Saki was hardly able to make out a word the knight said from all the hustle and bustle of the Claywind market. The mixed chatter of butchers selling prime cuts of cattle to royal chefs, while the peasants ate ox tongue. Leatherworkers making bold claims that they had ‘the best dragonhide in all of Luna’, even the fletchers had been in on the marketing, claiming that the fletching of their arrows came from a hen which laid golden eggs! It was all extravagant nonsense, and nothing more than the seeds of merchants blossoming into capital. 

“Here’s my platemail, pauldrons, sabatons, sword, shield and gauntlets. I need them all refined by sunrise and not a moment after.” 

The knight, sporting only chainmail and his smallclothes, dropped the hefty metal armaments onto the table. This was accompanied by a tragedy of unpleasant tones that caused Saki's fluffy ears to fold back and her face to squint, as if the clamoring of metallic plates were like nails on charcoal porcelain. The cacophony completely drowned out the busy streets.  

“Hey.. can you watc-”

She was cut off by another, much more pleasant sound: The jingling of a coin purse. It fell next to the armor and made a musical symphony composed of wealth, which was vastly superior.

“Consider it done!” Saki chirped, though he had already walked away. “Or my name isn’t Saki Ironfox, Legendary Blacksmith, whose wares are forged with the very breath of a dragon!”

Perhaps spending her days in this carnival of merchants rubbed off on her a bit. She had no forge which was powered by dragon's breath, no hammer gifted to her by Thor, no Anvil crafted from the guts of the legendary airship Bismark. She never had any of that, anyone or anything.

An old run down anvil, with bumps and dents and which seemed second-hand, a furnace which could barely reach the temperature she needed for her craft, and a blacksmith’s hammer, which was taped and nailed together with a shabby handle. These were the things she had. 

The smile- which she faked for the man- quickly faded once he was out of sight, and she wrapped her arms around the pile of heavy armor. Struggle made the corners of her mouth quiver slightly as she lifted the heavy pieces of gear from her countertop and over to the smithy a few feet away. 

Placing both hands on her slender back, she pressed against her spine and worked out the tense muscles; a signal that she was about to start a long night of work. However, before any of that, she wanted to check just how much she was making off of this venture. Checking the payment before he left would have been a fruitless endeavor- It was not like she was able to refuse a royal knight, regardless of pay.

Her hands, as soft as the day she was born -a quirk of kitsune heritage-, opened the coin purse and began to count her taking. Thirty-three coins, for a job which was easily worth the effort of three hundred. Pitiful. It was backbreaking work, but it allowed her to live with comfortable buoyancy above the poverty line.

“Damned Kingdom of Fire knights… always trying to underhand honest craftsmen.” She spoke as a hypocrite, her entire sales pitch designed around the art of swindling.

As the skies above had already grown to the color of muck, the glow of her green eyes lit up the smithy in a pleasant contrast. She began work on the suit of armor, using her hammer to knock out any kinks and running the outer layers of the metal over a heated vent from the side of the furnace.  This shot out a bright flame, allowing the plating to become malleable with enough exposure. 

Once she had properly got all the scuffs out in order to rinse away the metallic residue left behind from the rough abrasive, she took to the sander and ran a cool jug of water over the base of the mail, once she had properly got all the scuffs out in order to rinse away the metallic residue left behind from the rough abrasive.

Finally, to finish up the armor she picked up another jug, this time filled with oil, and poured some onto a damp rag. She started to polish and buff out any minor imperfections of the armor. This entire process took a couple of hours from start to finish and was just one of many pieces she needed to work on before sunrise. 

“Some days.. This takes me back..” she whispered to herself.

She reflected for a moment on her profession and the memories that came with it. The diligence she exercised with the craft reflected in her upbringing living on the streets of Claywind as an orphan. Saki was very analytical as a child, and discovered an unrivaled passion for staring into the bowels of a smith’s furnace and crafting a multitude of fine art out of steel and brimstone. 

From across the busy street of the local Blacksmith, she watched and took notes in her head about the multitude of steps it took to make a blade, the delicate nature of repairing suits of armor after a bloody war and, resisting the heat of the forge to craft such beautiful instruments of life and death.

As a child she had used this information to craft toy weapons for herself and the other orphans of Claywind. Not having the tools to venture into the mines at such an age, Saki instead opted to gather clay from the riverbanks. She had smelted her resources using a makeshift furnace she made from the sticks of a campfire and a metallic pan with openings and slits cut from around it to allow proper ventilation and airflow to fuel the fire. 

Her first few attempts were a disaster. Overheating the clay, failing to mold them into proper “weapons”. But she never gave up. She was the opposite of a goldbrick. She was worth something, and she wanted to prove that to herself more than she ever wanted to prove it to her peers. Before long she had crafted them an entire set of clay weapons! 

“I’ll never go hungry again”. She spoke in a ‘matter-of-fact’ tone to no one but herself. Taking in all that she had become and was yet to be. 

Saki was interrupted by the comically loud growling of her stomach contradicting her own words. A hearty laugh escaped her lips as she pat her tummy and stood up from her work bench.

“Suppose it’s time for a little lunch break! There’s probably a few vendors still open serving the graveyard shift after all.” 

Snatching up the coin purse from her workbench, she ventured off down the streets of Claywind market in search of a place to fill her stomach, foreshadowing a long night of work still to come.

Saki was floating in an absence of space. Her body, an absence of weight. Her mind, an absence of thought. But her heart remained heavy with playful resolve. The abstract scenery around her warped into a series of past memories; flashes of a childhood alone and afraid raced through her vision. 

The colors of her memories bled out in the most literal sense, with a mixture of varying hue’s being drawn into a pool at her feet. Her memories, now a monochrome vista, were laid out before her. 

Suddenly, out of the puddle swirling beneath her, two figures began to manifest. Their form was fuzzy, murky and obscured with a fog. One took on a slender, shorter build, with the other figure built in complete contrast. Saki was unable to make out most of the pair’s features, but one thing she -was- able to take note of was the rough outline of fox ears on the two. 

She felt an instinctual connection to the pair radiating a warmth through her heart. Saki opened her mouth to speak, but words refused to come out. The lack of a tangible existence around her smothered verbal exclamations. 

“What kind of blacksmith sleeps on the job?” one of the figures spoke.

“What a waste, suppose you get what you pay for.” the other chimed.

Saki had no time to be confused as the startling sound of the knight’s palms slamming down on the table woke her from a deep sleep. The sudden impact with the wooden countertop caused a tall stein to start rolling from the table. Reverberating echoes of the glass trailing to the edge of the surface before crashing into pieces on the floor caused her ears to fold back again. 

She had been drinking again, and when Saki drank, work did not get done. 

“Ah, good morning sir!” Saki tried to play it cool before the knight. That fake smile growing on her face was a stark contrast to the throbbing hangover-induced headache she was starting to feel. 

“It’s sunrise. Where’s my armor, peasant?” 

Saki’s eyes narrowed to confused slits, as she was still taking time to process his question.

“Your armor?”

“My patience is thin this morning. Where. Is. My. ARMOR!” the knight yelled.  

A realization sprung into her mind, as she turned her gaze towards the pile of the knight’s armor she had begun work on before her drunken festivities began. She had only finished working on one piece, the chestplate.

With haste she bounced up from her seat and ran over to the pile. Saki’s fingers fiddling clumsily with the jug of oil, as she attempted to at least polish the remaining pieces before she brought them back to the man. 

Never before had she messed up -this- badly. This knight was practically royalty, the strong arm of the law, the judge, jury and executioner! Saki gulped deeply in fear. She didn’t want to think about the repercussions this could have for her. She just wanted to continue on as if nothing happened… so she did.

“Here you go sir!” Saki hauled the heavy load from the smithy to the counter with a false sense of bravado. 

“Thank you for your kind patronage. You knights are the backbone of the Fire Kingdom, you know! Without you, I wouldn’t have the freedom to run my own smithy!” she said with a big, cheshire-like grin.

“The last thing the Fire Kingdom needs is a drunkard like you, who can’t even follow simple instructions. I said by sunrise and not a moment after.”  the Knight spat from his lips, with a sense of superiority as he suited himself up in the various royal armaments that laid before him.

 “This level of negligence and irresponsibility belongs nowhere within our borders. You’re lucky I have places to be, peasant." His comments were ironic, considering he had yet to notice the lack of work she put in.

“I will keep that in mind, sir, and a mistake like that won’t happen again! Thank you!” She bowed to the knight, chastising herself infront of him and her body language begging for forgiveness. 

Before Saki had even finished her sentence, the knight had taken leave from the shop. He walked away and tightened the last strap of his pauldron, fading into the crowd.. She breathed a sigh of relief as she lost sight of him and held her fingertips to the bridge of her nose. What was going to drive her to an early death first? Her incompetence or the pulsating of her head post-hangover? 

“I really gotta put down the bottle one of these days.” she said under her breath, while taking her seat.

The dark shade of the clouds overhead brought with it the smell of distant rain.

“That’s great.” Saki said sarcastically. “Gonna get soaked again. Really have to invest in something more than a back alley smithy with hardly any shelter.”

Rather than get to work trying to cover her tools in what little shelter she had, Saki laid her head on the table and focused all of her energy into soothing the hammer that was pounding against the inside of her head. 

She focused on her recent memories, the night she had out at the pub drinking and eating with other locals. She focused on her dreams, the one she had been rudely woken up from specifically. This calming of her body in order to alleviate the symptoms of her boozy night soon got the best of Saki with her eyes growing heavy and a gentle snore escaping her nostrils as she faded back into wonderland.

"We need a plan. Fast." spat the wizard beneath blue and white robes, with various splotches of charred fabric exposing his bare skin. The faint emblem of the Kingdom of Ice- a mountain on a snowy field- was etched into the chest.

"She's a bloody monster." The taller warrior added. His armor, a similar hue to the robes of the wizard, gave more protection from the onslaught of scorching flames and balls of cinder. "We can't let a monster like that take one step into the Ice Kingdom."

A few paces behind the warrior lay the body of a woman,with bow and quiver holstered to her back. She was unresponsive, and the fresh scent of burnt flesh lingered in the air. The sputtering flickers of flame singed the fabric that still clung to her body. 

Before the remaining fighters was a flaming beast of a humanoid in the shape of a woman lacking any semblance of traditional clothing, with swirling strands of flame covering her most reserved areas. Her hand was raised and at the ready, with another ball of fire manifesting in her palm, ready to be hurled at moments notice. 

The warrior charged forward, headfirst into the dangerous creature. 

"Wait you fool." Cried the wizard. 

With a quick shift in his stance the warrior lifted his hefty war-axe and flung it forward in an attempt to slice through the threat. It was pointless. With a wave of her hand the flameweaver heated the air around her with a fire hotter than the depths of hell.

Droplets of sweat which dripped down the man's face began to boil seconds before they evaporated in a flash. The inferno was so volatile it melted the hilt from the warrior's weapon and left the weight of the axehead to fall to the floor between them.

It wasn't but a few seconds before the smell of burnt flesh raced through the nostrils of the Wizard. The warrior falling to his knees and landing flat onto the dirt beneath the fiery creature's feet. 

"Bloody fool. Charging a flame elemental head on is akin to suicide." his voice grew more nervous by the second. 

The wizard turned tail and began to run from the elemental. Making for a cave system a few hundred yards away. The elemental launched a flurry of fireballs at the Wizard with a few landing against his backside and scorching his robes more. 

The woman walked forward in pursuit. Her bare feet singed the ground beneath her and set flame to the cool grassy plains around them with each step forward. She wasn't fast enough to catch up with him before he ducked into the cave system. 

Any wise person with a clear mind would see that this was a trap. Perhaps it was arrogance which caused her to come to the mouth of the cave. She had just dispatched two of her aggressors, what was one more?

Like a lion stalking its prey she walked into the cave and lit up the walls around her. She called out to the wizard, as if she were taunting him. 

"You dare challenge the Queen of Flames Emarosa and then you run? Coward." 

Her eyes darted around the room catching small glimpses of shadows flickering against the walls. She was going to catch this man, and kill him. The sound of boots shuffling against the rocky floor were a quick indication of where he was. 

"Gotcha." She exclaimed. Raising a hand to summon a ball of fire. Her body started to illuminate the silhouette of the man before her. His staff was raised at the ready. 

She took a single step but was physically unable to take another. The wizard played her, the time spent in the dark cave allowing him to chant out the incantations of a bind spell. But that wasn't all; as a magic sigil took root from beneath her feet and a trembling from within the cave began. 

"I will banish you back to the hells you came from. The Ice Kingdom shall never know your treachery." The wizard roared. Staff pointed directly at her body. "ya kurves ossveth zurkn ekess osshi jhizossh arir dhivu!"

The rumbling grew in intensity as large cracks formed in the walls and ceiling of the cave. Large bits of the overhanging cobblestone falling around the elemental as her hand arches back and she flung her fireball at the wizard. 

The ball of flames struck the wizard square in the chest causing him to crumple to the floor, but it was far too late of a blow. The incantation had been brought to a close, and the binding of magical chains continued to slither up her body. 

She put up a struggle, trying her best to break free until the final bits of light from outside the caves entrance were cut off from the crumbling ceiling, and with it, she became buried beneath the rubble of the cave. The elemental becoming one with the mountains and returning to the very nature from which she was born. 

The howling wind nipped at Saki’s face with tiny fragments of snow getting blown against her delicate skin. Winter had arrived in Claywind and with it the harsh northwestern breeze from the Kingdom of Ice. 

This wasn’t the first winter she had gone through in Claywind and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The lack of finances from a poor fall turnover at her hole-in-the-wall smithy made things a bit worse this time however. 

She could sell her body to the lonely men of the town if she really needed the money, as she had in the past, but this was a venture she didn’t enjoy doing. She had very little attraction to men and despite her small, innocent, smooth figure being a big asset, every time she had to lay with a stranger for gold it was like sandpaper against her dignity.

Saki wrapped herself in her blanket and curled closer to the smithing furnace which was sputtering the final few flames from its reserves.

“Suppose I’d better grab some more coal," she said to herself. Talking to herself in times like these as one of the only ways she was able to mentally make it past a harsh winter. 

Luckily she lived only a few hours on foot from the nearest mine which bordered the Kingdom of Ice. It was dangerous traveling along an area like that as the tension between the warring nations was at it’s peak along the borders, but what else was she to do? Freeze to death in the coming winter?

Saki reached for her pickaxe and strapped it onto her traveling bag as she made a mental note of whatever reserves she had for the journey she was about to take: 

- The last bag of salted cow meat which she had dried into a jerky.

- A waterskin for drinking filled to the brim.

- Two loaves of bread which had begun to mold in some parts

- A collection of dried berries and fruits which she had wrapped in mint leaves.

- A couple of glass jars 

- Flint and Steel for building a makeshift fire.

It wasn’t a lot, and she was really banking on finding some high quality minerals from her trip to help her survive through the winter. Saki took one of the glass jars out of the bag and opened the lid, reaching forward and scooping some of the warm smoldering coals of the furnace into the jar and cracking the lid slightly.

 The embers were still crackling from inside the jar and she would use this for emergency warmth, tucking it between her shirt and overcoat and allowing the heat from the jar to radiate through the from part of her body. 

“If only I knew Fire Magic..” she whispered. She hauled the pack onto her back and set out with haste towards the mines. 

It was an exhaustive trip despite how close the mine was to Claywind. The harsh chill of the wind cut the warmth from her exposed flesh and slowed her down much more than the heavy layers of fresh snow beneath her. She made it, eventually, to the mouth of the cave and let out an exhaustive sigh.

“I just made it and it’s already starting to get dark”

Saki heaved her backpack off her shoulder and onto the cave floor before digging through it for her flint & steel. She didn’t need to look far for tendering as there were plenty of leftover, dried branches which had blown into the cave entrance through the spring. The mouth of the mountain gave protection against the harsh winter for the little twigs. In a matter of minutes she had a nice, warm fire roaring up inside the cave. 

This was time for her to rest and eat some of the food she packed along with her. Opening the bag of jerky first and gnawing on it like a feral animal. Saki took in the flavors of the meat and tried to save every bite before swallowing it. Every few bites complemented with a nice cool drink from her waterskin to wash the salty aftertaste from her taste buds.

Saki’s gaze was locked at the entrance of the cage as she watched the snowstorm wax and wane in intensity over the coming hours. She didn’t need to worry about predators -inside- the cave system. Her sensitive fox nose was more than enough to catch the scent of any strangers lurking through the cave.

Once she had rested a good bit Saki stood up and arched her back in a nice stretch. She reached down for one of the thicker branches she had been burning to use as a torch. She grabbed her pickaxe, and hoisted her pack over her shoulder to set off a deeper into the cave. It was important that she watched her step as she trekked down into the mines as the incline was steep and the dripping water from stalactites made the stone floor slippery. 

Saki made it to a flat stone floor after only a few minutes of walking and found a nice spot near some stone rubble. Because of seismic activity a lot of the rocks could fall from the walls and the ceiling and was a prime place to investigate before chipping away with her pickaxe. Saki kneeled down and began to inspect each stone she came across, a process which consumed much of her time as the poor light from the torch made it hard to prospect. 

Eventually Saki took a tally of everything she had gathered: 2 Large Iron Rocks, 6 Large Coal Rocks, 2 Pebbles of gold ,4 Small Graphite Rocks.

“What a haul! This should be more than enough to get me through the winter! I can break up the coal into smaller bits when I get home and ration it until spring. Also… gold! Amazing!” she giggled happily. Finally, some good news for the fox. 

As if the world was actively working against Saki, a strong gust of winter wind blew itself into the mouth of the cave and down the channels of the rocky shelter, causing her torch to wither out and leaving the fox girl in complete darkness. 

“Ah hell.. That’s no good..”

Saki hoisted her pack over her shoulder now filled with the minerals and tried her best to find the wall of the cave, trying to use it as a guide to retrace her steps in pitch black darkness. She made it to the steep incline and slowly began to crawl up it. 

Saki could see what appeared to be a faint glowing light source ahead from where she believed the fire to be burning, so she kept crawling up the incline towards that light. Once she came to the crest of the cave however, she would notice that the light was not coming from the entrance. In fact- it appeared her campfire had been blown out alongside the torch when the monster gust of wind caught the mouth of the cave. 

The source of the light was glowing faintly from a pile of rubble cobblestone which lay along one of the walls. She had walked right by it and been none the wiser of its existence as her own light source from her torch was much brighter. Saki kneeled down out of curiosity and began digging the loose stone from atop the light. 

What Saki had unearthed from the floors of the cave appeared to be a small, dimly glowing creature. It looked akin to a slime but rather than being filled with a sticky liquid it appeared that the inside of the creature was molten and radiated a faint heat. The flickering of gentle flames leave the outer edges of the creature's body. It had a face which bordered on cartoonish characteristics and an expression which cried for help.

“Aww poor thing…” Saki spoke gently to the creature. “I have no idea what you are… but I can’t just leave you here.”

Saki moved her hands toward the new little friend of hers and cautiously went to pick her up. Because of the heat radiating from the little ball she was hesitant at first, but pleasantly surprised when he was able to handle the creature. She hugged it to her chest and walked the rest of the way towards the entrance of the cave.

A few moments later, Saki had the campfire roaring again and she lay down beside the crackling flames.

“Don’t worry little guy. You’re safe now.” She tried her best to soothe the creature. “I’ll keep you warm. Just rest.” 

Soon Saki felt her eyes growing heavy as her slits came to a close and she hugged the creature tighter, not wanting to let it escape the warmth of her body. A gentle snore echoing through the cave as the howling winds of the storm battering the outside of the cave brought their first night to a close.