“So, you’ze lot ready for another story? Somethin’ new? We’ze closed a chapter of da Great Saga, but like I told ya, dat ain’t the end. The story’s all, and all is the story. It stretches behind us, formin’ us, makin’ us. It stretches ahead of us, ready to be shaped by what we are. It defines us, we define it. Headwater and delta both, we are. Now, da ripples of the past are spreading forward again, finding new banks to wash upon. The River touches a new land, one that burns feverish hot with sickness and corruption, one that shines bright with untold promise. A new story, waiting to be told. Waiting to be shaped by those with the will to make da Great Saga their own.
So, who’s ready for the next story?” - Hogrog ug Weirdklaw
***
Tales of Animosity, Volume VIII: The Heart of Darkness
or, “A Tale of the Law of the Jungle, of Inevitability and Chance, of the selfish Altruism of Fate in three Wayward Soldiers, of the Death of Ambitions, and of the Many and Varied warriors of fortune who followed the Damned into Hell, as told by the mad Orruk Hogrog ug Weirdklaw, Wurrgog Speaker of the Great Saga, and Faithfully recorded by myself, your humble servant Mikhail Nikodemeus Grimm”
***
The Flaywilds
The jungle air sweltered, exhaling like some vast beast roasting in the midday sun. Its breath rose in stinking, stinging clouds of sulphur mist and biting flies, clawing beneath armour and under masks, leaching strength with every laboured step. The plants were close, too close, ever grasping and snagging, seeking to drag the witless down into the cloying muck just beyond the trails. They surged against the invaders, growing back nearly as fast as they could be cut away. Each step forward was a war, against the heat, against the vines, against the spiders and snakes and stranger things that lurked beyond the edge of sight. And somewhere ahead were the enemy. It was hell. Nothing could be worth this. And yet…And yet, there is the distance, rising out above the canopy of trees loomed the ruins of one of the Pyramid Temples that fell from the sky. It was the promise of so much. Power. Truth. Redemption. Everything. Everything lay there, so nearly within their grasp. Just beyond these trees. One more hill, one more valley. One more battle. Its promise burned fever-bright.
And so they took one more step, and another, and another.
