Bravus

"Bravus! Bravus! Bravus! BRAVUS! BRAVUS! BRAAAAVUSSS!"

"Bravus!" The voices sounded from outside the arena walls.
"Bravus!" A thousand war chants, piercing the strongest of wills.
"Bravus!" They called, warning of dread and despair.
"Bravus!" For the true King of the Lost Isles was here.

Bravus. One name that brought terror to the ice lords, that caused stone walls to circle the kingdoms of the north, and left their villages in ruin. Son of the God Agnar. King of the Dregs. Bravus the Berserker.

There are few halfborn left among the kingdoms, the gods rarely allowing their offspring to live. Yet Bravus was born from the impossible. They say that he came into the world on a sinking warship in the middle of a hurricane. Without sails, and with gaping holes lining the sides, the ocean dragged the ship to the bottom of the seas. Bravus arrived at the Isles of Dreg on a single plank, and the people worshiped him as they did his father.

Bravus grew up slower than his followers, surviving through a whole generation of Dregs while still looking in his twenties. Yet the blood of Agnar had made him battle ready even as a child. Because there was no food within miles of his home, Bravus had lead his people on over a thousand raids into the neighboring kingdoms. They took weapons, food stores, and whatever they needed to survive. Ice kings had fallen to his axes, and their lands were picked bare to prepare for winter. Bravus' name spread to the corners of the world, and he felt invincible.

At least, until the day his world came crashing down like a tidal wave. It was spring, and the Dregs were preparing for a grand raid on the Queendom of Isolda. They prepped their warships, rode out past the horizon, and barely made the Queendom's shores before nightfall. Low on supplies and hungry, they broke into a temple of the Goddess Ran, who holds the sea. They ate like kings that night, filling their bellies and draining the sacred mead. The next day they raided the villages along the Queendom's edge and stockpiled their ships to the brim.

When they set sail for the Isles of Dreg, the ocean felt wrong to them. Storms scattered the fleet and led some of the raiding party off course. By the time they regrouped and reached the Isles, they found the revenge that had been waiting for Bravus since the day he was born. A giant wave had crushed their islands, washing away homes and families and dragging them out to sea. There was nothing left. Just the floating remains of a kingdom, and bodies as far as could be seen.

Little did Bravus know, it was his father who had shielded him all his life. The Goddess Ran had been trying to drown him since the day his mother gave birth: the hurricane that should have taken his ship, the dead waters around the Isles that starved his people year on year. Ran has no love for Agnar, and one by one his children had paid the blood price for it. The desecration of her temple was the last the sea would tolerate. Ran could not lay a hand on Bravus himself, but she found her revenge through his people.

With no place to call home, Bravus and the Dregs lived on their ships. They sailed far and away to find villages that still had food and supplies, and many of Bravus' people died on the way. With barely a thousand Dregs left, he turned his ships to the main land. He would fight in the arena, and he would win. Standing before the gods, Bravus would demand that they raise his islands from the deep, and his people with them.

Arriving at the gates, the Dregs pounded on their war drums, and together, gave Bravus the welcoming warcry that no living thing could ignore.

"Bravus!"

In the arena, no gods may interfere.

"Bravus!"

He would be alone for the first time in his life.

"Bravus!"

But even without Agnar, Bravus was the Berserker.