At the mountain's summit there was a gaping maw in the stone's face that gave way to a cavernous pit. None of this was natural, though time had weathered many of the innumerable claw marks that had been left from when the cavity was dug and ripped out of of the mountain. It was inside this horrid lair (in which no mortal had ever set foot and lived) that the orcs' king had slumbered. Beneath him was a mound of charred bones, bloodstained swords, shredded armor, and unimaginably huge heaps of gold and gems, though even those precious treasures had their brilliance tarnished by the very foulness in the air. That great mound was all the spoils of war, accumulated for so long that they had become the size of a small hillock and a throne for the monster that slept atop his precious collection.
For a hundred generations Khilgarrath had ruled the orcs of these mountains with fire and death, and in times past all of these lands had been theirs. Time was finally catching up to the beast, though; his inner fire was beginning to fade, and with it his passion and desire for war. The orcs had declined in strength and number and now only plagued the lands near their mountain chain. Khilgarrath was mostly content to rest, and so it was only perhaps once in a century that his orcish slaves had the honor of marching to war beneath the shadow of their master's wings. Indeed, it had already been so long that many of the petty wizards and scholars had dismissed the tales of his horror as mere fantasy, but the peasants still remembered his legacy of terror.
It would not have been long before the
mighty dragon roused from his slumber on his own volition, but the sound of that wretched horn from below still managed to make him wroth. He would have slumbered for perhaps another season or ten, but it would seem that the insects that worshiped him as their god of war and their king had seen fit to deny him even rest. The thought crossed Khilgarrath's mind to purge those worms with his flame; what were they to him, anyways? Perhaps a new shaman was needed to lead the tribe? It had been only ten years since he had imbued the hands of the last shaman with fire!
No. The shaman was still alive, but barely. Though the stench of smoky breath and rotten flesh clung to air of his den even after so many years of quiet, the dragon needed no smell to sense the little creatures that crawled about on the plateaus and crags of these mountains. His ancient magic was potent enough for such tasks, and with little more than a thought he scried below and near instantly located Gormlag the shaman. The fool would pay for this interruption!
Upon his descent D'Artagne had somehow mustered up the courage to call out and speak to the dragon, but the orcs' king would have none of it. The insignificant rabbitman hadn't even caught his attention yet.
--=~=--
Gormlag lay on the ground, choking on his own blood. Worse than the agony of his own bleeding was that fiery glare in his eyes from the baleful sun above; just as it had baked the dirt of these red mountains as hard as stone, it now withered the dying shaman with its tortuous heat and bright. It dried and scorched him just as it did those few sparse thistles and bushes that tried to eek out a living on the slopes of these forsaken mountains.
This pain burned him even worse than what he had felt when he had plunged his bare arms into the burning bile of his god, infusing himself with fire and becoming shaman. The sunlight pierced through the visor of Gormlag's helmet and into his eyes, blinding and burning even if he shut his eyelids. For all his former strength, the shaman was too weak to even move his head so as to avert the glare. The sharp pain and tortuous light denied him even the peace of slipping out of consciousness and slowly fading away into the next life; it would seem that he was doomed to suffer until his very last breath.
There was suddenly a tremendous thud.
'Yes,' the dying orc thought,
'...I can hear their beat already! The drums of war! I will march to glory in the afterlife...' That horrid sun vanished and made way for respite. Gormlag shuddered, his life compelte and his end at hand. Then there came a second light, a thousand times brighter and hotter than the sun. Suddenly he was drenched in fire. Burning alive, Gormlag howled, his hoarse, rasping scream drowned out by the roar of fire.
--=~=--
Khillgarath had landed before the corpse of the shaman, crushing beneath his claws several of the charred corpses of lesser orcs that had been left by Torrens. Looming over the moribund shaman so much that he blocked the sun, the dragon had then reached up and began to sear the shaman. The rock below cracked and melted, the superheated air blast outwards in a small explosion, and the heat had burned away every last piece of weakness and soft flesh left within Gormlag's body. The flames began to die down.
The dragon sighed and looked down upon the shaman, the orc's body even more ruined than before. Already the dragon was exhausted, but this process was far quicker and more preferable to making an entirely new shaman, however unworthy this one was proving to be. That initial breath of flame was the drizzle that preluded the storm; he had broken down and shaped Gormlag's body by cauterizing away what had remained of the twisted orc's weakness and personality. Now it was time to temper the steel: this shaman would become a mighty sword indeed, a fine weapon of war that would hopefully never shatter again.
The dragon retched and from his throat flew a globule of searing bile, that fluid hotter than any coal fire, magical flame, or even the dragon's breath. The horrid fluid seeped into the ashes and bones that remained of Gormlag and forged him a new body even greater than the last had been. Before the shaman's spirit could wander away, Khillgarath used his magic to bind the orc's soul into this new body. The avatar of destruction was complete, and the shaman rose to his feet bearing more resemblance to a fire demon like Torrens than any orc.
Khillgarath's most pressing job complete, he sniffed the air and surveyed the scene. Clearly the village had awoken him because they had been attacked and were so miserably weak that they needed his protection, though in all fairness their foes had managed to defeat the shaman...
Where were the foes? The dragon saw neither any signs of an army nor any fallen invaders in the immediate vicinity, only dozens of orcish corpses strewn throughout the clearing. It was outrageous. But then D'Artagne would find looming over himself a draconic visage...
"Little one! You are brave indeed to not cower before me as even the orcs do. But surely you are not responsible for this intrusion upon my lands and savagery against my warriors? This...glorious destruction?"--=~=--
The Master's eager ears listened carefully to the words of Clotho; for some strange reason, his scrying magic was failing in these treacherous passes. It was as if the magic of another great magical entity had already brought these lands completely under its control. That being, if it existed, would have had to be ancient indeed, for its presence was so deeply ingrained to the land that one could hardly even feel a disturbance.
When she was done, the Keeper acknowledged Clotho quickly,
"Very well. Prepare at once; we will march upon this village quickly. If passage has already been secured then we will be on our way all the sooner, and if not, these orcs will be denied time for further preparation."When the host of demons and other assorted monsters that was the Horde encountered Torrens on his way down, he would be unceremoniously ordered to fall back into line with the others with hardly a thanks. Whether by intention or mere chance, Faeles found himself right beside Torrens once more.
