The days that followed all blurred together, marked by the steady sound of Dubs's hammer striking metal, by the constant heat of the forge fire, and by that darkness that never left Emrys anymore, no matter the hour.
He first learned to recognize the sounds. The particular creak of the bellows whenever Dubs worked it. The hiss of water when a white-hot blade plunged into it. The dull scrape of ore being sorted into wooden crates. Every sound became a landmark, a way of knowing where Dubs was in the space without having to activate his haki, which he still reserved only for moments of real concern.
His arm stayed immobilized between its two wooden slats. His ribs, tightly bandaged, still hurt at the slightest sudden movement, though a little less each day. His ankle, on the other hand, stubbornly refused to hold his weight without outside support.
Dubs, for his part, didn't really change his attitude. He kept talking in that same even, almost flat tone, going about his blacksmith's tasks with the same mechanical regularity, giving Emrys something to pass the time without ever trying to strike up conversation himself. It was always Emrys who asked the questions.
"Are you really that tall?" he asked one day, as Dubs had just carried him outside to, in his words, "get some air before you rot on that pallet."
"I'm a bit over four meters," Dubs answered without turning around, busy examining a chunk of ore. "Why do you ask?"
"Your hands. Your voice coming from so high up. I had an idea, but I wanted to be sure."
A grunt answered him, one that could have passed for amusement on anyone other than Dubs.
"Four meters is already a lot for a human. But for a giant..." He let the sentence trail off for a moment. "For a giant, kid, I'm a dwarf."
Emrys turned his head toward him, surprised despite his inability to actually look at him.
"A dwarf?"
"Most of mine top ten meters once fully grown. Some go up to twenty, or more for the oldest bloodlines," Dubs explained, still in that same detached tone he used for everything, as if he were listing off a batch of ores rather than talking about his own race. "Me, I stopped well short of that. A growth anomaly, or so I was told. Among giants, that's looked down on."
"Looked down on how?"
"Among us, size is pretty much all that matters when it comes to judging someone's worth. The bigger you are, the stronger you are, the more respect you get. A giant my size is barely better regarded than a human in our society." He paused, setting the chunk of ore down with a dull thud. "And even that's only part of the problem. Most of mine spend their whole lives chasing one fight after another, hoping to die in battle if they can help it, ideally by the book. Me, I never had that kind of urge. I'd rather shape a blade than stick it in someone. For a giant, that's almost worse than being small." He let a silence pass. "That's part of why I live out here, far from any giant settlement. My forge, my tools, my ore, that's enough for me. I don't need people looking down on me, in every sense of the word."
There was something in his voice, a barely perceptible trace of old bitterness, quickly hidden again behind his usual tone.
"But then," Emrys pressed on, curious despite the dull pain that kept marking the rhythm of his every movement, "giants are a separate race? Like humans, or the mages of Belialuin?"
"The mages of Belialuin are humans, kid. Just humans who handle magic better than average," Dubs corrected. "But yeah, giants are a separate race. One of the five big ones, if you count generously."
"Five?"
Dubs then sat down on a rock large enough to hold him, a movement Emrys recognized by the particular sound it made, metal against stone, the tools hanging from his belt clinking against each other.
"Humans, first. The most numerous, the most spread out. They're pretty much everywhere, in nearly every kingdom I know of, split into a good hundred nations, kingdoms, and city-states that spend their time squabbling over trifles." He went on, listing the races off as if he were inventorying ores in a quarry. "Giants, next, us lot. Powerful, but few in number, and pretty much confined to our mountains. Fairies, after that. Small, tied to nature and the forests, able to wield a kind of magic neither humans nor giants really master."
"And the last two?" Emrys asked, sensing the conversation was taking a more serious turn than usual.
Dubs let a silence stretch, longer than the previous ones.
"Demons. And goddesses."
The tone in which he said those two words alone was enough to tell Emrys these weren't races like the others.
"Those two, that's a whole other story," Dubs went on. "Races far older than the rest, far more powerful too. And ones that have been at war with each other for probably longer than any living memory can recall."
"At war? Right now?" Emrys asked, surprised.
"Yeah, right now. It's actually been going on for a good while now," Dubs confirmed. "But so far, it stays a matter between the two of them. The rest of us, humans, giants, fairies, aren't caught up in it. They fight each other on their own turf, without it directly concerning us."
"Why are they fighting?"
"No idea, exactly. And honestly, kid, I don't think there's anyone, human, giant, or otherwise, who could really tell you why," Dubs continued. "What's certain is that it's been going on for quite a while now, without either side clearly gaining the upper hand."
Emrys felt a shiver run down his spine, unrelated to the coolness of the morning air.
"And it could end up involving us too?"
"That's exactly what everyone dreads," Dubs answered. "As long as it stays limited to the demons and the goddesses, it's not really our concern. But if that conflict ever spread, if it started touching the other races... that'd be a different matter entirely. A real Holy War, this time, one that would concern all of us. For now, we're not there yet. But nothing says it'll stay that way."
A silence followed, longer, almost uncomfortable. Emrys sensed he'd brushed up against a subject Dubs preferred to avoid, without quite knowing why. He chose not to push it.
Over the following days, the conversation returned several times to the subject of the races, always in small pieces, never all at once. Dubs seemed more at ease talking about giants than about the rest, maybe because it was his own history, and Emrys learned that giants lived clustered together in cities carved straight into mountain rock, that their natural magic let them shape stone and metal almost instinctively, and that their lifespan far exceeded that of humans.
"We can live for centuries, if we manage not to get killed first," Dubs explained one evening, sharpening a blade whose shape Emrys could only guess at from the sound of the whetstone sliding against the metal. "Me, I can't be all that old, compared to others. About a hundred years or so."
"A hundred years," Emrys repeated, incredulous. "And you call that not that old?"
"For a giant, kid, that's barely out of childhood."
Emrys stayed quiet for a moment, trying to imagine an existence so long that an entire century was only a fraction of its course. He thought of his own life, of the one before, so short by comparison, and of this one, which was only just beginning.
It was around this time, in fact, that he managed, for the first time since his fall, to take a few steps without help. Dubs had propped him up against a slab of rock, his ankle still supported by a tight bandage, and simply watched him try, without a single word of encouragement or the slightest offer of assistance.
"You're gonna fall," was all he'd warned, in a tone that was neither cruel nor sympathetic, simply factual.
He had indeed fallen, three times in a row, each fall sending a jolt of pain through his still-healing ribs. But on the fourth attempt, he managed five full steps before having to lean against the rock to keep from collapsing.
"Not bad," Dubs had commented, immediately going back to his hammer as if nothing had happened.
That brief moment stayed etched in Emrys's mind more than any speech of encouragement could have. There was something reassuring in that constant coldness, in that total absence of coddling. No one here was going easy on him. No one pretended his situation was less serious than it actually was. And yet, no one let him fall through the cracks either.
"And the fairies? The demons? The goddesses?" he finally asked, curious to know more, even if Dubs's coldness on the subject of the last two clans remained a wall difficult to break through.
"Fairies, I don't know much about. They rarely mix with the other races, unless someone encroaches on their forests. They live even longer than us, from what I hear, practically immortal as long as they stay connected to their sacred tree." Dubs paused, the scrape of the whetstone stopping for a moment. "As for the demons and the goddesses... honestly, nobody alive today can really speak about them with any certainty. Everything we know comes from legends centuries old, twisted by time and by whoever's telling them."
"You don't seem to think very highly of them," Emrys remarked.
"I don't think highly of anyone who caused a war big enough to turn entire mountains into craters," Dubs replied bluntly. "Doesn't matter which side they were on."
The conversation ended there that evening, Dubs going back to his sharpening with a focus that discouraged any further questions.
But as the days passed, despite that coldness that almost never left him, Emrys began to notice tiny variations in the giant's tone. The way his voice grew slightly more animated whenever he described some particularly complex forging technique. The way he lingered a little longer than necessary on Emrys's hands each time he examined them, as if the marks left by Drainda and Gae Dearg kept pricking at his curiosity despite himself.
"That weapon you were holding," Dubs finally asked, one morning, while changing the bandage around Emrys's ribs. "The one that left you these marks. What exactly was it?"
Emrys hesitated. How could he explain Drainda, Gae Dearg, Unlimited Blade Works, without coming across as completely insane to a giant who probably knew nothing about this kind of power?
"A sword," he finally answered, deliberately staying vague. "A sword capable of cutting through magic itself. I can make it appear at will, using my own energy."
A silence followed, different from all the previous ones. Almost respectful.
"A weapon like that, kid," Dubs finally said, his voice carrying an interest Emrys had never heard from him before, "I've never seen one in my entire life. And believe me, I've seen plenty of weapons pass through my hands."
For the first time since his arrival, Emrys felt he had just captured the giant's full attention, without reserve or distance.
"If you ever want to teach me more about it," Dubs went on, almost hesitant, as if the very idea of voicing such a personal request cost him something, "I wouldn't mind. A blade that cuts through magic, that's the kind of thing a blacksmith dreams of understanding."
Emrys smiled faintly, despite the pain still pulling at his ribs.
"We'll see, once I'm back on my feet," he answered. "For now, I've got more urgent things to deal with."
"Yeah," Dubs agreed, his voice instantly regaining its usual coldness. "Finding your mother. I remember."
And with those words, the giant went back to his work, leaving Emrys alone with his thoughts, in that perpetual darkness which, for the first time since his fall, felt just a little less heavy to carry.