Daughter of Stormcrown (Patreon)

Name?

"Raewyn Baer. Clanname Thundercloud."

Lineage?

"Daughter of Sigbolt and Tyrisgard. Citizen of Stormcrown, officially.  Technical term, Goliath."

Occupation?

"Protector of Gravesfeld, 'Ambassador' to Stormcrown, otherwise Barbarian and wrecker of generally everything."

Martital Status?

"Married, blissfully."

***

The Titanclan Warrior roared in triumph as he bashed away yet another three challengers.  More Giant than Man, the berserker wielded his flail and giant shield with a speed that belied his ominous bulk.  Even in a practice ring, there would be serious injuries among the attendees.

Good.  More glory for the victor then.

His clanchief looked far too smug, sitting next to the Lord and Lady Stormcrown high up in the floating stands above the wartorn sandpit that served as the arena's floor.  Titanclan was always so damn cocky because of their great size and strength, even compared to others of their kind.  It wasn't hard to understand why; Ballus, their leader, was half again as tall as even the Storm-Marshall himself.  This specimen, Thugart, was a whopping 9 feet tall.

Size isn't everything.  Strength matters far more.

Another challenger, this one using a two-ended polehammer, was smashed down into the sand with a groan.  The crowd raised tankards and horns of mead, echoing the champion's roar of dominance with cheers and cries of approval of his exhibition.

All right, enough of the showboating.

Her boots hit the sand with barely enough time for the announcer, one of the bird-headed Aeriefolk, to caw out the victory.  All eyes turned to her as she rose to her full height, half a foot again over seven feet.  The Thundercloud tattoos and markings on her armor and tattoos immediately grabbed their attentions.  One of the High Houses was competing today!

Her opponent, thankfully, didn't seem impressed.  He even laughed.  Maybe not something to be thankful of.

"What's this?" he bellowed.  "Are we sending our whelps against me now?"

"Are we warriors?" Raewyn called back at him, speaking over the announcer and even Lord Ballus when he stood to no doubt chastise her for breaking protocol.  "Or are we bitches?"

The crowd laughed.  Thugart noticeably ground his granite-like teeth together beneath his helmet.  "You'll find out who the bitch is..." he snarled.

She wiggled her eyebrows up at him and then turned to inspect the weapons rack nearby.  Swords, hammers, axes...there.  Her purple-tinted hands snatched up a war-lance, with a heavy leaf-blade and reinforced haft.  It was a fine weapon, perhaps not as much so as her personal weapon, but those weren't allowed here.  She abstained from a helmet though; her indigo hair tended to get uncomfortable when it was all squashed down.

There were no long, drawn-out affairs to Goliath brawls.  As soon as her weapons were in hand and she was standing, facing Thugart, he was already halfway across the arena floor.  Heavy boots pounded into the sand as he barreled towards her.  His flail had become an iron whirl above his head, shield held across his body.

Raewyn had more than enough time to duck the spiked iron head as it whistled through the air towards her skull; Thugart was a showboater and made the arc as painstakingly over dramatic as possible.  She bounced back on her boots, dodging yet another wild flail strike which threw up a cloud of sand as it impacted harmlessly on the floor.

Spotting an opening in his defense, she lunged experimentally with her spear, the blade skating across the baldric of his weapon arm.  A light strike, not much more than a tickle.  The cheers in the crowd, or specifically a specific voice amidst all that furor, grew even louder as she danced around his berserker flailing.

She used the slippery sand floor to her advantage, keeping within Thugart's reach of the flail, impeding his movements with harrowing jabs to his exposed musculature.  Sheens of blood blossomed down his grey, stony hide from the tiny holes being poked in him; none of the wounds would be anything but superfluous, meant to enrage.

Then came the shield.  Keeping her eyes constantly tracking the flail, she didn't spare much attention to Thugart's other armament, which came smashing into her broadside as she stepped around yet another horrifically wide miss.  The solid steel and wood crashed into her like a battering ram, shoving her back and away from the gladiator.

Blood trickled down from her nose, licked away by a long tongue before she bared her sharp teeth in a predatory grin.  "Finally landed one huh?" she taunted, now circling the panting, frustrated Thugart.  "What's that make, a dozen to one?"

"You...annoying...little...harlot" he snarled, flail and shield shuddering in his massive hands.  "Undersized, irritating little gnat!  I'll crush you into gravel!"

Catcalls and mocking chants resounded from amongst his followers, matched in intensity by her own.  One specific one of her own anyway, more than loud and verbose enough to challenge Thugart's fanatical fanboys with a passion that belied his exotic, out of place presence amongst her kind.

"Little?" she narrowed her gold-amber eyes up at him.  "Undersized?"  Her shoulders drew back, her stance shifting to something more serious.  The grips of her spear creaked beneath her grasp as she lifted it, aligning it perfectly with her chosen target.  Muscles swelled beneath her skin, fire and lightning coursing through her veins.  "I'll show you undersized," she snarled, and then launched the spear as if it were fired from a siege engine.

Thugart obviously was able to block it; it was a highly telegraphed move.  Dodging it wouldn't have been easy either, not from how quickly it accelerated to barely a blur.  It smote on his shield with a ringing peal of impact, wedging into the wood so deep that the point burst out through the back, right in front of his startled eyes behind his helmet.  The 9 foot tall half-giant staggered back from the blow, thrown momentarily off balance.

Then Raewyn was rushing him, feet pounding across the sand as she focused all her power.  Between each step, her blood surged to a lightning storm inside of her, billowing clouds and thundercracks building, expanding, growing.  And as her Rage grew, so did she.  The crowd's howls became something else now; recognition of the Old-Blood overpowered even a warrior exhibition.

By the time Thugart had recovered from her attack, she was already upon him.  The look of shock and surprise in his bloodshot, black eyes behind the armored facemask was priceless as he gazed up at her, shocked into a momentary stunned silence.  Titanclan had old roots, going all the way back to when Giants first mingled with those they called Smallfolk.  It presented itself in obvious ways, making them taller than most of their cousin-clans.  

Imagine his surprise to see the woman he had been fighting now half-again as tall as she had been before.  7 and a half had become over 10 feet of lilac-skinned, midnight-haired warrior, with veins that literally pulsed with barely visible arcs of latent electricity.

Then he was being piledriven back as she shoulder-tackled him, lifting him up entirely off his armored feet, and then body-slammed down into the sandy floor.  She sprang away as he lashed out wildly with his flail, barely able to come back to his feet before she was upon him again.  The air surrounding the Giant-shifted Barbarian had become electrified now, whirling winds and arcs of lightning coursing along her mighty, amazonian body.  Thugart could barely keep his feet under him as it sapped and tugged at him as mightily as a gale at sea.

Raewyn did not really need a weapon when she was like this.  She deflected a shield-bash by planting a giant foot upon it mid-strike and shoving his arm back, forcing his entire body to stagger back again.  His flail smote her on the ribs but to her it barely felt as a tickle.  Undisturbed by it, she lashed out and grabbed hold of his helmet's rim.  Metal buckled and warped beneath her crushing strength as she tore it from his head, and then bashed him across the skull with it.  The arena attendants all winced at the dull, echoing bonk sound it caused.  Again that familiar, out of place cried out in primal joy and excitement.

Stunned by the helmet strike, Thugart barely had time or the thinking capacity to respond, swinging blindly with his flail again.  This time she caught his wrist, halting the blow before the iron head could gain any amount of momentum.  They wrestled there, a contest of strength that had only one clear victor.

Slowly, inexorably, as the tide crashes evermore upon the rocky beach, wearing it away, she bent his arm up and back, both their vast musculatures straining.  Then, with a neat flip of her wrist, she pulled his arm completely up and away, exposing his sweat and blood streaked chest right before her huge boot crashed into his sternum.

Titanclan or not, Thugart went flying back, off his feet, and again crashed onto the sandy floor.  The crowd howled in delight as she freed her spear from his shield and pointed the double-bladed tip down, tickling his eyelid and nose with it.

Bending down, body still filled with the fury of the storm that was her bloodline, Raewyn met his startled, still half-senseless eyes with her own.  "Who's undersized?" she taunted, voice deeper, echoing as thunder within deep storm clouds.

"I...am," he conceded.

Raewyn stood and held her spear up triumphantly, blade shining in the bright sun.  The Arena howled in recognition of a victor.  The Lord and Lady Stormcrown raised their drinks to her, fondness twinkling in their eyes.  Lord Ballus Titanclan had never looked so pale, an odd color for his granite-grey skin.  But she had eyes only for one.

Crossing the sandy floor, ignoring the cawing shouts from the announcer as he lauded her victory, she grinned down at the pale, tiny-seeming figure sitting in the lower section of the stands.  His forest-green eyes twinkled mischievously up at her, a hint of a predatory smile upon his lips.  The shock of white amongst his chestnut brown hair was always so adorable to her.

"Well hello there, Ms. Champion," he murmured up to her, audible even now to her.  It was a voice she would never tire of hearing.  "An outstanding match."

She shrugged nonchalantly, dropping her spear into the waiting hands of an attendant and otherwise ignoring everyone else around her.  "My thanks, little one," she growled, loving how he wriggled when she called him that.  "Care to attend to my injuries?"

His eyes flashed, trailing up and down her enlarged frame meaningfully.  "It would be my honor, and very great pleasure."

The thrill his words and gaze caused her was as great as any victory in battle.  In a single moment, she had reached down, scooped up the frail-seeming elven figure in one hand and hefted him weightlessly over her shoulder.  Turning, she gave her Lord and Lady a single head-bow of deference, ignoring the scandalized, shocked, or surprised looks on everyone of her fellow Goliath clans' faces.

"I think I might retire, your Grace," she called up to them.  "I thank you for this exhibition."

Raising her mug, Lady Sigbolt Thundercloud-Stormcrown grinned in response.  "It was our honor to witness your showing," she called in an imperious voice that commanded silence from others.  "Thank you for a fine match."

Trying not to giggle at how professional she and her mother were having to behave, she instead just tipped her fingers in a salute to her father, who grinned behind his great beard, and strode off, Elf in tow over her shoulder, out of the great arena.  Her private quarters weren't far, a visitors' lodge allowed to her during her visits back home to the floating islands that formed the lands where Goliaths reigned in their many varying elemental clans.  By the time they had arrived, her Rage had subsided, shrinking her back down to normal size but still carrying the man over her shoulder just as weightlessly.

She threw her prize onto the bed once inside the hovel, its construction larger than average due to her kind being as big as they were.  She gazed down at him eagerly, admiring every inch of his sinewy, lithe, slender frame.  She'd never cared for the overly macho, over-muscled types she had grown up surrounded by.  Her tastes were...definitively more along the lines of 'scrawny and skinny'.  It made his surprising of her always the more enjoyable affair.  

His eyes flashed dimly red in the low light, a single fang protruding from his lips, making her wriggle inside.  "A fine trophy," he murmured huskily to her, gesturing to the bloody weal in her flesh where she had been hit.  Already his delicate, dexterous hands were helping peel her out of her armor and leathers, blessed with intimate, practiced knowledge of every buckle, strap, and section of her attire.

"None finer than you," she spoke softly, loving the feel of his hands on her, always so gentle, so fine, so hungry.  She pinned him then to the bed, leaning down over her tiny Husband with all the love possible in the world emanating from their eyes.

Asher grinned up at her, exposing more of those two, overly long and sharp canine teeth.  "Even so, you deserve a real prize."  In a flash, he had flipped them over, pinning her nakedness to the course sheets with a strength that belied their differences in size.  His sharp teeth grazed her collarbone and throat, making her shudder with uncontrolled eagerness.  Even as he bit down, filling her with heat both above and below, her strong arms crushed him to her.

Their hovel soon echoed with the sounds of his doting of her.  A finer prize there never could be, compared to the happiness of the odd, mismatched pair.

***The second of a collection of short scenes, this time featuring Raewyn Baer, Storm-Giant Goliath Barbarian.  Stay tuned tomorrow for a Valentines day surprise!***