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Drakanslay
chapter 4: Adrian, the mercenary king and lover of wolves

chapter 4: Adrian, the mercenary king and lover of wolves

Twilight touched the hostile mountains of the Twin Fangs. A chain of plateaus where dry air was breathed, too hot during the day and relentlessly cold during the nights ruled by bastard abominations that devoured men.

There, the demons, the children of Fenrir, lived!

The citizens of the capital of Artizan shouted, far from those hostile territories full of barbarians and skin changers, where great warriors went to test themselves and bring back prey to sell to the machine masters. Few returned alive.

The people from the north labeled those people as mere savages, lunatics capable of living among beasts. Few settlements were seen as refuge for those who dared to enter the deserts.

Under the shadow of a reddish plateau, there existed a vast oasis where a circular wall rose, made of limestone, protecting a settlement of the Makian tribe. Houses made of archaic stone and brick. On top of the roofs, they placed skins of beasts, lynx and large felines, acting as scarecrows illuminated by mounted mobile lanterns powered by windmills surrounding the city, and a hydroelectric plant powered by a dam near the city. Created since the time of the battle against the gods, by a Makian who traveled to Romania and returned as a lord of machines, bringing great advancements to his tribe.

Drums resounded throughout the town as people gathered near the vast dam. It was a double celebration in honor of two men; the one who wore the crown and the one who refused it for a forbidden love.

Tall individuals with bronzed skin dressed in wolf and feline skins danced under the lights of spotlights, to the rhythm of music. Burly bodies with bronze skin, lupine features highlighted on the faces of the tribals, wolf-like eyes of various colors, and long claws. The Makian stood out for being great hunters, something between human and beast; treated as pariahs by the side of the Artizan's offspring, and as a means of war for the elite.

Amidst laughter and chants, the couple was welcomed with joy by the inhabitants who prepared large pieces of meat among other delicacies, cooked by a large torch fueled by logs in the center of the village, illuminating it, and the shadows of the people grew and diminished in full jubilation.

At the edge of the river of the dam, in front of the torch, they erected a wooden platform for the lords of the celebration. Under the shade of a skin roof, the couple sat on a long shared chair, receiving gifts from the members of the tribe, including precious stones, jars filled with wine, monster skins, and weapons ranging from archaic bone spears to technological ones brought from Romania.

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The woman named Hela surpassed her newlywed in size. Her face couldn't be seen due to a stony white feminine face, from which a transparent veil fell, and she was crowned with a tuft of multicolored feathers. She had bronze skin dressed in fine white silk garments that denoted her amazonian figure; solid muscles without departing from the feminine curves and overflowing breasts. The short skirt exposed muscular legs marred by scars, trembling, and her huge hand with long nails intertwined on top of her partner's hand.

"A wine of death..." pronounced the groom, Adrián Farenhei Tepes, eloquently as he drank from the wooden jar in one gulp, and the intoxicating purple liquid dripped from his lips. Upon finishing, he wrinkled his face at the strength of the drink, taking a few seconds to recover. "Definitely... this thing would kill my father."

"You shouldn't speak of him in that manner," spoke Hela in a muffled voice behind her mask; it sounded deep yet nervous about the unfolding events. She couldn't believe it, months earlier she was the prince's bodyguard, and in the blink of an eye, the two fled to get married.

Adrián was like a square peg among spheres when he joined the Makian. A young man of slender build, barely reaching one meter seventy in contrast to Hela's prominent corpulence and over two meters tall. With Caucasian skin, his hair shone like beaten gold, tied back in a ponytail, and his amber-colored eyes shone intensely along with that sharp smile as he offered the cup to his wife, who in a trembling hand, drank a sip through an opening in her lips.

Adrián's attire was in harmony with the natives; wolf skins used as a helmet, clad in a bullet-resistant armored vest, and a pistol on his belt like a sword. He represented the great lord of beasts at the wedding, about to take the maiden who would be his eternal life companion.

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Hela was no exception, under her skirt, she kept a sawed-off shotgun. The Makian, as mercenaries, were dedicated to war and crushing rebellions for the high lords of Artizan. Considered savages, they embraced the warlike life; something that Adrián himself became when he renounced his throne. They made him one of them, he ate the heart of a horse, spilled the blood of berserkers, flaying them and using their skins as their clothes.

He defeated Donovan, the leader of the tribe, in unarmed combat, in exchange for being accepted and receiving his wife's hand. A black eye, two broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder cost him his victory; he never regretted his conviction. They didn't get along anyway; they had a certain rivalry in their military training years, and his relationship with Hela was an open secret that didn't sit well with the lord of the Makian.

For Donovan, Hela and Adrian's love was only sexual pleasure, so he hated his sister dishonoring herself like this. Adrian never forgot Donovan's petrified face when he showed up at his house, after crossing the deserts to ask for Hela's hand; a request for ice water in preparation for the big news that almost made him attack the prince on impulse: Hela was pregnant with a Tepes bastard.