Private Tales Dying Embers at the Edge of the World

[Nym]

She watched him - silent, unmoving save for the faint shudders still rattling his large frame. The antidote would work, eventually. The venom would leave him with every nerve tender as a burn for a time, but it would not kill him.

Nym shifted to sit on the ground, her back resting against his workbench, booted feet pulled in close. She sat close enough to hear the rasp of his breath as her thoughts turned over and over like coals in a dying fire.

The dagger in her hand was so fine and well polished that her own face looked back at her, warped slightly by the curve of the blade. Eyes of jade, ringed with weariness. Her lips, faintly parted. And behind all of it, that quiet, nauseating question:

Was she proud of any of it?

She’d meant to kill him. She’d wanted to erase him from her life, from her paranoid mind that believed one day, he, and everyone else would come to kill her. She had coated her blades in venom for that exact purpose. It had been her right. Her justice.

But five fucking words…

And suddenly the rage that had fueled her began to feel... brittle. Hollow. Her justifications, so carefully laid out in her mind fell apart like dust through her fingers. They sounded so much like her father’s now. She could hear his voice again, the frantic muttering in the palace corridors as he paced and whispered about enemies no one else could see. How many times had he whispered that they all wanted what he had? That no one could be trusted?

She remembered nodding. Believing him. She had been four the first time she'd killed for him. Four. And it had never stopped.

Now she heard those whispers too. And she’d taken heads for it. Innocents. Old friends. Those she merely suspected.

And worse - she’d had Settra do it. The one man who’d given himself to her without expectation. The one she'd sworn not to use like her father had used her.

But she had.

Her reflection blurred as her eyes did. She blinked, wiped quickly at her cheek with the heel of her palm.

Then came his question, and her glassy eyes turned to him, the scarred wreck of a man who had once ruled the world with flame and might. Now laid low by a scratch. How fragile power was. How easily it could rot.

Her throat clenched as she swallowed.

“As you said,” she murmured, voice roughened by the storm within, “Be free.”

A beat passed. Her lips curled into a faint smile at the cruel irony of it all. Then, with no further warning, she drew the polished dagger across her wrist in one clean stroke.

 

[Gerra]

“No!”

The shout tour from his throat, raw and ragged by his own battle with the toxins.

Confusion flowed into grief, cold as the ocean, flowed into anger, hotter than the volcano in which they stood.

“No,” this time the word came low and rumbling, full of that old power that made men tremble and fall to knees in supplication.

He hauled his body across the ground with fast, lurching movements. Fingers that could barely feel fumbled for and seized the tang of a naked blade lacking a hilt which lay by the forge. Then he flung himself toward, one hand reaching out to seize her upper arm, the other hammering home the edge of the naked blade toward her exposed, infected wrist.

Cut the poison off at the root.

Nym

 

[Nym]

Her breath caught like a sharp thing in her throat, clenching around the cry that wanted to tear free.. This was it... It hadn't been what she'd imagined for herself, but she couldn't find any regret. The venom burned like acid. It would get worse. Gods, it would get so much worse.

But she didn’t move. Didn’t scream. Didn’t strike again. She closed her eyes and waited.

The pain bloomed behind her ribs like a second heart, beating white hot and furious beneath her skin. Tears spilled from her eyes, unbidden, born not of pain but a grief she had no language for. Grief for what she had become, for what she had done. For the girl who had once dreamt of freedom and lived long enough to choke on it. For Settra, who had loved her. For Medja and the misplaced faith she'd had. For her mother who didn't care to know her. For her father, even in all his madness. For the monster before her.

She could have made it quick. Could have ended it with a single strike to the heart, and her twisted, brutal history would’ve been buried with her. But what was mercy to a legacy like hers?

She would not be remembered kindly.. But she would be remembered. The least she could do was suffer. A minute or two. She could do that.

Nym swallowed hard, blinking through the haze of tears, the knife slipping from her fingers with a soft, metallic clatter.

She heard him protest - but she didn't hear him move. She flinched the moment his hand closed around her bleeding wrist.

“What are you d—” She didn’t finish. The realisation hit her in a single, blistering heartbeat.

“No—NO!!”

She tried to wrench free, but it was already too late. One moment, her hand was part of her, warm, slick with blood, trembling in his grasp. And then, with a brutal sweep of steel, it wasn’t.

It lay on the ground, severed above the wrist. Fingers curled like a sleeping thing. Unreal. Wrong.

The pain hit an instant later, and it was fucking unthinkable.

A scream tore from her lungs so raw, so violent, it seemed to shake the very air around them. Her spine arched as if struck by lightning, nerves igniting in a blaze of white hot torment. Blood pulsed from the stump in thick, wet spurts, painting the floor, her chest, her face. Her world narrowed to that one point of agony, everything else falling away, sound, light, sense.

Her heart hammered so hard it felt as though it would rupture. Her vision shattered, black spots devouring the edges, the ashen world around her spinning in sickening lurches. Her throat burned, voice cracking and breaking with the ragged sobs that followed the scream. She couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t breathe.

Her remaining hand scrambled blindly for the blade at her side, but she couldn’t focus, couldn’t see. Her fingers trembled too violently to grip anything. Her whole body shook, spasming in waves of agony and horror.

She gagged. Vomited. Choked.

The bile burned her lips and nose and throat, but she didn’t care because all she could do was feel. And it was too much. The pain was a mountain crashing down on her, an ocean dragging her under. Her skin was fire and her bones were screaming.

She was going to pass out. She was going to die.
Gods, please, please just let her fucking die.

 

[Gerra]

Bright crimson blood gushed from her severed stump, spattering. Gerra closed his around her arm tight as he could, seeking to cut off the spray. Agony still roiled his own gut and he felt as though he might vomit upon the ground from the effects of the toxin. His eyes hazy with pain, he tugged her brutally toward the forge, dragging himself forward on his knees.

He raised a bare hand, then drove it deep into the fire of his forge, the flames reflected in his wild eyes. The smith seized a coal and dragged it forth, his skin untouched by the fire.

The same could not be said for her.

The coal sat there for a but a moment, black at the center but haloed in a red-orange glow that pulsed with heat. Then, without pause, without time for reflection, the Son of Molthal sought to press that coal against the raw and ruined flesh of her stump, to sear it closed.

The woman could stab him if she wished. Could thank him by slaying him, as she had tried now twice before. Gerra no longer cared. Curse all the gods in heaven, he was in so much pain. Tears spilled from the half-giant's eyes, hot with rage and anguish. The toxin could already have spread too far.

She may already be dead. Mother. Heal her.

Nym

 

[Nym]

She kicked and thrashed as he dragged her toward the forge, her blood hot and slick beneath her, leaving a trail that smeared across the stone floor. Her vision swam, black spots bursting like ink across her sight, threatening to swallow everything whole.

Her free and only hand struck at him again and again, punching wildly, desperately, bare of weapon but not of intent. Her knuckles split against his arm, blows that should have bruised bone but landed on iron, his grip unyielding, merciless. She was nothing against it.

“NO—no, no, no, no, n—!”

Then came heat. The coal met the ragged stump of her wrist with a hiss, and the world imploded. White-hot pain surged through her body in a wave so total, so obliterating, it felt as though her very bones were melting. The burn wasn’t skin-deep, it ripped into her marrow, seared her nerves raw until there was nothing left but fire. Her scream split the air, higher and harsher than any cry before, a sound so ragged it tore blood up from her throat and her voice shattered, dissolving into soundless agony.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t exist. The agony was too much, too vast, it eclipsed every memory, every grief, every rage. She would have bitten her own tongue off if it would have silenced it, but her body wouldn’t obey her anymore.

Her last punch landed weakly, barely more than a brush of her trembling fist against him. Her arm fell heavy, useless, and her back arched violently, vision flaring white, then black, then white again. For a breathless, endless moment, she prayed for death.

Her chest heaved one last time, her body convulsing with a raw, soundless sob, and then her strength gave way entirely. Her lips parted in a silent curse before the darkness surged up and swallowed her whole.