Anak-Meophustez, better known as Lord Meophust among the Mayaken, was once a great king, in another lifetime. Among the Anakim, the race of giants now extinct in the world of men, Meophust ruled as one of a handful of great-Kings; his dominion was over ancient Thrace (present day Bulgaria, Eastern Europe) before it was called thus. In his time, humans were a new sight on the sands of the earth and seemed an aberration on the face of the planet; giants had ruled the lands of the earth, had fought and bled for their kingdoms and had shared the world out along carefully, jealously guarded lines. Humans were most unwelcome, and because of their diminutive proportions as seen by giants, they were considered rather easy to eradicate; not until the overwhelming proliferation of human life, as evinced by our mass overpopulations, did we become the primary threat and bane of the giant’s existence. Humans had taken giants seriously since the beginning. Upon the incessant, unending pining and complaints of his subjects, who continued to lose lands and livestock to human communities, Meophust decided to take the battle to the human realm before countenancing their presence in his.

The great king had lived for a thousand and six hundred years before he commenced war against humanity; he persecuted the human lands on the eastern coast of the Great center Sea (Mediterranean) for an additional four hundred years until his glorious death before the walls of his outermost city Illyria (Troy), which he had built to a height three times his own (the great-King stood 50 feet tall). As the tales go, Meophust was slain fighting by himself an army of damned men, demonic creatures quite different from their human lookalikes; the very blow that took the King’s life was infused with the deepest, darkest magick- even to the Anakim who were born and bred of magick. Bizarrely, the slain king was said to have walked away, lifeless, from his realms, to dig his own grave in valleys unknown. Where his body lies is forever lost to all knowledge.

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Verdenstadt Fortress

Skollvurn Forest (Lowlands)

The castle of Verdenstadt, unlike SkollWodin on the knoll, stood on a jagged, craggy hill of black stone. The most physically impassable of the three castles that made-up the tri-fortresses, Verdenstadt had incredibly high walls, almost a uniform 50 feet on all sides, with some walls rising even higher. The towers and their spires reached even greater heights and were said to scrape the sky by the populace of the surrounding villas; they could be seen from well over a mile away and they mastered a dominating view of the valley and plain before them. There were some nine towers in all, the tallest of which rose nearer to 70 feet high; it was called the Villi Tower and on its topmost battlements it housed a great censer, which was filled with fats and burned as a beacon each night, taking advantage of their superiority in clarity even at nighttime. The gate to the fortress had a five-tiered defensive battlement built around, which depressed the actual gate itself some 10 feet into the body of the main east wall, facing the safest path up the jagged craggy hillside. In this hollowed space, all the accompanying traps for foes imaginable were most-definitely engaged, and it was believed a trap door was disguised before the very bolts of the gate itself. From the tops of all nine towers, great serpentine pennants rippled and danced high in the air, many a pure black in color, with two red flags atop the main gate battlements and atop the elevated citadel rooftop. The whole place had a decidedly cultivated martial look to it, and it oozed intimidation at all who beheld it. Daily on its battlements patrols stalked up and down and past each other; the trickle of traffic in and out of the castle was severely curtailed, due in part to the perilous single point of access down the incline of the hills. The western part of the castle was built into the stone side of a sheer Cliffside of an adjoining hill, which towered over the walls and towers of Verdenstadt and the summit of which was jagged, slabs of stone. On the northern and southern bottom walls, great slabs of stone had also been hurled near the base, shattered and carved into jagged points to discourage concerted action at the foot of the defenses. Apart from the isolated, donkey path up the eastern hillside, there was no physical way up for human effort, even for mountain climbers. No human war effort, besides blatant treachery could assail the place; it only managed a garrison of 200, all elite veterans of siege and skirmish warfare.

**

Maester Martel stared at the walls of the castle atop the hill with a cold sneer on his countenance. Daily reports were whispered on the wind, death-cries echoed and resonated within, from the nearby forest knolls and gorges; the auxiliaries were felled surely and steadily in the woods around the deeper hinterlands, between the fortresses of Bruuksfurt and SkollWodin. Their numbers persisted yet, and just below a thousand of the freshly and fairly marked still stalked and savaged the hearths and villas. Of slight interest to the aged-faced, pale-skinned man, were the whispers of the force of armed men that had marched forth from SkollWodin on-the-knoll; they advanced apace with a swath of dead and dusted auxiliaries. The voices say they numbered near a thousand; they also said this force did not march to some ultimate confrontation but deposited its cells along the way, to arm and defend the isolated peoples; they said he did not have to expect any reinforcements coming to the aid of his prey. His clawed hands caressed and preened greyed strands on a receding hairline as he looked to draw in a deep breath, mid-thought; he needed breathe no air, but succumbed to old habits from a past life. Scattered in over a hundred groups of ten or more, his mayakith prowled the valley passes beneath the hills, and they could smell those who walked the walls of the castle above.

The Maester’s mind dwelled also on his recent trip to and fro the northern coast, in a path between the fortresses Bruuksfurt and Verdenstadt, slipping through the vale’s defenses. His meeting with ‘the Mother’ had further reinforced his mood to penetrate the castle before him, as well as infiltrate the entire valley populations; here lay another isolated fledgling kingdom, or state of sorts-a perfect home for his children and their preferred place to hide. On his return trip, as he and his group of ten passed the shadows of the Verdenstadt hills, Martel Merovich had disengaged mid-run, turned and leapt in a great bound that traversed the valley floor to the battlements atop the hills, over 600 feet- he had landed on a currently empty patch of wall. Within moments, he had been surrounded by two Therians of immense bulk in the narrow walkway in midair; had neither turned in either direction to observe the threats nor shifted his gaze from the compound beneath him. There in the empty courtyard stood a sole soldier in a woad blue cloak and like-colored armor; he had stared up at the Maester with a great grin on his face and his presence had seemed to fill the entire castle, like a resonating howl within one’s mind. Momentarily the world had darkened, so that even he, a spawn of Adam had difficulty seeing through the deep shade; all that had remained visible in that gloom had been the bright white eyes of the blue-clad soldier in the courtyard, and his bright white teeth, still displayed in that wide grin- deep sorcery was present in the castle…

Now Martel knew that indeed Verdenstadt was his rightful prey and only he and his ken, his mayakith, could hope of surpassing the near-insurmountable difficulties posed by besieging the castle. Since he had returned from the ship on the coast his eyes had glowed a deep bloody red, as well as those of his ten guards; he had also noticed vast changes in their capabilities- it was like they had left another life behind, like they did their first. Hearing now covered many more miles than before, with a finer, almost unnerving clarity; a single bound may lift them high into the skies, or throw them across a half dozen miles so that they traversed wide countries in half-hours; a blow with real intent could shatter through stone several feet thick as it did when he struck the two behemoth Therians on either side atop the wall. His blows had moved with blinding speed, almost outstripping his own eyes; the blows had each splattered large chunks of the wolves forms like feeble sacks of blood; the force of the blows had then carried the creatures hurtling over a score yards back through the air, like darts from a crossbow , till they shattered two 18-foot guard rooms on the battlements; the shockwave from the attack had shook the walls and even reverberated down in the courtyard, though the stonework took no considerable damages. He had killed them as a response to the sorcerer’s threat-now he watched with inner mirth as they scrambled around re-building their ramparts. And curiously, any of his mayakith who had looked he and his group in the eyes afterwards had also manifested permanently glowing eyes. Now he restricted access to himself, keeping a force of 20 red-eyed mayakith around his person; he had sent Agrippina, his child-like consort, with the remainder of the now hundred strong red-eyed to go share their new enchantments with their ken down in the valleys beneath Verdenstadt. Now he whispered into the wind: “We attack on the night of morrow.”

**

SkollWodin Fortress

Skollvurn Forest (Lowlands)

Rollo opened his eyes to a grey sky, as the air escaped his lungs for the umpteenth time; he had lost count of how many drops and falls to his rump and backside flat, he taken this session alone. He let his mind drift a little, taking in the bleary sky with boiling dark clouds only visible in shifting shades; this helped him avoid the pain, and gather his senses, or so he hoped. And he had reached a decision. As he slowly pushed himself up from the dirt once more, and released a huge breath and with face downcast, he said loudly, “I forfeit. No more, please.” He dropped his wooden staff on the ground before him, breathing a little heavily under the slight chill of the day. How was he supposed to protect anyone like this? He thought. On his back every other day, in and out of sessions; he had tried sparring one-on-one with Hilda- they had become close friends since before their parents departed the keep. She too had put him flat on his back. He had begun considering enlisting in the kitchens or the stables perhaps, maybe even the armory if he could manage it, to save himself the embarrassment of being rejected for the armed corps. Shamefully sometimes he had even began to wish his Da could return on a visit perhaps; give him an excuse to quit the keep altogether. He was prepared to swear on both his gonads that he would never tell another soul about what he had witnessed in the great hall, if they would just let him go home. But a dark part of himself whispered his Da’s fate; fallen out in the wilderness among the casualties of the armed counter led by the Viscount and commander Katwulf. Whenever his thoughts strayed that way he would swallow hard and take three deep breaths, calm and measured like he now did in the stable courtyard behind the great hall. It was a much smaller yard but more isolated and convenient for drill exercises than the bustling and busy front courtyard; and now it was filled with a semi-circle of teens just above or around Rollo and Hilda’s age. As finally managed to raise his head a notch, in attempted defiance of the cloak of shame, his eyes fell on Anslem on one edge of the line. The kid had not spoken to anyone other than commander Katwulf since the night of their arrival at the hall; he had lost his father and sister in that night, a huge chunk of his family. And at such a young age, and with such brutality; the lack of any truly familiar faces after the incident also added to the stupor the boy was currently drowning in. Rollo had watched over him from a distance, not having the maturity to combat or alleviate so deep a pain. As he looked at Anslem, the boy looked back. And for a moment there, there was recognition; the old spirit of childhood and friendliness within had acknowledged Rollo’s identity, and had there been the feeblest spark of empathy in that look? And then the boy’s head was tucked carefully back into his chest. That moment, something had dropped in Rollo’s head, like a pair of scales; and his heart reached out earnestly to Anslem. The kid was as his brother- it was Rollo’s place to protect him, ad his Da would him. He exhaled, he blinked.

**

Outside Bruuksfurt Fortress

Skollvurn Forest (Lowlands)

They swam like snakes in the water, able to easily elevate the upper parts of their bodies above the surface, while seeming to glide along in the water. Their legs worked in a blur that propelled them faster than any other creatures to ever grace the waters; those that swam full beneath the water sped like arrows through the water, arms at their sides, giving their pale bodies a streamline. There were scores of them approaching the round walls from every direction in the water, and in no time many were crawling and climbing onto the beach around the place. The castle was built on water, an astonishing feat of engineering, with much wood involved in fording a river and to form an enormous base around which earth had been packed before construction. They say that the original inhabitants had built the castle before the arrivals of the Norsemen, as a bastion against the dark magicks that prowled the forests around the great river, to keep all sorts of creatures out, like the nefarious wolf-men that plagued all of Eastern and Northern Europa. All this and more could be heard on the whispers of the wind, if but one were a pale-faced mayakith. And as they stared up at the towering walls now, they hear whispers of panic and resolve, fear and determination. They that guarded the fortress were prepared for the savagery to commence.