epersonae | Reckoning Bonus Materials: Kenneth!

This was saved in my docs as “Kenneth what’s the frequency” and bonus points to anyone who knows that reference without looking it up. When we realized that we had an actually significant OC, I felt like I needed to write a little something to just figure out what all was going on with that. His voice in the final work ended up a little different as @polyblaster and I got a better feel for him, but this was where it started. (Spoilers if you haven’t read The Reckoning Arrives yet!)

He was just a kid, really, when the day came, but he was already working in the silver mines, on account of being big for his age. Already he’d been sold out by people he thought were on his side, already he’d seen the kind of shit people could put their own families through, how they could turn on their neighbors.

They said people in other places stood together, when the Shadows came, reached across their divides like the Seven Birds had. He heard stories, later, from those rare travelers, about the fighting in Goldcliff and Neverwinter and how Lup and Barry themselves showed up to fight.

But in Hurn and its mining camps, the unknown had created fear, and fear had turned to panic, and panic had driven folks to terrible things. He’d been trapped outside of the cave where everyone else had fled; he’d seen people torn apart by invisible horrors.

For just a second, there’d been peace as the green light and the blue light had flooded the narrow canyon where he’d defended himself with a rusty pickaxe. And he’d been changed by it, though he would’ve denied it if you asked him directly. Kenneth Bonebreaker was never going to be a wizard, but if he could, he would have wanted to be a chef, especially one as cool and witty as Taako from TV.

He was never going to get to be a chef, but at least the recipe for tacos, the food that had helped save the universe, well that was everywhere, and Kenneth too learned the value of being able to whip up a good meal.

But he went from being a big kid to a burly teenager to a massive hulk of an orc, and so he wasn’t wanted for his ability to make food, but for the fact that he could break rocks...and heads. When Kalen showed up, calling himself Marcus, and using his long-time crew to kick out the old mine bosses, he saw something in Kenneth. Maybe just what everyone else did, namely his muscles, but Kenneth hoped maybe something more.

He believed Kalen when he said that Magnus Burnsides had screwed him over: folks weren’t always what they seemed, were they? And it made sense, when instead they caught Taako and Lucretia, that they’d disable their magic, tie them up, and lock them in the fortress’s prison cells. The Seven Birds were powerful and dangerous. His friend Maldwyn got taken down by a sniper with a crossbow, maybe even by Magnus himself? Not dead, but he looked really bad when they dragged him in.

But then Taako was pretty much everything Kenneth had admired when he was a kid hearing the voidfish’s song all those years ago: sharp-tongued and funny, giving that Lucretia grief but still somehow standing up to Kalen? And he couldn’t help but laugh, and when the other guards took the two of them away and left him to a dressing down from Kalen, wheels started turning. They kept turning when he got put on KP, while he peeled potatoes. He reached for spices almost without thinking about it, and when he realized it, he didn’t stop.

It’s not like he was going to go against Kalen. The strongman had given him an opportunity, and for once in his dumb life he was going to hold onto that. But if he could impress Taako, well maybe that would be good too.