The darkling without a name took time with his journey through the lands of ash and fire. He was already weakened from the chase and the fight and it would have been unwise to lose all the strength of your legs so close to the burning mountains.
Now that the battle was over his body allowed him to feel more of the harsh land once more. The burning heat that came with every ashen breeze to his darkened face, the scent of sulphur hidden in the thick smoke and the cutting of tiny corns of obsidian that came with the rising hot wind torching his skin.
It was done. The scroll was his and soon would be his name. He dared to smile and grunted at the thought for his name was more than but his own legacy. It was a weight on his shoulders that he had to earn again, that he had to prove and carry until those after him would do the same. If she would ever take his name.
His father was once a man proud of his conquests, a rider of the sky to battles in the south. A proud defender against the Arch Druid and his minions. Some warriors in his clan still whispered his name and told the grand stories. Ara'gash, the mountain on wings. It was said the clans of the south told their children of the evil mountainous shadow from the sky that carried the name Ara'gash. Tales to make sure the children would not leave the tents at night. To fill them with fear for the shadows from the sky, fear for fire that would rain down if they wouldn’t listen and axes that would break their own if they wouldn’t do their chores.
The darkling without a name, was always proud that the weight of his fathers name now was resting on him. But even greater was the pain when he lost his own. Even more reason why he would not be beaten by the land now that the battles were behind him. If anything his long walk through the ashen plains was his last test to regain his pride. No matter the burning pain of overused muscles or the lack of sleep the last days carried. Because to sleep in these lands was deadly. The lungs would fill with smoke and ash, so most orcs who had closed their eyes here, never woke up again. Sleep going into death, a peaceful end in a burning land. An end he was not allowed to have.
He looked up as a ball of molten earth crossed the sky. His burning eyes were sharp to pierce through the smoke and make sure no drop would fall in his direction. “The dragon must feel his victory is close” he thought as the fire trailed through the black sky. Once it had passed he continued with a more fierce and faster step, knowing that soon he would reach the upward path. It was as treacherous as the rest of their lands, for in the ever growing darkness of the smoke most did not realise that they were walking uphill until the mountain would suddenly become steeper and the obsidian of it sharper.
Each of his steps was filled with pain, but followed with a grin just as he was taught. “It will betray your senses.” He remembered “When your muscles burn, your grin will be the snow.” his father had taught him “In time your day will feel wrong without it. Now take my axe and try to swing again”.
If his father had known what kind of pain his son would endure in the weeks to come, he would have chosen his words differently. But only fools and children lived without mistakes and even if the darkling would never allow that thought to fully happen, his fathers mistakes would cast a grand shadow over the clans. Even more so in the weeks to come.
As much as Great Khan Ara’Gash’s life was a tale of grandior and legend, his end was not. He lost his beast in a great attack against the Arch Druid's tower deep in the white wastes of the south. His fight was as grand as his life and legend said that he fell an entire clan that day, but the hordes of the south were unending and so, he was captured.
A shiver ran down the darkling's spine while he remembered his father’s last return. That legend of their clan was no proud warrior of axe and muscle any longer, but had been turned into a mindless werebeast. The hair on his muscles had grown to fur, his tusk had become even sharper than those of an orc and his axe was now swung wildly in the name of the Arch Druid and not for the dragon any longer. Maybe it was a warning that the Arch Druid had sent this greatest of all warriors back to his own clan to wreak havoc, maybe there was still a slither of his own mind left and he simply wanted to go home, but it did not matter either way. Not for the darkling, so he told himself, and certainly not for the clan. For it was a great battle that day, that had changed the life of many and for some even to the better. But their fate did not change how much he hated his own. How much he hated what his father had turned into. His suffering was ended by him, after both day and night of battle through the snow filled pines of the Frost Song Valley. But many protected their clan that day for his father was not the only beast sent north. The entire valley was filled with fury and bloodshed that day as the ashen orcs of the frostsong fought against the werebeasts sent from the south. And the valley was big, maybe even bigger than the ashen plains.
His father had fallen in spring but what had become of him was slain in the following winter. The only reason the darkling got the final blow was because of an orc he should know very well in the years to come. As his father was stumbling he lost his axe and the orc that he would start to call brother rushed to take it. He remembered the drums of his heart when he saw another instead of himself take his fathers axe, ready to take his twisted head. But instead that warrior threw that axe over to him and left himself open to attack by the beast with nothing but a grin.
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“Should always be the son to best him!” And so it was his honour to take the head of the beast that once taught him to swing that very axe and his duty to save the man he would call brother first and Khan later.
He clenched his fist around his axe tighter as the hike slowly started to go up. So many years had passed since. It was before he and the man that he would call brother even were part of the riders. Before they were chosen to fight for the Dragon like their Fathers did and before the darkling had a child of his own.
The burning mountain rage came closer and the terrible burning heat on his skin greater, but he marched onward. Behind the thick smoke of the mountains ahead he could see the shadow that was the Karn’arak. A structure once made by the dragon generations ago for those that would ride in its name, a towering piece of Obsidian burned right into the mountains. Hundreds of platforms surrounded the impossible structure only to all be towered by the greatest one that made its top. The shamans told the story that Karn’Arak once had been the biggest mountain born by the earth, before the Dragon used it to forge the future of the northern clans.
With weight on both his soul and his heart he started to take the long walk up the black mountain. Rivers of molten earth ran down from its top, leaving burn marks for days to come, even if they were far. Now the hike became even steeper. It would be almost as long as the march through the ashen plains that lay behind him but feel twice as much. Oftentimes some even went too far up, for the entry to Karn’arak was not even at the top of the mountain, but in caves hidden in the smoke. Those who did not know better would often take the wrong one, and die either because of the earth’s fire or because of the dragon's untamed spawns.
As he climbed his mind past generations, from his father down to the treason that had him brought into this moment.
His sister was almost seven years younger than him and born from a different mother. The weight of their fathers name was shared, even if their youth was certainly not. Or so, he would try to tell himself since her betrayal. In truth he remembered how he protected her in the snow when she was but a whelp. He remembered how he aided a mother that was not his own to carry her through the snowed filled valley. Not because either of them meant anything, so he told himself, but because it was a duty laid upon him by his father when he flew away to conquer. Mara’gash was the name given to the small thing that was his sister. A name he swore to never speak again, but a name he knew would always fuel his fury. He remembered how she grew fierce and old with every season. How the girl he once protected became a woman that aided him to hunt. How he found a wife through her aid when she was still very young, and she a man through his when she became a woman. Their bond was strong even for siblings, no matter how often they would fight and scream at each other, they both shared a name that carried so much weight, and even if neither of them would ever say it out loud, they were both grateful that someone shared it with them.
Now however, he was alone. She had betrayed them all and stolen what was most important to him.
The mountain’s steepness grew to a wall and where it was a hike before now he had to climb. He grunted with pain while he burned his hands against the hot obsidian, time and time again. If he was still a rider and not an exile, his hands would have been protected by black obsidian just like his legs. But only at the top he would regain his proper title and armour. For an exile with his honour was only left with the obsidian on his legs. Not as a meaning to protection, even if it served as much, but as a prison until he could regain his name.
Every burnmark left on his hands fueled the fury inside him more and more, for he could not bring his mind to anything else but his sister and what she had stolen.
When he became a rider he wasn’t home at the clan much anymore. Like their father he had tribes to raid and lands to conquer in the dragon's forgotten name. Still he would always return and be aside his sister for many years to come. Despite the hatred that should brew between them, they were a family, both due to the blood in their veins and through the few battles they had to endure together. Despite how all the land would change and all things were shaken by time, she was there when he would make a name of his own, she was there when he made a family of his own. When he got a child of his own, she aided him and his wife as much as he had aided her mother years before. And when he and his daughter mourned his wife's death she was there to aid them through the coldest of all winters. Even though she wasn’t a fully adult member of the clan yet, she would carry the axes meant to protect her and became the mother his daughter needed in the years to come.
As the years went by, he was fighting in the south, while his sister was caring for his daughter like he once cared for her. If he had known what was to come, if he had known the anger that had been brewing in not only his sister but so many of their clan, he could have been there. He could have avoided the split and the loss of their name and maybe even brought his daughter to her senses to not follow his sister to the south.
It would be time for her Daal’gavek soon to become an adult. He grunted at the thought of her doing it in another clan, but there was no sense in mourning a past that had to be, only in concentrating on the climb ahead. There was still time to bring her back into the dragon's embrace and away from the Arch Druid's spawns. Even if his sister was lost, so he had to tell himself, his daughter was yet to be saved. She would grow strong and old, taught by the valley and himself, and one day she would swing his axe and carry the name of the mountain onwards. That was all the hope he allowed himself to have and all that truly mattered.