Metalwhisper

Is this not death? I thought as I lay here, unable to move. I was slowly dying, I knew, because I was lying in a pool of my own blood.

I did not know what had happened to me, only that I was lying on my back, my feet folded under me in odd angles, and that I had been walking in this dark alleyway before whoever did this appeared and quickly made short work of me, leaving me for dead.

Something wet plopped onto my nose and I looked up, just as the rain started. It sighed as it hit the cobblestones beside my head, washing away my blood and all traces of my assailant. I closed my eyes as the rain came down in torrents, washing away all scents and traces, just as my life was quickly vanishing with the rain that ran into the gutters. I couldn’t tell you who I was now, even I wanted.

Because that was the reason why I was out here in the first place – I was finding out who I was before I had lost everything. I only knew that I was a Metalwhisperer, one who spoke to metals. And that my family, all dead, were all Metalwhisperers before me. It was a gift passed down my generations. And now, it was going to die with the last descendant of the most famous metal smiths in history.

Wait, there was a –

“Hello,” a velvet voice murmured. I forced my eyes open and looked up into a pair of brilliant blue eyes. Then I flinched away from the lamplight that suddenly appeared in my vision. My breath came fast and laboriously as I saw a glint of metal in the glare of the lamplight.

“Don’t kill me,” I tried to whisper, but it came out as a gurgle as blood spilled out of my throat and over my chin. Instead, I coughed and the stranger picked me up and turned me over, holding me up as I spat out blood.

“It’s all right, you’re going to be fine now,” he told me soothingly, holding me steady as I heaved and gasped for air. Then my vision went black and I slumped in his hold and knew no more of what happened that night.

It turns out that the man who had saved me that night was a knight of the realm. Sir Jared was a man who not only was knighted for some deed, but was actually trained for combat and fighting. It turned out that he had heard a scuffle in the back alleyway that night and had come to see what it was. And finding me, he brought me back and chased down the men who did it in for me and had left me for dead and turned them into the local constable. He was a good man. And those men would swing from the gallows on the morrow.

“Do you have a name, metal eyes?” Sir Jared had asked me.

I only managed to give a shake of my head before I fell into a deep sleep again.