It was the White Days. Like a snowstorm, blinding, her head was full of hissing blur. She didn't have a name, not yet. She simply was. Sometimes the voice spoke or laughed, and she laughed with it. Where was she...? It was hard to focus. She was moving, swinging her hammer, but when wasn't she? An arena. That was it.
She briefly wondered why she cared what she was doing.
She had crushed a half dozen of the dragon cultists before one of them had got in a hit with a hammer of their own. She'd been stunned enough to be netted like an animal, dragged down and kicked until the darkness came. Why had she attacked them? She was hungry, that was it, and the wolfmeat had run out. There had been a whole wagon of meat, and she'd battered the guards down with ease and gorged herself, crunching on half-frozen raw flesh until her stomach hurt. Turns out that caravan had just been separated from the rest, and the others found it as she stepped out of the wagon, hands full of gory hammer and looted pack full of meat and gold. It wasn't hard for them to work out what had happened.
When she awoke, they'd taken her weapon: the tremendous maul that she'd used to kill her father. Father. The word had no meaning to it, it seemed. The nameless girl had never experienced love or kindness. Frost Giants were hard and sharp as the ice around them, and the lowly slave-child she had been was almost beneath even their contempt. Didn't matter now, anyway.
A blade opened a three-inch long cut on her left arm. She responded with a hammer blow that sent brain matter to splatter and steam in the snow. She howled out loud, a savage wolf-cry of joy and rage, churning together into a savage blend. Her body ached from exertion, and she panted great clouds into the frigid air. There had been at least fourteen rounds now, and she was tired. She hadn't held back, painting the arena with her opponents, and a dozen wounds wept crimson into the furs she wore as clothing. The melee seemed to clear for a moment. Obviously she'd run out of opponents.
She looked around at the watching faces, some masked, some hooded. One was clearly out of place - his skin wrong for snow-tan, not dressed in the furs of natives or the weave of the dragon-cultists. The voice demanded she look. Remember that face, it growled. Remember. Of all the things in the White Days, as she'd call them later, he was the only thing she ever remembered with distinction. he was talking with the local cult-mistress. But now more bandits crowded towards her, hacking and chopping with desperation writ plain on frost-bitten, gaunt faces, and she lifted her hammer to swing...
...
She sat against the tent pole, more of her wrapped in bandages and pungent salve than not. It itched, and she had to resist the urge to yank off the cloth wraps. The half-elf that had saved her stood across from her, talking. it had been so long since she spoke, she couldn't find the words, so she settled for gazing up at him. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't have swung her hammer. She listened to the strange accent, so unlike the gruff tones she'd heard all her life. "...will be having your favour, one day."
A favour for a favour. She knew the concept. When she'd hunted with the wolves, they'd stagger the moose, ripping at it's legs and back, distracting it until she came in and crushed it's skull. It had been an uneasy brotherhood, certainly, and she'd fed on the wolves more than once when they intended the opposite. She nodded once. An agreement, but sealed tight with the blood she'd shed.
Eventually, he left, and later so did she, disappearing back into the wastes. Though she didn't know it, the White Days were beginning to clear.
...
It was a year later. She'd grown strong, and her mind had grown clear and sharp. She realised she was nameless. She was feared, now. They'd started calling her the Laugh of the Avalanche, a terrible bandit that haunted the woods and howled with the wolves. They told stories of her sometimes, where she was a giant with eyes of ice, a hammer that crackled with frost. She sat back in her den, surrounded by things she taken, and a thought struck her. The favour. That halfblood elf. She looked around at her ill-gotten gains, and shook her head dismissively. Trinkets. A dozen fine swords, engraved with gold. Magically preserved flowers, forever living, even in the cold and dark. A dragon scale, glittering cold white. Only one thing truly mattered.
She lifted the maul onto her shoulder, and stepped out her den. Snow crunched under her boots. She breathed in the cold air, and aligned herself to head south. It might take a while to find this elf, but that was alright. What she couldn't earn, she'd take. That was the way of the world. She set off, pulling up her scarf to hide her face against the chill, and couldn't help but smile.
In other words, Dwarmin, that all sounds good to me.
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Topic: City of Aretrian - D&D 3.5 [5/5] OOC Thread - It's dead, Jim! (Read 78462 times)