Fable - Ask Sheketh by the Sea

[Gerra]

CLANG

Sparks flew.

CLANG

The blistering heat of a forge.

CLANG

The glow of white-orange.

CLANG

Gerra stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow, holding up a glowing blade before him. The half-giant looked upon his work, nodding slowly. That would do. He took tongs and lowered the glowing blade into water, quenching it, then began finishing what he needed to for the day. Lost in thought.

He left the forge - built long ago into the side of a volcano by unknown hands - and trekked down the green dotted slope to a cottage by the sea side. A small figure sped out of the front door to meet him.

"Daddy!"

The half-giant stooped, laughing, and picked up the young girl who bore his features, swinging her around before setting her back and walking hand-in-hand toward the second figure standing by the cottage door.

"Husband," said the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes upon.

"Wife," he rumbled, smiling.

They had dinner later that evening, a good soup. At the same table they'd had a thousand other dinners. In the same house Gerra had lived almost all his life on Sheketh.

After dinner, they sat near the cliffs, looking out at the sea.

"Dad, do you think you will ever leave Sheketh?"

Gerra chuckled, "Why would I? I have all I have ever needed right here." He wrapped his arms around his wife and daughter pulling them close.

"What did you make today, dad?"

"A sword."

Sword turn to shadow, then reform for another swing.
​

Gerra blinked, shaking his head as the vision circled his mind's eye.

"Who is it for?"

"A strong hero," rumbled Gerra, trying to dislodge the vision, "like you will be one day, my young adventurer." He patted her on the arm.

Blinded by his rage . . . felt . . the sword shear further into his arm . . . the blade grating upon bone
​

He gasped and reached a hand up to cradle his head.

"Husband, what's wrong?"

He closed his eyes, willing the nightmares away. "It's nothing. Nothing, dear. Just the lingering of bad dreams."

When he opened them again, he looked with his family upon the setting sun over the Sheketh sea. The only home he'd ever known...

 

[Dizzy]

Days into weeks into months. Dizi’yvesik had paid bribes, met with chieftains of Abtati tribes, and had even been hosted by pretenders of the god-king’s legacy. Many told her he had vanished without a trace.

‘It will be impossible to find him,’ one had claimed, ‘you’d be better off serving the Empress,’ another dog of the empire had whispered.

But Dizzy knew.

She had hunted for endless nights, killed several informants so that no one unworthy could pester her god, and in silent meditation she knew she could hear the voice of Gerra calling to her. She knew that she had, finally, found someone on Arethil with the strength to ascend mortality and become the living god she had spent her life searching for.

Waves clapped upon the dinghy as her ironclad boots sunk into the soft sands of Sheketh.

Heart thundered in her chest as anticipation mounted and she made her way up the trail. The hints and clues and silent prayers had all led her to a single point in time, a single location in the universe. Here and now.

A small cottage, modest for the one true God, and a trio sat upon the cliffs.

The tiefling fell to her knees upon catching a glimpse of the one she had sought. There could be no mistaking it, a giant in form and hair of flame. This was the god-king she had spent longer searching for than all of the gods before him. A myth, in the form of a man.

“God King Gerra, I am Dizi’yvesik,” she pressed her horned-head lower towards the dirt, “I pledge my service to you, O Holy One, conqueror of the sands and Emperor of Amol-Kalit.”

 

[Gerra]

The half-giant blinked down at the horned stranger, nonplussed.

“Um…”

He wiped a hand on his wool tunic, home spun from the Sheketh sheep that grazed nearby, and extended a hand.

“Don’t know of a god-king, but-“

A splitting headache wracked Gerra’s skull and he grimaced as a vision of a cave lurched into his mind. A cave and two great, glowing eyes staring at him. Terror in his heart, but also a sense of righteous pride and a foothold on destiny’s doorstep.

“I will let my deeds speak. I have risen from exile to apotheosis.”

Gerra’s eyes nearly shut, welling tight with the pain, and his hand shifted up to his head, then back down again. He extended it once more to help the horned one up.

“Apologies, I have the worst migraines,” he rumbled.

“Dizi, may I call you Dizi?” He gestured at the pack slung over his shoulder. “I was about to go to the forge. Would you like to join me?”

He started walking up the volcano’s slope.

 

[Dizzy]

Didn’t know of a god-king? Was he simply modest or was it… yes, that was it.

A test of faith.

Dizzy had served the great geitlan Serjian despite his insistence he wasn’t of the divine. She’d pledged fealty to the horrific rhaksa demon for a time and proven her faith was pure at every opportunity presented to her. The living divines were always like this, requiring their followers to offer penance or patience.

“You may call me whatever you wish, holy one,” she answered quickly. Dizi wasn’t the worst nickname and was close enough to what the humans in Alliria or Dornoch had called her.

The forge. Another test, no doubt. So that he could assess her various talents, surely.

She rose from her prone position as Gerra began walking towards the slope, answering confidently, “yes your majesty, I can work a forge if you will it.”

After several large steps she caught up to the heels of the god-king she’d spent so much time seeking out. The entire situation made so little sense, he had a vast empire yet he sequestered himself on this tiny island? Perhaps it was his own sort of test. Perhaps he needed the quiet meditation to fully ascend.

“Sire,” she spoke with a humble tone, “do these migraines trouble you? Are your other followers not addressing these headaches?” Perhaps she could earn favor through treating the god-king with a chamomile tea or a small dose of magnesium.

It was surprising that his consort and child-slave weren’t capable of such things.

 

[Gerra]

“You keep calling me this,” Gerra rumbled with a frown as he walked, covering swathes of ground with every stride, pack slung over one shoulder.

“I am just a blacksmith. My followers are sheep,” he pointed at the herd grazing not far from them, a few curious members watching.

“But yes. Headaches have troubled me of late.”

He swung his bag down as they came to the mouth of the cave and entered his forge. The air grew hot and sweltering, nothing his giant’s blood could not handle, but to Dizi the heat would feel oppressive, like a living entity that sought to suffocate her.

The glow in the distance grew as they arrived at his forge. Tools lay everywhere, neatly arranged by size and type. Raw materials piled in a corner.

“Behold my humble workplace. That fire is lit from the flames of the volcano itself. It has not gone out for hundreds of years, perhaps more. I seek only to harness it for my forge.”

He bent down and picked up a hunk of metal, then handed Dizi some tongs.

“Have you smithed before?”

Gerra placed a large pot in the center of the forge and stared at it as it began to heat up.

 

[Dizzy]

There was one thing that had now become incredibly obvious to her about Gerra.

He wanted to ensure that his followers were fervent. Ensure that any who considered him worthy of admiration were willing to endure doubt and tribulation before he'd even think about revealing the divine secrets he, undoubtedly, had access to.

For now, she'd play along. "I can help treat your headaches my lo-" stopping herself abruptly she paused and bowed, "sir blacksmith."

Once they entered the forge her skin bristled and a layer of sweat almost immediately formed upon her brow. Dizzy pushed through the adversity, trying to ignore the discomfort she felt in every pore of her body. Although, in truth, she wondered just how long she could toil in this place without passing out. The heat was simply so extreme that exhaustion was a legitimate concern.

"I've forged in the past, when necessary," it would benefit no one to lie here, "but I would not call myself particularly skilled."

She grabbed the tongs he passed her and used them to retrieve slabs of heated metal and hold them in place for her god-king who insisted he wasn't a god-king. "May I ask," she finally chanced to ask in between strikes, "how long have you been here? In Sheketh, I mean?"

 

[Gerra]

"Here?" rumbled the half-giant, taking a hammer and smacking it against the peace of heated metal. "I have always been here."

A flash of fire, of blighted wastelands. A vision of mountains taller than any in the world. A glimpse of a sea of sand and glittering oceans.

Gerra grit his teeth and breathed through his nose, ignoring the growing pain in his temples. He focused on the task at hand, on the trade he knew so well.

"In forging, you must first choose your material," he instructed, he turned away from the hammer and picked up some scraps of metal from the piles. These he dumped into the glowing pot. "Separate, certain materials may be weak. But when melted down and combined, their strengths compliment each other... if you choose wisely."

He turned back to the heated metal and pointed at it with a hammer. "But combining them is not enough. Someone must give them shape. You hold a sword. But it does not know it is a sword yet. The smith must hammer it. Through precise pressure, we create the shape we choose."

Gerra brought the hammer down. Sparks flew.

 

[Dizzy]

Dizzy nodded along as her lord continued to protest things he knew to be false. She wasn't sure why he was so dedicated to this charade but she knew it had to be a test.

"Yes," she imparted as he ran through choosing the appropriate metal and briefly spoke on alloys, "out of many, one."

It was a religious statement from another living god she once followed. Perhaps that was the lesson he was trying teach her? That he had to build his empire off the backs of many different cultures and individuals starting with the Abtati but eventually incorporating all of the peoples living out in Amol-Kalit

Yes, yes, of course. Those peoples were his metals and now... he needed a sword. He needed her to be his sword, yet she did not yet know of his divine will.

She held the calipers tightly as his hammer struck the hot metal, tempering it to the desired strength and shape. "I understand," a knowing look came over her, "what shape would thou choose for me, my lord?"

The tiefling made direct eye contact with the giant conqueror. The imperator of the sands. The one true living god of Arethil.