After the defeat of the slavers, word had spread quickly around the major townships of Nocturne. Within weeks, the tribal kings of the other six settlements and their emissaries had greeted the leaders of Hesiod and asked to meet the black-smiter’s son who was rapidly becoming a legend.
As he hung precariously on the rocky precipice, Vulkan considered this would be a poor end for such a figure. He slipped and for a moment thought it was over. A sense of falling overtook him, but he reached out to salvage a desperate handhold on a lower crag. Dust and grit fell in a hard rain, beating against his body, but he held on.
Though his heart was hammering like a hammer upon an anvil in his chest, he tried not to breathe too deeply. This close to the lava trench, the air was a poisonous miasma thick with sulphurous alkalis. He could already feel the blistering around his nose and the skin of his throat. An ordinary man would have died long before now. It only enhanced the belief that he was not truly of these people, that Nocturne was not his birth home. Vulkan’s father, N’bel, had said as much to him before the tournament. He had promised to seal the vault below the forge and did so, but he couldn’t suppress the truth. Vulkan had asked him outright before the events began but the answer hadn’t come. N’bel, stifled by looming grief, couldn’t tell him. Perhaps now, he never would and Vulkan would be forever ignorant of his origins.
Fingers stiff as stone, his arm burning like all the fires of the forge were ignited in it, Vulkan thought about letting go of the hide. With both hands he could probably clamber up the rock face to safety. The bubbling, cracking refrain of the lava below seemed to urge him, or maybe it was trying to entice him to fall.
The last eight days had taken their toll, though. Vulkan didn’t know what strength was left in his limbs. In truth, he could barely feel them anymore and had to constantly fight a strange sense of weightlessness that threatened to loosen his grip unconsciously.
“You will not beat me.”
He spoke the words aloud to galvanise himself.
The lava crackled below in what was beginning to sound like rumbling laughter.
It baffled reason how the pale-faced stranger had managed to match him through every trial. No one knew where he had come from, though some suspected he hailed from the nomadic tribes of Ignea. Vulkan doubted it. When he’d come into the town, this Outlander, as he’d come to be known, was wearing garb unfamiliar to any Nocturnean. From Heliosa to Themis, there were cultural derivations amongst the people of the planet but they shared common traits. The Outlander shared none.
His boasts were utterly audacious. Vulkan remembered the derision he’d caused when claiming he could best anyone in the town, even the champion of Hesiod, in the tournament. Out of respect, perhaps sheer disbelief, Vulkan had kept a straight face.
“Let him enter if he wishes,” he’d said privately to N’bel when questioned. “The fool will either give up or lose his life to the mountain. Let the anvil decide.”
Considering his current situation, those comments now seemed remarkably short-sighted.
Below him, the river of molten rock beckoned and thrust Vulkan back to his potentially fatal present.
How could he fail? What would his people think of him if this pallid outsider beat him?
Vulkan clung to the drake hide by its long tail. As it drifted in the hot vapours emanating from the lava trench he knew he had to sacrifice his pride for the sake of his life. He was about to loosen his grip when he heard a cry from across the craggy mountain summit.
“Vulkan!”
Peering through a thickening belt of smoke, Vulkan saw the hazy outline of the stranger in the distance. The Outlander was bounding over the rocks towards him. Over his shoulder was the largest drake hide Vulkan had ever seen. He blinked back the stinging sensation in his eyes, trying to be sure it wasn’t just a mirage caused by exhaustion and the sulphurous air.
The hide in Vulkan’s defiant grasp was huge, but this… this was massive. It easily eclipsed that of the Nocturnean and suddenly Vulkan’s pride felt all the cheaper because of it.
Moving swiftly, the Outlander hoisted the immense pelt from his back and cast it into a vast lava pool that stood between him and the rocky outcrop where Vulkan was clinging on. Bridging the bubbling morass with the hide, the Outlander leapt across and landed on the other side. Rushing to the edge of the precipice, he thrust his hand down and seized Vulkan’s wrist.
“Hold on…”
In a feat of incredible strength, the stranger lifted Vulkan to safety, drake hide and all.
Exhausted, they lay upon the barren rock for a time before the Outlander rose and helped Vulkan to his feet.
In the distance, the lava pool had claimed the Outlander’s mighty prize.
“We can’t go back that way,” he said, with no hint of remorse.
Vulkan clapped the Outlander’s shoulder, feeling some of his strength returning.
“You saved my life.”
“If you hadn’t clung on as long as you did I might not have been afforded the opportunity to do so.”
Vulkan looked to the lava pool where the last remnants of the drake hide were gradually being consumed.
“You could have returned to the town as champion.”
“At a cost of my opponent’s life? What kind of hollow victory would that have been?”
Swollen flakes of ash were clouding the air and the breeze brought with it the stench of burning. It promised fire to come.
“The mountain is not yet done,” Vulkan said. “It may erupt again. We should go back to Hesiod.”
The Outlander nodded and the two of them began the long climb back down the mountain.
CELEBRATION GREETED VULKAN upon his return. The entire township, together with the chieftains and emissaries of the other six settlements of Nocturne, had gathered to witness the conclusion of the tournament.
N’bel was amongst the first to see his son back safely. Though he was not quite the hulk of a man he used to be, the black-smiter embraced Vulkan fiercely.
“You did it, boy. I knew you would.” He turned, his arm sweeping across the buoyant crowd behind him. “All of Nocturne hails you.”
The shouts of his name echoed loudly in Vulkan’s ears. Tribal kings came forwards to greet him and bask in his reflected glory. Bellows of affirmation and fealty rang out alongside the vigorous applause of the throng. Only the Outlander was still and quiet, his gaze on Vulkan. But there was no judgement, no quarrel in his eyes. He just watched.
Ban’ek, the tribal king of Themis, came to the front of the crowd and bowed approvingly at the tournament champion.
“A worthy trophy,” he said, gesturing to the drake scale hide still slung over Vulkan’s shoulder. “You will look noble indeed with it as your mantle.” Vulkan had almost forgotten it was there. “No,” he uttered simply. Ban’ek was nonplussed. “I don’t understand.” Vulkan shook his head. “All of this, your adulation and acclaim, it is underserved.” He took the hide from off his shoulder and presented it to the Outlander.