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Delaigda was on Primordia and did not understand why society did not want anyone to be using his or her own brains. Everyone still did not understand that they were on a planet and content with just a little piece of land. It made perfect sense to use your brains against a creature that was far larger and stronger than one’s self.
The beasts that they had to contend with were dumb, even though they weighed more than thousands of people. She liked hunting, but society forbade that as well. Women were not allowed to do much in society and this made her feel like leaving. She had a loving family, but they were wrapped up in the politics of the society. Her father was even on the council and disliked the fact that his only daughter of ten children, did not act like a daughter.
Being his tenth child it did not hurt him much in the eyes of society, but it still hurt. She did not like hurting her father and it hurt her inside when her father winced when anyone came with news about her doing this or doing that. It got to the point where she would get punished no matter what they came to see him about. Most men had at least sixty percent more muscle mass than her, even though she had more than any other woman in the society that she lived in.
Most men despised her due to this fact, including her father. It was obvious that her physical prowess was not gotten from her mother’s side of the family, but from her father’s side. Even though this was so, she was just as beautiful as her mother. The men in her society liked women who were frail and had to depend upon their man to take care of their needs.
Delaigda was sad sometimes, actually most times, that she would not marry anyone of importance. Those of any import were entwined deeply into the web of the council and any attempt to move around against the faction who led them would bring exile. Rumours of the waste were always brought to the lush green lands where her society lived. It was always said that stranger beasts lived there than any of those that roamed into the society. The waste was a place where nothing grew and only promised death.
She took to this the same as she took to the idea that women were useless in a society of men that hulked up to a height of nine feet and sometimes weighed over six hundred pounds. The average woman in her society reached up to a height of five feet and most times weighed less than one hundred and fifty pounds. Delaigda was six feet and four inches tall and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds.
Delaigda was not chubby like most women, but actually appeared to be slim and well toned with a very feminine figure. It was completely away from the normal chubby look that the men of society preferred. This is what made her choose to venture into the Waste. Never in her entire life had she taken things that were not hers to take, but now it was necessary. If she were to survive the waste, she would have to take the necessary things from others. Delaigda thought about taking weapons, but decided taking something that was so necessary for the society to survive would be terribly wrong.
Her father’s armour and weapon master taught her the workings of weapon making and armour making in secret for the last fifteen years of her life. Delaigda's weapons and armour needed a few more years of honing, but they would have to do. She could always work on it. So, she took her tools as well as the small anvil that she worked with and put them in a reinforced pack. Wearing the armour and the sword was more practical than carrying them. Also taking a whetstone, she left for the kitchen to see what she could find for provisions.
Filling a large sack with two loaves of day old bread, a pound of soured cheese seasoned to last at least a week without being kept cold, a skin of fermented goat’s milk and two skins of spiced water. From there she went to the Fletcher’s hut to get her composite bow and her fletching tools. After fastening a quiver of forty arrows onto her back, slinging her bow over her left shoulder and putting her fletching tools in her pack, she headed to the store rooms to find some other equipment that she might need.
Delaigda was able to procure fifty feet of rope, a long patchwork cloak, a large wool blanket and a small tent. She always thought that they should domesticate an animal for riding, but they had never listened to her. The society preferred to eat the horse rather than to ride it. Thus, Delaigda had to walk into the Waste and hoped she could find a beast to coax into taking her the rest of the way into the Waste.
A few miles into the Waste and she spotted such a beast, a horse worthy of a warrior such as herself. It was bigger than any horse that she had ever seen being about twenty-four hands high from the place where she would sit to the ground below it. The horse knew that she was there. In fact it tossed its massive head from side to side in defiance of her presence and then stood on its hind legs letting out a mighty neigh, a war cry of sorts.
Dust was sent into the air like the clouds in fog when its front hooves fell to the ground digging into the desert sand like a tempest wind that causes a sand storm. It danced around in defiant circles bringing up more and more sand. Her eyes were filled with sand, which meant that she could not see the horse stampeding towards her, but she did hear it. The thunder of galloping hooves in her ears made her afraid for the first time in her life.
She was so afraid that she could not move and trying only made her limbs feel more like lead each time an attempt to move was made. To her amazement the horse stopped a hands breadth in front of her face. It was so close that she could feel the horse’s warm breath on her face, melting away the fear. The horse nudged her shoulder and she took this as a sign of approval. Removing the steel gauntlet from her right hand, she ran her fingers through the thick black mane of this large horse.
Delaigda talked soothingly to the horse and decided to name him Thunder. Thunder laughed the way horses do when they feel warmth and love coming from the gentle caressing of those that are more than their masters’ and more like companions. She opened her sack and brought out the large wool blanket. Delaigda placed the blanket on Thunder’s back. After putting her gauntlet back on, she climbed onto Thunder’s back.
Sitting on his back for a few moments before taking off, so that he got used to her, she looked around from her new vantage point. For the first time in her life she felt at peace. With gauntleted fingers in Thunder’s mane she urged him on. They traveled many miles over sand and as far as she could see in any direction there was only sand. This sand was a light golden copper colour that shimmered in the sun.
The heat waves were visible above the sand and distorted her view and thus she did not see the strange object jutting out of the sand directly in her path. It was black as black could be, as wide as Thunder was long and about fifty feet high. Before realizing it was there at all, Thunder had already been halfway through it and Delaigda was a few seconds from going through it herself. Moments after Thunder and she disappeared from the waste, the black object shimmered and vanished as well.
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