Third-Fist stared ahead and right into First-Casts melting eyes. They had looked twisted from the day they agreed to the pact all those many hundreds of years ago. Yet today was one of the few times he actually had to look into the once shaman’s eyes for so long and this deeply. It was a grim sight. He once had been a man of honour, a man who carried the ancestors wisdom, but now all that was left was the rotting flesh he called his body, and the eternal duty to their mother.

They stood on two different sides of a black corridor. Next to them was an opening to the grand balcony and around them the dark obsidian of their mothers tower. A few torches flickered around them in a dark twisting light. The only kind of light their home knew these days.

Sometimes the warlord was jealous of his warriors. At least they saw the sun before their end. A real light, real fires. They could feel the real wind and untouched earth. At least they could die with honour. He quickly casted away that thought. No one would ever die in honour if it was in their mothers name.

First-Cast licked the molded flesh of his lips before he spoke. Deep, raspy and wrong. “You should show more gratitude, Warlord.” He grinned and showed the obsidian chains that went from his almost green tusks to his grey teeth. “The end is nigh.”

Third-Fist formed a formal smile. From all the things their mother had taught them, courtesy of all things was the one most useful. “My mind merely goes ahead of itself, high caller.” He answered with quite neutral friendliness. “Plans for the war. Organisation of the boats.” He played off a chuckle to show his own big tusk and teeth. His were far more intact than First-Casts. “It truly is a curse.” The warlord finally added.

First cast's smile slowly vanished. “You should allow yourself to enjoy the moment. It will never come back.”

“I will be able to enjoy it when it is all over.” It took strength to keep up the face.

“You could be dead by then.” First-Cast’s words sounded like a mixture of a jest and a threat.

Third-Fist nodded. “I count on it.” Only the cold remained on his face now and the two favourite sons, once leaders and brothers of a mighty clan, stared at each other once more.

After a while the battle of their glares was ended when the sound of boots echoed through the corridor and their mother arrived, followed by a group of royal guards. Ogres in the most decorated of armours, yet even that was rusting away like everything else.

She stopped right before the two favoured sons and smiled all so darkly and brightly with a face that was not her own but stolen from that poor pig skin girl. Like always when she had fueled her age again, when she had stolen a young body once more, she started to reveal more and more of her body. She was only wearing the slightest hint of cloth and the only parts of her body that were protected were those that would look grander in mind than in flesh. Her golden locks waited to be aided by the wind, yet in here they reflected the brightening torches.

The warlord and the high-caller bowed when she arrived.

Third-Fist spoke first, granting him an angry look from First-Cast “They are gathered Mother.” He stopped his bow and looked back up. She was really tiny in her new form, even more next to all the ogres.

First-Cast added. “They are desperately awaiting your words, mother.” His smile was grand and honest and still somehow managed to look like bootlicking.

She smiled and licked her lips as she walked past them onto the balcony. “Of course they do.”

First-Cast nodded in agreement as he always did, while Third-Fist remained silent. Yet both of them followed her onto the balcony to be met with a cold twisted wind on their decaying faces. Dark clouds loomed above the black tower and their rotten land, while below a tide of Ogres, all that was left of their clan roared and shouted at the balcony. They raised their weapons, ready for what and wherever they would be sent.

As she stood in front of them the wind started to blow right up to them. It sprawled her locks and made the few bits of black cloth she wore even more revealing. Surely she would have counted as pretty among her own kind. Yet here, she was the only one who revelled in her new found youth.

“How long has it been my boys?!” she asked down to the crowd below. Her arms were wide open, an invitation for most, a mockery for Third-Fist. “Far too long was I forced to dry out in age and to linger in the shadows!” She looked down at the crowd with soft eyes, and Third-Fist knew how her gaze would craft her image into the mind of her sons. “But you were there to protect me, oh my sweetest boys! All of you were there to defend me and fight wars to take what is mine!” A wild flicker was echoed from her words into her eyes and up to the sky where thunder cracked. She always loved the theatrics, and many of her foolish sons did the same.

“Long ago I ascended you to what you are now!” If he weren’t used to her mockery Third-Fist would have grunted at her words but he remained cold. Still he felt First-Cast’s gaze on him for only a moment, before the once shaman returned to cheer at her twisting rotten words. “Now, after I cared for you for so very long my sweetest boys, I ask you to aid me and do the same!” Her voice echoed over the rotten lands of Krognar and far beyond her sons to the agonizing sea. “I ask of you, to follow me through the land of the orcs! Through the land of the druids and right to the Dragon's lair!” Her voice trembled with wicked fury, echoing the hag's decaying mind. And yet when Third-Fist glanced down even his last hopes were destroyed. Cheers. The fools still cheered for her. Maybe it was fear, maybe they had forgotten what was taken from them all those many years ago. But they cheered. She spread her arms with the widest and most wicked smile. Her black attire was so loose that it almost revealed herself fully as she did.

Back in the earliest days when there was still a flicker of resistance he thought she chose such attires to appeal to the clansmen. Back when there were no humans sent to her to feast but when she instead robbed them of their wives and daughters. Sisters and mothers.

“Ohh! I love you too my dears! And my love will only heighten once we kill that beast of a dragon, that fool of a druid and every single orc that stands in our path! Those that will lay down their weapons will be granted the same chance as you, they will know ascension after my own is done!” She said it with the joy of a parent revealing a gift, and once again the fools cheered for her. Loud and wide they cheered. The last warriors of their clan. The last that should remember the days of tusk and axe.

Third-Fists eyes widened at her promise, her threat. Yet he knew better than to speak. He had known better for a long time.

Her wicked smile widened even more and the winds around her black tower rose. The rotten flesh of their land and the stench of their ascended bodies circled all around and made her quiver in joy. Revelling in the response of her creation. “And once we are done my boys! Once the east is ours! I will show you the west! I will give you plenty to take and conquer!” She looked down with a glare in her eye that spoke of both joy and pain while spit was cast from her words like a wild beast barking. “And you will do it for ME! You will take it all, for your joy and MY pleasure! You will aid your mighty mother and you will be the sweetest boys to ever be cast into existence!!” Her words were echoed by drums of lightning above. Yet they all sounded wrong, as wrong as they had ever sounded when they were made by her. And yet once again, the warriors cheered.

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She laughed quietly and more to herself. Yet First-Cast echoed her dark laughter until she spoke again. “How long have we waited for the day, my sons?! How long have we waited for the dragon to rot away enough that we could take it for ourselves?!” Some of the fools fell silent as if they tried to count the years. Even if their minds were kept intact, Third-Fist doubted they could have counted that far. “It does not matter now for the day has come, where ascension is upon us…upon ME!!” She shouted down to the cheering ogres and raised her hands to let lightning crash and turn by her whim. She revelled at the display in the sky and spoke up to it as false rain was falling from the black clouds. “One last war to end them all my sons! One last battle to turn your beauty of a mother to the goddess she was always meant to be!!” She listened as the cheers echoed the lightning above, all of her creation applauding her desire while she licked her newfound lips at the strange taste of the forced rain. After a moment that felt like days she slowly let her arms fall again. She looked down with a wide grin before she turned back to the tower and to Third-Fist. “Bring them to the shore.” She commanded and started to walk by. As she did she let a finger touch his chin while she spoke further. “And make it quick. I will not wait.”

He punched his chest with a fist at her command and went to the balcony himself.

Hatred was burning inside him for his own forming words, yet what was left of him, if not a man of duty. “You heard what mother desires! Now let us grant her that wish!!” He shouted down and felt First-Cast’s wicked smile behind him, before the once shaman started to follow their mother into the tower like the dog he was.

“Prepare the boats! All of them! We shall sail this hour! And we will not return until the moment of Ascension is upon us!!” His dried excuse for eyes almost cried when they cheered at him again and started to rush for the boats at the eastern shore. This was all that was left of his clan. Their land rotten by dark sorcery, their flesh deformed and decaying over the ages, and their honour long lost to a pact with but the most wicked of witches. Even though the rain was a forced display, for once he was glad for it.

During the next hour, the tide of Ogres moved to the shores. The boats were saddled and twisted warchants were sung. Not in the oldest tongue, the tongue of druid and shaman, but in words taught by their mother. Words that forced the winds to their side while they started to sail for the Savannah and its shores. Most boats weren’t even crafted by themselves but put together or fixed by those stolen from the republic, whenever more fuel for their mothers youth was sent. Yet Third-Fist demanded to ride a boat made by their own craft. If he would lead the last of his clan to die, he would do so in their own old forgotten glory at least.

The boat was crudely crafted from wood that was stolen from other ships as well, yet he saw the old forgotten sign of the sun-lion painted at its side. He didn’t know how old the sign was, yet it was a reminder of better days. This was the right ship, for the wrong war.

And soon they sailed, a legion of different ships from different times, yet all of them having their sails ready to be drafted along by their mothers enslaved storms.

The callers were spread among the ships and all of them started to sing the twisted tongue of sorcery as they gathered the dark clouds above Krognar. Soon their mother joined in. Her voice took the awe of many warriors, yet Third-Fist looked past her and the clouds she gathered. Back on their shores, his home, the now rotten lands became smaller. Yet for once, as the clouds were dragged elsewhere, the sun was shining upon its shores once more. For a moment he remembered the days when it wasn’t so much different than the Savannah they were sailing for now. Back when he rode a Tusk-Lion over the hills and around the shores. Back when he was an orc and his flesh and muscle were his own. Back when there was honour. Back when he had a family. Back when there was hope.

His attention was forced back to mother once again, as she started to float with the clouds. The darkness made a gigantic dress that hid her inside like a black promise and soon she was high enough to float between sea and sky. This was the truest her form has ever been, he thought. A monster that darkens the horizon. A mountain of darkness that loomed over the skies. Yet no goddess…yet.

Her words became louder and she pushed the winds forward. They sailed now, and fast.

It had not even taken a day until they arrived at the Savannah shores, and the first clans of the druid had fallen to their blades. To Third-Fists gratitude most of them were wise enough to not lay down their weapons but die in honour.

Once ashore himself he was called to take a look at the prisoners they had made. Old people that could not even lift an arm anymore. Ill that were defeated before they arrived. Children that could be easily held, and becoming mothers that thought they did the best to protect the future inside them.

“Shall we bring them to mother, Warlord?” A high ranking legionnaire asked him. It was a long line of prisoners still, that went on for what seemed all of the continent's shores. At least as long as Third-Fists decaying eyes could see. Behind all of them ogres stood ready to let their axes fall for their necks.

He saw a becoming mother before him. Defiant in her gaze, yet the hint of fear for her unborn was there. He kneeled before her. Still his twisted body towered her and he had to look down. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off as she spatted into his face. He closed his eyes and slowly washed his face to stare back at her again. He looked down at her round belly and sighed. Honour was lost long before, but finally he understood that it would never return and he would never cross blades with the ancestors in the afterlife.

After he stood up again he took a step back and folded his hands behind his back. “We need warriors. Not the ill.” He declared coldly and the legionnaire nodded before he brought his order further. He raised his axe and shouted. “Death!” As his axe was brought down so were the weapons of the ogres standing behind the prisoners. Countless greenskin heads rolled when blood was spilled at the shores and the sea painted in red. Third-Fist gazed into the pregnant woman’s eyes for as long as they were open. Her defiance slowly gave in to the fear of her unborn yet finally they were forced shut, and the future taken.

His mind started to shut after that, and with folded hands behind his back he walked along the shores where more and more of their legions gathered. Mother was still floating and chanting while the tendrils of dark clouds started to take the sky for themselves while the army gathered around the Savannah, only to march at his command. After he had done the long walk to the front and got the reports of their centurions, he commanded them forth.

Even on land they marched fast. Their boots were walking in unison, like it was the human way. They trampled over the savannah and its dry grass, and took every village they could find. Third-Fist stopped to look at their prisoners. He just ordered their death. It was the better fate he decided.

Just before they were to turn north the prisoner’s tongues started to slip. There was a gathering of the clans in the grand mesa ahead. As Third-Fist brought word to their mother he for once didn’t even know how to approach her as she was still floating in trance between black clouds and darkening earth. Instead First-Cast glared at him, just below her. “What is it warlord?!” He spatted.

“We are lucky. It seems the clans are all gathered in the Mesa ahead. If we turn north we can avoid them and reach for the dragon without anymore losses to our legions.” He answered cold but loud.

First-Cast slowly started to smile. “Oh…don’t fear the battle ahead, Warlord. If they are gathered, we shall take them.”

Third-Fist face and voice started to crack “Why?!” he asked. “Our goal is the Dragon, if we attack them now we only risk for him to appear!”

Suddenly their mothers words shouted down. All of her sons ducked down as she did. “Let him!” She said with a big smile. “Hasn’t it been too long since I saw him?!”

“But mother~” Third-Fist started to argue before First-Cast took his shoulder and glared at him. “You heard her!”

Defeated and without another word Third-Fist moved ahead of the legions again. Not even a day later and the Mesa appeared before them and soon they could hear warhorns and drums as figures on the outer edges spotted them. It would take till night until they were close enough for a fight. Yet he knew it would be a bigger one than the villages they had taken before. And somehow even less fought with honour.

For now he started to understand. He was not only guiding his army to end their own clan, but all of them.