Steve Shell
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
They were simply his only children fit to represent the public face of Barrow Mining Company, the only ones who could pass relatively unnoticed amongst its human workforce.
Yet something had to be done, and so E.P.
instructed his sons to add more links to the great iron chain that suspended the black box that had been prepared for him.
And they lowered him even further into the earth, deep beneath the grand home office he had constructed.
Conrad barred the door that led to the building so that none might disturb him and dismissed the staff for several months so none could carry the tales of the sounds that echoed up from beneath the family's headquarters.
The air inside that place grew unaccountably cold, far colder than the snow that fell on the mountains around Coal Hill dread voices.
echoed up from the places below in a language that even Conrad and Benuel could not understand, and E.P.
And then, on a bleak night in the heart of winter, beneath a moonless, empty sky, the heavy chains rattled and clanked again as E.P.
and unto him was born a daughter.
Holly Barrow was everything the Barrow patriarch could have desired in his progeny.
Brilliant, beautiful, and strong.
Her particular talents began to manifest at the tender age of three when a well-meaning nanny clasped the hand of the fussy toddler who wanted to stay outside and chase lightning bugs around the family's sprawling country estate rather than come inside for dinner.
The young woman had only meant to draw the little girl alongside her into the house, but Polly responded with force.
Her tiny hand morphing subtly into a huge gauntlet armored with plates of bone, and little Polly had simply crushed the bones of the nanny's hand.
And then her mutant paw returned to its normal dimension, slipped free of her pulpy grasp, and returned to trailing her new glowing friends around the manicured lawn.
EP could not have been more proud.