Epilogue
Far to the south lies a lush valley, where the sweetest fruit grows, the crispiest ale is made, and the grazing animals grow unusually large. Beyond that valley is a verdant island where legend holds the gates of hell are buried.
It’s also the location of the ancient city of giants, yet nothing remains of the myth except a single, volcanic mountain.
Every ten years it awakens to spew brimstone and ash onto the land, and carve new paths that erase the legend of the giants and the horror of the Great Sundering. Everything nearby is destroyed, except for one monument that never burns.
High on a cliff side, a giant and a woman are locked in a stone embrace, untouched by time or fire.
His arms shelter her, hers press against his chest, and their faces are inches apart.
It's the calm look of adoration on their faces that onlookers remember, as though the devastation around them does not matter.
No one remembers their names or the truth of what happened in the vale.
No songs remember their deeds. No books record their tale. Accounts were lost. Witnesses died. History was rewritten.
But the mountain remembered.
In their honor, every ten years, it erupts.
Not to bring death and devastation, but to bring hope and renewal to the land.
For the lava that flowed did not burn the world or bring death. It brought life and healing and sent embers floating across the fertile land, cleansing it. Spreading magic that caused the world to prosper.
No one recalled to whom they owed their new dawn, or what it had cost. But deep in the mountain, the souls of two lovers seal the doorway to death.
Chaos still presses at the gates of the land, stirrings in the underworld, biding its time, waiting for the world’s end to come at long last. But now was not their time, for the lovers had sacrificed everything, and it was love that sealed the gates of hell, that held back the demons from devouring the land.
Yet sometimes when the mountain rumbled, and smoke billowed thick and hot, the giant's eyes turned liquid gold, and the woman's fingers twitched.
Sometimes a stone chest rose and fell, a trick of the eye, or something else?
A heartbeat, a breath, two voices in the wind, as though they might break free.
Do they dream in stone? Are they aware of their surroundings? Semi-conscious in their self-made prisons of stone? Do they wait for a dawn of freedom that might never come?
Every ten years the fires rise and they remain. Standing in place. Sealing the world. Guarding against evil. Their love, their sacrifice, sealed the gates.