The Thunderborn's Destiny

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Prequel to Sune's Chosen. A barbarian carves his destiny.
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The final inking cut into his flesh, and the stalwart barbarian didn't even grimace in pain, though a lesser man might have. Grinning instead, Gundor the Hammer clenched his fist. The ink-maiden--a shaman of the Tribe of the Thunderbeast--had infused the ink and her drawing with mystical power, and Hammer could feel the enchantment seeping into his flesh, becoming a part of him. As he held his fist clenched, he could feel a sensation of hardness and power flow into the bones and muscle therein.

Grinning, he used his other hand to slide around the back of the woman's neck, pulled her in close and kissed her savagely. She returned the kiss with equal fury, gnashing down hard on his lip. Laying back on a pile of furs, the naked barbarian spread his muscular thighs and clasped his hands behind his head. The ink-maiden coiled around his muscular body, fingers and fingernails dragging across lightly-haired, chiseled flesh. He looked up at the sky, the dark clouds masking the twinkling stars and the gleaming moon. He could smell the storm brewing, and he knew his mate could too.

Vyathan bit down hard, her teeth digging into the thin skin over his ribs at his side, causing him to wince reflexively. He grasped her hair and she glared at him with feral defiance. It was an aspect of her being that he adored and respected.

Heart pounding in his chest, he heaved her atop him, and the shaman's muscular, sleek body immediately began to gyrate, panther-like grace grinding down on his manhood as her musk filled the air. He bit her lip, kissed her, and bit again.

She reached down, her hand gripping his surging manhood, and promptly sheathed him within her loins. Hammer had learned the difference between the women of his clan and normal human women. This was their third lovemaking in as many hours. Her pace was vigorous and without quarter. A city-dwelling maiden would have been passed out, snoring in contentment after her first bout with him, but, imbued with the primal spirits of their land, Vyathan was a vigorous and eager as their first grunting, sweating, violent bout of lovemaking.

The barbarian felt the storm surging in the sky before her saw the first flashes of lightning. It invigorated him, and with a sudden surge of strength, he lifted his trunk upward, grasping Vyathan with large, strong, calloused hands by her hips, tucked his feet under his hips, and stood upright. Her hands gripped his boulder shoulders and she fell back, looking up at the sky. His head fell back, dark brown hair falling down around his shoulder blades as he thrust with his hips, jerking the shaman up and down as she laid back, suspended by strong arms and vice-like thighs around his powerful hips.

Lightning struck, perhaps drawn by their mutual primal attunement mingled together in the heat of passion, and split a sapling nearby, igniting it in flames. The thunder that followed was loud and cracked the air and sent shocks of force through both of their bodies. Hammer and Vyathan cried out in the sudden pain that thundered in their bodies, a pain that was quickly transformed into pure, electric bliss.

Still thrusting, still jolting her body, Hammer felt his blood electrify, felt the promise of the storm filling his primal soul. He pulled the shaman to his face, her eyes reflecting the his own, and they gnashed at each others lips and tongues, their kiss as savage as their lovemaking.

Lightning struck again, very close by this time, and their body hair stood on end from the latent static energy. Hammer felt his climax surging forth, but held it at bay with an effort of will. He'd be damned before he let himself spend before his mate. Luckily, she was close by. As if drawn by her impending climax, the rain began to pelt them, as if to douse their passion. Instead, it was like fuel to a fire, and when Vyathan's dusky-skinned body began to shudder in climax, Hammer used one hand to grasp her black hair and pin her against the hilt of his shaft. She clamped down, and he released, a torrent of molten virility pumping into his mate as her quivering body slapped and pummeled his own.

And when the thundering climax faded, the sky only wept rain upon their sweating, heaving bodies, gasping for breath. The thunder was a distant rumble, and the lightning a distant flash.

So distant, it seemed, that Hammer and Vyathan thought that, perhaps, they only perceived it nearby in the throes of passion.

Hammer grinned, his chest twitching with rumbling laughter as he knelt and laid the woman down beside him. Curling and purring against him, the shaman was slow to doze off.

Perhaps she knew what would come next, perhaps not. Either way, both were unarmored and effectively defenseless.

The ensuing flurry of chaos had creatures both large and smelly surrounding them and barking in a harsh, guttural language. Hammer shoved Vyathan off his body and leapt to his feet, immediately regretting his lack of weapon and hide armor. Vyathan pounced up as well, unbothered by her rough removal as she reached out to the primal spirits. A solid, wet thunk accented a creature's--Hammer recognized them all as bugbears--sentence, and Vyathan collapsed. Her spared her a glance, and that was all he needed to ignite his fury. Blood oozed from the back of her skull, and a dark rock laid beside her, spattered with her blood.

Rage unlike anything he'd felt before filled his veins. Naked and coated in rain and sweat, the barbarian charged the nearest bugbear, one that was laughing and poking a fat finger toward his mate. Without thought, he clamped down on the beast's forearm and bit the finger off. He spat, the foul blood in his mouth just long enough to give him a taste, and the finger went flying. Blood trickled off his lips and over his chin as he pulled the bugbear by the arm toward him, bringing his forehead into the hairy beast's face. Nose and jaw cracked, the bugbear grunting as Hammer bull rushed it to the ground. He rode the beast down, then leapt up, stamping down savagely on its cracked face. He turned in time to catch a heavy punch to the side of his head and, for a moment, the world was all blinking stars and swimming images.

His rage shoved dizziness aside. He lowered his shoulder into the shaggy goblinoid and, muscles straining, he wrapped his arms around its waist, lifted it up onto his shoulder, and slammed it head-first into the wet ground. A sickening crack signaled its broken neck, and it lay there limply.

But surprise was no longer on his side. He turned and saw more bugbears, all armed and stalking toward him. Rage overruled reason and he leapt for a sword-wielding bugbear. The blade knifed across his chest and stomach, rending flesh, but he ignored the pain by some feat of primal fury. He bit down on the bugbears neck, tearing savagely at the flesh and spit out gobs of gore. Blood--his own and the beasts--coated his chest and stomach, dripping down past his hips and thighs as the bugbear thrashed against him. He took the beast's sword out of its dying hand and leapt blindly to the side, where he hoped a bugbear would be there to greet him.

Rather, a shield stopped him, and the iron barrier slammed into his head and torso, sending him sprawling to the ground.

*****

Ellyet Ironsong's chest was rising and falling with a pace indicative of moderate exertion. The slaughtering of bugbears was not an overly difficult task for him and his cohorts, the League of the Falcon, and was also pleasurable business.

But they were not in it for free. He knelt and drew a long, curved knife, severing a misshapen ear from one of the husky beasts. He put it in a pouch and grinned at the other men and women doing the same. A dozen in all, the League had been roaming this part of the High Forest, near Grunwald, for nearly a year now, and had made good money from the town's officials keeping beasts such as these away.

However, he'd always made it his business to keep his bounty hunters away from the barbarian tribes that inhabited this region of the High Forest. He wanted no quarrel with them, and was pleased that, until now, he'd not run across any.

But now there was an unconscious man and woman in his midst, the latter likely dead, by virtue of the vicious head injury she'd suffered. The man was covered in blood. More blood than Ellyet had seen in his long, elven years. Brushing his thick chestnut hair back over his pointed ears, he walked over the kneeling woman between the barbarians.

"Well?" he asked. His voice was musical even in the context of a single word demand.

"She has a pulse, but I don't know for how much longer. The male is quite alive, just unconscious. You must have struck him hard. He was clearly under the influence of rage and fury when he turned on you."

"I'm not sure I was his target," Ellyet said, "at least, not for long. He didn't look before leaping."

The woman, called Lark, murmured a prayer that sent rosy light coursing along her forearm and into the barbarian, restoring him. He sucked in a deep breath, sat bolt upright, and looked around frantically. He stood up and cast about, looking for enemies.

The fellows of the League of the Falcon tried to hide their laughter as the bare naked barbarian's manhood swung about like a fleshy war-mace.

Lark had already turned to the fallen woman, though, and it wasn't until the man was at her side that she paid him any heed.

"Please, give space," she said, putting a warm hand on his bare shoulder. Blood dripped from the contours of his body, some getting on the shaman's skin even as the rain did its best to wash the thick stuff off.

"Vyathan," he said, his voice low and rumbling, like a distant storm. He ignored the cleric and put hands on the woman's face. He bent and kissed her forehead, then her lips before backing a few inches away.

Lark murmured prayer after prayer, sending rosy and golden light into the fallen shaman. Her head wound was already closed, but the amount of blood that soaked into the earth was more than the priestess had seen in years.

She said one last prayer, gripping an ivory-and-ruby pendant in her hand hard enough to cause pain, and thrust the medallion against the naked woman's breast. She shouted the prayer, frustration and emotion surging forth.

The shaman drew a ragged breath.

"Hammer," she said in a weak, breathy voice.

Lark skittered away and Hammer fell over the shaman, holding her face and staring down into her eyes. He could feel the bloody earth beneath her and said a silent prayer to his ancestral spirits as his lips lashed Vyathan's.

"I'm here," he whispered.

"The ancestors are calling me," she murmured, lips grazing his stubbly cheek as she pulled him tight. "They are calling me home, Hammer."

Tears welled up in his eyes. His body shuddered as sorrow washed over him. Then came a sensation of joy for his mate. She was going home.

"You are going home," he said, his voice deep and strong suddenly. He held her face, and she smiled, her eyes glittering with tears and rainwater.

"I'm glad it ended this way," she breathed. "In passion, in battle, in fury, in rage. I saw you fight for me, avenging me before things went black. Maybe my spirit saw it all."

She coughed, and he held her tight.

"I would have killed them all a thousand times over," he growled in her ear. Smiling, she nodded.

"Do not weep for me," she gasped. Thunder boomed overhead and lightning struck several times close by. Men and women scurried for cover, but Hammer knelt over his mate, unmoved, for the lightning and the thunder were a part of him. He held her face, stared into her eyes, his lips over hers as she breathed her last breath.

He took it in, savoring the taste of her last breath, and then reared back like a thunderbeast from eons past, roaring his fury, his anguish, his joy, his sorrow, all into the heavens. The storm responded with a peel of thunder that should have deafened him.

And then all was silent. He leaned over, closed her eyes and kissed each one, then stood to face Ellyet and Lark.

They stared at him agog, and he simply walked away.

*****

They couldn't understand, anyway.

Hammer felt a part of him die. Vyathan was right. This was the best way for it to happen. In combat, even abbreviated combat, was where all Thunderbeast barbarians wished to die. By the ancestors, it was where all barbarians wished to die.

He only wished he could have gone with her.

The thought stopped him in his tracks. A fury that only dwelt in his own soul blossomed, angered by that thought. It was his lot to live on, and so he would live on! He would fight, he would love again, he would die when the gods demanded it, and he would brook no complaints about any of it. Vyathan had been older than him by several years. She'd lived longer and seen more. By all rights, she had lived her life fully and freely, kneeling to none and fighting the world. It was an honorable life, and it was an honorable death.

Hammer found himself smiling. It was a lopsided grin that he'd used to charm the shaman in the first place. He'd not taken for granted any moment he'd had with her, lived each one as fully and passionately as he could, and there was nothing more he could have wanted.

The tall, muscular barbarian took a deep breath, then turned to see the elf and woman staring at him still.

"What," he asked flatly, a bit annoyed with them.

"I understand your mourning, but--"

"I mourn not, woman," he snapped at her. She looked surprised, but not hurt by his brusqueness. Hmm.

"Then I don't understand, but regardless," she held up some overlarge pants and a tunic. "You can't come back to Grunwald in the nude."

"I am a son of the Tribe of the Thunderbeast," he said, "and I will do as I please."

"Then you can't fight more of these bastards in the nude," the elf said. The barbarian gave him a hard stare, then grinned.

"Take heed, woman, on how to speak to a barbarian," he said, taking the clothes and dressing. By this point, most of the blood had been washed away, and his wound, closed by Lark's healing magic, was just a ragged, if thin scar across his torso. To his surprise, the auburn-haired woman was smirking at him.

"I am Captain Ellyet Ironsong, commander of the League of the Falcon. We work for the people of Grunwald, cleansing the surrounding region of monsters such as these. I would take you there for further healing, make sure you're fit for returning home."

"I will not return home," the barbarian said. "I am Hammer Thunderbeast, or simply Hammer, and I left my tribe under the influence of a vision. My mate and I left a tenday ago, wandering this forest searching for a sign. Now I have found one. I will be joining you."

"Hold on, now," Ellyet said, holding his hand up. "We're not hiring. Find another group to join, but you're not hunting with us."

"Then I will hunt alone until you decide the competition is too great. Take me to Grunwald."

Ellyet gave the woman at his side an amused look, and she pursed her lips in a little smirk.

*****

Grunwald was a sparse town. Being effectively a frontier village, it had all the things it needed and very little of the things it didn't need. Hammer knew immediately this was not his destination, but rather another campsite on the path to his destiny. The Falconers led him around, introduced him to the mayor, who was less than pleased to have an Uthgardt barbarian in his realm, and some of their employers, be they priests or farmers plagued by marauders.

It wasn't until they'd come to the tavern, a quaint establishment with a robust proprietess, that he saw the Falconers come alive and began to learn more about them.

Lark, the cleric, was a sunite. She followed the goddess of love, Sune, the Lady Firehair. That, in itself, was a curiosity to the barbarian. Most of his people worshipped Uthgar, Tempus, or Silvanus, gods of war or primal spirits, or the like. Useful gods. Not petulant, whimsical gods. But still, he was certain Sune's followers would be worth knowing, if the goddess herself was not. In the tavern she wore little more than a loose white blouse with a rose pendant and tight black breeches with knee-high boots. She wore a dagger, though it was more perfunctory defense than anything truly functional.

Their captain, Ellyet, maintained an air of discipline, or perhaps that was just his elven nature. He seemed to prefer tighter garments that left him more flexible, and, for some reason, had no eyes for any of the pretty lasses ferrying drinks, or for Lark, even. That astonished the barbarian, who grew up with men lusting after women and vice versa. Perhaps he simply wasn't interested.

One of the scouts, a handsome man who was quite entertained by ladies on a nearly constant basis also caught his attention. He sported a leather vest that was more fashionable than functional, and tight leather pants with an accented cod-piece. Hammer was certain the man wore it only as a bluff, but the way the women kept patting it...

"Hammer," Lark said, putting a hand on his forearm. She'd imbibed more than a little cormyrean brandy, and her eyes were a-twinkle and speech a touch slurred. "Do you miss your...your mate?"

"I miss her company," he said, his voice deep. He'd found the clothes given to him were too tight around his arms and had sliced them off halfway down his upper arm. The formerly clean cut was now ragged, thread dangling here and there. The dark hair on his arms caught the threads and Lark's hand tickled those on his forearm. He had also cut the neck of the shirt to fit better around his neck and open up down to his broad, barrel chest. "But I do not mourn her. It is not our way. She is with the ancestors now."

"Some would say she's with Kelemvor," Lark said, then blushed. Her fair-skinned face turned pinkish. "Kelemvor is Lord of the Dead. He makes sure all the souls that pass on, well, pass on. He fights undeath."

"I have fought undead," he replied. "A foe with no honor, no fear, no courage, and no skill. They seek only to serve their base needs. They are not worth dying for, but must be extinguished."

"Does love still have a place in your heart?" Lark asked, abruptly changing the subject. It set him back a bit, but Hammer mere grinned as she edged a bit closer. Having abstained from drink, as he had all his life, he felt no sense of inebriation, but the heady scent of the woman's fragrance and the feel of her warm skin...

"There is a void that must be filled by it, yes. It was vacated when Vyathan left."

Lark seemed to pause at that, but her grip on his forearm tightened just slightly. "I don't mean to impose, but--"

"You wish to see if I've room in my heart to lay with you," he stated flatly. She gasped in surprise but didn't retreat. He could see the answer in her eyes, but wanted to hear it.

"Yes," she whispered, nodding. She looked around nervously.

"Vyathan often brought other tribeswomen into our bed. They were eager to meet and commune with our tribe's ink-maiden and spirit-speaker, as well as her mate. It was a sacred thing to them. You will not be as Vyathan was, but there is naught keeping me from laying with you."

"Come with me, then," she said quickly, squeezing his forearm. He arched a curious brow at her, but followed her through the open tavern and into the stairwell that led to the second floor. There were several doors lining the halls, and he guessed them to be private rooms. He didn't notice it at first, but there was a creeping sensation that he was being closed off from the world he knew.

The subtle curve of the woman's bottom drew his attention away from that fact, though, and he continued following her. It occurred to him that this human woman was not a barbarian, and perhaps he should be gentle with her. It also occurred that she knew well enough what he was, and seemed to be eager for a true experience with his kind. A grin crawled across his lips as she pushed open a door and shut it behind him.

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