#thunder king

This is a drawing related to an idea for a Mario game I’ve had for a while now, called Super Mario Story! The girl on the right is my OC Isabela, and the ominous, regal figure is another OC, the Thunder King.

Strange Magic Week 2017 - Beyond Field and Forest Theme

AO3 link

(WARNING!  DARK!!!)

To the northeast edge of the esteemed Dark Forest, far, far beyond the goblins’ familiar domain, stands the crescent mountain range known as Wolf Jaw, named thus for its jagged peaks, forever tipped with snow, as if the great god Lupus had laid his bones to rest there, before his spirit leapt to the stars.

Many legends are told about just what lies beyond this majestic, natural border, and nary a one is without some element of horror and death.  A journey across is considered little more than a pipe dream to the good goblins of the forest.  The distance is much too great, the cold much too strong, the monsters much too hungry.  

Therefore, the impenetrable barrier of Wolf Jaw is sensibly admired from a safe and broad distance.  After all, one does not walk into the mouth of a predator. 

But if eyes were to see over this range, to finally solve the countless mysteries born from centuries of fireside tales and cautionary bedtime stories...

...they would discover that, disappointingly, fact often neither equals nor overwhelms fiction. 

An immeasurable desert, the grave of the earth, is all there is to be found in the dale belly behind Wolf Jaw.  

Yet, there is a history beneath the emptiness.  Clues of a time long forgotten.  From the diamond-patterned cracks in the sand between the numerous skeleton trees and underbrush left baking in the sun, one might reasonably conclude that this was once a vast and bountiful marshland.

What is lost forever to the windswept dust, are the remnants of the ancient race that thrived in this ghost nation.  The nameless species of unknown origin, possessing traits to be found in goblin, fairy, and insect forms.  Tall, winged, armored, fierce.  A hive of countless male drones serving one, beautiful and mighty queen.

For centuries they ruled in this wet domain, conquering every beast and burden put to their task.  Hail to the warrior queen and her masses!  Such power and prosperity!    

How cruel is it then, that like a rushing river, fate will take such sudden and woeful turns?

When the clouds one day refused to weep, and the crops grew dry as the fauna fled, the hive met its terrible, agonizing defeat of starvation and madness.  Even to briefly fill the bellies of her poor children, did the queen herself surrender to the blade, and others followed...willingly or no.  Heaven have mercy on their souls!    

Of all the unfortunate, there was a single drone who escaped the nightmare of home turned to husk.  For weeks, he watched the sky rumble above the mountain range, as if taunting its riches before the dying swamps.  So, when the last of his brothers were consumed, he pursued the rains with a devil’s fire.  

Driven by hunger and the insanity of what he’d endured, he scaled the rocks, tunneling deep into the lonely caves when the icy chill proved too much to bear, where the darkness turned his scales ashy-white and further twisted his sense and heart.  Yet he persisted, for an endless stream of desolate months.  Viciously following the sadistic voice of the storm.  

When at last he made his breach, he gazed upon an immense forest, lush and teeming with life from the frequent downpours.  He thought of his forsaken land and raged at the injustice of it all!  

Threefold his disdain increased when he soon encountered the strange creatures dwelling beneath the canopy.  They feared his foreign and sinister appearance, and sought to strike him down.  He fought as a savage, and as his enemies fell, one after another, he was struck by a wicked fancy.  

Yes, he had served a queen to tragic avail, now he would close himself off to the time before and conquer this place that had, in his mind, stolen the life from his realm.      

He would become a king!

All who dare cross him would suffer for his suffering!

And he would take the name of the sound that had so mocked him.