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.

 

[Nym]

It was almost absurd, seeing him like this. The great conqueror, once draped in fire and glory, now wide eyed and reeling, like a stag chased into a trap. Uncertainty clung to him like sweat. Fear, even.

Either he was playing a very long, very convincing game… or something had truly cracked in that mighty skull of his.

“Sultana,” she corrected dryly, rolling her eyes as though the title tasted better than his fumbling attempt at her name.

“Someone else…?” she echoed with a scoff, giving him a slow once-over before casting a glance to the quiet path beyond the forge. “Oh, of course. Just a familiar face in the crowd, I'm sure. There must be scores of fire-eyed half-giants hammering steel in remote volcanoes these days. Silly me.”

Her brow lifted, sharp and dark, as she set the blade down with a clink and folded her arms. She leaned her shoulder against a pillar, comfortably settled in now, like she had all the time in the world to dismantle him piece by piece.

“Alright then. Let’s hear it. Tell me your life story, stranger. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Who raised you? Where did you get your scars?”

Her tone was casual, almost playful, but the venom in her words was thinly veiled, coiled just beneath the surface. She watched him squirm with a feline sort of delight, her head tilted, the ghost of a smirk dancing at the corners of her lips. Whatever state he was in, however fractured, it was still satisfying to unnerve him.

Because this, watching Gerra tremble, was the only justice she'd ever been given.

 

[Gerra]

The questions fell upon him like his own hammer blows fell upon a piece of molten iron, each one reverberating through his being as though striking to the core of his existence. Again and again they rung upon the mettle of his psyche. He felt as if he might unravel, the whole of him crumble apart, poorly quenched.

"Stop," he croaked, as she thrust the dagger of her question into him again and again. The venom of the blade did its work well, poisoning his dream. Questions he had pushed out of his own mind too frequently reared up as of old ghosts and skeletons unfaced.

Born? Born here. To who? When? Where were his parents?

A flash of searing fire and voice like the trembling of the earth itself. A hall of deepest black and braziers burning low. Fear. Fear and loathing.

Where did he grow up? Upon the island. With the sheep. Of course. And so why did he remember a barren wasteland lit by plumes of eternal fires.

Where did he get his scars. He looked down at his hands, at his body, and found them littered with old wounds. Far too numerous for a simple smith. Flashes of blood and battle awakened in his mind.

He felt some hidden horror lurking beneath the surface, each question scraping away the dirt under which it was buried. He found he did not know want to know. He was a blacksmith, enjoyed being a blacksmith. It was simple. It was peaceful.

She was here to take it away from him, to kill him.

"Stop," he roared, then he splintered, collapsing onto his knees and clapped hands to a head that felt as though it might split open such was the pain.

Some foul magic wreathed him, glittering in the air.

If she could see it.

Nym

 

[Nym]

Nym grinned. All white teeth and no warmth.

She didn’t move as he crumpled, only shifted her weight against the pillar to better watch the show. His roar echoed off the forge walls, but it didn’t so much as flinch her. She’d heard it before. Louder, back then. Full of power. Now it was hoarse, raw, cracked with fear.

She liked it better this way. Somewhere in him, something old and buried was thrashing against its chains. And gods, was it beautiful to see.

A glimmer caught her eye. Thin tendrils of light curling off him like smoke, too deliberate to be heat shimmer, too charged to be natural. Magic. Her eyes narrowed. So, someone had done something to him. Or perhaps he'd begged for this forgetful peace himself.

“No,” she said sweetly, as though replying to a child tugging on her sleeve. “I don’t think I will, Gerra.”

She let the name linger on her tongue, like wine. Cruel vintage.

Her gaze dropped to her nails as she inspected them with lazy satisfaction, dragging out the moment like a lion toying with a wounded gazelle. “Emperor of Amol-Kalit,” she began, voice lilting with honeyed scorn. “Djinn of Rhaqoum. Sultan of Ragash. King of Annuakat.”

A pause. Then she looked up. Her eyes were bright with amusement. A cruel little spark dancing in the green.

“Prince of the Harvest,” she added with mock reverence. “Son. Of. Fire.”

Each word struck like a bell, deliberate, resounding, meant to hurt. Her eyes rolled at all of those titles, none of which she had ever used.

Her head tilted slightly, “Do you remember it yet? The world you scorched? The people you crushed under that oh-so-righteous heel?” Her voice dipped lower. “The girl you chained and branded like cattle?”

She took a step closer, slow and confident. “Because I remember, Gerra. I remember everything.”

 

[Gerra]

G E R R A

Son of Molthal. Legions of blight orcs in ill-fitting, mass-produced steel, stamping pikes and chanting. An ambush in a town, dozens of dead orcs. A great siege of a dwarven fortress. Thousands of bloated bodies, festooned with arrows and bolts growing from them like strange flowers. Fighting in dark caverns, filled with fire and smoke. Defeat and terror.

Djinn of Rhaqoum. Burning sands and the oppressive heat of a sun. A hidden city within desert rocks. A hundred elves singing his name.

King of Annuakat. Slaughtered nobles and spilled wine in a garden. A ziggurat overlooking the wide river delta and ocean beyond.

Sultan of Ragash. A great battle by the banks of a river. Charging chariots, armored elephants, a Thakathi blood sorcerers hurling death from atop a rhinocerous - slain by his hand. A night attack, the beat of a dragon's great, leather wings, screams and fire and blood. And afterward - victory. The tall domes of a city amid the sands.

These and a thousand other memories beat upon the gates of his mind with fist and mace and hammer and hoof. The doors groaned, as the ceiling had groaned, great stones collapsing in the midst of a coronation. An army of the dead ridden in upon the back of a lich-drake. A desperate fight against a colossus in plate. Victory.

Emperor of Amol-Kalit. A dream. A dream of a better world, forged upon the sands of this distant land, fused from the warring kingdoms and princes into an empire who did not care if you were Kaliti human, Sereti ogre, or Abtati elf. An empire based upon merit valuing warrior-poets and learning and a better future. A dream like a lightning strike in the desert and as fragile as the fulgurite which it formed.

Fractured now. Splintered beneath the claws of the Father of Dragons.

Gerra, son of Fire, child of Menalus and Maskat's vessel, huddled upon his knees and stared at hands. His vision blurred in and out. In his hands lay another dead dream, the glamor of the Fae in tatters about him.

"I should have died there, facing Drakormir," he rumbled, hoarse, "died with my dreams."

Eyes that shimmered with unspilt tears looked up to Nym, recognition in them. And fire.

The old fire.

"I was forging a better world." His chest rose and fell, an emptiness in him. A void. A bitter taste dwelt in his mouth. The taste of ash.

His fingers coiled into fists, shuddered, then fell back to the floor. "I remember. I remember everything.

I failed them.... and I failed you."

 

[Nym]

Nym stared down at him, the taste of victory curdling on her tongue.

This was not how it was meant to go.

She had come here expecting fire, resistance, rage. She’d pictured him rising like some ancient beast, eyes lit with hellfire, that old fury spilling from his mouth like molten gold. She wanted him defiant. Wanted him cruel. She wanted to hate him easily, as she always had.

But there he knelt, hollowed out, broken, nothing like the tyrant she remembered.

And when his glistening eyes rose to hers, there was no rage to recoil from, no seething arrogance. Just shame, and grief.

She stiffened. Her smile faded, slowly, like melting wax. Her amusement slipped down into her chest and twisted there. Unwelcome. Uncomfortable.

She had no witty response for it. She didn’t know what to do with it.

Her expression hardened, jaw tight, even as a flicker of something uncertain glinted in her eyes. She folded her arms to cover te way her fingers trembled.

“You should’ve died long before Drakormir,” she bit out. The words came too fast, too sharp, like a reflex and her voice lacked conviction.

She hesitated, a long breath escaping her nose. Her gaze searched his face.

“What happened to you?…” she asked, quieter this time. Less accusation, more demand. A question she'd buried for years under anger.

 

[Gerra]

He only nodded at her words. Yes. He should have died before Drakormir, upon the battlements of Lor Holdram, maybe, or the hundred battles afterward. How many would still be alive? Or. Would the world be a darker place, ruled by dragon tyrants of myth? If he had not sent Drakormir into the slumber beneath the waves, would another have taken up the cause and smote him down?

Like as not they would have.

Yes.

Better that he died a thousand deaths before Amol-Kalit. Better he never have dreamed of empire, of that vision rising from the sand to bring the fire of civilization to the far reaches of the world.

"I was cursed," he hissed, staring at his hands, "by the Herald. Everything tastes of ash. Food. Wine. Everything. And..."

And? The rage, the fury of Empire. Turning upon trusted advisors. Burning all memories of friendships. A symptom of his station, or something more?

His brows drew together. Could he not be honest with her, whose own father he had slain.

"I think it drove me mad... Until I sought out the Fae King of Summer. I fought him in his realm, for his realm."

A snort of disgust. "I thought I could prevail. This - this forge." he gestured around him, "This life. It's his illusion, his enchantment. Glamor they call it. I don't even know how long has past."

His empire could be dust by now. But no, the woman before him was still unmarred by age, beautiful in the way a finely wrought blade was beautiful, perfectly balanced and razor-edged.

Gerra shook his head.

"It no longer matters. You came here to take your vengeance. One I deprived you of before. Kill me and be done with it," burning embers met her gaze.

 

[Nym]

Surprise flickered in her gaze as he spoke of the Herald, just for a moment, her brow lifting in silent acknowledgment of something deeper than she’d expected. That recognition faltered the instant he mentioned the Fae King.

Madness, then. That’s what had taken root in him.

Her brows drew together, a quiet calculation passing over her face. Pity might have bloomed there, brief and unwanted, but she smothered it.

He asked her to kill him. Commanded her, more like. As if death were a mercy she owed him. As if this was how it should end. Easy. Clean.

Her expression hardened.

No.

In a blink she was upon him. The distance closed, and a slender dagger sang free of its sheath, glinting in the forge light. Its venomous edge kissed the scar she'd once carved into his flesh, just beside his heart. Only an inch. One inch in the right direction, and he’d crumble at her feet.

How close she had come once before. How close she was now.

"Are you really so willing to die?" she hissed, her voice low, lethal. Her eyes bored into his, their green sharp with fury. "Is this how you'd let it end?"

The blade pressed harder, not piercing, not yet, but enough for him to feel the promise in its edge.

“After all you did?” Her hand trembled, not with fear, but with wrath restrained. “All the fire and blood, all the ruin -my father- and you think you can just... slip away?”

She laughed once, humourless and bitter. "Would it be worse for you to live?"

 

[Gerra]

The tip of the dagger nestled against the muscles of his chest, needle sharp pushing at the skin. He wondered if it was poisoned. Maybe just a scratch would set his humors aflame and he would die writhing in pain.

The him of yesteryear might have seized her wrist, forced her to plunge the dagger into his heart, believing himself beyond the bane of mortality. And his younger self, that wild-eyed conqueror, might have simply reached up and snapped her wrist - or her neck. This would not be the first time she stabbed him. He had nearly died before.

He saw the tip of the blade wobble, tremors from her hand. What emotions warred there? Hatred, like as not. So much hatred.

Gerra might have responded, told her that her father was a cruel man and a tyrant - that the world was better off without his bloated body upon Salitra's throne. But this she already knew. And had he not told her as much before? Futile. Just as his continued existence seemed to be futile.

The Fae's glamor had been a disguised blessing. Let him while out the last of his days here, away from where he could harm the world, a simple blacksmith.

But now it was not to be. She took that facade from him, tore it to ribbons. Now, confronted by the truth of his life and its many failures, he wished only for an end.

"It may," he answered, his stomach full of acid and bile. Looking on her, he remembered a time years ago, when the wounds were still fresh. When last she'd struck at him.

Why was she here and not ruling in Salitra in his absence? Or perhaps even succeeding him, as empress? Is that not what he had wished for, one day. And yet here she stood, so close to him that he could see the venom in those green eyes, could mark the travelstained, hard worn garments in which she'd come.

"Ever the wrong questions," he rumbled, mournful, some of the old Gerra in him them. Not the rage, but the moments of clarity. The wise ruler he'd sought to be, despite everything he'd done.

"Would killing me set you free?"

Free to live a life unconsumed by vengeance.

Free to acknowledge the faults of her father's rule and, perhaps, do better.

He stared into those verdant pools of acidic hate and groped for truth. "I've never hated you, Nymeasha. But I was the greatest of fools. To think I could convince a girl to join the harem of her father's killer, such brashness. I had such dreams then. I told you once, maybe you thought them lies. Know that they were not. I dreamed that we might, together, unite a fractured land. I was wrong. You grieved for your father and I sought to use you as a political instrument."

 

[Nym]

Her hand trembled, the blade trembling with it, and for a moment her whole body seemed to shake. The question he asked struck something deeper than any blade. Her jaw clenched, teeth grinding in effort not to let her face betray the tears welling in her eyes. But they gathered there all the same, glimmering like droplets of molten glass. Her throat constricted, locked around something sharp and unspeakable.

Would it?

She had never been free. Not from the moment she’d been born into her father’s court, raised with poison and polished steel, shaped to smile while holding the blade that would slit a throat at command. His command. Nymeasha, the obedient. Nymeasha, the weapon.

And when he had died, when Gerra had torn her world from beneath her feet like sand washed out by the tide, she hadn’t found freedom. She’d found a void. A drifting. A hunger.

She had learned to decide for herself who lived and who died. She had killed so many. So why… why was he so hard to kill?

He had earned her hatred more than any other. He had used her, broke her, and then left her with nothing but ashes.

Her eyes flicked up to his, wet and gleaming with fury and pain alike.

“You all fucking used me,” she hissed, her voice ragged, “My father. You. Uvogin. Medja..”

“I’m taking my life back,” she said, louder now, teeth bared. “I’m taking everything back. Salitra thrives under my rule. My people prosper. My armies grow.”

Her chest heaved as she glared at him, every word laced with bitterness, every syllable sharpened by years of rage and grief. “I need no one. I have cut down every soul who stood in my path. Who questioned me. Who tried to take from me.”

Her voice softened into something hoarse and hollow. Her hand faltered again, the dagger's edge quivering against his chest. “I should hate you most of all. And I do. I do.”

The tears finally slipped free, one falling silently down her cheek.

“But I see you now. And you look as lost as I was.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And that might well be worse than death.”

 

[Gerra]

"It may," Gerra acknowledged solemnly, again.

For once, Gerra turned his intellect not upon how to best use her to his ends - he had no ends, not anymore - but upon her. This woman whose life had imploded the day Annuakati siege towers had encircled her home.

"We did use you."

Use her as an assassin, an instrument, a political bargaining chip. A tool, not a person. Look at her now, proud on her own, defiant and deadly. But some wounds still hurt, no matter the passage of time.

He wondered if her words rang true, to the smith's ears they sounded forced. As if Nym herself did not believe them, as though Nym worried for her people, her city, surrounded by enemies who wore the skins of friends. But perhaps that was just his madness, driving him once more to schemes.

"And you should hate me," he nodded, "but know this." His eyes locked with hers, embers that may have lost their splendor, their true fire, but still burned for all that, and he reached up an arm, corded with muscle from years of forge work and scarred from years of battle, and brushed aside her tears from her cheek with a thumb callous as stone. Knowing - perhaps even hoping - it might drive her to stab him. To end him.

His hand did not shake, did not quiver, though where she was overcome by emotion he was wracked by the numb of an incomplete existence, a life misled.

"I am proud of you. The world has need of just rulers. Promise me you will be one."

 

[Nym]

He surely wanted to die.

That had to be the only reason he dared to reach up and touch her face. To not only acknowledge the tears she shed but wipe them away, like he had the right. Like he had earned any gentleness between them. Like she hadn't wanted to carve his name into the graveyard of her mind and never speak it again.

The fury in her gaze was molten. Her arm tensed, the blade ready to plunge into his chest and end this pitiful, broken story. She wanted him to scream. She wanted him to beg. She wanted him to feel every ounce of the rage and ruin he had left in his wake.

But then he spoke words worse than poison, and it was like her soul recoiled.

Her breath caught in her chest. Her throat burned with a sudden, choking ache. Her vision blurred at the edges, her body trembling, not from weakness, but from conflict. Proud?

What the fuck was she supposed to do with that?

She had murdered in cold blood since the age of four, slipping through crowded rooms with poisoned needles to jab at the legs of her father's targets. He had called it duty. He’d never once called it good. Never once called her good. And never, not once, had he ever once uttered the word 'proud' let alone directed it at her.

What was there to be proud of? She had not seized her throne. It had been handed to her, most likely to send her away and keep her quiet. Her first decree had been blood. Her second, silence. She had ruled not with justice but with fear. Whispers met the sword. Conspirators were dragged into the streets. She had become her father, in every way she had once sworn she would not.

And yet... this monster, this ruined man, told her he was proud?

Her mouth parted as if to speak, but no sound came. Her eyes stayed fixed on his, wide and unreadable. For a moment, she was simply still. Caught. Cracked.

Then she remembered to breathe. To blink. And then she struck.

But not with a quick plunge through his ribs. The blade sliced across the scar she had once carved into him, crossing the old wound with a new one. Blood welled instantly, bright against his chest. A red cross. A mark. An ending.

The dagger had been coated in venom, drawn from the basilisk she had fought in the unforgiving sands on her return to Salitra. It was a slow death. She had seen it. Watched men scream as their blood clotted in their veins, as organs turned to jelly, as breath came wet and gurgling as men coughed up their own lungs. And she would watch it again now.

It was agony. It was earned. And it was what he deserved.

 

[Gerra]

A single cut, stinging at first as the blood welled. He looked down, surprise etching his features. A mere cut? Did she mean to slice him up slowly, death by a thousand slashes? He had known her to be callous, cruel even, but that seemed more befitting her father than her.

"Would that it were a deeper thrust," he rumbled, softly, but the stinging did not fade. Instead, it grew, became a heat scorching through his veins.

Gerra's brows knit together and he let out a gasp, then a cough as fire tore through him. He, who had stood upon the edges of volcanoes and looked down into their depths unharmed. He, who strode the fiery sands of Amol-Kalit's great waste and felt no pain. Now, the former emperor felt the searing agony of some toxin consume him, carried upon his blood as wind doth blow embers.

He fell backward, slumping against his anvil.

Shocked eyes cast from the wound, to the blade, and from a constricted throat came a sorrowful chuckle, "Viper indeed. Poison after all."

How many had sought to kill him by such a means in his imperial court? Failures all. But here he had no Maho Sparhawk, nor Scorpion magi or Lector priest to save him.

His body trembled, sweat breaking out all across him, and he shuddered as the toxins ate their way through him. A tremor wracked his hand and he watched it shake, unable to make it stop.

"Be free then," he rasped to her, his assassin.

 

[Nym]

Nym didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t look away.

She simply stepped back one pace, a precaution. She had waited for this. Not just today. For years. She waited for it. The inevitable surprise to cross his face. Then the pain, and finally, the realisation.

She watched it all unfold..

For once, he was powerless. And wasn’t it stunning how fragile he became, the almighty Gerra, reduced to ash by a scratch. No divine wrath. No legendary duel. Just a single, deliberate slice and a kiss of venom beneath the skin. The bite of a viper.

Her head tilted with a feline sort of grace, dark waves falling over her shoulder. Her lips curled into something that almost resembled fondness, but the kind one might offer a dying animal after striking the mercy blow.

“Hm..” she nodded gently in agreement. “I can almost hear the songs they’ll sing..” she said quietly. Her smile deepened, dreamy and distant.

She watched him stumble. Listened to the chuckle crack in his throat. The sweat clinging to his brow, the tremble in his limbs.

“Are you afraid?” She asked, softly curious, her voice holding no venom now, only wonder. What did a dying god feel in the end?..

She reached into a pocket and pulled a small glass vial, a milky blue liquid swirling within.

She held it up between two fingers, just long enough for his blurred eyes to see. To hope.

“Antidote..” she murmured, before she opened her palm and let it fall to the ground. It hit with a delicate chime, and was swiftly followed by a grinding crunch under her heel.

She looked back up at him with eyes like emerald flame, calm and unreadable.

 

[Gerra]

The mind had accepted death, but the flesh was weak. Fingers stretched out for the antidote, desperate, hope fluttering through the pain - a light in the storm clouds of his ending.

Then she smashed the vial beneath her heel, extinguishing all hope.

His hand fell, flopping against the floor. He couldn’t feel it anymore. Pain still raged through him, hotter than anything he had felt before - even the fires of Drakormir. Gnawing him away from the inside out.

The erstwhile conqueror’s body shuddered and contorted, wracked by the poison, and he let out a gasp of agony. So excruciating was it that his vision blurred and he felt as though it would take his sight away and leave him to die slowly in pain, sightless but for the sound of the flames and the breathing of the woman standing over him, delighting in his demise.

 

[Nym]

Her brow lifted, just a touch. Curious. So he did want to live after all.

Nym watched as his hand twitched toward the shattered remains, the milk-blue antidote already seeping into the cracks of the floor. Too slow. Too weak. Her lips pressed into a thin line, not in satisfaction, but in thought. The fire in his veins had finally humbled the fire in his soul. Even he couldn’t burn through this.

She began to pace, her steps deliberate, slow, silent as a circling jackal. Her jaw was tight, her arms folded, the dagger still held loosely in one hand. The sounds he made were nearly unbearable. Wet and animal and real. A gasp, a choke, the sickly rasp of a man coming undone. The agony clawing its way out of him filled the space between each footfall. And it sent a chill spider-walking up her spine.

She had imagined this a thousand times. Had plotted it in her mind. But nothing had prepared her for the sound of him breaking.

She let it continue. Let the hope drain out of him like the colour from his lips. Then finally, she knelt before the fallen god.

In her hand now: another vial. A twin to the one she’d crushed. The last one.

“Looks like I have one left,” she sighed, the words soft, breathy, maddeningly casual.

She uncorked it, the faint scent of herbs and acid wafting up. Held it out toward him.

 

[Gerra]

He did not reach for it. No man wished to be tortured to death, even one who believed he deserved it. Instead, confusion in his near sightless eyes, he looked up at the woman.

Helpless.

At her mercy.

And wondered…

“Why?” He rasped.

Did she not seek to be free, had she not made her choice. This was the path she had set herself on. Why not see it through?

Nymeasha had said she hated him, so best she rid herself of him. Free herself, free the world from his potential to return to his old ways.

“Free us… both.”

Gods, he could no longer see.

The Ash King would gloat to learn the news of his slain son. And his mother… oh goddess.

Would there be any rest in the beyond? Some small measure of peace?

 

[Nym]

The vial remained where it hovered, its cloudy contents catching the low light. But when he didn’t reach for it, when instead he turned those failing eyes up toward her, helpless, ruined and confused, her head tilted ever so slightly. Like a curious child peering at a dying thing in the dust.

Why?

Her lips parted, then pressed shut. The dagger in her hand no longer trembled, but something in her jaw did. She let the question hang between them, let it echo in the hollowed-out silence he’d left behind by choosing not to scream anymore.

“I wanted you to feel as I did,” she said quietly. The venom in her voice had cooled, but something more cutting had taken its place. “You were always so far above us mere mortals, weren't you? The giant. The king. The god with skin of flame and iron.”

She leaned closer, watching his breath hitch, hearing the rattle beginning to take hold in his lungs.

“But your life,” she continued, voice steady as steel drawn slow, “is just as fragile as mine. As any child's. As any woman’s. You reminded me how easily I could be snuffed out, crushed beneath a boot, used and discarded.”

A faint twitch crossed her brow. “I’m just repaying the favour.”

Then she moved, shifting her weight forward onto one knee to pres the uncorked vial gently to his cracked lips.

“Drink,” she murmured.

A command, not a kindness. She wanted him alive. To know he had survived only because she chose it. Because she allowed it.

 

[Gerra]

The liquid dribbled between his lips and his throat bobbed, some part of him willing to live still, even after everything. He did not know how long he lay there, body still wracked with pain, before the constriction in his throat loosened and he felt able to breathe again.

Eyes like shimmering coals watched her movements while the rest of him lay there, nerves half-paralyzed, practically insensate.

“What will you do now?” He croaked after her pronunciation.

Return to empire, no doubt. Did she not see the path she was set upon now? How many would she slaughter to achieve her ends? How many would she crush beneath the wheels of imperial ambition? Sons and daughters conscripted into the army, into labor forces, into whatever the empire deemed necessary.

Surely she knew that such a civilization could only rise so high, built upon the bones of the fallen.