Chapter 1: They Say (Patreon)

Author’s note: Hi guys.

.

First of all, I have to say how heartwarming it is how many of you decided to give me a chance and stayed with me. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

.
This is the first chapter of the first new story - temporary title: Grandora. This one is more similar in a sense to Lament of the Slave.

.

It's a story about a girl, Eirlys, and a world under the sway of the Grand Beasts. I guess there's no need to say more for the introduction when you can start reading right away. However, I will allow myself a small warning: 18+ content. Swearing, gore, torture and descriptions of the results. Basically everything you shouldn't be a stranger to from Lament of the Slave. Yet something that might not sit well with everyone.

.

I was wondering in what system to deliver the second story to you. Whether to deliver Grandora in the first half of the month and the second story in the second half, but I figured that if I'm 'just' editing the second story I can afford to release it between the chapters of Grandora. So that would mean three chapters a week. Wednesday, Grandora. Friday, Second Story. Sunday, Grandora. It's nothing set in stone, and depending on the number of chapters of the second story, the release order may change. However, if you have a better idea on how to approach this, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know in the comments below.

.

Without further ado, enjoy!

.

Chapter 1: They Say - Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/95782856

.

___________________________________________________________________

Chapter 1: They Say

.

"Move!" The crack of the whip, striking body, tearing skin, ripping flesh, followed the roar of the mine foreman. Mercifully, I was not the target of that bastard's wrath, but the male Foxkin pushing the ore cart on rails in front of me. Blood gushed out of the man's back. A painful howl ripped from his throat. Sweet music to the foreman's ears, torture to mine. Yet, much like the man's, my legs didn't buckle. Instead I leaned into the ore cart with more force to avoid the bite of the whip.

*CRACK*

My back flared in pain. I screamed, bringing a wry smile to the foreman's lips.

"Yo’ call that a full load, vixen? One more time and I'll have yo’ racked by yo’r tits." Not an idle threat. In fact, it was one of the mine foreman's preferred forms of punishment. But not the worst. By far the most used was hanging by the ears - excruciatingly painful. Or so they said. Hard to hang a gal by her ears when she only had one.

The much-hated so-called masters, however, were not to blame for my missing ear. While many lost theirs or had them damaged as a result of the punishment, I lost it even before I got here. In a terrible fire. One that scarred half my face and left me without a family in this cruel world.

[Grandora. A land where humans lived in the shadow of Grand Beasts. They had many names and were called by different titles. Titans, behemoths, destroyers, monsters, our light, and our ruin. Some even called them gods. The ones who could not be touched by humans who lived at their whim, with an ever-present light in our hearts to guide our paths.]

Or so the most devout preached.

For the rest, the looming presence of the Grand Beasts was a shadow that weighed on our minds, a curse that ate away at our lives. The longer you lived, the deeper the presence of the Behemoths penetrated your body, changing it into their image. Eventually turning you into a beast. A fate that awaited most, but not me any more. The ever-present bestial pressure of the Grand Fox Vetrifyr, or Frostflame in Common tongue, impalpable to normal perception, yet spread across the world, fighting and mixing with the might of other Behemoths, made its claims on my body as early as my five years. With small tufts of silver fur growing on my tiny legs, I officially became a Foxkin and earned the suffix 'ame' to my name - just like my parents. At the time, something to celebrate. Frostflame was a mighty, ancient behemoth that guaranteed a Foxkin respectable standing in any country, kingdom, or empire throughout the world. That privilege came to an abrupt end with Frostflame's sudden death five years ago. The world and its races turned their backs on the Foxkin overnight.

*CRACK*

"Move, vixen! Or . . . " the foreman Dek'maw, a Bearkin, left the threat unspoken. The bastard didn't have to say more. With warm blood trickling from two new gashes on my back, I swallowed a scream, gritted my teeth, and leaned back against the ore cart. Even with an ear missing, there were far worse things they could have done to me than stick my nipples in clips and leave me hanging by rags, doing a tiptoe dance in the middle of the mine for their amusement. Just the thought of the tail stretching sent shivers down my spine and threatened to freeze my feet to the ground. It may have been over a year since they went too far and ripped my tail off, but the nightmares of that day still wake me from my sleep.

You're the lucky one, they told me. And they weren't wrong. Some of the poor souls ended up paralyzed from the waist down - me with just the stub of my tail - and nightmares.

"Ah . . . the eyesore," grunted the forewoman Vesp'ake, Hogkin, when I finally got the damn ore cart to the unloading station. "Come on, hurry up! Make it quick . . . so I don't have to look at you any longer."

Many have found me hard to look at, the reason I ended up here and not in some brothel, but the stupid sow was no beauty either. The pressure of the Grand Boar, Svinthral, or Snoutquake in Common, had already seeped deep into her bones. No layer of masking powders could cover a pig's snout for a nose and fangs that lifted her lips. Saving every snide remark that came to my tongue, and there were many, for whispered conversations with the other slaves away from the foremen's ears, I slammed the cart's brake, unlocked the bucket, and dumped its contents - gold ore - onto the pile below.

"Get . . . your ugly face . . . out of here!" She may not have had a whip in her hand, only a pen to record the quantity of ore, but I dared not speak a word back. Any flame of resistance slumbering within me has long since been snuffed out. Yet, for whatever stupid reason, I clung to life by the skin of my teeth. And so, no matter how frustrating, painful, or downright better to be dead than to live a heartbeat longer this place became, I learned to listen.

Without further delay, I locked the bucket, released the brake, and made room for the one behind me.

"Here, Eirlys," Luna'ame, a Foxkin like me, brought a wooden ladle of water to my mouth. I gulped it down, looking around the place - my last stop here, out in the fresh air, before I plunged back into the depths of the mine. Huge barrels in this place, fed with drinking water from a stream on the surface, were manned by two others. One I knew, the other face was new to me. Nothing unusual. People - nay, slaves - died here more often at the whims of their masters, their whips and the relentless heat of the mine than cattle at the hands of the butchers.

"One more, please?"

"This is no place for niceties, and courtesy, girl," Luna'ame, a thirty-something woman, remarked as she scooped up another ladle for me. Mercifully, unlike food, water was not rationed.

"Isn't that all we have left?"

"Don't quote me that old fool. Kier doesn't know what he's talking about. A wrong thanks can earn you ten lashes here."

"Am I supposed to call you vixen, like the foremen do, then?"

"Better than getting the whip, nay? How many today?"

"You saw, didn't you?"

"Um-hmm. Let me look . . . not too deep. Looks like that limpdick got a good night's sleep tonight," she whispered, careful of the foremen's ears.

"With who?"

"Just be glad it wasn't you, girl."

"He would never touch me," I pointed to the left side of my face, to which Luna'ame smiled grimly. "Maybe, but I wouldn't bank on it if I were you, girl. Here."

I took another gulp of cool water and looked behind me. Four other slaves were already standing there, some wetting their parched throats like me, others waiting their turn.

"I should go before . . . " well, before whatever. There was no way of knowing what might have crossed the foremen's minds. Water may not have been rationed, but time was not to be wasted. Three gulps might have been fine, just as one might have been too much. You never knew. So, unwilling to risk another lashing, I leaned back in the cart.

"May you come back, girl," Luna’ame wished me the way she always did - for foremen with a lack of sincerity in her voice, for foxkin ears with a genuine concern. Like me, she was well aware of the dangers of the journey back to the depths.

Alas, having no choice, I pushed the empty cart to where the tracks began to slope, climbed in, and released the brake. Slowly at first, the cart quickly picked up speed. With the squeaking of wheels on rails, I made my way down the open pit, and as the darkness of the tunnels replaced the daylight, I yelped with joy. One had to make the best of the little things here in this living nightmare. And the journey down into the depths, through the dimly lit tunnels, was - well, thrilling, to say the least. Dangerous, for sure. One pebble on the track and I could end up smeared all over the tunnel walls. It happened far too often. But not to me - not yet, so I basked in the rush, the wind in my hair and the brief freedom. With the brake lever of the cart, I held my life in my hands for a change.

The track down was ever straight and twisted as the diggers followed the veins of gold ore. Some of the bends were gentle and could be taken at full speed; others I had to lean into to keep the cart from flying off the tracks. Only a few required braking. The same was true when I caught up with the cart in front of me. No passing the slugs on the tracks - quite frustrating, but I understood them. Going slow meant getting down in one piece, getting more rest between each back-breaking trip back to the surface, and enjoying the freedom longer.

Despite the thrill of the ride, and much to my regret, as of yet, I made it down unscathed and by my breath count in record time, just as the Foxkin with the fresh, bloody gash on his back was getting out of his cart. Thanks to those three risky gulps of water, I stayed at the surface long enough to have the whole way down free of slug drivers.

The sheer delight of the ride, however, didn't show in my eyes or on my lips. A small smile could draw the ire of the foremen overseeing the work here in the deepest parts of the mine.

"Don't slug there!" growled the massive Hogkin man, and I hurried out of the cart. "Shaft seven," he said to the slave in front of me, flipping the switch so the man could push his cart in.

"Shaft twelve," the hog-man grunted when it was my turn. As soon as he flipped the switch, I pushed the cart. Shaft twelve, like this entire level, was the latest addition to the mine - an attempt to get as much gold as possible out of this place and its thinning veins. It was a long shaft with many branching tunnels, most of them now filled with mined stone. Yet what awaited me at the end was just a tiny pile of ore, barely enough to cover the bottom of the cart, and a pissed off foreman.

"What the fuck is this - and where in the name of all the Titans is the vein?" the huge badger-man sputtered, kicking a slave writhing on the ground. Nothing unusual to see. Neither I nor the other slave miners batted an eye. But when I squinted in the flickering light of the lamps, I spotted pitch darkness behind the foreman.

A mistake.

"What are you gawking at, vixen?!" the foreman barked, and I froze. His ire shifted - to me. I immediately lowered my head, fixed my eyes on my bare toes, and pressed my ear to my head.

"I asked you a question! Didn't you hear me? Maybe that ear of yours is just as useless as the other one . . . I'd say you don't need it; what do you think, vixen?"

What I thought was that he should drop dead like the rest of the foremen. They were all the same, trying to take out their frustrations on those who could only bring more suffering upon themselves by defending themselves. But to say something like that to his face would be a death sentence - a painful one.

"M-Mercy . . . sir."

"What did you say?"

I dared to look up. Under the bestial pressure of the Great Badger Petraek, his ears, like mine, had long since lost their human shape. But that didn't explain his question. Badgerskin were not known for their poor hearing. It was their sight that was lacking. Yet my plea seemed to fall on deaf ears.

"Mercy . . . sir," I repeated, afraid that if I didn't, it would only make him angrier. Alas, as I feared, it didn't do me any good. The foreman stuttered and reached me in a few steps. "Oh, you want me to show mercy . . . to a mongrel like you?"

" . . . " I said nothing, wishing more than anything that he would direct his anger at someone else. No doubt the wish of all the miners in the tunnel. For them, I was the scapegoat. If only I knew the reason why.

"Fine, I can do that. You want me to show you mercy, vixen, then I will gladly show it to you . . . " The badger-man purred, his grin sending shivers down my spine. And for good reason, that tone of voice was never a good sign with any foreman . . . yet I didn't move an inch when I should have run. Fear kept my feet frozen to the ground. I wasn't sure if I would survive what would follow if I did. There was no escape from the mines. Only a few entrances led to an underground network of tunnels, all of them well guarded. My only options would be to hide in abandoned tunnels for the rest of my life - starve to death sooner rather than later, or face the punishment of the foremen for running away. Only a handful survived that.

And so, when the burly badger-man held out his hand to me, I just stood there. As his hand closed around my throat and the bastard lifted me off the ground, I swallowed a cry of pain. Even as he dragged me towards the pitch black darkness at the end of the tunnel, I just watched, a silent plea to the other slaves on my lips.

It wasn't until he made it to the end of the tunnel and reached out his hand with me into the darkness that fear gripped my guts and panic broke through all the caution that had been hammered into me. The darkness - the reason for all this - turned out to be a chasm, a ravine. A massive one at that. The light from the lamps in the tunnel didn't reach the other side, let alone the bottom.

"Nay, nay, nay . . . please, I'll do anything . . . !" I pleaded, struggling to free myself from his grasp and return to the questionable safety of Shaft Twelve.

"Anything . . . you . . . ?" the bastard smirked, and I knew. This man has already decided my fate. "Then check what's down there for me."

The badger's grip around my neck loosened, and despite my best efforts to grab onto him or the edge of the tunnel, I fell into the utter darkness of the ravine.

They say that at the end of the journey to your behemoth, you will share your life with the Grand Beast. But I didn't see it flash before my eyes as I fell, unable to even see my flailing arms in front of me. There was no Grand Beast waiting for me at the end of my journey. Frostflame was dead. What awaited me was more darkness, pain, and cold. Bone chilling cold . . . water.

I hit the surface so hard that the impact took my breath away, likely broke a bone or two, and the pain clouded my mind. Only because of the cold piercing my body, numbing the pain, did I cling to the thread of my consciousness, one thought echoing inside my skull so hard it was almost unbearable. Live. I want to live!

Breaking back to the surface, I sucked the damp, cold air into my lungs and let out a near-soundless scream. As always, it fell on deaf ears. Just like on the surface, there was no one down here in the darkness to help me, or at least spare me a kind word. I would give anything to have my mother back, having her stroke my hair and say: Everything's gonna be all right, Eirlys'ame; to have my father teach me how to survive in the snowy woods; or just to have one more chance to play with my younger sister by the crackling flames of the fireplace.

I hated Frostflame for dying. I hated myself even more for surviving when others didn't. Even now, I was desperately doing everything in my power to reach the shore that I couldn't see for the darkness, but hoped was there somewhere. With each breath, my heartbeat slowed, my arms and legs grew numb, and yet - I wanted to live - to survive once more.

One stroke after another, one splash of freezing water at a time, followed by the silent screams into the perversing darkness. But when the edges of the sharp stones dug into the skin of my fingers, my frozen heart melted.

The shore. I had reached it. I survived once more - and once more wished I hadn't.

And yet I fought on, clawing my way out of the icy water, the sharp stones cutting into my flesh like the foreman's sharpest whips. It hurt - so much. Blood gushed from my wounds, no warmer than the water itself. But I lived.

For how long, I dare not think.

My father's teachings hadn't prepared me for this. Though similarly freezing, this ravine with a lake at the bottom could not be more different from the snow-covered woods of my home I so hard wish I was back in. And so, feeling that this was it, that the time had come, I curled up into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest and dreaming of snowy woods, I closed my eyes, hopefully for the last time.

The world saw it differently, though, and when the whole place shook, my eyes opened wide. The darkness, the darkness all around, was as heavy as ever, but in that darkness, two huge gems shone so brightly that it hurt my heart. The life in them, the youthful energy. They had everything in them that I had lost long ago.

»Child of Vetrifyr,« a deep, powerful voice echoed through the dark void in Ancient tongue, rattling my bones as a breath of warm air wafted over my frozen body.

They say . . . well, they say that when a Grand Beast leaves this world, another will take its place. It has happened many times throughout the history of the world. Alas, no one has ever witnessed it - or so they say. Wherever the truth lay, there was no doubt in my mind that out of the pitch-black darkness of this abyss, a behemoth was staring back at me, a Grand Beast that had opened its eyes for the first time in its life.

___________________________________________________________________

Author’s note: I know it's hard to make a judgement from one chapter, but with a knot of worry gripping my guts, I have to ask for your first impressions. You know me and even though I may not like it, feel free to give me your honest thoughts.

.

Thank you for reading :)

___________________________________________________________________

Grandora . . . . . . . Table of Contents . . . . . . . Next Chapter