All orcs knew that the end of their lives was only another part in the grand battle of their kind. The south knew that their death would feed nature, have trees grow from their lifeless bodies until it's leafs would spawn more again. An endless cycle that started with the dragons of yore and would go on until the entire world was full of trees and life.

The North however, believed that even a dead orc was still a conqueror. Their ashes would be carried with the wind and sooner or later all would find their way to the last of all battles. The grand grey ash of the Bladespire wastes. The place where all would one day end, as after generations of war and death it would engulf all the land, drown the seas and maybe even, one far day if their kind lived long enough, mount to the stars, until the orcs conquered all there was, and nothing but ash would remain.

Those clans that travelled the wastes, nomads aligned to the dragon and his riders, saw themselves as protectors of the dead. As those who remembered all their stories and their suffering. Inscribed on the great obsidian spires that had always been risen from the grey wastes, the stories were told. Some in runes of ancient times that reflected the fires they served, others in pictures painted from blood and fruit to colour the spires with the lives that once had lingered. Too many of those stories had been forgotten and even more would be lost to time, but they all painted the black spires in the grey dunes and shared the colours of life in the land of the dead.

An old man climbed one of the spires. His dark cloth protected him from the strong ashen wind. A wind that even darkened the sun that day. There was a rope around the spire and around his back protecting him from falling. It was the strength of his old legs that held him up there, pressed against the spire. Still he seemed relaxed as he painted it with his hands. It was not pictures he painted but simply forms that felt right to him, for his eyes were hidden beneath a blindfold and his hood. On both were chains and trinkets. Melted and flattened rocks of different minerals that loosely hang from both and made their clinking sound in the winds. The chains of a shaman, and the eyes of a seer.

He sang as he painted, an old song that would be carried with the desert wind while he continued to paint different shapes and colours onto the spire. Some red, some blue, some yellow and often enough a mixture of plenty. Most of the shapes he drew were but simple circles. Yet he knew they painted the story of the life that had been. The paints were from bags on his belt and whenever he took a new one, he saw to remove every remains of the last from his hand with the other with wide motions, almost like a dance. It made one of his hands as colourful as the spire he painted, while the other always carried out the task.

He stopped his song and work as he felt a shift beneath the ashen dunes. Holding both his hands at the spire he felt, listened and then nodded as his blind gaze went over the distant grey dunes. He knew the tremor was from a sandwyvern but it took his blinded hidden sight a moment longer to know it had a rider.

He smiled and removed the remaining paint from his right hand to then make a print of his coloured left on the spire. With a wide grin he used his arms to hold the rope even tighter to slowly let it glide lower while he took careful steps with its height until he had climbed down again.

Down at the grey dunes he took his staff that was still leaning against the big black spire. Now with his bare feet on the ashen desert ground he felt the tremor even clearer until the big sand wyvern sprang out from the ground and landed quite close to him. Even without eyes, he knew how big the beast was, from both the big vibrations it made in the wastes and simple old memories.

It sniffed the old man who simply smiled and layed the coloured hand on its horn. “It has been long, old friend…” he said to the beast before its rider jumped down from a saddle that was carved inside its giant grey scales. The beast remembered the old man's scent and made a small but loud movement with its twin tongue.

“Ahhh…Sha’Raph..” he said as the rider came closer “Too long that you brought my friend to see me again!” he continued to pet the big wyverns snout with a wide grin that showed his broken and missing teeth. Even one of his tusks was broken, hidden under his decorated hood.

Sha’raph however was completely covered in black Obsidian, even her hood and mantle were black. Only the silver and golden coins on her mask shared a different colour. As she spoke her voice was muffled from the mask “Master Kru’Gan.” “Watcher of my desert..” the shaman answered in response. Both made a little bow to the other. As much as Sha’Raph tried her usual cold demeanour she knew his blind gaze could always see through her mask. She suddenly stood more relaxed and sighed before she spoke “He found it…” The old man's smile vanished and his voice turned darker. “Are you certain of it?” She nodded as if he could see “I doubt he thought any rider would recognise it…but he walked it proudly around Karn’Arak..and I could hear him say he wanted a word with the dragon.”

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“Then the snake is about to unleash its poison…” he said as the ashen winds grew stronger.

She shook her head “After all I hear from the valley his poison is already in play..” fear was in her voice, the old man knew that well. The young girl he trained in these very dunes still lingered beneath the mask and she knew very well, she was their own poison.

He made a bitter smile at her fear before he forced himself to a brighter one again “Let us ride, Sha’Raph.” He laid a hand on her shoulder while his blind gaze went into the distant ashen dunes “Let us return to the clan…and you tell me about the snake..”

She sighed but smiled. “Do you want to ride him again, master?” “Oh no…” he said while his face spoke of melancholy as he laid a hand on the great beast “I am but a humble guest now..”.

They then climbed the big grey desert beast and hid inside the great hollowed scale. Once they started to fly Sha’Raph closed it with the thick remains of the same scale that hung above. It was Almost like a tent. Only tiny holes remained that were meant for the spiked chain that was going through it.

She swung the chains that lashed into the thick scales of the beast. It roared and started to move. First it jumped underground. Even if its two riders were protected by the grand scale they hid inside, some dust always came in. She whispered something in the ancient tongue. It should have been too low for the beast to hear yet still it did rise from the ash and to the grey sky again. It crossed one of the painted spires only barely before Sha’Raph opened the scale again.

Old man Kru’Gan made a wide almost toothless grin at the wind in his face “Oh I missed you my friends..” His smile carried over to Sha’Raph under her mask. “It is good to be back, master..” “You shouldn’t always call me that, Sha’Raph..” he said as the trinkets on his hood and blindfold clinked together “You are the watcher of the clan, of the living” he laid a hand on her shoulder “I only have to care for the dead.” Her smile vanished. It was already strange to be a rider for Karn’Arak but even stranger since she had become the watcher of her clan.

“Now tell me about the boy that calls himself Khan now…” there was poison in the old man's words but still she trusted him more than any other orc she knew. He raised her, trained her and made her the warrior she was now.

“He is small in body, but big in ambition.” she said and was answered with a deep “dangerous..”.

She nodded as her beast took to the south where behind the dusty storm a hint of the sun was seen. “I think..” she started but stuck on her words for a moment “I think he is a great leader…fair to his riders, and I have no doubt he only wishes the best for the clans…” “You think the scroll is the best?” her master's words pierced back.

“It depends what he will use it for doesn’t it?” she was surprised about her own words yet could feel his smile.

“Is it more than trust, you share with him?” his words became sharper and pierced deeper with each question. She said nothing as her mind went back to times she and Aru’Gal had together. Some in battle, others in drink and joy, yet she remained silent.

“Oh…a Dagger that feels for its prey is just as dangerous as a small orc with great ambition..” there was disappointment in his words that made her sigh under her mask.

“My heart will always be within the wastes..” she answered with determination in her masked eyes.

He smiled as he spoke “Oh I know, Sha’Raph..I know”

They took a few moments of silence as nothing but the ashen wind surrounded them. It was Sha’Raph who spoke again after her mind went to many uncertain futures “The scroll..what will it do?”

Kru’Gan answered with a long disappointed grunt “pain, Sha’Raph..” he said “Nothing but pain…”

Clearly not satisfied with the answer she continued more vehemently, “If your dagger has to strike, it must know all about its prey.”

Taken back by her sudden disobedience he smiled and spilled his poisoned words “Ohhh…you know your prey better than anyone could have ever wished for.”

Losing every bit of courage she had before she stayed silent for a while again until Kru’Gan took yet another word “You will learn all you have to…but know that it is the oldest secrets of the clans that care about magic like this..”

She raised a masked brow “I thought it was stolen from the Ogres in the west…”

His blind gaze pierced the more and more visible sun “History is a circle…” he nodded “Legends are path..”