The Ember Blade (Fantasy, English, 5:24)
Description
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Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Cameron Mann, the ember blade, keep faith and hold fast and we will free our land. Edri had said that not three days passed as he stood on the battlements of the Keep at Salt Fork and watched the enemy closing in side by side with his brothers and sisters. Pride swelling his chest and angry defiance in his eye. It had felt like truth. He knew better. Now, the forest whipped and scratched him as he clambered up a muddy slope, breath, burning his lungs and a cold fist of terror in his gut. Dirk labored through the undergrowth in his wake, white with exhaustion. The older man was at his limit of endurance. It was plain but his slumped shoulders and the vacant look in his eyes. Edri called him the last few paces to the top where Dirk bent over, pulling in air like a man near drowned. He scanned the forest fearfully while his companion recovered the trees were loud with birdsong dude leaves stirring in the dawn light. There was no sign of their pursuers yet, but he could hear the emperor's hounds through the trees. You go on, Dirk said raggedly. He had the flat stare of a dead man. I'm done. Edri had known Dirk for less than a season and liked him for none of it. He was a low sort, fond of drink and spitting and the kind of rough humor that made Edick uncomfortable. Edri was a frustrated young man with lordly blood looking for a way to define himself. Dirk was an illiterate ironmonger with nothing left to lose, but Salt Fork had brought them together, united them in common cause even when everything lay in ruins, Ari would not let go of that. He pulled Dirk upright. You'll run Edri said, and when you can't, I'll carry you together. They stumbled on. He'd always known Salt Fork would be the end of him. But he dreamed a different end than this. 50 of them had seized that town 50 who dared to stand against their oppressors. Their act of defiance was to be the spark that would ignite the fire of the rebellion in their people. He never expected to survive, but at least his name would be remembered in glorious song. The Bards would sing a different tune. Now they'd sing of how the townsfolk resistance crumbled. As soon as the Croton army came into sight how the crowds threw open the gates and tried to arrest the men and women who led them astray hoping to trade them for crow and mercy. They'd sing of a symbolic escape through smugglers tunnels with the ringleaders fleeing for their lives as the soldiers marched in, they'd sing a failure and they'd sing it in the tongue of their overlords. He'd seen Ren swallowed by the mob. He was trying to reason with Ella had died defending him, killed by a stone to the head. He didn't know if any of the others had survived in the confusion. He'd lost everyone but Dirk, perhaps there'd be a rendezvous days from now. Some message left at a dead drop but he wouldn't be there to read it. The emperor's Huntsman had chased them through the night and drew closer with every hour they want to see another sunset and both of them knew it. A temple loomed suddenly from the trees towering before them. The side of it brought them to a halt. Its walls had been breached by the forest. And a Masi Kulla lay in the ruins near the entrance, balcony, domes and soaring vaults had been gnawed by time's appetite. Yet still it stood in testament to its makers into elegant masterpiece from a lost world. Dirk's legs shook and he fell to his hands and knees. Edri stared, wide eyed exhaustion had drained him of emotion. Even his fear had been numbed. But now he felt a sense of wonder which slowed his hammering heart. Once his people had been great, they led the world in art, theater, medicine, architecture, philosophy, astronomy, and the ways of war. Their empire had spanned the known lands and Asia had been the home of heroes, but that was the past and the past was long behind them. Their empire had faded centuries before Asia had been under a croon boot for 30 years now, longer than Edri had been alive. He'd never known true freedom. And so in the end, he'd gone searching for it. The collapse of the Salt Fork uprising and the long and frantic night that followed, had shaken his faith. He cursed himself over and over for staking his life on a naive dream of revolution. Yet here before this silent monument, he found new strength, the blood of its builders still ran in his veins. And one day his people would cast off their chains.