The strangers came, saying they had heard of
our deeds, seen something alike in themselves,
had worked to whet aim and strengthen thew,

risked rugged mountain ledge and long ocean
crossing to find us and pledge as our fellows.
They stood something shorter than us, thinner,

with their hair rudely chopped. Their helmets
sat too tight, too small, their masks marred.
Their names seemed crude transliterations

of our own, but they hefted their home-hewn
axes with pride. Their weapons were not well-
worked, soft and shattering easily, seeming

copies created from awkward drawings of
Dragor’s Tooth or other god-forged weapons
held by heroes from our histories, those

who we all aspire to be at least a little like.
They were grateful and greatly aghast when
we invited them on our adventures, as though

rejection and rout were the lot they long ago
resigned themselves to, but two strong hands
and a hilt to wrap both around are always

welcome where we are accustomed to travel.
The villagers came out, eager to meet us,
knowing us from song and story. They stopped

a moment when they came near enough
to notice our new friends only matched us
at a distance. Up close they spied the fraying

fabric of their jerkins. They saw the smith’s
mistakes in their swords and the hastily hand-
drawn heraldry in bright and childlike colours.

They turned away in search of heroes who
looked like the ones in tapestries threaded with
blue and silver silk, those sung about through

gilded masks under marble proscenium arches.
But when kiss of blade on armour raised sparks
that sputtered out on scuffed and stained ground,

our new compatriots were beside us, bringing
their blades down. They were with us under the
starfield as we faced down skull-headed demons

with bodies lit from within by otherworldly fire.
They stood between us and the venom of viper
golems and the claws of giant crow-men. When

faced with fiendish technology from the time
before the Necroclysm they stood their ground
beside us, brave as any. And in the firelight, when

we squint at our companions through the flame
and shimmering evening air to the other side
of this stone ring, we make out the myths

that live within them, fables that far outshine
false first impressions, stories enacted while
others looked elsewhere. Now we see them.