Deep upon an endless carpet of green pointed pines, the great city sat. Like an alabaster beacon, it beckoned all to come and partake of its pleasures. As a diamond on a king’s crown, it stood as a statement to the wealth and craft of its builders. Within it, millions lived and prospered as they lived their pampered lives, each generation devolving deeper and deeper into hedonism as their children and their children’s children grew more and more dependent upon the machines their genius had wrought. 

Then, the azure sky was sundered in a terrible fire. A war they thought so far away reached the doorsteps of their paradise. The forest burned, the moon cracked, and the city was smote to ruin. The fires burned for weeks as the cries of the people steadily died. Those denizens, unaccustomed to survival and toil quickly withered and died.

For those that remained, the trial had only begun. A great plague, artificial in its origin swept across the land. Many did it send to the grave, and few did it spare. Among those fortunate enough to remain, some were scarred and mutilated by the sickness. The healthy few abandoned the city and scattered throughout Ruin to scratch a living from a land that no longer catered to them.

Millenia passed and the city was consumed again by a steadily creeping jungle that ringed an ever shrinking lake to the south. Within its crumbled walls, one creature, a twisted horror of “civilized” mankind’s last war, carried on. What little humanity remained within the creature slowly boiled away from the jungle heat. Denied the sweet release of death by old age, the horror devolved into something very near a beast, subsisting off of the flora and fauna within the overgrown jungle.

Still more millenia passed. Villages became towns. Towns became cities, and humanity breathed new life, having learned to tame the soil of Ruin. Still though, the great city remained lost to the jungle. A thousand more years crawled by.

 Finally, a group of particularly brave adventurers found the lost city. They encountered the beast, and through sheer numbers, they drove it off. Enraged by the loss of its home but unable to fight the tide of humanity that was quickly reclaiming the city, the creature retreated deep into the jungle.

The intrepid settlers of the great city gave it a name, “Hurria,” which in their tongue meant “jewell.” That jewel once again arose to become a beacon of human achievement. Its once ravaged walls again stood strong, rebuilt over the generations by a hardy and determined people. 

As the sun arose to bathe the thick jungle canopy with its oppressive heat, at the base of those great walls, a giant man and a beast, all too familiar to some grappled.

The man was inhuman in proportions. Though no taller than the average man of his tribe, he was impossibly large. Rippling muscles knotted and tensed across his massive back, covered by a long plume of wild black curly hair, a hallmark of his people. He was naked, save a half torn maile chauss that clung to a similarly damaged pair of short legged desert cotton pants. In his hands was the typical weapon of his tribe, an iron hookspear.

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The creature, a relic of “civilized” man and their terrible weapons stood before him, its nostrils flaring with each beleaguered breath. It had been a man once but was now a horror of twisted and mottled skin, bulbous growths, and rotten pointed teeth. Its body, seemingly stooped permanently, still towered over the warrior. Upon its massive hunched and boil covered back, a mountain of muscles rippled just beneath the mottled skin. Where very human arms and legs had once been, now gangling appendages covered in thousands of years of scars, punctures, and misshapen spots remained.

Sweat poured down the man’s brow in small rivers as he again thrust himself again at the hulking beast. Despite its massive size, the creature was extraordinarily agile. As the warrior threw the weight of his inhuman bulk into a mighty thrust of his hookspear, the horror jumped aside. It swung its diseased, clawed hand at the exposed chest of the warrior but was unhappily met with air as the man rolled beneath the swing.

As he sprung to his feet, he used his momentum to swing the long spear in a wide backward arc. He was met with an animalistic shriek as the iron tip cut a gash across the hulking form’s chest. Dark red blood oozed out of the wound, but the wound was mostly superficial. The creature charged the warrior. Having already swung his spear, the man had only a moment to brace against the charge, holding the weapon in both hands perpendicular to himself to try and blunt the charge. 

The beast crashed into him and sent him sprawling into the thorny jungle undergrowth. He rolled sideways a few times and was stopped only when his head struck the base of a large palm. He grunted and shook his head to clear the stars. A loud thudding brought him back to his senses. Miraculously, he’d held onto his hookspear despite having rolled dozens of meters. Though he couldn’t see the creature, he lifted his spear instinctively and braced its base against the palm.

The creature burst out of the undergrowth in full sprint, shrieking a strange but not entirely inhuman shriek. It spotted too late the hookspear that jutted in its path. With a sickly slurping sound, the jagged iron tip sank deep into its midsection. The warrior grunted and his back muscles knotted as he struggled to maintain a grip on his weapon.

The shrieks grew frenetic and wild as the creature, seemingly ignorant to its own self preservation pulled backwards, tearing apart its innards as the hook, meant to snag crocodiles and large fish, did its work. Finally, the warrior, with a great roar, pulled the spear out of the creature’s midsection. With it, entrails spilled upon the jungle floor.

Finally spent, the twisted horror’s cries reduced to a whimper, until finally it fell to its mangled knees. At that moment, its clouded red eyes cleared, and a very human look of relief crossed its face. The warrior’s blood ran cold as ice as he stared back into the monster…the human’s eyes. 

Then, it was over. The last remnants of “civilized” man died. For thousands of years, it had been held captive by the machinations of man, a great plague that had twisted it into an unwilling immortal, desiring death but unable to exact it upon itself.

The warrior stood, his legs shaking despite the great musculature that pressed tightly against his skin. Leaning on his spear, he bowed slightly to the creature. “Be at peace, civilized one,” he grunted in a deep baritone. 

At that, he turned to the great city of Hurria. He had a bounty to collect from the city’s tyrant, and he’d better collect it soon before the man changed his mind. 

Thus, his title, the first of many, had been earned. Fetu, the Slayer of the Civilized.