My dream was a storm of roiling darkness shot with golden lightning. The dark was too deep, to stare at it was to risk madness as it unmade even the mind that beheld it. The light that ripped through it was too bright, for it tore away all that it touched and left only echoes of itself. This was power without reason, without rules. This was a raging storm too strong for the universe to contain, yet too there was an echo in it. Not like my song, like the first song. Like Mom’s song.

I had never been with a woman before. I had heard the song, the song of death. My song. I had felt the earth respond to me when I stretched beyond the simple song of death to try to weave life back into the earth made barren by demonic sorcery, but even then I had to kill to make my song bring life. I destroyed, so I could create. I was a force of destruction and renewal, not creation. It had been different with Kala. When we loved, my song filled her, and she wove herself into the song in me. We created without destruction. I had been burning with the essence of the primordial will, the divine power ripped from dozens of consumed demons and the life force of as many empowered sorcerers. I had burned so bright with the force of the gods transformed by my will into primal power that my own flesh could not contain it. I should have died. Instead, I helped bring forth life, tearing Tamara inside, and reshaping her so that she might bring forth the baby inside her and live. I drove my will into the child that failed under strain too great for its flesh, and remade that flesh into something stronger. Tamara sang the song of death, and let me weave the life inside me through it before it consumed me.

Then Kala had decided that rather than executing me for the crime of laying hands on her naked sister, she would take me as concubine. She loved me. I felt the song of life in her, the song of life that called to the power consuming me, the power out of control in me, and when she took me into her, she took it into her as well. We wove our songs together and the earth responded. The song of life. Not the song of creation and destruction, not the mortal song that was mine, but the first song, the song of creation. The song that rang inside Mom even now, every time the storm raged.

“It was in the storm I found her. In the storm I loved her. In the storm we danced. In the storm we made you.”

The voice was the essence of the lightning, the primordial blade of will that first tore the darkness asunder and forced it first to be one thing.

I felt the blood of Ajax in me quake in fear, and then in rage. I felt my tentacle friends huddle back behind me and hiss in fear. In one voice, the ghosts of titans and primordial horrors cried out.

“You are dead!” He/they/I hissed. Denying his existence.

The light flashed so bright I screamed as it lit my bones like a sword blade struck by lightning, lit my flesh like a candle wick kissed by fire. A flash of rage, a flash of regret, a hint of something softer, and then the voice.

“I am dead. I who first brought forth the universe from chaos, and loved her. From her sprang the race of titans who bore my blood and power, and her life. They slew me, and ravaged her. They shaped the universe until there were more worlds than they had known heartbeats, and on each of them they strove to tear even more from the universe until there was only the order of their will, and the stuff of Chaos their mother was no more than the clay they shaped into their toys. I could have destroyed them even then, but they had consumed her, and of her, they were all that was left.

Then they created their own children, as they had done to me, so did their children do to them. Rising up, the gods worked primordial will into a new thing, into magic. The work of a hundred days could be done with a word, a shaping that required a master a lifetime to learn could be taught to an infant in an afternoon. The gods wielded their magic like the Titans had wielded their weapons, and my children too were cast down.

I did not care.

Yet the blood of my children fell upon the earth. The earth shaped from the corpse of my bride, the common soil of a single world ripped from the corpse of the universe their mother and mixed now with the blood of my children, and from it rose the mortal races. In them the golden fires of the primordial will the Titans had from me, and the gods had from them. In them, the primordial darkness of the chaos from which I brought forth my bride, my murdered bride, mother of Titans, from whose body they shaped all the stars and worlds.

They were of me, and yet, they were of her. I did not rest easy in my grave, for she whom I loved lingered in the shadow of these lesser races. Not titan, not god, just common mortals, little different than beasts save that they were formed of her clay, and my blood.

Then the child was born. In her was the song. She sang it as a girl, and my dreams grew near the surface. She sang it as a maiden and my dreams touched the sky and the winds attended and danced with her. She danced it as a woman, and as her bare feet danced upon the earth my beloved’s heart beat again. I came to her then, and she was everything my bride had been, and everything she never got the chance to be. She was mortal, no more than a blossom to live a few hundred seasons and fade, less than the least of my children, yet in her was all that was beautiful of the universe I loved, and so I dared to love her, and she to love me.

We made you, Clover. Of our love. We made you. Yours was the song of mortality. The song I sang for your mother was the song of creation, the song I sang when I used my will to rape the primordial chaos and bring for the order I chose, to bring forth the universe for me to know. That is the song of the immortals, and that song nearly destroyed you. Yours is the song of mortality. The song of destruction and creation, of consumption and construction, of growth through struggle. Your song is not born of the heavens, but rooted here in the earth. The earth made of my bride’s bones, the common soil that birthed that perfect flower that brought me back from death again to love her; your mother.

Do not seek my song. I am dead, and it was my folly and my children that murdered me. The song of the titan bound all creation, and in the doing spawned the gods that murdered them in turn. The gods are the ultimate order and seek to bind all things in place beneath them.

But they do not have your tentacle friends. The primordial will that bound chaos was my gift, my children’s gift, taken and twisted into something new by the gods. You have a measure of that, but you have the other as well. The darkness from which tore my bride, from which I created the universe, the darkness which my children, the titans sought to drive to utter extinction is woven in the mortal flesh of this world, and you have learned to free it.

Walk your road. Sing the song the gods do not know, and bring a new thing to this earth.

Let what I wrought with my bride be a beginning, and not an end, and I will be content to sleep in death.”

It is easy to say the words that rang in me, but they were not words. Each one was a storm of images and memories. Each one tore through me like a spear, tearing through me and leaving knowledge of things that history had forgotten, that legends feared to speak of, that temples feared to record. Writhed, and if my body had not been broken and reformed a hundred times, I would have broken. At last he was done speaking, and I felt his presence withdraw from the world. It was like the weight of a dozen horses suddenly being taken off my chest, for the pressure of my father’s presence beat the air worse than the thunder of a hundred storms.

My father. Who is dead. And created the universe. Nope. Not going to think about that. I just got married (I think). I just fell in love (I think), I just made love, several times, and I liked it, and she liked it, and I liked her, she might even like me. I am not going to think about disturbing things like my father was dead since the beginning of time and came back just to love my mother. Nope. Not going there.

Kala poked me. Hard.

“Your father created the universe?” She demanded.

“You heard?” I asked, not understanding how she heard my dream.

Tamara looked over at me, and the baby, which had it’s eyes open, glowing gold and trying to grab a tentacle of darkness that seemed to grow from its chest with two little green fists, burbled happily. Tamara was looking at the tentacle, the glowing eyed baby, and then over at me and her sister in the next bed and hissed not all that quietly.

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“Everyone heard you. The earth shook and every time that voice spoke the sky lit with lightning brighter than the sun. I am surprised every hut in the village didn’t shake apart. I could hear your voices echo off the MOUNTAINS and they are three days ride away.” Tamara insisted. I looked over at Kala who nodded in confirmation. Just then Janice, Oskana, Olga, and Gracie entered the hut, apparently the whole can’t see a female orc nude thing was still a thing this morning, and they all looked at me accusingly for some reason. Janice poked me in the forehead, I was getting a lot of poking this morning, and shouted.

“I knew you weren’t normal. No one gets that strong. You are like, not a god, not really a titan, kind of like whatever comes after a god. Clover, you are not normal!” Janice was shouting, and poking. Again with the poking. She was mad.

“I am totally normal. I taught you to do the things that I do. Any one can do it.” I insisted. I mean, it was true. I may have utterly failed at learning demonic cultivation in the Dread Empire, but I taught first my squad, and then my whole cohort how to grow strong in the broken places, to take charge of their healing and reshape their body and their mind. I had taught them to feel the spirits in the earth, air and water around them, to feel the flow of the universe and to learn to move with it. I mean, I couldn’t do magic, but getting along with the world was dead easy, right?

She closed her fist and began pounding it into my head. Then she stopped, sucking her bleeding knuckles.

“Clover, when you dance, the storm starts. When you scream at the sky, lightning falls down all over whoever you are mad at. We followed you here from the place your enchanted steel armour melted down to slag and then burned to nothing but pale ash, and we followed you along a trail of flowers and footprints that seep clear spring water across fifty miles of open desert. Open desert that now has a road of flowers that are still getting water from your footprints. You. Are. Not. Normal.”

Janice gave up reasoning with me, and punching me in the head as her hand was getting sore.

Oskana the crone orc shrugged. “Your penis was glowing like the sun. When you and Kala started having sex, we could still see it. It glowed right through her body, and then she started glowing. Now she has tentacles of darkness coming out of her shoulders and her eyes glow like someone stuck a lantern in her brain. Hell, the baby has tentacles of darkness and glowing eyes. Plus, Kala’s pregnant, which is totally not possible between a human and an orc. The spirits haven’t shut up about it all night.”

I looked at Kala, and hugged her. She hugged me back but looked confused. Gracie muttered something in trollish that was pretty idiomatic. Roughly translated it means so curious about what the lions ass looked like you climbed in its mouth. It is how trolls point out that you missed something important.

This time she poked me. “There are armies. Here. Several.”

Janice facepalmed, which I knew meant that she had come in here intending to lead with that, but got distracted. Oskana winced, which meant she had meant to lead with that but got distracted. Gracie poked me in the head again, I was getting poked a lot, which meant that she hadn’t gotten distracted, and I was the cohorts senior Centurion and defacto Tribune, I had best let go of my girlfriend and get soldiering.

Kala swore softly.

“Shit, I should have thought about that. We are the Spear Maidens. We are the only armed orcs that don’t belong to any tribe. We are the keepers of the spring. The only spring in orcish territory. We keep it because any one tribe that holds it holds power over the rest of them. We are of all tribes but sworn to none, so we are the only ones who can defend it. We are not as strong as any one tribe, but none of them is strong enough to take us alone and have enough power to defend the spring against all the blood feuds killing us would start. If your cohort is here, they think we are making a power play, merging with a foreign power to make the tribes submit.”

Ah, I knew how this worked. A balance of power, everyone is perfectly still, knowing that whoever moves first loses, but the second anyone moves at all, everyone has to move right away because whoever moves last also loses. My cohort following me was like a torch thrown into a haystack. The plains would be burning with war in their wake and it was my fault.

“I will go deal with them. Janice, do you have any spare armour, and maybe a sagum? I kind of burned everything away but my spear, shield and Xiphos.” I asked. She was my second, and good at details like that.

Janice rubbed her head and sighed.

“Boss, you were six inches shorter before you got lit on fire. Nothing I brought will fit you. Just go naked. Wave your dick at them a few times and I’m sure they will see reason.” Janice sighed.

I looked at Gracie, she nodded and shrugged. I was pretty sure that is not how it worked. You don’t get taller by being lit on fire, or short children would be tossed in cooking fires all the time right? I glanced at Janice, then Gracie, but neither one seemed to be joking. Still, armies, plural, were an officer thing to deal with. I was the officer. If Janice said dick waving was required, then dick waving I would do. Honestly, in the army waving your dick around at command meetings had always been a metaphor, who would have thought it was an actual thing you did?

Striding from the tent, I picked up my shield and spear, no belt to hang my Xiphos on, so I guess I would go as is, I strode towards the biggest approaching dust cloud. Time to do some dick waving, and make some peace.

As armies go, they were not very large. The biggest one that I was jogging towards was perhaps 600-700 orcs. Granted your average orc was about eight feet of green tusked and angry, but they were metal poor so mostly leather armour and more spear and axe than swordsmen. I was buck naked and only had a spear, not even a helm to my name, so not really in a position to judge on military kit, but my own cohort was much better armed and armoured. They had some mounted troops, looked like lancers, and the chief or general in front was riding a chariot with big choppy blades on the wheels, a dozen throwing spears in the chariot, and being pulled by six big boars. God I hate those things. Nothing like having your cock and balls almost ripped off by a boar who crawled all the way up the spear you killed him with just to try to take your nuts off as he died. I ate pork every chance I got ever since.

“Hail and well met, noble orc. I am Clover son of a very fit gentleman who brought flowers, and husband to Kala Anyadottir of the spring village. We come in peace. We seek only friendship.” I spread my arms wide, taking my shield and spear out of line to prove how peaceful I was.

“Lying Dread Empire slave, I will feed your manhood to my boars, and rape your bitch of a traitor bride before giving her to my men. No more neutral spear maiden bullshit. The spring will be Grotex. The water will be Grotex. All tribes will be Grotex or all tribes will starve. All will bow to Grotex and I will drink my celebratory wine from your stupid pink skin human skull!” Roared the big chieftain in the six boar chariot. Well, I guess dick waving wasn’t enough to get their attention. If service in the Dread Empire taught me one thing, it is when it is time to stop talking and GET STUCK IN.

“What did you say about my wife?” I roared, and my voice drowned out the roar of all seven hundred of his tribesmen.

I took three steps and threw my spear. It punched through three boars, front to back, before shattering the wheel on the left hand side of the chariot, throwing Grotex as the chariot toppled and came apart.

I used my shield to slam through the horse and lancer that charged to stop me on my left, then spun and leaped in the air to hammer the next horseman out of his saddle as my foot collapsed his chest. I threw my shield to take out a line of three charging horsemen as it shattered legs and dropped mount and orc screaming to the desert floor. I reached the groaning Grotex, slapping aside the two warriors who tried to help him up. I pinned him to the ground with one foot, and ripped his head off with my hands.

My eyes blazed with golden light, I could see it reflect from the weapons of the charging orcs. A forest of black tentacles rose from my shoulders and slapped arrows and spears from the sky around me. I roared at the charging orcs as they stumbled to a halt around me.

“My name is Clover, I come in peace UNLESS YOU WANT TO END UP LIKE THIS ASSHOLE!” I roared as I popped Grotex’s head like an overripe grape, painting my naked form in the Legion standard BGB (blood guts and brains, although technically I would have to reach back and grab some of the guts if I wanted the total camouflage scheme).

Seeing as no one felt like continuing to attack, one of the orc officers marched forward. No fear in his eyes, but anger and resolution.

“You do not hold the spring against us?” He demanded.

“The spear maidens hold the spring for all the orcs. Come in peace to speak if you will. I guarantee the safety of everyone who comes in peace.” I said as I reached out and pulled out my spear. One of the gods damned boars from the chariot had pulled itself free and took a shot at goring me from behind. I rammed my spear’s lizard sticker base through the boar’s skull without turning away from the orc I was looking at.

“I hate those fucking things. Bacon and bad attitudes, that is all they are. Please, come and accept the hospitality of the spring village” I said, trying to be suave and debonair when half the boar’s skull was stuck on the bottom of my spear as I walked away.

I walked back through the front gate of the village where Kala and Olga looked concerned, Janice and Gracie looked annoyed, and the rest of the cohort looked mostly bored.

“Dick waiving finished. There will be peace.” I said, bringing my spear, still with half a boar skull stuck on the ass end of it, to the attention position, and giving my most martial pose.

My squad dissolved into laughter, but Fuckhead shot me a thumbs up.

See? Fuckhead gets it.

That is some grade A officer rank diplomacy right there.