Welcome, ladies, maids, gentalkin, lads, Sam, Hearthlings all. Tonight I continue the tale I told last time we sat 'round the hearth. We spoke of Radona and how she was exiled to the great wilderness from Hearthhome. How her very presence disturbed the folk around her. Now let me tell the tale of her first victory, the killing of the minor titan Amarok, the giant wolf.
Thunder roared like the cry of some great beast, waking the sleeping Radona. As her eyes opened she witnessed the flash of lightning crossing the sky and lighting the shadowed forest floor below. The howl of wolves echoed across the valley between the crashes of thunder, the call of the hunt sounding through the trees. The great predators smelled blood in the air and sensed easy prey. Radona stood and began to run, faster and faster until the trees blurred together in the darkness, fleeing the hounds that roamed the land, seeking shelter until she found a clearing with a mighty tree in the center. With a running leap she grasped the lowest branch and pulled herself up into it’s waiting boughs. The beasts that followed the scent of her fear burst out of the treeline and circled the ancient oak she sequestered herself in. They howled out unto the blackened sky and a fantastic response rumbled back through the forest, the harbinger of a greater being. Radona ascended farther up the branches until they thinned. Taking her knife she hacked away at a bough, cutting it from the trunk, making a makeshift spear. It was a poor replacement for a proper weapon but Radona would take what she could get. The wolves began to jump at the lower branches, seeking blood and flesh, to rend and tear, primal fury lighting their eyes in the night.
A smaller wolf managed to jump onto a branch and began to ascend the old oak. Radona climbed higher until the branches snapped off in her hands but still the wolf followed. Her hands shook as they gripped her stick, fear gripped her tight, the wolf getting ever closer. Then with a great leap the beast went for her jugular, aiming to bring her down to the pack below. Radona’s hands frantically blurred into motion, hidden instincts surfacing, awoken to stave off death for another moment, her spear slamming into the predator’s skull, knocking it off course and into her shoulder. Radona fell from her high perch, hitting some branches until she landed on a larger bough. The wolf though plowed into the loam below with a sickening crack, crumpling into itself as it landed. Hauling herself farther up the tree, Radona checked her shoulder. Bleeding profusely from the places where the fangs carved into it and scraped from the fall, she had to bandage it. Tearing the hem of her shirt, she attempted to stop the bleeding with the scraps. Cracks and thuds could be heard from the woods, getting ever closer to our hero, until out of the trees came a massive white wolf drenched from the rain with huge red eyes that sang of murder and death to it’s prey. Amarok, the Beast of the Pack, while not as big as the dragons that were said to live to the south or as lethal as the giant snakes to the east, this titan had made a meal out of many a hunting party over the decades of it’s existence.
The beast charged the tree with a howl, intending to uproot the mighty oak and tear Radona’s broken body out from the wreckage. The girl saw but two options stay and hope that the tree held or jump and hope that she survived the fall. Her decision made she gripped the trunk tight with her arms, her spear clenched in her left hand, dreading the impact to come. With a resounding crash that shook her very bones and rattled her skull, Amarok slammed into the tree sending branches clattering to the ground. But the oak held, cracked and battered but it did not fall. Safe for another minute, she could only hope the pack was discouraged by their two failed attempts to slay her because the tree would not take another blow. The wolves let loose howl that shook the air as Amarok turned around for another charge, Radona faced the choice again and this time she jumped. Waiting for an unseen signal to strike she jumped from the tree and landed on the beast’s nose with her spear buried in it’s ear, with a roar of primal fury that she could see reflected in the beast’s gaze, she ripped her stick out of Amarok’s ear and punched him in the eye. The resulting howl of pain and rage deafened her and the wolf shook its head to be rid of this prey that dared cause it pain. Radona slipped, failing off Amarok’s face, she could feel her leg shatter beneath her when she landed. The giant wolf turned around and lunged for the morsel on the ground, Radona in an attempt to dodge fell sideways. The great maw went past her exposing the jugular of the beast. As lightning flashed around them Radona mustered up the last of her strength to slam the spear into the neck of Amarok and up into his brain. The beast collapsed dead on top of the girl as lightning struck the broken remains of the tree that was her sanctuary not a minute ago the flash of light and sound scaring off the rest of the pack as Radona tried to push the remains of the titan off her legs. Eventually as the sun’s first rays of dawn crest the trees Radona passes out from pain blood loss and fatigue just missing the sight of a funny shaped creature run towards her.
- Sannolga the Wordweaver telling the Legend of Radona: First Blood.
Done! This rapidly became more than the snippet I wanted it to be so you guys don’t get to see the other two story segments that I was going to write but I should get them up during the week. Anyway let me know what you think!