It is hard for Zoleshi to remember now, but there was a before. A time before, when she had a home, and parents who loved her and taught her their trade. A time when the local boys gave her presents, or threw things at her, or even called her pretty. A time when contentment was the air she breathed and happiness the water she washed in, or so it seemed now. A time before giants.
They lived in a smithy downslope of Baslwief, on a stream she'd thought a river. Zoleshi's father was a blacksmith, forging tools of the plow and tools of the harvest along with the occasional tools of war. Her mother preferred to work in bronze and tin, and after a turn spent making pots and lanterns spent as much time as possible building intricate clockwork devices that served no true purpose other than to delight the observer with the sheer marvel of their existence. But they spent most of their time smelting the trash ore that came down from Baslwief -- ore too poor to bother smelting at the mine, but too rich to ignore. Zoleshi spent many long days working the bellows, or tending the furnace, or sweeping and shoveling the omnipresent grit of pulverized rock and powdered metal. She hated the labor, but she loved the work, and her mind was full of the things that she would create one day, when the hammer or the file was in her hand.
But that was before the giants came.
Her parents were screaming and the house was shaking, and a deep rumbling laughter rolled across the heavens like amused thunder. Then she was outside, as the smithy was splintered by clubs the size of mastiffs. Her father was thrown against a wall as easily as Zoleshi would throw a hammer, and all her fear turned to rage. She was at the smelter then, and did all the things she was told never to do.
Soon there was fire, and molten metal, and clouds of smoke and metal powders. And the bellow of a burning giant. Zoleshi found herself standing on her father's anvil with a hammer in her hand, facing an angry giant. The once well-organized smithy was a riot of tools and clockwork gears, and the air was heavy with the scent of woodsmoke and burning hair. She smashed the giant's hand, and then his club sent Zoleshi flying, to land face down in a mound of powdered metal. She struggled to rise, she struggled to breathe, and then everything exploded.
Zoleshi woke a different person in a different world.
Everything she had known was gone. It had all been smashed, then burned, then dipped in molten metal. That went for the smithy, the house, the smelter -- and Zoleshi herself.
After breathing powdered metal for so long, Zoleshi's lungs were full of it, and so was the rest of her body. Her skin was grey, her nails copper, and she coughed constantly, trying vainly to expel the poison from her body. And her face was ruined -- molten bronze had dripped down her cheeks like tears, leaving bright tracks in the blackened flesh.
That she had lived was incomprehensible to her. People don't survive such things. Not without a miracle. It was only when she looked down at her hands and saw the brands on the back of them that she understood. Perfect bronze clockwork gears. Zoleshi's mother had told her about Brigh, the woman of clockwork, the Whisper in Bronze. Somehow Brigh had saved her. Had chosen her.
But why? For what purpose? Zoleshi didn't know. But she did know that it was time to begin hunting. So she gathered together what things she could, and went out into the world. There were giants to kill.
