and death. He was known as a conqueror, a king, a reformer, a revolutionist, a genius, a murderer, a tyrant, a rapist, a thief. In death, people grew bold enough to piss on his grave and yell whoreson, bitch, manslut, and many other colorful insults.
However, he was never called weak or frail. People wouldn't even associate the word cripple with him. The last thing anyone would call him would be a healer.
Julian, better known as just Doctor, was all of those things.
He lived in a tiny house no bigger than a shack on the outskirts of a village that counted more sheep than people. Both dawn and morning came and went. Julian only bothered to rise around noon when the wyvern pup was too fed up with his laziness and rolled him out of his hammock bed with its claws.
With a loud thud, he let out a long irritated groan, "If you want food, just help yourself!"
But the wyvern, affectionately named Dog, had already eaten its fill of both breakfast and lunch.
The house was no better than a shack. It was so cramped that even falling off the hammock was enough to jostle tightly crammed shelves and trucks and other odd items lying about. Julian had collected many odds and ends over the past four years and though they were predominantly junk, he didn't have the heart to throw any of it out.
There was even half a suit of Old Age armor that stood on a log-stand, so rusted that no one could ever dream of donning the thing ever again.
A bookshelf hugged closely to the stuffed bear that Julian used to tie his hammock around. And it would always teeter a little when he rolled.
He crawled up to a seated position, the world blurry before his eyes. Awkwardly, he stood and did not move around with wide movements, fearful of knocking things over. With a cautious hand, he felt around, searching for his eyeglasses that were not on the desk where he usually left them.
Julian began feeling through the shelves with a hiss of annoyance. The strange blurs he was seeing outlined no such thing as edges.
There was knocking on the door. Muffled little voices called for him, "Doctor! Old man!"
"Doctor are you home?"
They rapped impatiently, a boy and a girl.
"What if he's not home?"
"I would bet he's just sleeping."
Julian sneered at the disrespectful little brats and prepared a long monologue-worth of scolding to unleash upon them.
But first, he really needed to find his glasses.
"Dog!" Julian barked, "Where the fuck did you put my glasses?" He squinted at the blurry green-brown shape that was moving and twitching on the old lamp that now served as a sock-hanger (Don't ask. Julian had no idea how it got to that point either).
The creature glared at him silently, but Julian could not make out the narrow serpentine eyes through his deficit vision. He squinted hatefully at the beast until impatience took hold.
He lunged! Thin arms reaching out to grab the pup. His movements were much too slow, failing to even glide over scales with his fingertips.
It was all a terrible mistake. The sudden movement jolted old wounds and made his muscles instinctively tensed. Julian lost his balance and have no room to regain it. His hand flew and grasped the old lamp to steady himself. It shook and tumbled, Julian couldn't regain his footing and went with it, crashing to the floor.
On his way down, he somehow knocked a tall clothing stand. A rare potted plant rolled over, falling onto the desk, dirt spilling over his still-open journal that he'd left there last night.
Dog cackled with ear-splitting squeals, angering Julian even further. He cursed at the damned creature and flexed his fingers, pulling on a weak string of power that laid dormant in scarred magecircuits.
His hand curled into a fist. And then released a stream of bright blue, shooting straight toward the cackling beast and smacked it straight in the chest.
A high pitched cry pierced Julian's ear as the beast flailed in pain before crashing into the clothing line. The antler of the mounted deer head on which the line was hung strained.
Snap!
And all of Julian's laundry was on the floor. The wyvern tumbled into the hammock bed. It was no longer certain if the little caws coming out of its beak were laughter or cries of pain. Probably both.
Julian was about to cry out in exasperation. There was still rapping at the door. With the last bit of his dignity, the Doctor sucked in his rage and stomped to the entrance of his little shack.
It was only about four steps away. But with his terrible vision and bad leg, he stumbled into this and that, failing to catch random items he knocked over and cursing painfully when he stubbed his toes. Even his jar of precious Blue Stones was toppled over and scattered around on the floor, but it was his fault in the first place for leaving it out carelessly.
The mess that the Doctor called his home only became even messier.
Without having a chance to get dressed and properly groom himself, Julian was clothed with only a loose old tunic that cut so wide it drooped off his tanned left shoulder. Years of being crippled and not being able to walk properly on his right leg had caused him to lose much of his muscle mass, reducing him to a slender lithe form.
If there was one thing that Julian could still barely claim to was his looks. His ink-black hair framed his face in delicate waves, ending just below the shoulder. His face was sharp but just soft enough to retain elegance without seeming feminine with two deep brown eyes that were angled just slightly like a cat's.
But even his appearance was weathered with age and the scars that littered his body. There was a time where specs of gold danced in his eyes and charmed anyone who dared chance a look. That light had now faded.
Maybe he was still a bit pretty, but Julian was no better than any other old man with a lame leg, bad vision, and crows feet forming around the edges of his eyes.
He went to try the door, only to find that it was stuck. The children's voices were like chattering magpies on the other side, refusing to stop.
"Shut it, I'm coming!" He barked at them, trying his old door again, making sure that the mechanism that locked it shut was truly unlocked. It was, but Julian was still wrestling with the damned thing.
And he wrestled with it finally came free of whatever curse that held it in place, so fast and so suddenly that Julian almost fell over.
Now his door was open much wider than he intended, allowing the children witness of the terrible mess inside.
"...Doctor, mommy told me that you really need to get your life together," said the girl.
"...Doctor, this is the reason why you'll never get a wife," said the boy.
"You." Red fury traveled up Julian's next, "Little. Shits! I'll kill you both!"