***WARNING- this chapter mentions sexual abuse***
When the world still worked in wonder and the people moved from land to land freely to settle wherever their hearts desired. A before time, when there were no kings or queens on the land. Life was a simple cycle of survival, and trading was done with resources and not coins.
There along came a man whose greed knew no bounds. Where there was land, he saw the potential to tear down the trees to construct houses. Where there were caves, he saw the rich veins of ore and minerals to be mined. Each animal they crossed paths with was hunted down and farmed for its meat and pelt.
With this, the wealth of his village grew exponentially with every passing year, and soon they did not need to trade with the other neighboring villages for resources to survive.
The man's hunger couldn't be quenched. He wanted more, whether it was wealth or women. His home was already the largest among the other villagers. He was a man that had everything. He was by definition, a king amongst men.
There was a nomadic clan that held no name and roamed the land, stopping for only a couple of months before picking up and leaving once more. They lived off the land and paid respects to the druids of nature every waking hour of every day.
They swore off eating meat, preferring the earthly splendors of berries, nuts, and mushrooms they spent most of their day harvesting. The other hours they spent languidly, singing songs of praises towards their deities.
Never did they eat more than they needed. Perhaps because of this, their bodies showed no signs of aging. Both the women and men were undeniably the most beautiful people in all of the land.
The man heard of the nomads, and using his extreme wealth, made it known he wanted the nomads brought to him.
This was the last time the nomads were ever free.
After months of waiting, the man's wants were fulfilled. An entire group of trappers were the first to bring the man what he asked. He handsomely rewarded them for their catch and sent them on their way.
Others flocked to the man with their live captures in tow, and the man rewarded each one of them.
The now enslaved nomads were nothing but playthings for the despicable man. He lent out the nomads as if they were nothing but flesh to be toyed with. Everyone in his village took advantage of the people and made it so the nomads lived in absolute torture every day.
One day, a very special nomadic woman was brought before the man. The woman had locks of flaming red and dark eyes the color of coal. She was the most beautiful one of the nomads yet. He rained down immeasurable riches upon the hunter who had captured and brought the woman to him.
Then he did as he liked with her. Day in and day out. She cried out in pain, but that did not bar the man in any way. He kept the woman locked in his basement and only visited her in the dead of night.
Little did he know the woman was one of the favorites of a mighty being with powers akin to a god. The being was a giantess that was known to grind down the bones of her enemies to make them into ingredients for her spells. She was a vengeful sorceress. A sorceress that had lived for hundreds of years already.
At first, the Giantess was ignorant of the misfortune that had befallen her favored human. By the time she had begun to look for the human, all that was left of the nomad was a pile of bones that man had thrown out once her body withered away.
"How dare you touch what is mine!?" Her voice boomed down from the skies above. The entire sky darkened as the clouds rolled in and enveloped their world in black. The village people's screams filled the air as rains pelted them below. It truly was the beginning to the end for them all.
They fell to their knees and begged for forgiveness while the man felt no remorse for what he had done.
He hid inside his home and refused to leave the comfort of his many plush furs of the animals he had slaughtered only for their pelts.
Meanwhile, the villagers continued to be assailed by the rains the sorceress had called from above. The rain flooded the houses and destroyed nearly everything, killing many in a single night.
Nevertheless, the man cowered inside his house built on top of a hill. He blocked out the screams that rang out from the ruins of the village below.
On the third day, the screams of the villagers ceased. He could not hear the pelting of the rain on his roof anymore.
The man stepped outside. The sky was still as dark as night as he turned in every which way to access the large scaled destruction. As far as he could see, the sight of the collapsed houses spanned out before him. Hands and feet poked out from the rubble and the carcasses of their livestock stayed lifeless where they lay on the ground.
The people that had survived the torrential rains poked their heads out. They did the same as the man and looked around at the mass of bodies that were scattered throughout the village.
They cheered when they thought the Giantess' rage had finally been quenched. Their cheers of joy soon changed to screams of terror as droplets of red started to rain down, sliding down their faces and soaking into their clothing.
"How foolish. To think my rage would be so easily satisfied with just that." The Giantess showed herself in her smaller form in front of the man. He fell back as he looked upon her omnipresent figure of horror. Her dark-colored hair rolled in waves from her head. The sharp-cut features of her face. Her eyes. No matter where he looked, her completely hollowed-out holes for eyes haunted him, demanding his continual attention. The man could not look away even as streams of blood flowed down from his eyes.
He tried to escape by crawling on all fours.
"For a simple man who has spent his entire life taking from others," her voice came out but her lips did not move, "I can only see but one fitting end for him and his people."
Her cackling laughter filled the space between them. It was then that the man finally showed his fear as the sorceress raised a gnarled finger.
"The inhabitants of this village will be punished for all eternity in a land of inexplicable evils." The earth beneath them quaked and split open. From the cracks, massive trees sprouted forth. The trunks rose higher into the sky and all around them until they stood in the middle of a dense forest.
"For vile creatures such as these, I place an everlasting curse to not only the ones here but to all their descendants."
"You all will live as you lived as humans, prisoners to your own bestial desires. Beasts not only in name but in form as well." Howling screams penetrated through the heavy thicket. Sounds of skin tearing apart and of breaking of bones overwhelmed the man. A sob escaped from the man's chapped lips.
Then a wave of indescribable pain wrecked through the man's body and he twisted on the muddy ground. The man opened his mouth to scream but found he could not let out a single sound anymore.
One by one, all the bones inside the man's body were snapped and mended back into place.
The man writhed on the ground, the tattered clothes lay below his body as mud-caked every inch of him. There was nothing inside his mind as his only thoughts were of the insufferable agony he felt.
The man bent forward and choked out blood. He heard the snarling sounds from somewhere unknown and realized that the animalistic noises were coming from him.
"A cycle of pain and death. All here Beasts will be enslaved by the phases of the moon." The sorceress told the disfigured figure of the half-transformed man. "Like the people and the animals you Hunted. You too shall be Hunted and tortured as mere animals as soon as you step foot outside this Forest." She neared closer to the man.
With a frightening twist of her cracked lips, she finished uttering the final lines of her curse.
"Your minds will rot away, bit by bit until there is no trace of sanity left."
As a kiss of death, the Giantess bent forward and brushed her deathly cold lips over the man's forehead. Then she turned and her smile widened, showing the whites of her sharpened teeth as she walked away, the sounds of their forsaken screams followed after her but she paid them no heed.
The Giantess left the forsaken Humans to turn into the very Beasts they were.