Tales of Arise has had me in a chokehold since the moment I started it.


It feels like he's defined by the iron mask that's wrapped around his face.

He doesn't know much other than that; everything's been lost to him- his name, his home, his purpose. He doesn't need anything of these things, he supposes, but it doesn't stop the deep yearning that he feels within his chest.

Doc tells him the only thing to do is to move on. And it isn't that he doesn't he agree, he does, pushes himself every day just so he can live to see another miserable dawn.

Wonders if it's worth it, sometimes, but with every time that he steps in between a Dahnan and a Renan slavekeeper, he knows it is. Perhaps that's his purpose, the reason he's bound by the steel around his face and is addled by the inability to feel pain despite the blood that pumps through his veins.

No past, no name- only a title and a small hold on what might lay in the future.

Things must change, that he knows. Someone has to stand up and protect those who cannot, and he has the ability to do so.

The iron mask can be crippling at times, heavy across his head and sizzling in the way that it holds heat. Not that he can feel it. He can only imagine. But perhaps that's the point, perhaps it's a symbol of strength.

Instead of wearing it like the chain that binds them as slaves to the fire, he wears it with a passion that burns like the stars above. Thinks of freedom and breaking free, and how one day he just might be able to breathe fresh air, far away from the oppressive Gates of Fire.

But perhaps he's stupid; every time that he stands up to them it only feels like a step back.

The hot sand and craggy earth under his feet, the pressure of whipmarks along is back, the bright burns that fire leaves behind on his cracked and calloused fingers. These are the things that he doesn't feel, but everyone else does.

Doc bandages his hand up, as he often does. Says some annoyed words and gives him harsh advice. Doc looks up to him like everyone else, but it isn't because of his physical strength, it's because of his bittered resolve to live to the next day.

So many others have lost it, wasting away to nothing as they give it all to the Renans instead.

At the end of the day, he sits on his pallet and watches the dark sky through the rough-cut window. All he has is this damned iron mask, a blank memory and the hushed title given to him from the lips of his fellow slaves.

He wants to save them, wants to do right by them.

But most of all, he wants to find himself.

Wonders if that makes him selfish.