The Gorog Chronicles

Author notes

Gorog, The Born

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on Oct. 30, 2007

Long ago, at the peak of the highest mountain in the lands of Ilsiria, a child was born. The child’s birthday was racked with thunder, lightning, and an unusually high number of decapitations. This was, by no means, the child’s fault. He was born to a slave girl named Zira, mistress to the overlord Roanork. The great overlord had impregnated Zira, but was unable to father the child because his own wife, much more sinister than her husband, would never allow such intimate betrayal. Roanork, having little room in his heart for compassion, was nonetheless unable to kill Zira. He ordered seven of his most vile minions to take the slave girl to the top of Black Tooth Mountain, where she was to give birth to the child and live out the rest of her days in exile.

But Roanork couldn’t bear to live his life without seeing his own child. He lightly poisoned his wife’s wine with a concoction of chili powder and bile of newt; the apothecary had assured Roanork that this poison would keep his wife in slumber for several days. Roanork followed the minions and Zira to the top of Black Tooth Mountain and, after she gave birth, he entered the clearing and swiftly killed each of the seven oafish fiends he had charged with protecting Zira. The overlord held his child, sang it a sweet song from his own childhood. The song spoke of demon bats and child-eating witches and legions of undead; as far as Roanork was concerned, it was the most beautiful song this side of the Dark Seas.

Roanork and Zira embraced while the child lay quietly on a bed made of blood soaked robes and leather armor. The child watched the starry heavens disappear behind a blanket of despicable thunder heads. Rain poured as the overlord kissed his aching mistress. Lightning struck a nearby tree and at the same time, an incredibly long spear was driven through both Roanork and Zira. At the opposite end of the spear stood the overlord’s wife, Zee, driven mad by a swirling mixture of rage, insanity, and considerable indigestion.

Cursing her husband’s blood, Zee told the child that it would stay in the mountains, promising that if the boy ever stepped foot into her kingdom, she would have him drawn, quartered, pissed upon, burnt, pissed upon again, and dipped into a latrine, wherein he would be pissed upon several more times. Seeing as how the boy was only a few minutes old, he didn’t understand any of these things. He only giggled, drew up a knife from the belt of the still-writhing Roanork, sneezed, and then threw the blade directly at Zee’s head. She fell in a heap and died before her husband. The child cuddled with his father and held his mother’s thumb until a pack of bickering man-spiders happened upon the grizzly scene.

But that is another story.