Ruilira, Ruiliran Empire
~Two Days Before the Ceremony~
“Grand Ruilira” a weathered man no older than forty murmured as he wiped the sweat from his brow. It had been so long since he had been in the birthplace of the most glorious empire in the world and the cultural birthplace of his people. Having traveling in the edge of the Known World in the great, gelid north had dulled his near-tropical proclivities. Living alongside subdued barbarian tribes and battling many more had changed him, more so than any campaign in the sun-baked deserts of Ham had. It would take him some time to readjust to the land of his people.
Yet, the heat troubled only his body, for his mind recalled the great victories on the Ruiliran soldier had the honor of being apart of. He remembered the spoils of war, the pungence of blood and defecation as slain men lost control of all bodily functions. The brutal slaughter of all those fit to carry a sword and the ravaging or subsequent enslavement of those unable to. He had witnessed the mythical stories of pale-skinned warriors in the furs of bears astride the backs of hairy elephantine beasts and stout, hairy horses no bigger than a domestic ass. Above that, he had witnessed the creatures of legend greater than any single putrid race of man, like the bulky, stout men-like creatures which dwelled within the caverns of the north and the fiery wyrms that no shepherd dared pursue when it happened upon a herd of cattle or sheep.
Of course, there was also the creature he had managed to trap himself. A goliath being that made him harken back to the cyclops of yore, that were said to inhabit the ancient mountains of Ruilira before the dominance of man. Though this creature was far more primordial. The man had likened the beast itself to that of a chimera of sorts, blessed with the visage of a man with all the grace of an elephant and the intellect of a jackass. A creature that no man on board had managed to silence, not even with the whips crafted from the hides of hippopotamus or wild ox.
The man had also played back the capture of the giant himself. The northern savages had ancient techniques for hunting the great mountain giants and the traps and actions that had brought the brute to heel made for a fascinating sight. That is something he had to concede to the northern savages, they were quite skilled at everything they did. Though being skilled alone was no match for the unalienable superiority of the civilized man and the Ruilirans in particular. The land conquered would go on to be incorporated into the great empire, the degenerate gods the northmen swore by suppressed and the culture of Ruilira thrust upon them.
Eagerly the Ruiliran walked below the deck of the massive cargo galley to look upon his foreign victories. Passing by the rowing men, lowest of Ruiliran men above slaves, the man entered a room situated near the stern full of an uncountable number of slaves. Northern barbarians are many different tribes, few even collected from the tribes of the northwest and east with slightly different physical features and tattoos. The smell was even worse than the stench of the battlefield as men, women and children were forced to stew in their own waste: blood, urine, feces, vomit and menstruation fluid. Bound in manacles, they wrestled for space having been stacked on top of one another, elbow-to-elbow.
Away from the tightly packed human cargo was the giant. His arms bound in thick manacles forged with what the natives had called dragonsteel. The beast itself had a rugged exterior, a thick brown mane connected to a prominent beard. On its torso was what he would hardly hesitate to call clothes, crudely sewn from the pelt of a hairy behemoth, perhaps a rhinoceros or cave bear. Unlike the human slaves who were stripped naked, no man dared to get close enough to the creature to try and move it regardless of its incarcerated state.
The giant himself opened his eyes, upon the strangely dressed human that it had encountered before. He too replayed the memories of the north, how the wicked northmen had set traps for him. How the whip-bearing tan-skinned men had tried to break his spirit but to no avail. Admittedly he had been captured before, but this was the first time he had even sailed across the great waters in a great raft different from the ones that northmen used. These weren't northmen, perhaps these beasts in all their cruelty weren't men, but demons not unlike the ones in the tales of his youth.
His heart bled at the thought of his long scattered people. In truth he remembered less and less about them as the decades went on, but the one of the one that would remain with him until death. When the elder giants gathered for the coronation of names, a tradition lost with them and the then young giant would receive his name, Ulgar. A name he would keep with him in the darkest times of his life. Even now on this demonic craft and beyond, he would keep his name, no matter what would be laid out for him in the future. “I am Ulgar of the Mountains” he mumbled to himself in his archaic tongue of giants “And no man shall break me…"
The galley docked in the Port of Nethuns, where his twin demi-god sons watched over the city in magnificent marble. The giant looking upon his former north adversaries as they were dragged off began to plot a means of escape, though the elaborate actions of these tan-men, these foreign demons in the shape of men had made much difficult. Whereas iron was a gift of men in the north to be used sparingly, these creatures used iron like the dwarves. By the time every last waste-covered man, woman and child had been removed from the massive rowing ship, the giant had exhausted every futile plan in his mind.
When the man behind his fall had returned, he had in his company another man, one wrapped in tapestries too grand for any northmen to wear. Briefly they gawked in their tongue, of which Ulgar had only picked up a few words of, nothing to fluently communicate with. Soon more tan-men arrived and struggled to subdue the giant, who bound in dragonsteel, still put up a fight unlike no human slave they had ever seen. Eventually however, Ulgar lost the ability to fight the man-like beasts and struggled to fight against exhaustion. The lack of sufficient food and water having worn his stamina, which he had reserved for this inevitable moment. Yet he would be overcome once again and successfully dragged out of the galley by a team of five.
“Overcome, but not broken…”
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