The Blood Ring of Tytus: A Masters of the Universe Adventure

I - The Goddess and the Champion

To yon cavern went the Giant, for the Old Dragon dwelt

In that pit 'neath the mountains that loomed o'er the veldt

But the great ageless dragon Granamyr would not deign

To do battle with a mortal, so went the refrain

But the fame of great Tytus, the Giant Warlord

Spread even to the Eldest of the Old Dragon Horde

Who, rising from his pit, spoke a fiery spate

And fought a war with the Giant that came to stalemate

And though 'twas his desire, the Breather of Fire

Could not wrest the Blood Ring from Tytus the Great

- Excerpt from The Deeds of the Giants, the oldest epic poem in the Western Eternian language.

I

THE GODDESS AND THE CHAMPION

THE night was hot. Hotter, it seemed, than the day that had preceded it. The day had been a vexingly hot one – there was no question about that. But, somehow, its toils and troubles made the heat bearable. Somehow, the hours of perilous travel under the blazing sun, the laborious ascension of craggy peaks, the fending off of unnumbered wild beasts, and even the taxing effort of the occasional battle with enemies... somehow these trials seemed to make the intolerable swelter wholly tolerable. And some would say this was especially true of the latter example.

The young woman who stepped out of the inn and into the oppressive night air was one such person.

The inn had been intolerably hot, she thought. What little air there was in her cramped room had been weighed down so tremendously by the heat and humidity that it was unable to do any living thing any good. It is less a room for sleeping than it is an oven for baking, she thought. Even the most senseless and dumb beasts had at least sense enough not to take a blazing oven for a bed. Would less be said of a Warrior Goddess?

Teela had never liked the epithet. It struck her as needlessly boastful. There was no doubt of its truthfulness, of course. But it seemed to her that it was better to let her sword speak this truth in times of battle so that her lips might remain silent in times of peace.

But these thoughts were not on her mind this night. This night, the heat would brook contemplation of no subject but itself. And as she stepped out of the oven that masqueraded as a bedroom and into the night air, it dawned on Teela that on this night, it was not merely her room, not merely the inn, but perhaps all of Eternia that had become an unlivable oven.

Teela sucked in as much of the still, stale air as her lungs would hold, then exhaled slowly. This offered no respite. The heat was omnipresent, an unconquerable foe. Dewy beads of sweat glistened on Teela's skin, pasting the drenched locks of her fiery red hair down on her slender neck and shoulders and causing the thin cloth of her chemise to cling to her supple body with a tenacity its seamstress had scarcely intended.

After lifting the hem of her already soaked garment to her brow in an effort to mop away some of the ceaseless perspiration, Teela found herself startled by a glint of light pouring faintly from a window on the far side of the inn.

"Ah," she said softly. "Another poor soul robbed of a night's sleep by this accursed heat."

The Warrior Goddess made her way slowly to the source of the light, her bare feet falling softly and silently on the damp, mossy soil. She peered curiously into the window of the dimly lit room, but its ancient, cracked glass provided no view at all. Finding the room's nearby door slightly ajar, Teela crept forward and pushed it open, finding access to a sight that the window would not permit.