SNAKE

The departure from Ormas was a quiet affair.
The city was saved, but the cost of the siege was etched on every face.
We left Triton and the bulk of his crew behind, tasked with overseeing repairs, re-establishing trade, and ensuring the Obsidian Maw was ready for our return.
It felt, almost, strange to walk away from the great ship having been on it for some time, to leave the scent of the sea for the deep, loamy smell of the earth once more.

Mayor Theron had provided us with our guide, a quiet, sharp-eyed woman named Elara whose family had hunted in the foothills of the Neoth Range for generations.
For three days, she led us through ancient, winding forests and across rolling green hills.
The land was beautiful, and it was easy to forget that Dietha even existed in it all.

It was on the fourth day that we found the village.
It wasn't on Elara's maps.
Nestled in a perfectly secluded valley, it was a picture of idyllic peace.
Smoke curled lazily from the chimneys of immaculate, timber-framed houses.
A small, well-tended field of grain swayed in the gentle breeze.
The sign at the entrance read: MEADOWBROOK. WELCOME, TRAVELLERS.

But as we walked down the single, unnaturally clean street, a strong sense of wrongness settled over me.
It was the silence.
There were no children laughing, no dogs barking, no clang of a blacksmith's hammer or chatter from an open tavern door.
Villagers paused their work to watch us pass, their faces adorned with placid, welcoming smiles that did not, for a single moment, reach their eyes.
It was as a sterile quiet.

"This place feels... off," I murked to Cassandra, who was walking beside me.

"It's too quiet," she whispered back, her hand resting near the hilt of her rapier. "Peace is one thing. This is something else. It's repressed."

Before we could say more, a man emerged from the largest building, a combination of a meeting hall and a shrine.
He was elderly, with a long white beard and robes of simple, undyed wool.
His smile was the widest and most unnerving of them all.

"Blessings of the mountain upon you, travellers," he said, his voice unnaturally smooth. "It is a rare thing to have visitors. I am Elder Maeve. Welcome to Meadowbrook, a sanctuary of peace in these troubled times."

Tulote, ever the diplomat, stepped forward.

"We thank you for your welcome, Elder. I am Tulote, and these are my companions, Arda and Cassandra. We are on our way to the Neoth peaks and are in need of a night's rest."

"Providence has guided you to our door," Maeve said, his eyes crinkling in that hollow smile. "All are welcome who seek shelter from the storm of the world. We have little, but what we have, we share feely. Please, be our guests. Rest. Eat. Find peace in the valley's embrace."

His hospitality was as immaculate and unsettling as the village itself.
As he led us towards the guesthouse, I felt the stares of the villagers on my back.
They weren't curious; they were watchful.
Appraising.

-

That evening, Tulote's revealed to us his strategy, apparently he too had picked up on the unnatural nature of this place. 
His plan was clear and multipronged, as his plan for Ormas had been.
We split up, each trying to uncover something that could confirm or deny our suspicions.
Tulote accepted the Elder's invitation for tea, a diplomatic meeting to probe the village's history and governance.
Cassandra, with a whispered promise to "see what the shadows have to say," melted away into the twilight.
My task was to mingle, to try to find a genuine human connection in this place of unnerving quiet.

I morphed the Gladius into a normal steel-alloy sword, to not draw much attention.
I found my way to the village smithy.
It was the only place that felt remotely real, the air thick with coal smoke and tasting of hot iron.
A figure was working at the forge, their back to me.
They were working on the anvil.
As the figure turned to quench a glowing piece of metal, I saw it was a dwarf.
A woman, built solid as mountain stone, with soot smudged on her cheeks and a magnificent braid of fiery red hair that fell over one shoulder.

She noticed me and her hammering stopped. Her eyes, the colour of hardened steel, narrowed with suspicion.

"What do you want?"

Her voice was a low, gravelly rumble.

"Just admiring your work," I said, nodding towards the anvil. "You've got a good arm. Reminds me of the metalworkers back on my ship."

"I'm not a 'metalworker'" she grunted, placing the cooled iron on a rack. "I'm a blacksmith. And you're with them, aren't you? The nobles."

She spat the word like it was a curse, her gaze flicking towards the guest house where Tulote and Cassandra were.

"Come to bless us poor folk with your presence?"

Her hostility was the most honest emotion I had encountered all day.
It was refreshing.

"I'm no noble," I said, holding up my hands, showing her the calluses. "My name is Arda. I was a labourer before all this. A father."

She eyed my hands, her expression softening by a fraction of a degree.

"Nobles don't get calluses like that I suppose."

She wiped her own hands on a leather apron.

"I'm Xerta."

"Pleasure to meet you, Xerta. Is it always this quiet around here?"

She shrugged, her gaze darting around the empty street as if checking for eavesdroppers.

"Elder Maeve calls it 'contemplative peace.' Says it's how we keep the darkness from our valley."

Her tone was laced with a cynicism so thick you could cut it with one of her chisels.

"And you believe him?" I pressed gently.

Xerta gave a short, bitter laugh. 

"I believe in good steel and a strong hammer. The rest is just words."

She looked me up and down.

"You're not like them. You don't have that... smell. The one that says you think you're better than everyone else."

Before I could ask what she meant, the bell from the central shrine tolled.
Xerta's face tightened.

"Evening offering. You should go. Wouldn't want to miss the Elder's blessings."

There was a clear warning in her voice.
As I left, she turned back to her forge.

-

We reconvened in our room an hour later.

"The Elder speaks only in platitudes," Tulote reported, "He claims they trade with no one and live off the bounty of the valley, a bounty provided by their faith in 'the coming peace.' When I asked about the demon armies in the mountains, he claimed their piety acted as a shield. It's nonsense. Well-rehearsed, but nonsense."

"It's worse than nonsense," Cassandra said, "It's a lie. I followed the villagers to the shrine for their 'offering.' They left baskets of food, tools, and woven blankets. After they left, a group of Maeve's acolytes collected the offerings and took them not into the shrine, but out a hidden back gate and up a trail into the mountains."

She looked at us, her eyes dark,

"And that's not all. In the cellar beneath the shrine, there are cells. Empty, but recently used. And on the walls of each cell, carved over and over, is a single symbol."

She drew it in the dust on the floor: a jagged, spiralling eye.

The symbol of Dietha.

"Xerta was right, it's not piety protecting this village."

Tulote's face was like thunder.

"It's a tithe," he growled. "They are feeding the demon army in the mountains. They are sacrificing their own people and their supplies in exchange for their own safety."

"They're fanatics," Cassandra corrected. "They're not just appeasing Dietha. They're worshipping her. They believe if they server her, they'll be spared when she finally consumes the world."

The silence in the village was not peace.
It was of fear and terror.

It was the terrified silence of the herd, riled by a pack of wolves who had convinced them that sacrificing a few sheep now and then would keep the rest of the pack at bay.

"Oh well, I guess no rest for us." I said.

"You know what we have to do."

-

The catalyst came the next morning.
Maeve's acolytes, their faces serene and implacable, went to the door of a small cottage and brought out a young family - a man, woman, and their two small children.
The parents were weeping silently, but they didn't struggle.
The rest of the village watched, their faces blank masks of practiced indifference.

"They are going on a blessed pilgrimage to the mountain shrine," Elder Maeve announced to the village square. "To offer their devotion and find eternal peace."

"'Pilgrimage' my arse," a voice roared. "You're sending them to their deaths, you old bastard!"

Xerta stood in the centre of the square, a massive, two-handed smithing hammer held at the ready in her hands.
Her face was a mask of pure, undiluted fury. She had finally had enough.

"Xerta, you forget yourself," Maeve said, his calm demeanour cracking for the first time. "Do not interfere with the Great Plan."

"Here's my plan," she spat, and charged.

She had no magic, nor divine powers.
But she moved with a surprising speed, her hammer a blur of motion.
The first two acolytes who moved to intercept her were sent flying, their breastplates crumpling like tin under the force of her blows.
She was an incredible duellist.
Her fighting style as brutal and practical as the forge she commanded.

That was our cue.

The battle for the soul of Meadowbrook erupted.
I was at Xerta's side in a heartbeat, removing its mask of a steel-alloy sword, the Gladius Nobullus shone with its calm, white light.
As she fought with raw, furious power, I fought with precision.
She would shatter a shield with her hammer; and I would charge in and disarm her opponent, not even bothering to focus on glyphs.
I felt a strange kinship with her, another person fighting not for glory or titles, but for the simple, decent thing.

"I've got your back!" I yelled over the din.

She glanced at me, a look of shocked gratitude in her eyes.

"Then let's give 'em hell!"

Tulote unleashed himself upon the acolytes. 
He strode into the fray, his Flamma a raging inferno.
He didn't bother with subtle manipulations of earth; he raised great, jagged pillars of stone that toppled buildings where cultists were hiding.
He was the demigod of war they had only ever read about, his fury all the more terrible for having been so long restrained.

Cassandra ignored the foot soilders, her target was the leadership.
She flickered from shadow to shadow, and one by one, Maeve's inner circle of fanatics collapsed, a thin line of blood at their throats, their eyes wide with a surprise they had never had time to process.

Seeing the heroes and Xerta fighting, seeing the cult's enforcers falling, something broke in the villagers.
A single farmer, his face contorted with years of repressed rage, charged an acolyte with a pitchfork.
Then another joined, and another.
The fear had been broken, and a flood of rebellion swept through the square.

I cornered Elder Maever as he tried to flee towards the shrine.
He held up a hand, his face a mask of insane piety.

"You cannot stop the coming of Chaos! Dietha will reward her faithful!"

"There are no rewards for collaborators," I said.

With the flat of my blade, I knocked him unconscious.
The fight was over.

-

In the aftermath, we stood in the now-truly-peaceful village square.
The tyranny was broken.
The family was safe.
The villagers, led by a tired but triumphant Xerta, were rounding up the last of the cultists.

I found her leaning against her anvil, cleaning her hammer.

"You're a hell of a fighter, Xerta," I said.

"I'm a blacksmith," she replied, though the edge was gone from her voice. "I know how to hit things hard."

She looked at Tulote and Cassandra, who were directing the villagers with a calm authority.
Her expression was still wary.

"I still don't trust nobles." The she looked at me. "But you... you fight like a man with something to lose. I can trust that."

"We're heading into the mountains," I said. "To Kaelen's Peak. To break the siege for good. Your home is still in danger. We could use a hammer like yours."

She was silent for a long moment, looking at the faces of the villagers she had just helped to free.
"This valley isn't free until the mountain is," she finally said. "I'm not doing it for your Lord Regent or his Elf Queen." 

She met my gaze, her steel-grey eyes clear and determined.

"I'm doing it for them. And for you, Arda. You're alright for an outlander."

She hefted her hammer onto her shoulder.
A new fellowship had been forged.
As the four of us gathered around the maps later that evening, planning our final ascent, I felt a new sense of completeness.
We were not just a trio of legends. 
We were now four disparate souls.

A lord, a queen, a hero... and a blacksmith.

Together, we were going to bring down a mountain.