The Blacksmith
Foundation and Forge
Iron was born in the heart of a star, fused from lighter elements in fires hotter than any forge—creation beyond any alchemist’s dream. Stars died and exploded, casting their creations into the dark.
In time, some of that matter gathered again, becoming something new—like the world you live on. And one day, someone pulled this iron from the ground.
They melted it down and forged it into a sword, a plow, nails for a cobbler’s bench. It all became scrap eventually, melted down and joined with more scrap.
Mixed. Melted. Mingled. Reforged.
History entangled. Futures built.
The work I’m creating now carries every failure and every success—the birth and death of civilizations, kettles and war machines.
And someday, when the fire and force become too much for you—if you’re willing to step up and do the work—you might earn the right to swing the hammer.
Written, voiced, and produced by Shawn Fitzmaurice
Voiceover Nerd Productions, Inc.
© 2025 Voiceover Nerd Productions — All Rights Reserved.
Featuring Shelly Fear as Sister Tephra – voiceoverslayer.com
Letter from Mareen to Richard
I have visited you here every year on our anniversary. Gods… fourteen years.
Usually, Sara and I sit together by your headstone. I tell her about you — your curly red hair we could never tame, and that smile that never failed to tame me. I think of her as our child because I like to believe you made one of your crazy deals… this time with the universe… to bring her and me together. That would be you.
Caring for Sara is the only thing that lit my darkness and kept me from following you into the heavens.
Today I am here alone. And surprise — it isn’t even our anniversary. This week marks twelve years since she arrived. We’re calling it her eighteenth birthday.
I wanted to tell you more about her. I assume you already know, but what do you know, Richard?
You would have loved her. From the start, she was all quiet eyes and steady hands, watching everything. A week or so after she came to us, one of the chapel cats had a litter. We went to adopt one. There were only three left. She gathered all three against her chest and said they were family, and now they were her family too.
I let her keep them, of course. I remember thinking, even then, that she loved too much to separate them. And maybe she understood separation better than most, even if no one — not even her — could say who she had been taken from.
She eats like you did. Too much, too fast. I don’t know where she puts it. The baker still brings up the time she ate three honey twists before anyone else had even gotten theirs. She laughed so hard she sprayed the table with chewed-up pastry. You would have loved that… her laugh, I mean — the way she doesn’t hold anything back.
Lately it feels like she’s holding something back, and I can’t quite place it.
It was around that age that she started asking questions I couldn’t answer — about time, about space. About why we have no stars, but everyone Ilra meets seems to have their own. I swear on the Seven Children, Richard, everything she does seems to have its own kind of math built into it.
Sister Tephra is a math genius, and she seems to understand the things Sara asks about. So I brought her to the chapel, hoping someone who spoke her language could give her the answers I couldn’t. She did. Sara has been studying under Tephra ever since. I hope it was the right thing to do.
She has always been fascinated by how things are made, and how they become part of something new. When she was about nine, she told me once that the iron in a nail might hold pieces of a ship — and a sword — and another nail. She said it like she could see it happening right there in her hands. She was nine years old, Richard. Nine!
I’m worried about her. Our daughter. Sometimes I find her staring at a candle, a flower — anything, really. When she snaps to, sometimes she’s emotional… angry, sad, happy. But she says she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t remember anything at all.
She spends so much time training with Sister Tephra. And yes, she’s still odd. Like you said, she is preparing for something big. Whatever it is, let’s hope it never happens. But Sara has learned so much about things I can’t even imagine.
She asked me to keep this a secret, but I feel like you won’t tell anyone. She found a hidden library in the chapel. She said it looked like someone had tucked the door away and had forgotten to remember it — for decades, maybe more. She said the library is filled with books about mathemagic, old science. Richard, there are books about time travel.
Actual time travel.
Doesn’t it seem odd that she is so fascinated with these things? She is the only person The Moment has ever given us. She is smart and creative beyond anything you’ve seen.
And Tephra.
Sometimes I think it wasn’t really my idea for her to study with Tephra… and lately, I’m not sure if that should comfort or scare me.
Chapter 1: Introduction to The Stitched Sky: An Assembly of Celestial Testimonies
As recorded by Ilra Wint, village chronicler and seamstress — a woman with ink and a thread
We have no stars in our sky.
Others do, and some who pass through Gratch Hollow tell stories about skies thick with constellations, their names learned like lullabies. Yet they never seem surprised that ours is empty.
Perhaps they expected it.
I’ve spent the better part of two decades collecting their accounts: wanderers and traders, bards and priests, even the quiet ones who vanish before morning. They speak of lights in the night sky. Some whisper names. Others draw what they remember. No two sketches are the same, yet close enough that I believe them.
And always, there are stories.
Chapter 2: The First Time I Died
As told by The Stranger
You prefer the hero voice for my final performance? Then the hero voice you shall have! Let my story reverberate throughout this chamber with its weird purple glow and give the tale of my untimely demise the drama it deserves. You’re still paying me in silver, yes? Excellent.
Let me tell you the tale of the first time I died. At least, as far as I knew.
Honestly, coming to consciousness was the first thing I remembered at all. My life before? A complete blank. No childhood. No career. Nothing other than language and knowledge, if you can imagine.
So the axe splitting my skull may not have been my first death at all. But given the usual mechanics of death, I would enthusiastically argue it’s a strong candidate.
Oh, the axe! Picture it: the itch on my scalp, pressure in my bladder, cold air against my skin… the unmistakable smell of pig-shit. These are my very first memories, by the way.
Well, those and the voice taking the shape of a deathly scream. Hatred and murder were clearly its motivation. If a nightmare could be cast as one man and a sound effect, this one would pass the audition. And I personally might have skipped the production altogether.
Somehow I had a sword, and somehow my hand knew to reach for it, which it did, fairly gracefully, I must say, but only after being released from some kind of paralysis.
I managed to open my eyes to my first clear vision. It was also, for the moment, my last: an axe blade descending quite painfully upon my skull.
The next time I died? Oh, you’ll love this one.
The Day I Dealt Death a Damning Defeat was the same day I died the first time, but this time I caught Death unaware.
The darkness receded once again, and this time I was prepared. The scream took its place. The curtain of stench rose before me. I ordered the darkness to unhand me and seized my sword by the hilt. Solid. A deadly thing, no doubt.
I drew it and caught that axe blade before I could even open my eyes. For the first time, I saw my weapon clearly: an awkward thing that looked more like a stage prop than a sword, except it was flat-black, solid, and deadly.
A girl stood there, stricken… but clearly impressed. And who could blame her?
She had a friend, too: a pig-man. I was surprised at the time, naturally, but he would not be the strangest creature I encountered that day. And the axe-mad little lunatics seemed bent on making him bacon.
I saved them both, of course. Well, I had a little help.
Don’t look at me like that. I did die… just a little… on the inside.
Heh. I wonder if he ever went by Chris.
Chris. P. Bacon.
They say the stars speak. That gods live among them, that monsters were slain there, that the sky remembers things so that generations never forget.
Chapter 3: Thaliriel, The Uninvited Mare Who Refused to Yield
From the Archive of Divergence History, kept in the MisArsesDolé cavern libraries beneath Bralith University of Mathmagics and Technomancy.
Read by Archivist Fr. Thed Crelith
Greatness handed down is empty.
When earned it is divine.
— Author Unknown
Thaliriel is known for her legendary stand: the mare who would not bow, the uninvited who fought to be seen, the one who claimed her place through defiance.
Those born divine were handed their stars and space. But for her it was a choice.
They named her Last of the Sky-Beasts. Last but never least, earned and not bestowed. Her wings she forged for a climb through headwinds no god had need to face. Her horn she formed in defiance of those who would deny her stars and space.
So when you see her light know this: she is not there to carry you. She’s not there for you at all. But let her brilliance remind you:
What is bestowed may fade. But what is earned cannot be denied.
Some say the stars slowly wander across the years. Sometimes I wonder if they are not merely lights, but souls.
If the constellations are memories in formation… And if the ghostly visitors we glimpse during The Moment, those flickering souls who vanish before breath or word, are on their way to join the sky and become stars themselves… then maybe our village, quiet, watchful Gratch Hollow is the seam between two worlds.
Maybe The Moment is the stitch. Maybe the heavens require a pattern. And maybe, just maybe, we are the thread.
Chapter 4: The Day the Stranger Nearly Got Me Killed before Breakfast
As told by Sara, the Girl Who Stayed
“Good to meet you. I’m Sara. Pardon the voice. I was up really early, and Mareen says I sound like an old man before coffee.
The day the Stranger showed up? I was nineteen. It was morning… first light… but the people in Gratch Hollow were mostly still asleep, even if I wasn’t. But the equations I had been studying had gotten under my skin. And Pip, here, wasn’t making it easier. He was upstairs… in Mareen’s room… thumping a mouse. Right. Above. My head. As cats do.
My little hunter… so I took the hint from the Universe… yes, and you too, Pip: coffee time! I decided I wanted to try using the resonance stones Sr. Tephra made, to manifest my time-recursive equations… big concept, I know, but not important to this story. Not yet anyway.
So I ran into the chapel and grabbed the stones. And when I stepped back out: I saw four of them, standing in the field. Like they appeared out of nowhere.
The Cult of Swillborn. Armed. They didn’t see me, thank the Seven Children, so I ducked behind the door, while Tansi… Tansi thinks she’s a tiny panther, crouched in the grass, ready to protect me from the death cult. Too many cultists around those days. I should have connected the… well… you know… the stories.
And I despise the way they twist Brinna Swillborn’s work. And for what? Power? Some unholy math scam? Who knows. No one’s ever sat one of their vicious little asses down for a chat over tea… or a biscuit…
From what I could tell they were mostly around my age. But there was one sitting in a wheeled chair. I assume he was their high priest. He had a heavy-looking black collar around his scrawny little neck. It had a huge, something like a purple gem. Which seemed familiar…
His voice croaked out Brinna’s High-Mathemagics, spoiled with foul forbidden variables that twisted into some kind of dark prayer. Then the others repeated it back. Like a chant. “It’s as if poison could become holy… if you only drank enough.” As Mareen would say.
Those kids… No. It wouldn’t be the first time good people were grifted into a “holy truth.”
The tallest one lifted a ceremonial axe, real over-dramatic, like. Seriously, I think it glinted… it was etched with dangerous Old-Swillcode Symbols. I guess they needed the instructions.
And Jon! Gods. Jon meandered! He meandered along, humming, and squealing away, so happy with himself, like a pig in… you get the point. He had a flowerpot. Probably a sprout had come up… it would be the only miracle that mattered to him. He lit up when he saw me, snout snorting, squealing with glee, probably dying to show me his little plant. I tried to wave him away. But instead, he waved back. Not quite what I was going for.
I looked back over at the Cult, afraid Jon had caught their attention, gods know what they would do to us. But there was someone new there… The Stranger. He wasn’t flickering like they do during The Moment. You’ve seen it. He just appeared. When I wasn’t looking. He was solid. Armed. His armor looked… normal. Except the color. That same dull black as the High Priest’s collar. And the wall surrounding Gratch Hollow. You see what I mean.
You know, if I wasn’t “The Girl Who Stayed,” it might have shocked me. Then… the scream that I will never forget… the terrible shivers up my spine. The axe fell, splitting the morning in two like a fruit, and I thought the Stranger’s skull would split in two too. But… no. A giant clang practically tore the air wide open. It echoed even around the top of The Hollow’s wall. The man blocked the axe with his sword. But just barely.
Jon squealed, dropped his little pot, and bolted, ears back, curly tail straight as a stick. And then, the Stranger, Prince Valiant, starts screaming at me: “You! Girl! Get help, help, help.” Smooth, right? Well, that caught the attention of the high priest… He sent one, a woman… well, girl after me… I froze… I just froze.
Jon was running over to protect me, fastest I’ve ever seen his hooves move. Gods, she’d have butchered him on the spot.
Her blade began to swing. I was sure I was dead… at 19 years old. But! Out of the chapel, along comes Sister Tephra… my mentor. Precise as a clock. Staff in hand, graceful, balancing every step like one of her equations.
Each blow struck precise. Her staff and body moved together like gears in a watch, calculating time in perfect blunt force trauma.
And then it was over. Brother Halvor came out of hiding and we prepared the bodies for burial. Those kids… they never had a chance. You don’t leave the Swillborn cult. Not alive.
There could never be another Sister Tephra. She solved the problem elegantly, like she already knew the solution. Of course she did…”
I see truths in the stories, and in the faces that flicker… glimpses of who they were, a moment ago. Perhaps their final moment.
So I record everything. I sew pages like cloth, each connected to the next by a thread I long to untangle.
If I cannot follow the thread, I will at least hold the needle.
And if any souls get lost along the way… if one of them, like our precious Sara, chooses to stay… then let them find what I’ve gathered. Let them study these scraps, sketches, and stitched-together skies.
Under Sister Tephra, Sara is learning more than I ever could.
Maybe she will see the pattern I’ve missed. Maybe, one day, she will help the souls of The Moment find their way.
What the Pig Promised is written, performed, and produced by Shawn Fitzmaurice.
A Voiceover Nerd production. © 2025. All rights reserved. voiceovernerd.com
