Kisah-kisah yang unik

Valentina I didn't cure the pain, I harness it House Paxley ruled over the regions near the Lantis Mountains in the south of the Moniyan Empire. Generations of the house had guarded these areas for the Empire, defending against the invasion of the Abyss with magic and swords. As the house patriarch's eldest daughter, Valentina had been given high hopes since she was born. She underwent rigorous training and grew up into a proud perfectionist, the heir most qualified to lead this noble house. As she grew older, she went to the frontier and helped the house repel wave after wave of invading demons. The news of victories in Lantis Mountains became the only thing that could put the civilians' minds at ease. As a result, House Paxley rose quickly among the nobles, while Valentina became the youngest and only female member of the house council. In search of allies, Valentina went alone to Moonlit Forest despite the Empire's prolonged hostility toward the Elves. The Elf King, ...

If the Lords Oja and Zymeth were unready for war, Grayback wasn't. From the moment he heard of Lord Zymeth's betrayal, Grayback saw the Wolf Clan's chance. Over thirty years, he had been building for this moment. Since his cousin Brighteye's death in an avalanche, Grayback had stealthily taken control of the Wolf Clan's fortunes, training his people, making them strong and maintaining their identity. And he had spent just as much effort restraining them, making them patient. They were a warlike people. Men like Longtooth, a lesser chief in the Whiteshard mine, had to be counseled over and over against rising in undisciplined revolt and letting out the great secret the Wolf Clan were still a proud people, beaten but not broken. There were a few minor flare-ups, even in Grayback's own mine, but nothing truly dangerous. They would only get one real chance to win their freedom failure would mean death for them all. However, Grayback knew they would never have a bett...

After the funeral rites had been concluded, Oja went for a long ride and mentally reviewed his situation. At the time of his father’s death, Lord Oja came of age in a complex world his predecessors had never had to face. In theory he was the most powerful man in the realm, with Lord Zymeth of the Lotus Clan as his advisor. The Wolf Clan was enslaved, and as far as he knew, had no chief at all. However, to his credit Oja understood that the situation was more complex than this. The Lotus Clan leader was too clever by half, and obviously more ambitious than he would like to admit. Likewise, the Wolf Clan was far from subdued the small riots and uprisings that broke out every few months testified to this. As Oja grew up he had been trained in the arts of statecraft and war, both personal combat and the command of armies, and he suspected that one day he would need all his abilities. He was not wrong the other two clan leaders were not idle on that day. Far to the northwest, Lord Zymeth st...

And so, in Lord Hideo’s reign war broke out for the first time since the coming of the Serpent Clan: Lotus and Serpent allied against Wolf. Surprisingly, for the first eight months or so the outcome seemed uncertain. The Wolf Clan warriors were matchless in their own territory. They fought at night and in all seasons, on all terrains. They seemed to have no organization, only packs or lone fighters who emerged from the forest to harass large contingents or massacre smaller ones. They laid traps and ambushes, and at times the forest itself seemed to thicken on command to immobilize their enemies. Individually Wolf Clansmen were cunning and brutally strong. More and more, Serpent Clans soldiers were relying on muskets and a defensive line of spearmen, just to keep from closing with the foe in one-to-one combats. And when a Wolf Clan fighter was killed, it was always at a terrible cost: he would invariably sell his life dearly, and these berserker rages were an awesome sight, enough to co...

After much argument and persuasion, it was agreed that one of the old Lotus Clan scholars would be sent to tutor Blackbone's son, Brighteye, as Lord Zymeth had once done for Hideo. The Wolf Clan sought little contact with outsiders, but eventually Hideo had persuaded him that there was little harm in it, and possibly much advantage. Despite all the posturing, growling, and ill-will, peace had been kept for another year, and all parties returned home semi-satisfied. Two months later, Hideo was out riding when the news came that fighting had broken out between the Clans. A messenger caught up to him and told him the story as they rode back to Serpentholm. Four days after the meeting of the clans, Brighteye's new tutor had arrived, a Master Warlock named Errelth. There were many in the Wolf Clan, especially among the shamans and druidesses, who did not welcome him, but Blackbone allowed it, reluctant to reverse his own decision. However, three weeks later the shamans were proven r...

Lord Hideo frowned as he sat on the rough matting that was the Wolf Clan keep’s only concession to comfort. Once each year the leaders of the three clans met together, along with their advisers and bodyguards, to discuss matters of mutual interest and attempt to keep the peace. Hideo had observed, though, that these meetings were increasingly devoted to airing grievances, making veiled threats, and generally creating as much friction as possible. This year it was the Wolf Clan's turn to host, which meant a difficult ride up steep trails to that clan's keep, high on the Shaleback ridge. The insular Wolf Clan made little attempt to make their guests comfortable, and hospitality meant sleeping on the ground in the stone, wood, and stitched hide structure they called a keep, and sitting through the chanting and endless sagas they thought of as entertainment. Endless bestial howling from the woods – some primitive ceremony had kept him awake half that night, and Hideo was not in a p...

Their arrival confirmed the rumors. The four strangers were indeed outlandish in appearance. All were well over six feet tall, and the tallest towered at what must have been eight feet high, with a long face and elongated limbs. The eldest had long straight black hair reaching to below his waist. He wore luxurious robes marked along the fringe with runes from an alphabet no one of the court recognized. His lined face marked him as old, but with an ageless quality he might have been fifty, but Yukio would not have been surprised to learn he was twice that. Despite his age he stood easily through the long diplomatic introduction, and moved gracefully. His three companions, apparently bodyguards, were equally baffling. One carried a long staff, and another, the gangly eight-footer, wore two dangerous-looking crescent-shaped blades. The third carried no weapon at all, but wore long bandoliers lined with silvery leaves. None of them spoke, and all had the same straight hair and flowing robe...

Yukio was twenty-four when his father died and he assumed leadership of the Serpent Clan. Still, he wished his father had been able to teach him more, more of the past, the history and knowledge of his Dragon Clan ancestors. Some of it was on the old scrolls his grandfather had saved when fleeing the Horde. Some was scattered among dozens of old Dragon families, who, although they no longer practiced the old ways, had passed some of the knowledge down, like the kabuki fighting forms and the philosophies of the Dragon Warriors. The rest… was lost. Still, times were good, and there seemed to be no need to question what was happening. Plentiful harvests had followed one another, year by year, for so long it seemed that this new land was a paradise. When the time came to marry, Lord Yukio did so intelligently, choosing a woman whose family had once ruled the Eagle Clan, and so erased one of the largest divisions remaining in the land. Even the new arrivals, the Wolf Clan, seemed to be cont...

Tarrant the Builder first had word of the Wolf Clan's arrival from one of the watchtowers he had placed on the high, rocky northern coast. He had decreed that there must always be a vigil kept, always an eye watching northward for the Horde. A rider came pounding up the western road, bringing the news: "Ships! Ships wrecked on the northern coast! A whole fleet men, women, a whole clan!" Tarrant knew this young rider had never seen the Horde, and might not recognize them, but even so he knew this could not be the enemy they had run so far to avoid the Horde were not men. He gave orders that the newcomers should be sheltered and given every kind of aid, as long as they offered no harm. Soon a peculiar looking man in middle age was brought before him, and was presented as Greeneye, chief of the Wolf Clan. Tarrant studied him well. For a start, the man was enormous, a head taller than Tarrant and broader across the shoulders. Everything about this man spoke of a life lived cl...

Ozaku rode south with a dozen drinking companions, into the patchwork of forest and grasslands that covered the flatlowlands. It would make excellent farmland and it continued all the way south to the coast, to what might well be the southern tip of the world. Already, life was returning to normal there, and fishing villages and hamlets were springing up. Ozaku was doing good work there, spreading word of the mighty construction going on, bringing news from the north, reminding people they lived as one clan now. When he could not go south anymore he moved west, to the southwestern tip of the crescent-shaped ridge that curved north and east to half-encircle the entire land. He named the low hills there Dragon's Tail, and found the source of the Talon, the slow, wide river that meandered through the lowlands. Over many weeks the party rode north, hunting and stopping in wherever they found settlers, occasionally running across ancient relics that showed that long ago other men had be...

Tarrant the Younger stood on the High Plateau, looking north, while his guardsmen stood by. The Breaking of the World was two months gone, and he had much thinking to do. He gazed out across the channel where the Great Dragon had struck, turning the southern tip of their continent into an island. Jagged cliffs attested to the unthinkable force and violence of that strike, which had cut through massive strata of rock, all the way down through what had been a high plateau, to reach sea level. The water still churned with strange currents and eddies -- it would never be easy to navigate. Thousands and thousands of Hordelings had died in the cataclysm, but it was safe to assume that some of them had survived, and were gathered on the opposite shore, still looking southward. Tarrant knew they would someday find a way to cross the water and that day there would be a reckoning. But there were more immediate worries. His father had led the Dragon Clan and refugees from half a dozen other clans...

As they traveled south the weather grew warmer. In a month they had left behind familiar landmarks. The long retreat took them past strange marvels stories about the Headless Men, and the Howling Marsh circulated up and down the column. They passed between two enormous brooding faces carved into the sides of a mountain pass, each with a different glyph carved onto its brow. At night, they could see lights winking on and off in the mountain range east of their route. And then after six months, they crossed the last hump, and beyond it saw the ocean. He had foreseen this moment weeks ago, and slowly over time he had reached his decision. The Dragon Clan and the refugees with them could not put to sea, nor could they defeat the forces from which they were fleeing. He stood there for a long time, gazing southward as the sun began to descend over this new land. Calmly, Tarrant descended to his camp and summoned his advisors and his two sons, Tarrant the Younger and Ozaku to his tent. There,...

Tarrant struggled up the last few feet of rocky slope to the top of a ridge. The land had been rising steadily for the last few days of their journey, and men and horses were both weary from the constant plodding up the broad plateau. In their headlong flight south, he and his clansmen and the other refugees had long since passed beyond the borders of what thought of as the explored world. Now each day brought new challenges swampland, cliffs, unexpected rivers that he had to maneuver his host around, always staying ahead of the menace behind him. It seemed possible that it could continue forever. Now his outriders had come back to him, saying there was something ahead he needed to see. And now that he had seen it, he knew that the long southward run was over. They could not retreat any further, and if they fought they had no hope of winning. He had one last thing to try, a final gambit. If that failed, it would fall to his son to pick the best ground to fight and die on. He was standi...

Chapter 1 At the beginning of the world, there was only light and darkness in the Land of Dawn. In this ancient time, strength and power were the only standards to rule over the lands, and every life created by the Unique God is living under this cruel truth. For as long as anyone can recall, light and dark became the primary forces of the land. They fought for territory, for labor power, and they never stopped fighting dominance. In a land that was full of war, everyone tried to protect themselves. But sometimes, surviving is so hard that whenever or wherever you are, you always get involved in this Great War. In a vast wasteland, smoke engulfed once-beautiful mountains. Some odious smells laid evidence to the countless killed. Scavengers crawled everywhere, devouring the corpses on the battlefields. At this time, the earth started to shake, more and more violently. Creatures and beasts alike suddenly stopped and looked into the distance, overwhelmed by fear. Dropping everything, the ...