Caging The Stone Heart PT 1

[Breg]

Common to all knowledge the Shabooli a fierce tribe of hunters and menacing peoples who have congregated along the coasts and intertwined in the threads of Gaea's creations. And though never common for the Shabooli to pick up human custom it was not unheard of for human slave drivers to steal them at birth and cultivate them for farming and menial tasks. This is where the story of a Shaboolian man named Breg of the Tamowee tribe began his perilous journey to the mainlands and learned the way of humans and their destructive instincts of greed and lust.
Breg was merely 12 years old, about the age of an adolescent in the human aging cycle. He was taught to hunt, and to dance in ceremony which was tradition, to give tribute to the forest that gave him his livelihood. It was a cold afternoon when it came, the billowing fires that smoked and plumed above the highest tree tops, strange men in plates of iron and long iron weapons on horseback with nets and slings. The Shaboolian men and women scattering their paths and coughing the unnatural smoke their home and tribe where doomed, as the men began swooping them up one by one screaming.
"Get em all men we have a quota this month, besides castles aren't built in a day put some back into it"!
Breg, with his long knotted hair and slender body slipped through frantically looking for his parents, frightened and shocked. The it came over him, this red and black fury, the feeling of helplessness and breaths soon becoming his own. He leapt out from behind the log he had taken cover under and charged. The men, unimpressed, moved forward, but were much surprised to see that Breg had dismounted one of their own and forced his own weapon upon his throat... soon after three more had come to quickly swoop their nets and bring him down to his knees.
"What the hell... a boy.. you can't hold your ground to a boy"!
They had thrown him in a cage on the back of a strange horse drawn carriage, Breg still clawing at the lumber and ripping his nails and flesh from fingers, bleeding and shouting in rage. The men drew near to watch such a spectacle, remarking and sneering.
"They truly are a savage people..He'll make a good slave"
All the while, Breg slowly calming, he wiped the blood from his finger on his face, painting it for war like his father before him to be a proud man and to not know defeat. But defeat was only a beginning..
He was shipped to the mainlands and sold from owner to owner, each one always complaining of how unruly and savage he was, beating and kicking only to fuel Breg's insatiable rage and hatred for all humans. So it was for the next 30 years and eventually he was sold to a man named Cartha, a theif in the underground black market business. Cartha was a shrewd man and not to be toyed with. Upon purchasing Breg he looked him in the eyes, standing there a large mass of dark skin scarred from years upon years of tearing, beating, and whipping.
"Whats your name slave"? uttered Cartha.
Breg just looked on and kept completely still, he always expected another hand to fall but didn't mind, he had grown accustomed to the lashing of the human hand and they bore him no harm anymore.
"What is your name slave"?! Cartha screamed, growing impatient.
"Fine have it your way".
Thereafter Cartha unshackled him. Breg, surprised and confused, glared.
"You, my friend, are going to be my new personal assistant of sorts," smirked Cartha.
"But first of all we're going to have to do a lot of work... a lot of work...". As Carthas shook his head and laughed.
The men ushered him to a room where he was force fed books and teachers, he was forced to spar humans with exotic weapons unparalleled to his nature, and nurtured in the way of civilization. He learned common tongue and to read basic words but moreover was taught to fight with swords, sheilds and all the underground militia tactics of the thief whose company he had learned to enjoy. Thus was the beginning of Breg's legacy.