Private Tales Dying Embers at the Edge of the World

[Gerra]

Upon an island volcano of Sheketh, farthest from the reaches of civilization, a lone figure smites a forge.

His blows are full of fury, full of sorrow, and there is a hunch to once proud shoulders. Sparks fly from his hammer strikes.

In the embers he sees visions of a different life. One he does not remember. He sees hosts of men and their banners in the fires of his forge. Monumental struggles. Great victories and even greater defeats. Echoes of glory, forever out of reach.

He wonders why he dreams.

He does not link them to the scars etched upon his body by the cuts of swords and arrows.

Does not wonder why he is missing a finger from his right hand.

All he knows is the toil of the forge.

It is all he has ever known. This island. This lonely refuge.

What else would he be, had ever been, but a blacksmith?

 

[Nym]

The forge hissed and cracked, its molten heart glowing in defiance of the ocean wind. The scent of ash clung thick to the air, but Nym paid it no mind. She moved like a shadow given form. Elegant, purposeful, clothed in obsidian silks that whispered with each step she took across the scorched black rock. Her presence did not ask to be noticed. It demanded it.

She followed the sound of hammer on steel, and finally paused before the smith, fingers trailing lazily across crafted blades. Eyes the colour of jade flicked toward the hulking figure at the forge, narrowed in quiet calculation.

The sound of the waves filled the silence that stretched between them, but she broke it with a voice like velvet and venom.

"I heard rumours," she said, her tone cool and conversational, as if she were discussing market gossip and not the shattered myth of an empire. "I didn’t believe them..."

She turned a dagger over in her hands, the steel catching the forge-light in flickers of orange and gold. Her long nails scraped across its surface with a slow, deliberate sound. Then she looked up.

"You were a lot of things," she said, her gaze hardening, voice low with contempt. A tyrant. A fool. A monster. "But I did not have you pegged as a coward, Gerra."

Her hood slipped fully from her head, dark hair catching in the volcanic wind, haloing her striking features like a storm about to break. She tilted her head slightly, studying him, daring him to speak.

"Is this it, then?" she asked, eyes raking over his hunched form. "Is this where emperors go to rot? Where conquerors hide when their glory fades?"

 

[Gerra]

The hammer stopped mid-swing. Paused there, as if frozen in time.

Slowly, the giant turned, his figure scarce-lit by the ill-flickering of the forge, casting shadows every way. Glowing eyes like embers fixed upon the woman.

Without recognition.

Gerra’s brows knit together.

“How… do you know my name?”

Those black clothes made her difficult to make out in the darkness, but he could see they were fashioned from silks. No meager mein this.

Those hate-filled eyes, as of an adder, staring from sun-weathered skin. Something stirred in him. Some vision he saw once in the volcanic flames.

She spoke of conquerors and kings and rotting emperors.

But he was just a smith.

“Do I know you?”

 

[Nym]

Ah. There they were.

Those molten eyes. How many times had she seen them in her nightmares? How many nights had she woken in a cold sweat, hand curled over the phantom burn on her forearm, the invisible mark he’d left upon her, seared not into skin but into soul?

Now they looked at her without a flicker of recognition.

And it unnerved her.

Nym’s brows drew together, her expression tightening as she stared at him, searching. Waiting. Expecting the cruel twist of his lips, the smug amusement, the inevitable command that always followed. But there was… nothing. Just confusion. Innocent, even. Like a child lost in a story that wasn’t his.

Her head tilted, ever so slightly, the breeze catching her hair as doubt slid cold fingers down her spine.

Is he lying? Is this some elaborate farce? Or… has he truly forgotten?

She hated the hesitation, hated that she couldn't tell.

"You don’t get to do this," she said coldly, lips curling into a sneer, though there was a tremor just beneath it. "You don’t get to forget while the rest of us are left carrying the wreckage."

Her boots crunched as she stepped closer, blade still loose in her hand but no longer poised to strike. She needed to see him, up close, needed to feel what was true.

"Some said you'd gone on a pilgrimage," she continued, her voice laced with scorn. "Others whispered you were slain. Turned to ash beneath your own hubris."

She stopped just a few paces from him now, the firelight licking across her face, illuminating the sharp lines and bitter grief carved into her beauty.

"But this..." she exhaled, a laugh without humour catching in her throat. "This? Beating metal into shape like some penitent monk on an island no one remembers?"

Her gaze hardened, jade eyes glittering like cracked gemstones.

"Tell me, smith. Do the fires whisper to you while you work? Do they speak of the lives you took? Games you played? The cities you sacked? Do you remember any of it?"

Her voice softened then, only slightly, as if coaxing something she wasn’t sure she wanted to wake.

"...Do you remember me, Gerra of Molthal?"

 

[Gerra]

Now she stood closer, he could more fully make out the hard bronze of her features, smooth but unyielding, and the gleam of those verdant eyes, so much of the viper in her. Beautiful, but spitting hate. He did not doubt her fangs.

The viper. Where had that thought come from.

“Of Molthal,” he mouthed. The words tasted as ash in his mouth.

The giant lowered his hammer. Let it hang loose by his side. So loosely. The strength bled from his fingers. Replaced by a growing, cold and gnawing pain.

“No.”

How did she know what he saw in the flames. Her words bit at him, full of frost that seeped through the skin and lingered.

She carried a blade. Stupidly, he wondered if he wondered if she brought it for a new edge.

Foolish.

He took a step back, eyes returning to her defiant features.

“Who are you?” Something of an old iron crept into his voice. The stiff tone of command. Hard. Yet brittle too.

 

[Nym]

She could have laughed. Gods, she nearly did.

It caught in her throat like a splinter, sharp and bitter and dry. Her lips curled, but it was not a smile. Not really. Her eyes never left him, twin blades carved of jade and fire, narrowed slightly.

“Of Molthal,” she repeated, voice a velvet shroud.

Who was she?...

Her jaw clenched.

“I am Sultana Nymeasha Soleiman.” she said with quiet, lethal clarity. She watched him closely for any sign of recognition, to drink in the way her name hit, if it did at all.

“Daughter of the Emir Soleiman of Salitra, the man you had murdered after you sacked his city. My city."

“You tore me from my home,” she went on, low and cold, “Locked me away from the rest of my family. And then I stabbed you in the chest." her lips twitched, glancing down at his chest, wondering if muscle memory might kick in, if the giant could scar.

"Ring any bells?"

 

[Gerra]

"I..." he took another step back, placed a hand on the anvil to steady himself. Images raced through a minds eye. Immense siegecraft, larger than his home. Far larger. Their arms groaning as they hurled their contents at a city. More images. Visions of sand, soaked muddy by rivers of blood. Screams of the dying and the anguished.

His other hand moved, involuntarily, to rub at the scar on his chest, so very near to his heart.

"I would not," he hissed, a low whisper full of dread, barely audible above the crackling coals. "I am just a blacksmith."

Saying those words seemed to bring him some measure of reassurance. As if by saying it, it might be true. He repeated them, stood a bit straighter.

"Just a smith."

He nodded once, as though that settled the matter. "I am sorry, but you must have me mistaken with someone else, Nymeasha-" yet even as he said her name another vision struck him like lightning.

Sweat stained bodies colliding. Sticks beating each other. Nearly breaking each other. Hatred and.... no. Only hatred.

Gerra blinked twice, chest rising and falling too swiftly. He couldn't seem to catch his breath.