Dragons. They were always part of legends and stories, from the ancestors of old to the young and their unborn. The oldest stories told, that there was a time when there were plenty. When they fought across an empty world of rubble and earth, and with their flames that were meant for destruction they created life from the ashes. Mountains were moulded into shape by their flames and oceans born from their blood. Where one Dragon spew fire another spew ice, where one could fly across the stars another would dig its home deep beneath the earth.
As the first corpses crashed down into the molten land life was born from it. Life some dragons grew fond of over the ages, while others started to despise it. Wars were fought in their names and life from the corpses of the dragons that came before, was burned to ash just for another dragon to rise more again. The stories could not tell how long the wars went on, or how many different forms of life were created from death. Maybe it was more than any orc could count, but they all, even those that were told in the south, had in common that only one of those ancient beasts survived.
Like all Orcs, Aru’Gal grew up with those stories. He did learn that the elements were only born into the world because of the legendary battles the dragons fought and that in the end only one had proven itself to be the victor. The strongest beast of legend, the father of land and sea, the mother of storm and flame.
The Dragon. They never dared to give it a name and it never gave one they could speak. Now it was resting, hidden in its lair deep beneath Karn’Arak where it made the orcs of the north its most loyal servants, to rule the land in its name. To Conquer like itself once did and to forge life and meaning in battle. Like itself once did.
That he did learn. After he became the Chieftain of Chieftains, the ruler of the northern clans and master of the Riders, it was time to meet it. To see it for himself with his own eyes, but what he saw was not a beast of legend.
It was big, as big as mountains, even its eye alone bigger than even the greatest halls that had ever been carved by orcs, but there was something in that eye that scared him. It was not the might of legends, not the piercing glare of a predator, but pain. A tired eye did greet him and a loud but annoyed growl echoed through its lair as he stood at the platform above its mountain of offerings for the first time, all those years ago. He had seen beasts with that eye before and even if his mind did not allow himself that thought back then, in his heart he knew, every other beast would be taken out of its misery if its gaze was full of such pain.
As one of the few orcs that could read and write the old tongues, he searched for years in the words left behind by those before him. Journals of other Chieftains, scrolls of shamans from ages ago and even books from sorcerers, stolen in the far west. One of them, more than any other, had clouded his mind ever since. Maybe it was because he knew the man and his children, maybe because as a more recent Chieftain, he could see the picture more clearly than others, but it was a letter left by Ara’Gash, from his time as the great Khan.
“I do not count the days of our age, but I know the number is far closer to its end than where it began. It angers me, that it will not be myself but those that I leave behind that will have to deal with the cold that befalls our master and his land. Only a question of time before it befalls its orcs as well. We were always able to fight against the cold, my own clan knows that better than any other, but what when the summer never returns? I dare not to think if we would face such a time unprepared, and I am sure it will come to that. Be it that my children will have to fight through it, or their own when the time has come.
To the Chieftain after me, and the ones after that. You must prepare to guide the North through a time of struggles, more than we who come before, more than me. I will fight, and not just end my legacy as a man lurking in a tower he did not build writing on papers he despises, but you will have to endure and learn what we left behind and I hope whoever will follow in my MASSIVE footsteps will have at least a grain of thought. Too many mistakes have happened to Orcs that became Khans and chieftains by muscle alone, none of them survived for long. Every orc is strong, do not dare to think that will make you a difference. Only your head, and filling the emptiness that lurks inside it, will.
If our Dragon is truly to die in a cold, to leave his land frozen, then we must face the south. Not in raids, not in skirmishes, but in war! Like the ancient times, like the stories have always told us and like the shamans always remind us.
Drums will echo through the valleys until they will be drowned by screams and blood. Their Arch Druid, the horned croak as they call him, has always planted the seed of hatred against us among his clans, so it will be time to finally hand them a reason! We will burn every clan if we have to and rip out the croak's cracked spine!
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So prepare the clans for it, my heir. I do what I can in my time. Weaken the south, strengthen the north. But I’m afraid I am one of the fools who got into this tower because I could fight, not because I could think. So be better than me, and prepare our people.
Let fire guide you through the cold mountains, and the age of ice that is upon us.
Great Khan Ara’Gash, known as the mountain”
Aru’gal had read these words more often than he would ever admit, and they stung out to him more than the prophecies of Shamans or the prediction of Sorcerers. Still the solution he had started to prepare, was more than Khan Ara’Gash the mountain would have ever thought of. Either because Ara’Gash was as simple as his son, or because he was simply too loyal to the Dragon they knew was doomed.
Even once he walked down the platform over the lair the words did not leave his mind, even when he could hear a loud booming breath in the smoke before him.
“A R U’G A L…” the voice boomed through the mountain and made Aru’gal stop his walk, not by fear but its force alone. “Has it not been long enough to wake me again, great Khan?”
He could not simply hear but feel the Dragon move as the mountain shook under its weight. Before he could answer a giant red eye, twice as big as the great desert Beast, opened in the smoke before him. Glaring and burning with fire as it looked down at its visitor.
“It tries to scare me…” Aru’Gal thought, still he could see the pain in that eye. Open only by force alone and still it looked tired. Its lids not completely revealing the great round shape but the painful begging of a beast about to live its last days. Before he could answer his voice was drowned by the loud sound of sniffing.
“Not even fear…great Khan…I am almost impressed…”. Words that pierced Aru’Gal’s thought because it was wrong. Of course he was afraid, of course every hair on his neck stood up and of course he had the great black sword on his back ready, yet still it was fooled. “Do you know why I’m here?”
It attempted a roar that sounded more like coughing and moved again to look with both eyes at Aru’Gal. With a deep breath from its nostrils it dispersed the smoke to reveal its full head. Red as the beasts around the Ashenplains and with Horns great enough to build towers out of it. It tried to look angry yet still, the look of pain never left its eyes.
“Not even a bow?! Great Khan?!” Aru’Gal thought long about what to do, how to answer. If he was going to set his plans into motion, he had to be sure if it was truly to die. Without a bow or a fall to his knees, but standing tall and firm he answered “I know you are ill”. For but a second something similar to panic was seen in the big glowing eyes before him, it was about to speak but this time Aru’Gal went ahead to drown its words first “I may have a Solution…”.
Its nostrils flared with anger and heat, still an answer instead of flame boomed back “Speak…”. That demand was all the confirmation Aru’Gal needed.
“There is a scroll, hidden in the Arch Druids tower..” he said firmly, loud and without motion “A ritual that can give you back some of your strength, even if it might go at a great cost…”
The Dragon breathed a few times, its eyes glaring away in thought for but a moment before they pierced back. “The druid..why would I believe you, oh great Khan?! Plenty before you have tried to lure me into wars they were too weak to fight…”
At least some thought still resided in it’s brain, Aru’Gal thought before he answered the same way he would answered an Orc “I am not the one that has to prove he can fight wars.”
Pure anger followed those words of disrespect and a glow was seen at the Dragon's endless throat.
Yet unflinching the Khan continued “Your people, my clans. Start to doubt. Even if you would seek to die here in a century or two, to rot away in your own lair, I cannot promise you, it would come to this.”
“YOUR KIND MAY TRY!!” it roared and breathed Fire at the roof of the volcano. Heat and light ignited the lair and revealed its full form while its fire burned. A long tail, spiked by scales and a body grand enough to house an entire clan on its back. Its wings were wide grey fields, the part were the Khans cloak was made of. Spikes and claws adorned all of its back and unlike the wyverns it had four legs, not two. After the fire left its throat and coiled up to the entrance far up the big Volcano beneath Karn’Arak, it pierced back at Aru’gal. Yet he still remained a firm charade. If the dragon was about to see through his schemes and if he was to burn here, then it proved him wrong and the clans would continue as they did. If not, then times were about to change. “I am just telling what you cannot see, master.”
The Dragon breathed from his nostrils a few times before its booming voice echoed its order through the mountain “Gather an Army, Khan of my name and prepare them for my Orders.” Aru’Gal could not help himself but form a bitter smile for only a second.
“As you command.” He then turned without a bow and started to leave its lair. He could still feel the Dragon's gaze and breath behind him but soon the mountain shaked again as it layed down once more like the dying beast Aru’Gal thought it to be. He moved back the spirals of Karn’Arak to take his own beast and follow his riders to the valley in the east. He had set things in motion before that day but now he truly knew that times were about to change and war was ahead.