The Final Strife

Though the Ghostings were confined to the hull and the Dusters toiled the ropes, the Embers, as we have come to see, were leaders even then.

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Freed from what, you ask? Some say the God Anyme had believed now was the time to purge the world of their greed.

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Ey, you think you know the ending? I see you get up to leave, as if this is where we stop, the shores of the empire in sight?

Oh no, you forget, eight ships left the mainland before it sunk under the flames of Anyme’s wrath. But only two made it here, to the ground where we now stand. So what happened? Where did they go? Let me fill the meat in this flatbread sandwich. Listen to me. Listen to me.

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The wayfarers remarked at the strange wind that carried them forward. Blue and sparkling with grains of sand, a good omen they thought.

The raging fire behind them, glittering blue up ahead.

Three weeks they moved across the open ocean. The wind was their only guide. Then one day it stung and bit, the wind rubbing the cheeks of the sailors raw. So raw their skin ripped.

Then the waves churned up and threatened to capsize the ships, twisting and turning in the sea’s grip. Some of you think it was the tidewind that took them, those six vessels lost, tossed in the waves. But the griots know that another horror rose up, up, and up from the depths of the sea.

A being not of nightmares but of nightmare itself. The Tannin is the creature that holds your body captive when your mind wakes in bed. The shadows in the cupboard and the darkness in your head. Longer than the Tongue across the Ruta River, wider than the gates of the Keep.

With teeth of stone and scales of glass, the Tannin roams the Marion Sea. It roams and owns the waters, its nest, its home. And so when the ships invaded unbeknownst to them, the great serpent rose up from the sea, and chewed up six ships, while the others got free.

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I see disbelief in your eyes, you up there, but why don’t you go for a swim, go into the Tannin’s lair? I’ve heard the fishermen speak of a churn in the water, the flick of a fin, or a shadow, too big to slaughter.

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Now those who did survive, guided by the tidewind as they were, found a world ready to shape, a graveyard of ruins ready to rise.

That’s the filling in our flatbread, though I didn’t promise it wouldn’t be rancid. As ever, I leave you a warning, don’t board a ship in the Marion Sea, and don’t ever, ever be stranded.