Kriegaxt thinks, and then responds. "I believe your friend the Ogress Lug would provide the safest place to hide. She seemed a person well honed in blade art"
As they walk to their destination, Kriegaxt tells her his own thoughts.
"I've no doubt some of the Bloodline are vampires-everything else I've read seems to be coming true. But not all, not nearly. They hide their numbers, and encourage rumors of fantastic power, and the Bloodline maintains strength in the illusion. That is what I would guess...they seem tyrants to me, drunk on their own power. I'm sure I'm not the first person to say something has to be done about them, however impossible a task that is."
Kriegaxt talks as they walk, flitting from topic to topic-Like Mayta, he now finds it hard to concentrate on any one thing, and is distracted by the tiniest of happenings, which he might have ignored before. It's an infectious mindset, to cast away fear and doubt...
"You have told me much, yet I have told you so little of myself. You may wonder what led me here, and I shall tell you, if you would hear me.
In my land, magic has been extinct for as long as we can remember. It's a dreadfully boring world, something I learned at a young age. So I sought to escape it, through books and tales of an the ancient time of Heroes and magic.
"
He pauses to watch a cloud that looks like an angry face roll over the moon.
"I can say my future was made for me, the day my family visited a place called Ireland on vacation. Our guide brought us to the statues of the Stone Giants which still lay there to this day. I noticed many of them seem to have died calmly, almost in meditation, and it made me very sad, to think that their noble kind was gone from our lands forever.
I learned later, that in age when magic left my land, the Giants could no longer sustain their bodies with mere food-no matter how much they ate, they were always hungry. Some Giants went mad with hunger, and laid waste to the land-Urgan the Devourer, Holthfang the Destroyer, Yjimr the Bad Wind-until they were all destroyed or starved to death in bitterness."
Kriegaxt and Mayta are distracted by a wolf like creature in the distance, which stares at both them with red eyes for almost a minute, before disappearing into the forest.
He continues.
"Not all Giants were bad though. Many were good-Vosthang the Kind, Blueheart the Manfriend, and Kind Queen Vinga to name a few. When they realized what was becoming of them, these Giants vowed not to harm anyone, even as they watched their kin waste away in great pain. I do not know if there was still a spark of magic left within them, or perhaps there was something in their bodies, but the Giants who were peaceful became granite statues when they died, and the bad ones turned to salt and blighted the land where they fell.
To this day, the good Stone Giants sit in eternal, peaceful meditation-often unnoticed by the very people who have lived around them for generations, though many still pay homage in shrines at their feet, and believe their spirits still protect us. Despite Napoleans somewhat controversial practice of using them as target practice for his cannoneers, like the noble Sphinx in Egypt.
Some of my books say that if magic returns to my world, the Giants will live again...good and evil alike...
But I babble. The thought led me to become who I am, and earned me a hunger of knowledge and adventure I hold to this day..."
And so, they talked and witnessed many strange things on the way to the Ogress Lug's home, for it was a strange night.
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Topic: Explorers of Remembrance (Fighting Words!) (Read 16563 times)