[center][u][h1]Belivahnn[/h1][/u][/center]

[center]Part Two[/center]

When I was young, my father spoke of titans, gods, and giants. Beings that controlled the world we lived on, shaped it, and created it. Some were good, some were evil, and the titans were primordial. Those who came before the gods were kind, but most have long since been dead. To warriors with long ears and heads, they were gods, and they still worship those they believed to be alive. The gods, those my husband's people worship, and to them, well, most of them, benevolent, but some of the clergy have fallen upon dark ways. Jihad and conviction have made these priests bloodthirsty. When I look to my husband's land and then my homeland, that is why so many of my people are now gone. His father, jihad, and ritual death are a corruption that spreads across the lands, and if it were not for larger kingdoms, it would encompass the world. I was lucky he found me, but now I am a part of a game I do not like. 

When I look back to when I was young, I remember stories, many of them of these gods, titans, and giants fighting. The three had been around since the beginning of time, and many other divine beings spread out, but those three were the most important, for they controlled the world. They controlled the universe; they allowed time to flow and to be something. But they work in mysterious ways. 

The titans and the gods have always been in a battle, and they sing to those like the witches, the wizards, the priests, my father. They sing to those who listen, and I've tried to listen, but I cannot hear them. I cannot hear anything besides emptiness; those who use the wyrd, or magic, had a rough time with her, some screamed when near her, others just got headaches, and a lot of people got headaches around her, but my husband saw me and believed I was his savior. I changed him, he was supposedly cruel, but I changed him. He saw everything and needed it. It was everything, and he believed that I was the deceiver of his faith, but he believed something besides that. In my faith and in his, several events are similar. One is that of the son of the giant; one is that of hope, and one is that of destruction.

His father, the priesthood of his father's lands, they called me the deceiver. Maybe I am; maybe I am the mother. Tonight, I talked my husband and my guard into walking with us. There is a gap in the line where my husband's guard is holding, and they will let us slip in through. The fire didn't touch me, and I won't let it touch them. We have reinforcements should anything go wrong, but it shouldn't; prophecy dictates this happens either way. I must do this, and I have heard his wailing since I came here. Few have, now I shall stop it.

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It was dark three hours after the sun dropped down below the horizon. We went out in leather and dark cloth, hidden in the clouded ash sky from what little the moon shined down upon the world. When we reached the wall, we passed underneath a stone archway that was to have a door emplaced eventually on the outside, while the inside facing the fire would be a blanket of flat stone slabs, but those weren't there yet. We entered the fire zone, and it was as if a tunnel was formed in the fire, but it was for me alone. Those behind me walked through hell, they all would, but they would regardless of what would happen.

My husband, and our retinue that marched out with me heard the screams of the dead, and they saw ashes; they saw death and destruction. All I saw were ash statues littering the ground, running, holding each other in fear. They saw much more in flames, hounds were heard all around us, and tiny flickers of light followed us like wolves prowling. Maybe we were being hunted, or maybe they were guardians but were they protecting the wailing child or us? We went through as quickly as we could into the wood; the heat got intense, and I felt it, every moment of it. It began to burn, it began to feel like I was walking through hell, but they continued to move forward toward the crying. 

Then it hit, fire hit us, it felt like an inferno, and the screaming stopped. I looked around and saw everything, and the firestorm continued around us, but we were also flames. We were walking flame. We continued to move forward, and we were flame. It was nothing before seen. The fire couldn't touch me, I was more of a walking ball of flame, but the others were flame; their armor and life were flames. They saw all in the world; all I saw was my son. I reached out forward, and I saw him, a perfect son. He had thick brown and red hair like he was born out of the fire. He was a large babe. I took him in my arms, and the crying stopped. I looked into my son's eyes and felt my child inside me kick, a family at once. 

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and we had to go. I turned, and we started running. The fire subsided around us, and we burst like phoenixes through the forest. We continued to move swiftly, quicker than we came in. We got to the town and started low to the ground; I was thankful that the boy was no longer crying. We would be heard across the fields, but we continued back to the wall. I heard fighting, so much fighting. We were caught; the prophecy was broken by her and the others. Then the crying began again, and my husband's soldiers lit up like warriors of the night. The night was lit by fire. I listened for hours as a fight raged; those sixteen soldiers and my husband were warriors like nothing. They were fast, and their blades cut through steel and iron like it was nothing. The soldiers of his father, of his faith, were nothing against just those seventeen men. 

The men protecting the wall were good warriors as well, and others joined in. It became a battle of the ages as my husband fought and bled for our family. Hours went by, it seemed, and I was standing there listening to crying. It died down sometime around noon, with the firestorm, and with so many men. Two thousand, maybe two and a half thousand, were dead. Plenty more were dying; almost every order and army lost men, and almost all were gone. There were around sixty left in total. When the orders from the north came, they joined the reconstruction. A new fort and city are to be built in the north. 

Belivahnn would be the name of this settlement.

The name of her fathers house, it was a fitting name. But, there was a new house born with her son. 

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Part 3. etc.