The summoners are assembling, the stories are starting to create themselves, and believe you me... The Monsters are coming.

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The following story is an entry in the Steem Monsters Common Card Fantasy Story Contest, sponsored by #SteemMonsters! I really want this story to be accepted into canon... I hope you enjoy it. Wish me luck!

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The Birth

by Chris Roberts

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With a sudden flash of light, in the rushing waters of the River of Life, the Flesh Golem opened its eyes. While the flood of memories came rushing back, the Golem kicked its mighty legs and pumped its powerful arms, striving for the surface of the magic river. As it breached the top of the water, the Golem issued a heartbreaking gasp of a cry, taking in its first breath of fresh air in a hundred years.

The memories kept coming, rolling one by one into the Golem’s mind. It thrashed wildly in the water, trying to fight off the truth. It desperately wanted to forget, to live a new life unencumbered by the traumas of the distant past, but it was no use. The Golem could think of nothing but the suffering of its people, of how they had been mercilessly slaughtered and cruelly forgotten by history. Revenge pumped the enchanted blood through his re-animated, waterlogged arteries with a ferocity the Golem had never felt before.

In the Year of the Splinter 522, the Great Meteor Storm changed the face of Anumün forever. Great mountains were brought crumbling to their knees, and thousands perished in the floods, fires and storms that followed. When the meteors came, only two of the seven great tribes still thrived, but this story goes back to A.S. 421, and the events leading up to the annihilation of the Great Tribe of Makimo.

The Makimoans had been fending off the raids of the Western Goblins for years. At that time, the Goblins were still grabbing savagely for land and slaves, but the Makimoans would die before slavery. One by one, the Makimoan villages were burned by the Goblin hordes, until only the Capital remained. Wave after wave of Goblin force tested the brave Makimoan fighters, and after seven days of fighting, the Great City fell to the onslaught.

As punishment for the continued defiance of the Makimoan people, the Goblins took no prisoners. With a brutality too severe for story or song, the countless Goblins fell upon the remaining victims, slashing, chopping and hacking until all that remained was a ghastly hill of blood and flesh. The Goblins left the hill of flesh where it lay, never considering the fact that the Makimoan Tribe had built their Capital near the banks of the River of Life.

A torrential storm the next day covered the hill of flesh with sand and mud, and over the next hundred years it gradually became just a hill like any other, covered with grass and routinely trod by both predator and prey. And there the hill of flesh sat, until the Great Meteor Storm of 522.

The hill of flesh’s western edge was struck by a gigantic meteor with enough force to dislodge the hill from the ground, like a giant stone. The hill was flung hundreds of meters, where it landed with a crash in the River of Life itself. The great mass of Makimoan flesh sizzled and steamed as it sunk into the waters of the River of Life.

The Flesh Golem dragged its substantial body out of the water and stood on its feet for the first time. As it looked from side to side, others could be seen climbing out of the water. These were brand new monsters in this world. Golems, made from the flesh of a slaughtered people, each Golem embodying the consciousness of a dozen dead Makimoans. But were they still dead, or had they been brought back by the River of Life? No one understood the full magic of the Rivers.

The Flesh Golems had come. Through a sick twist of fate, and into a world that didn’t want them, but nonetheless they had come. And they would have their revenge. Truly, the River of Life works in mysterious ways.

The End