The king and his children
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The king of Bunnishberg is a noble man they say, he commands a great army, and his people are healthy and well-fed. The king of Bunnishberg has lands greater than most and has a knack for diplomacy, avoiding incidents with other lands and kings. His courtiers are academics, alchemy and magic are their expertise, and he has fondness for religion without claiming one as his own; well read and tolerant is the king who desires no blood be she on his land.
His army led by great warriors, mercenaries from nearby kingdoms who, while being from another land are close enough to share a similar language and culture avoiding any language barriers or cultural disagreements.
Yes, the king is well loved, but there are those who hate him, his children.
Beneath the castle the king holds a secret, the halls of dark sones and ancient paths imprison many wicked beings, all made by his own hand. He cannot, however, create life through magic, he is no god. The beings of this realm are corrupted having once been human and lost who they were.
The goliath knights guard the halls and anyone with out a permit is killed and fed to the creatures. There are beings here guilty of cannibalism, murder, cruelty, and perverse acts. The goliath are a mystery as they are giant in height, bigger than any man and stronger than any beast, well almost any.
There is an order known as the Leech knights, healers who help those in need and heroes to the downtrodden, this applies only to humans, of course.
As a knight of the leech I must travel to this gaol and drain blood from his ‘children’ this toxic substance can be used in slaying giant rats and lizard men who enter the land, the sewers and rivers have a lot of these beasts, this poison is potent against the vermin.
The knights of the leech are good at letting blood without killing the person, they are beats to us but to the king they are ‘favoured’. We don our armour and pick up sword and shield, with which we would only fight non-human combatants, and go into the lair of the most insidious being known to man, the first born.
Th first born is a brute, his size is bigger than a goliath knight and he is more depraved than the crotch-shivvers and the gutbiters, flesh and purity he devours for this reason no women may come with us and as we have enough men together we can defeat him if need be.
We walked through the arcane hall that held tomes older than the kingdom itself and we looked upon the dead scholars who died at their post studying these Accursed things. this path has no prisoners and is the only way to the prisoner, he sits alone in his cell, his lower half frozen in ice and his upper half chained by iron, he is fed the flesh of the fallen for every cemetery is a lie as all bodies are stolen and fed tot his great beast.
We came to the cell door, a great and illustrious marvel of architecture, two goliath stood At the door “hold, none shall enter without a permit” the one to the right of the door boomed, our leader, an old knight held out a small brooch that the goliath looked at “enter” he said throwing the brooch towards the other knight.
As the great door opened, we could smell the stench of the beast, no turning back now. We walked through the passage, and the door closed trapping us “we could hear the goliath knights conversing, muffled as it may have been the laughter of one was loud, we were going to die here.
We walked a great way, the corpses littered along the ground alongside rats and globule leeches made us stop and ponder, would we as a group of twenty knights be enough?
Further we walked into the lair and then we saw him. Illuminated by the moon and few lanterns he sat, giant and winged and disgusting. We cowered before him, the aberrant son. The leader walked to him and began letting his blood, he wailed and begged in an unintelligible tongue, we pitied him. We began the letting and soon before long we had vials of viscous, purple ooze.
He was no threat to us and we tortured him for his blood, we turned to leave as the beast sobbed quietly and came to the door once again, we left the lair without issue and gave the vials to the army so that they could wipe out the lizard man population, men, women and children alike. We didn’t question our loyalty to the king but maybe…just maybe we should have,since his first son died in the war against the horde of Mu, he was never the same.
When I stop and think, pray to the gods or listen for a heartbeat…I can hear the beast…sobbing... like a child.