[co-written by JC and Kris]
The ship – or what was left of it – must have washed up in the middle of the night. It had been stormy, howling winds and thunder that shook rooftops, so it wasn’t surprising that nobody had heard the crash. In the hours after dawn, though, a group of townsfolk had gathered at a safe distance to watch the monster on the riverbank.
The worst of the storm had blown itself out overnight, but it was still a dreary, rainy morning, and the farmers and tradespeople who watched the monster from uphill were soaked through. It was miserable work, but nobody was sure when the monster would turn from… whatever it was doing, and attack. So they stayed, waiting for some sign of what to do – instructions from the Council, or aggression from the beast below.
A young girl, the one who’d first discovered the monster, came crashing through the brush, panting with exertion. “I went to the Singing Stag,” she said. “Nencio said that Cerah Leona was gone on adventure. But Ms. Forge said she’d come and help.” She pointed behind her, where an old woman walked out of the woods.
In the fire of my forge is something like Divinity. Work away, and work hard, and perhaps you will grasp the spark within the flames, wore a long cloak over her scale mail. She’d hoped the thick wool would be enough to keep dry, but the cloak had soaked up rainwater until it fell heavy from her shoulders, more likely to get in her way than anything else. Despite the weight, she walked with an upright posture, an air of grace and authority around her as she peered down at the scene below.
Half a longship lay broken and scattered. It seemed impossible that a storm could have blown it this far from the ocean unless it had been headed upriver already, but Kord and Melora were known to defy the expectations of mortals. The bodies were strewn along the beach, at least a few dozen, maybe more, it was hard to tell with the broken and mangled remains. But their bodies shimmered in Pelor’s light, scars with something ground into them to make them shimmer. The pattern floral on the back of the one closest to her, and in the center of the flower was a carved eye with three slashes..
Raiders were one thing, every two bit pirate and self styled warlord paid reverence to Gruumsh, but this was a cult of the scarred eye. Where other followers of the god of slaughter sought plunder, the cults saw slaughter itself as sacrament. They did not raid for plunder, it was a rite of transcending the weakness of flesh to join the eternal horde and raid the planes themselves. This was a different kind of dangerous. And so was the “monster,” a sole survivor gathering bodies for the profane pyres of Gruumsh, a figure covered in those same glittering scars, half dead, and just a boy. A boy likely saying goodby to his family as the afternoon’s frightful entertainment.
The atmosphere in the clearing was tense as Forge watched the monster – the child – at his work. The pyre he’d built was well-crafted, but the wood was wet, and it smoked and refused to catch flame the way a proper funeral pyre should.
As far as anyone in Quillpond was concerned, the child was a menace. The symbol marked in his scars was enough to tell Forge that his people took no prisoners, and showed no mercy. The evil which radiated from the shore was anathema to Moradin, the god Forge had followed for two hundred years.
After too many minutes of silence, Forge turned to face the youths in the clearing. “Go on home,” she said, waving them off. They left reluctantly, and only when she gave them her sternest glare. But she was clergy, and had served this town since most of their parents had been small, so they did as she said.
Alone on the overlook, Forge took off the cloak and mail. She placed them in a neat bundle on the ground, determined not to think of the mud stains, and picked her way down to the shoreline.
The boy didn’t notice her until she was almost to him, but picked up a broken oar and brandished it as a spear. Forge could see the scars clearly, tiny intricate designs over much of his body, cut in miniature so they would expand as he grew. The pain must have been incredible, but nothing compared to what he must be experiencing now. He roared at her, well, screamed, the sound was inhuman, but who could blame him.
Forge’s hand went reflexively to her side, where she’d once carried the warhammer that now hung over the mantle in her home. But it wasn’t there now. She’d put her days of battle behind her. She raised her hands in a gesture of peace.
The boy paused, he seemed confused by the gesture.
Forge took this as a good sign. Raising her voice over the rain, she said, “We don’t need to be enemies.”
The boy yelled something at her, the language completely unfamiliar, but the sound of a child trying to be an adult was all too familiar.
The boy’s skin glistened in the rain, and Forge couldn’t help admiring the work that had gone into decorating his body. It was probably done when he was child, a younger child, perhaps a pact sealed in his skin before he could fully understand the terms, or perhaps a record of the glory of his line…
Forge tried to speak to him again in Elvish, then in Dwarvish. She considered speaking the language of the gods, just to make him understand, but held back – better not to use such tongues in the presence of the Scarred Eye.
Whatever had happened to the boy’s crew – his family – hadn’t been kind to him. His leg was hastily bandaged, and she could see bruises forming under the glimmering scars. He ignored the wounds as he brandished the broken oar at her again, still not understanding her. She realized she wasn’t being menaced, he was preparing to be charged and trying to distract her.
He expected her to try to kill him, expected her to succeed, and in his battered state was still trying to win, or at least die in glory. He wasn’t confused by her words, as much as confused why she wasn’t trying to kill him.
He had a warrior’s heart, and Forge thought she could imagine the kind of man he might grow into. She lowered her hands slowly, coming to a decision. “You’re not going to die today,” she said, to herself as much as to him. She held out a hand, palm up, and thought about the warm hearth she wanted to go home to. She would take this child there, if he let her, and give him a good meal. He would rest and heal and know he was safe, and sooner or later – and Forge was already hoping it would be later – he would leave, strong and prepared for whatever destiny lay ahead of him. The flame that appeared in her hand was that hearth-flame, the promise of rest and safety, and its warmth filled the space between them, even through the pouring rain.
He lowered his oar and looked at her with suspicion, and finally spoke, but not in something she understood, but she could pick out the word Grummush. He looked over his shoulder at the pyre, with the profane sigils the boy had clumsily carved into the timber to proclaim the dead.
It was a blasphemy before Forge’s god to light such a pyre, to take part in a ceremony that glorified Gruumsh. Moradin was a god of creation, and Forge was a priestess of life. The god of the joy of slaughter was antithetical to everything their partnership represented.
But Forge had blasphemed for less.
She could practically hear Moradin’s laughter as she stepped towards the pyre, still holding the flame in front of her like a peace offering. She kept her eyes on the boy, careful to move slow so as not to spook him. When she came near the smoking, sputtering bonfire, she pointed, raising her eyebrows to ask for permission.
The boy raised the oar, throwing back his head and roared, for just a moment transfiguring him into the kind of terror he might inspire as an adult. The Raven Queen might claim the dead as her own, but today she would have to fight for them. Anger and pain radiated in the boy’s voice, but also defiance, and love. Forge used this to feed the flame in her hand. When the pyre lit, burning hot and bright, it was a reflection of what the boy felt, of what he had lost.
The riverbank was still strewn with bodies, and it wasn’t easy work hauling each of them into the blaze. Each time the mark of the eye caught alight it was profanity, and Forge was sure Moradin felt it as sharply as she did. But the child seemed invigorated by the flames, eager to lay his loved ones to the rest they would have wanted.
The boy chanted something in a language she didn’t understand, but she could feel the profanity of it, the cadence had been heard anywhere there was glory to the god of slaughter. As he did the oar snapped and the boy fell to his knees. He clearly wasn’t crying, it was just the rain. But it struck Forge as sharply as if she’d be hit by the oar after all. With that kind of strength, he could have killed the girl who found him, one more soul sacrificed to Grummush; instead, he’d allowed her to run.
Forge had raised many children in her life, and she’d buried most of them. Each of them was lodged permanently in her soul, the kind of heartbreak that could only come from unconditional love. She resolved then to break her heart again for this boy. “Vel’ual limbyr arrnadar’ni,” she murmured. Little blade, shining against the storm of the world.
They stayed there on the riverbank until nighttime; until the bonfire had burned down to ash. They didn’t speak. The boy watched the flames intently, and Forge wondered if this was part of the ritual, or if his own grief kept him from looking away until his family was truly gone. At long last, when the fire burned so low Forge couldn’t make out even a glowing ember, and the storm had blown away to wispy clouds barely visible against the starlight, Forge stood.
The boy hugged her hard enough to crack a rib and sobbed, all that terrible glory gave way under the weight of more terrible loss. Under all those glittering scars he was just a boy who had lost everything, broken as the ship they had burned.
That day, and that boy, seemed so far away from the 7 feet of half orc who had become her “grandson,” with his penchant for bringing home piles of fish and firewood. She was never sure how much he remembered from before the wreck, he struggled with the common tongue even now, and had become quite adept at using that to avoid questions he did not want to answer.
The intervening years had seen him grow into a strong, vital young man, and though people in town remained wary of him, their fear had largely subsided, with a few people even calling him friend. The brutality she saw on the shore that day had not dimmed, but there was a kindness, and humor which had fortified in him, more than Forge had hoped for. His name, she had learned, was Grummen, but she held onto the name she had given him that day. Vel’ni, little blade. Adar’ni, little world.