The Forge

JP with Bandorchu and Winteroak

As her comrades spoke and vented their frustrations at what life had thrown their way in the last year, she thought she started to hear something on the distance. A dull, yet familiar sound seemed to be echoing in the distance. She perked up, looking around the room wondering where the sound was coming from.

It was a low repetitive this that reminded her of metal striking metal. It echoed all across the cave but looking at the others she immediately could tell no one else could hear it.

She felt her breath grow slower as the pounding sound grew louder and louder.

Alexis knew the sound. It reminded her of the common sounds one would hear in a smithy, as if someone was tempering hot metal.

It should not be calming, hearing a sound that didn’t belong here at all, and that only she could hear.

Another sign of her dwindling sanity, she had to assume.

Yet this one awoke memories of home, the smithy in her home village. She could still the remember the day her father had taken her there.

She couldn’t help but listen.

The acrid smell of smelting smithy and forges filled the air replacing the smell of unwashed bodies, sweat and blood. The cave seemed to slowly fill with grayish smoke make her blink her eyes and concentrate on her friends. She wanted to speak, asking them if they heard and saw what she did, but she couldn't.

She closed her eyes, breathing, trying to focus her mind. And when she opened them again she was elsewhere. Another cave. One where the pounding sound of an hammer echoed in her very soul.

She turned to see an old man, with grey long hair, dressed in a simple tunic, working on a forge. She knew him immediately. She had seen his statue before. Fosia, Gatekeeper of Magma, the blood-life of Fang.