Send a spelling or grammar correction to: Tracy Johnson
This site sponsored by Agenda Games LLC
Back to Empire on the HPe3000
... and ...
This is a first draft of a story set in the world of Greyhawk.
It is based on a home campaign so some of the people, places and things
may be different. Any helpful comments or suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks
Jason Zavoda
There were clouds and she was floating among them. Below her she
could see the hills, the thick woods pressed against them, the mountains
growing up toward the west. The mountains were higher than the sky, they
blocked the moons and their tops were set afire by the passing sun.
Gytha swooped low, the hills came rushing up. There were houses
now, a small village set along a plateau, a pool at its center fed by a
mountain stream. One house was bigger than the rest, it was nothing
more than a large square building of stone, but it was easily four or five
times the size of even the next largest home.
She smiled, this building was her peoples pride, their gift
to their deity and the cleric who had brought the faith to them
centuries ago. The roof, tiled with plates of thin fired clay, parted
like mist as she dived lower and passed within.
There was a choking smoke that seeped through the shuttered
windows, the room was filled with it. There was the smell of burnt wood
and burnt flesh, the tang of blood and strongest of all, the smell
of fear. The room was filled with the injured, men, women, children,
all those from the village and the surrounding lands. Gytha reached out
and tried to touch them but her hand passed through as her body had passed
the wood and tile of the roof. They seemed real, the cries of pain, the
children's fearful whimpering, the coughing as the smoke increased.
Fire was all around, in her minds eye Gytha could see the village
as it burned, the huge shapes of giants setting home after home ablaze
with torches made from the trunks of trees.
The monsters circled the building of stone, it looked small to her
now. The thick stone walls and stout doors of oak banded with iron, they
seemed no more than straw and childrens toy blocks beside the horrible
strength and terrible size of the giants.
She knew what was to come and tried to close her eyes but they
would not shut. The people began to wail, her flock, her friends, her
kin, this was Gytha's village, or a dreamghost of what it had been and
how it met its end.
The walls shook, there was a booming as the giants used clubs
against the stone or tore boulders from the fence and threw them at the
church. Oak boards shattered as the doors were splintered and sent flying
into the villagers.
A few men and women armed with spears and axes pushed the
others back and faced the giants. One brute reached through the door
then pulled back a hand thats finger had been hacked away with a
desperate stroke. It put the bleeding joint to its lips and ducked its
head and shoulders back outside.
Stones rolled in as the giants played a game of ninepins and
bowled down the defenders. Gytha could hear the laughter of the monsters
as they sent boulders through the church to crush legs and pulp bodies
of those who could not avoid the brutal stones.
There was a shout and the booming began once more. Gytha held up
her hands and screamed as the rafters collapsed and the roof came crashing
down.
In an instant she was awake, a violent jolt had thrown her from
her bed made of cloaks and packs. Stones bounced down around her and she
was living her dream again. This time she did not scream, but Gytha looked
wildly about for the villagers she had not helped in life and could not
save even in her dreams.
There were cold stone pillars all around, a tiled floor scratched
a thousand times beneath, and only a small fire to light the dark. Near
to where she had lain there was a body, Derue. The memory of the villagers
faded, though they would never leave her completely, and the more recent
past came back into her mind.
What was that booming? she thought. Where are the others?
* * *
(To Be Continued...)