H.P. Podcraft.com.

The fortunes of war favored Hrothger.

Friends and kinsmen flock to his ranks, young followers a force

that grew to be a mighty army. So his mind turned to Hall Building. He handed down orders for men to work on a great mead hall meant to be a wonder of the world forever.

It would be his throne room and there he would dispense his God-given goods to young and old.

And soon it stood there, finished and ready in full view,

the Hall of Halls.

Heorot was the name he had settled on it, whose utterance was law.

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him to hear the din of the loud banquet every day in the hall,

the harp being struck and the clear song of a skilled poet telling with mastery of man's beginnings.

Grendel was the name of this grim demon, haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate

fens.

He had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters

Kaines Clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts. For the killing

of Abel the Eternal Lord had exacted a price.

Kane got no good from committing that murder because the Almighty made him

anathema and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogers and elves and evil

phantoms and the giants too who strove with God time and again until he gave them their final

reward.

So after nightfall, Grendel set out for the lofty house

to see how the Ring Danes were settling into it after their drink and there he came upon them a

company of the best to sleep from their feasting insensible to pain and human sorrow.

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