Once morning arrived the shaman and the druid were up before their Warrior. They had not spoken about the strange shift in the wind, yet when they woke up tired they shared a simple glance, and knew.
Being up that early for once was no reason for doom but of aid, as like the day when they arrived in the Mesa, they all prepared to look the grandest they could.
Once more Kazzok refreshed the paint on his skin, its scent sweet and iron while it mixed with his own. He offered Mara some of it without a word and so the shaman and the druid painted their skins. She, the shaman, to feel the land and the wind, to take the ancestor’s gaze on her and to speak in their name. He, the druid, to answer the blood of the earth, and to show that the old pacts were no more. Defiance was on both of their eyes, hers burning with the Dragons distant fire, his reflecting the morning dew inside the amber of his eyes.
Once Rika woke up she rolled her shoulder and grinned as the two looked at her with concern. “Far too long since I felt my muscles burn like this.” She grinned with pride. Her smile was echoed by both.
Kazzok even laughed but before she could say more he threw her the wolfcowl.
She ruffled its fur, which made Branak come to her for the same attention. She gave him some ruffles as well, once again getting the Savannah sand of his fur. After she was done cleaning the furs she took one of the spears from the days prior and adorned it with a small tuft of fur she had carried on her belt. Her hands and feet were adorned by wolfpaws once more and even Kazzok for once took on a cloak made from the bristles of boar and pines.
Once they left the tent, other warriors of the Bristle-Pine tribe were gathered and ready. Their eyes met them and Mara. All were adorned in paint and parts of their totem beasts. Scale-Eye wore his Wyvern cowl again and had his face painted in red. As if the maw of the beast he had slain was glaring from below.
Slowly they parted to give their Druid and the darkling shaman room to move up to Scale-Eye.
“I trust your words ring true, darkling.” He said once they stood next to him.
“So the ancestors will.” She answered. Her voice of the shaman, not the woman.
They started to walk through the Mesa and to its very centre between all the cliffs. A gigantic tent was built there. Leather and bones from a beast big enough that it could have rivaled the Dragon were used for it. Yet no scales were seen on that leather and no heat was radiating from the gigantic bones that were planted deep into the earth. The most outer parts of the tent were held with wood as well, though it made clear that bones were far easier to come by in the Savannah then wood.
All though it was like the rest of the Mesa adorned with colours and trophies, here they seemed to carry more purpose. Runes, that Mara recognised were the same the shamans used, were carved into the bones. And the trophies were not merely of the hunt but of war. She recognized obsidian armour and weapons, taken off Karn’Arak’s riders long ago, dangling in a rope net around the tent. Skulls and bones of orcs, horns and leathers of wyvern, remains of her own people.
They entered through a big open space of hanging bones. Inside it was round and open like an arena. Hundreds of greenskins watched them enter from the outer parts. Some standing on the wooden outskirts, others in caves that were dug into the very mesas around.
In its centre stood a gigantic old stone. A menhir high enough to hold the leather atop. It stood on a platform that was carved into the very earth and seemed unusually clean. If she hadn’t known better she would have thought it to be obsidian. On it more runes were seen, all of them adorned with a hand that was not just painted but carved into the stone. Meanwhile the Menhir carried five gigantic runes. They were easy to recognise because they were the first every shaman apprentice would learn. One for each element, and the one for blood in their centre.
On the platform Thickskin and other highly decorated figures waited, while around it their warriors watched. Some of them rode a beast like Rika was riding Branak. Though more than wolves. Some rode Rhinos, others a big Waran, and even a spider as big as a boar was there. Most of them were held close by their riders, for the different beasts made them all uneasy. That and something else.
It was hard to tell the tribes apart, at least for Mara. While the northern clans all had such big differences in their traditions that it was easy to spot one from the other, here they all wore paint and parts of their totem animals. The best she could guess was the difference between the beasts they wore. Many came from the savannah and wore beasts she had never seen. Thickskin and his Rhino. Some with lion- or cougar cowls. Others with a zebra’s cloak or a crocodile’s leather.
Those that came with them from the pines wore those beasts she knew. Wolf, bear, and boar cowls. Feathers of eagles and in one case even a bunch of small rabbit pelts, strung together like a chain.
Some tribes, those from the most distant south, even wore remains of what looked like monstrous beatles. Creatures of the harsh lands close to the white wastes where he was said to have this tower.
At last, there were those from the swamps and jungles of the rot-ire in the south west. A land of warm shadows and poisonous smoke. A woman on the plattform wore what must have been a big bat once as her cloak. Her eyes were pale, yet reflected the light. Others from there wore the many hundred teeth of worms or just a cloak of snake leather.
As they came closer some of the different beasts barked and Branak answered with a low growl. Rika couldn’t pet him for reassurance, for she had to hold her spear proudly next to her as she rode him. Only kept in place by her legs alone.
Silence went over the room and the warriors from their tribe stopped outside of the plattform. Kazzok held a hand before Mara, urging her to do the same, before he and Scale-Eye took steps up.
Nothing but the distant breeze brushed through the cliffs as the tribes waited for their words.
Kazzok and Scale-Eye greeted the other druids and Chieftains on the platform with a fist to their bare chests before Scale-Eye took word. “Shak’Aruk, fellow hunters! It was us who sought word and now we are here to share it!” His voice echoed through the cliffs unnaturally loud, and Mara wondered if the runes did their part in that.
Thick-Skin answered with the same loud booming voice. “I hope you will, fellow hunters! For you bring more than words to this place!” He glared down at Mara, who still waited before the plattform.
Scale-Eye raised his brow and looked over to Kazzok who now started to speak, loud and echoing. “The signs have been grim for long my friends! Everyone here knows that…” some of the distant watchers nodded and whispered while everyone standing in and around the centre kept silent. “No matter where you hail from, no matter how much blood you have paid in recent years, you know that he has left us. That we made him do so!”
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Some agreed with roars, others nodded and grunted at his words, yet again he once more continued. “But is it not strange? Why would he change his thirst this much?” He let his words linger for a moment before he answered. “Because he knows that time is at hand.” And one more time he did let his words reach the furthest places before he looked over to Thik-Skin. “We do not bring dark omen, we bring a truth from the north. And I dare you to let her speak for herself.”
Gasps and roars answered him now, some distant voices threw curses in his direction. Rika grunted at the words yet remained silent below her wolfcowl.
Thick-Skin huffed and raised a hand to at least silence the voices around the menhir before he took word himself. “You DARE to ask a darkling to give word in this of all places?!”
“I do.” he answered plain and loud. “And I DARE you to listen.”
Silence answered him. The western wind had grown a lot over night and howled more and more, only broken whenever words were taken again.
After he took a long deep breath, Thick-Skin did. “Let her come then.”
Mumours roused in the crowd, and once again curses were thrown towards the centre. Before Mara could even react Thick-Skin turned to their audience and roared “Be quiet! Let her speak then we shall see if her life is worth as much as the rest of her kind!”
Mara could hear both Rika and Branak growl at those words, then Kazzok reached down to take her hand and aid her up the plattform. Slowly she took those steps and felt the cold clean stone beneath her feet. It was so clean it reflected the distant dawn through the tent.
She nodded at Thick-Skin as proud as a Shaman could to his words before she was taking one last breath, and finally took word of her own.
“I am Mara’Gash daughter of the mountain and shaman of the Frostsong.” Her own voice echoed through the cliffs now and drowned those that were still cursing her very existence. “I am an exile of my clan, and protector of a niece fallen to fault.” Some laughed at her and she felt anger burning inside her, yet the shaman remained control. “I did not leave my home by any wrongdoing, not by any a fault of tradition or disbelief in our ways.”
None of her words were doing her favour and she knew that well.
“I left my home, because of one man and his fowl attempts for godhood.”
Finally some of the voices were silenced. “I left because of the man who leads the north, the man who commands the riders of Karn’Arak, the Chieftain of Chieftains, the all so mighty Khan.” She could not hide the distaste in her voice, but it seemed it finally brought her some agreement. “A man who seeks more than war with you, a man who will do more than raid and fight you, but who will doom us all!” Her words became louder as she spoke. “I left because even his own father feared the power that man is seeking and I pray to the very ancestors that he might reach his son and my words remain no more than dark omen.” She glared at Thick-Skin with her last words.
“Then what omen do you even speak of, girl?!” The woman and chieftain in bat leathers asked. Her rasping voice echoed yet mingled with the winds.
Mara looked at her and gathered her words. Long had she taken the truth by herself, but the winds would aid her spreading them now. They rose from two sides into the mesa now, circling around them as she spoke. A breeze from the east, and a growing wind from the west.
"Ascension. He seeks Ascension.” She wanted to continue but had to gather her words once more and the breeze from the east grew with her determined heartbeat. “My master and teacher, our Khan’s very father, told me the story. An ancient tale the shamans do not like to tell.” She could feel the eyes of both the tribes and her very own ancestors on her now. Kara among them. “It is a tale of two beings from the far west. Ugly beings with pink pig like skin and no tusk. Beings that thought to rule us and for that sought the power of our very Dragon.” She looked over to Kazzok and then to Rika, a hint of shame in her eyes for she never told them before. Yet both nodded at her reassuring. Even Branak seemed to do the same. “Yet they only hurted the beast that rests below Karn’Arak now, cursed his very flesh in hopes he would weaken and die over the ages to come. And our very Khan believes he did.” Some eyebrows on the platform were raised yet Mara continued without hesitation, too long had the words lingered inside her. “There is a scroll those pigskin sorcerers had left. Something only they know to use, yet our Khan seeks its power and should he get it, our Dragon will fall.” Some laughed at that, as if it was a good thing, yet stopped as the shaman continued. “And when it does, Aru’Gal, the small man that calls himself the great Khan, will take its place. He will attempt what the sorcerers did generations ago and take the dragon's power for himself, and once he does, no Orc will be able to harm him.”
Silence and wind were the first to answer before Thick-Skin took word again. Yet it seemed far less booming than before. “A problem of the north I say.”
“Don’t be daft!” Kazzok roared at him. “Do you truly think a man that cannot be harmed by any orc will keep himself happy with nothing but the northern cold?!” He grinned. “Our places are warm and pretty, of course he would want them!” he was close to laughing yet the meaning in his own words stopped that. He turned back to Mara. “Do you know how to stop him, Shaman?”
She shook her head and for once the eastern breeze grew to a storm before she spoke. “Find the scroll before he does, and burn it.”
Suddenly every beast around the Menhir started to bark and scream, pain coursing through their very skin and bones.
“You. Will. Not.” A different voice echoed from the shadows of every cliff nearby. Orcs drew their weapons and finally Rika jumped down from Branak and lost the spear to try and calm him. Yet the wolf like so many other mounts howled at the strange presence. They glanced around and some Druids spoke what they all knew. “He is here!”
Mara looked into the shadows of one of the nearby cliffs. The longer she starred the more she could see the giant silhouette. A dark figure high as the trees and using one as its walking stick. From it, the corpses of many orcs and beasts dangled down. Once it spoke again the beast's howls of pain became louder. “You. Need. Me.”
“We don’t! Begone pest!” Kazzok roared at it and suddenly the winds stopped.
His last words grew more silent with every word and once Mara could look down the cliff again the silhouette was gone once more. “You. Will. See…”
After that it was suddenly gone. Utter silence filled the mesa, only broken by hunters calming their pets. Branak regained himself quite fast, yet pressed him against Rika for support, seeking her protection. Mara looked around with a question on her face. “Why does h~” Suddenly the western wind returned and now as a storm. It was filled with pain and made her scream in such. She fell to her knees, gasping for air because her body did not dare to drink on the wrong winds around her. She felt more go to their knees around her and saw Kazzok being one of them. Rika stood, so did Thick-Skin and slowly she realised it was only herself and the Druids that felt the utter pain in the winds. She crept closer to Kazzok and held a hand on his arm while the pain slowly subsided again. He looked over to her and then the other druids around. “Was that him?..” she asked, gasping for air. He shook his head and looked up to Scale-Eye and Thick-Skin. “No..something else is close..”
The sound of thunder echoed in the very far distant, yet even that seemed wrong. A song sung in the wrong tone. A strange echo of what it was meant to be.
“Chieftain! You need to see this!” A warrior yelled up at Thick-Skin, yet everyone and Mara started to follow him. They had to run for a while, through the cliffs and up a way onto the most western Mesa. Once they arrived at its edge and watched the eastern Savannah their eyes widened.
Nobody dared a word now, as they stood in disbelief.
Before them the Horizon showed not the Savannah, but a tide of nothing but flesh and armour. Ogres, adorned for war. Far back behind them a storm was cast into the sky and a dark figure was surrounded by even darker clouds as it hovered between sky and earth.
“What do they even want?” a distant voice asked in the crowd. Mara knew the answer yet almost did not dare to speak it allowed.
“The same…” Kazzok slowly said it instead and locked his eyes with Mara’s.
She nodded slowly and in terror before her eyes returned to the ancient sorcery at the horizon. “Ascension…”