With a raptor's point of view, finding the orc village was a piece of cake. Orcs could evolve and they had cores, putting them square in the monster side of the 'it is fine to slaughter' scale of morality in this world. Their mindset also disallowed interspecies interactions that didn't involve bloodshed with one notable exception. Orcs could interact with goblin tribes without bloodshed, but it meant making the goblins their servants, footstools, and occasional sports accessory.

Just like they were doing to cross Aidan's Circle of Spikes barriers.

"I can't believe they would throw goblins at the spikes to make it safe to cross over," Sora complained.

"Me too but they just did. Point proven, now run." Answered Dawn.

"Roar!" Perched on Aidan's shoulder, Skippy was gathering Dragonfire.

Sensing the heat building up next to his face he calmed his friend.  "Not yet. Keep watch for ambushes." He held his spellbook on his left hand and kept casting and retreating. He was using Soul Sight to view a faint outline of the embodied and disembodied souls around him.

He glanced at the spells written in his book. The diagrams were compressed, using shorthands only he would understand. Mages usually did that to save space, but it took a bit of work to undo those shorthands. However, for all the spells the cipher was the same as they were only variations. Methodically he would cast one of them and note the results mentally.

"Soul Sever." - The orc's soul just separated from the body, leaving a small portion behind. Dead.

"Soul Rend." - The orc's soul was cut into ribbons. Dead.

"Soul Tear." - Toe orc's soul was split and tore like a sheet of paper. Dead.

"Soul Rive." - A triangular gash was opened from the top down, killing the subject.

"Soul Cleave." - A diagonal gash was opened from the shoulder until the hips. Dead.

"Soul Shear." - Even worse than the Rend version, if soul mincemeat was a dish, this would be your cooking tool.

A good amount of dead orcs from his spells and traps, it was time to slow down the horde. Each spell meant an orc soul getting cut to pieces in different ways for the sake of science. When enough dead bodies gathered, he would animate them with the minimum amount of mana possible and send the undead to hold back the green wave.

"Mass Animate Dead."

"Circle of Spikes."

 With one more stony barrier between them, Aidan would gain more ground. He was keeping his mind away from the death and carnage happening, to keep his sanity. How did it come to this?

Their previous estimate was completely off the mark. The orcs built huts over cave entrances, and there was a throng of goblins and a horde of orcs underground.

The orc zombies could only hold back the living ones for a few minutes. After that more goblins were thrown on the spikes until the bodies couldn't sink anymore and the horde would jump over them.

Dawn and Sora were ahead of Aidan, checking if any fast orcs wouldn't go around and block their path. Navigating inside the forest and around the rocks, valleys, crevices, and other geographical barriers couldn't always be done in a straight line.

"Soul Lacerate." - This one was promising. The orc remained alive with half his soul.

"Soul Slash." - Also promising. It cut the soul part of the legs, making the orc forever paraplegic.

He needed time to make a note.

"Skippy, now."

*FWOOOOSH*

"Stone Wall."

The dragon created a semicircular barrier of Dragonfire and Aidan raised a wall right after it. Dull thuds, screeching and screaming were heard as the thrown goblins hit the wall and fell back into the Dragonfire.

Aidan marked these two spells with a piece of charcoal and flipped several pages on his book. Here.

They ran as some orcs were detouring around the wall. "Cut the flames and save mana, Skippy." They were going around the wall now, it made no sense to keep it.

"Circle of Spikes."

Another barrier. One more opportunity to test his spells.

The orcs stopped and the goblins running around their legs ducked and dashed to avoid getting grabbed and thrown. However, there were enough goblins around. More green skinny monsters were tossed on the spikes. The horde was thinning more from friendly fire than from attrition, but the orcs were enjoying the exercise. Goblins eat too much and don't taste good.

"Soul Hack." - Like a trunk struck lumberjack ax, the orc was broken with concave notches. Dead.

"Soul Carve." - Aidan focused on the limbs and the Orc lost the part of the soul representing these limbs. Alive.

"Soul Incise." - The spell lingered. Aidan drew a star on the orc's chest, and a hole in the desired shape appeared. It died though.

"Great! I think that is the one. Last spell!"

"Soul Chisel." - Again it lingered. Aidan imagined cutting the star again, but the orc just screamed in pain as a strip of its soul was cut in the desired shape. The monster fell down rolling in pain and was trampled by the other orcs.

Meanwhile, a few hundred meters ahead.

"I'm getting winded, Sora. Slow down." In these months Dawn's training paid off. She didn't have Lumina's couch potato stamina anymore but was still a league away from the almost tireless Sora. Even without any mana affinity, her Sun element made her very resistant to exhaustion.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"And what is Aidan doing?"

"Dark magic. For real this time, he is done with the experimenting. You better not watch."

Sora looked at Dawn, it was a grim face. She shuddered.

"Well, you are here with me. I think it is better to know and refrain than to just blindly avoid."

"Thanks for trusting me, Sora. I won't lose myself, I promise."

Aidan constructed the diagram for the sixth circle quad-element Death spell. It was one of the two dozen spells Astromelicus allowed him to learn from the restricted section, AKA the forbidden library.

"Deathwave."

Everything living in a 120º wedge in front of him up to a distance of fifty meters suddenly died. The drain to his mana pool was big, almost a quarter, due to his low Water affinity. But was still better than without.

The orcs and goblins running behind the vanguard trudged and trampled over the bodies of their dead comrades, causing an avalanche of green flesh and a pile up as the others behind couldn't stop before the others behind these pushed them further. It stopped after a few moments.

Before the ones that fell on the corpses could move, Aidan was already done with the next spell.

"Mass Animate Dead." - "Kill all orcs and goblins," Was the order he gave his undead minions.

"Death Plague."

An enchant over his fresh orc and goblin zombies, it would give a fast-acting disease killing and converting any target bitten or scratched into even more undead.

The mass of bodies heaved and moved as if it had a consciousness of its own. The wave of dead bodies grabbed and devoured the still living greenskins that fell over them and rose, ravenous dead seeking the flesh of their former brethren.

"Soul Incise." He kept training the spell that had the biggest promise on the unfortunate monsters.

'They are monsters. They are not people. I wouldn't do that if they were people. They killed the knights,' He kept repeating this to justify himself. He felt the tug of darkness. How exhilarating this power would be. But he could control it. Just like he never touched Lumina's body. Or so he thought.

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Aidan stood in the center of the dead leafless forest, only whithered tree limbs around him. Further away from the sound of metal clashing, bone breaking, flesh tearing, grunts, screams. Hundreds of goblin zombies and dozens of shambling orc corpses fighting the terrified tribe. Any that dared step past the mass of undead bodies would either get its soul cut in pieces or receive a bolt of Dragonfire to the face. Each dead body would rise to join the ranks of the fighting dead.

The undead pressed on, caring not for wounds or injury. The living orcs, no matter how ferocious they were, still had emotions. They were capable of feeling fear. The cowardly goblins had fled back to their tunnels right after the undead horde rose.

The horde's morale broke even though they had numeric superiority. They broke to flee, getting bitten and wounded as the undead pursued.

It was one oversight that claimed the lives of several otherworlders. Why couldn't zombies run? Old, rotten ones whose sinews dried and stiffened maybe, but freshly animated corpses? They still had even blood in their veins, they were still warm. The zombies ran after the orcs, and the goblin ones proved faster.

Their backs exposed and the natural talent for ambush and assassination turned those small fiends into vicious killers. Each orc that fell with their backs cut would rise and join the rear ranks of the shambling horde.

In disarray, the horde spread but the path to safety, to their village had pesky barriers of jagged hardened stone covered in goblin bodies. The first orcs jumped over, but the second and third would eventually stumble and lose balance with the barrier. Some would cut themselves on poorly-covered spikes but the overall effect was that each barrier would slow the fleeing orcs. Suddenly trapped in the semicircle it became a killing chamber.

But the undead couldn't jump over. They had no mind. Slowly they climbed over the barrier, many of them losing the lower limbs on the spikes.

Aidan reached his undead horde and used Earth magic to retract the spikes. He lost ground in the pursuit of the horde but gained more goblin zombies. The formerly pierced bodies contracting the plague from being scratched by the clawed feet of those walking over them and rising to join the frenzied bloodlust.

They retraced the path Aidan took fleeing from the village and soon the green horde was reaching the huts. The last orcs were entering the tunnels.

From the edge of the woods, he gave his undead one last command.

"Enter the tunnels and kill only orcs and goblins. Don't attack or fight back against other creatures. Roam and hunt only your targets until you run out of mana."

He stopped and paused to catch his breath.

The adrenaline, the rush of battle passed and the reality of what he did hit Aidan. He retched and lost his lunch.

The same feeling hit Dawn. The girl leaned on a tree and puked. Some fluids spilled on her skirt.

"What is wrong? Dawn, talk to me? Are both of you safe? Should I run to help Aidan? Do you want a potion?" Flustered and panicking, Sora rushed to help her.

Dawn raised her head, wiped her mouth with a handkerchief and looked at her lover. "Sora, I did something terrible!" She grasped the tree bark.

"Is Aidan hurt?"

"His body is fine. Our mind, not so much. We should go there to meet him. I'm sorry, Sora."

They walked and soon the whithered area was visible. "Did you do this?"

"Yes. Poor forest. I didn't think it would affect the vegetation too. I didn't think."

"I can't see any bodies." She could see blood, liters of blood pooling in the ground, making a red-brown mud. Discarded or broken weapons, bits of flesh, bone, a few severed limbs. It was a battlefield without the dead.

"They are a bit ahead. Don't slip on the blood."

They moved ahead and the first bodies appeared. Zombies too damaged to keep working, their mana dissipated. But a few broken and still functional ones were crawling on the bloody mud, trying to fulfill their orders. Moving in the direction of the orc village.

Dawn constructed a spell and marked the crawling zombies.

"Firebolt Volley."

All the damaged zombies were hit by firebolts. It was faster and cheaper than casting individual firebolts. They burned and died.

The two girls kept walking slowly, avoiding the treacherous ground, burning any broken zombie still moving. After half an hour they reached Aidan.

Sora ran to hug him. "You stink."

"I think the whole forest stink. Don't kiss me though."

"Eww." Sora felt Aidan's breath.

"Told you." She let go of him.

"Where is your undead horde?" She asked, half-joking.

"Underground, hunting orcs." He grimaced, serious. Sora was expecting, but it still shocked her. "Come. The village should be safe. Let's find the corpses of the knights."

They descended the hill and reached the village. Aidan and Dawn went hut by hut using Earth magic to close the caves leading underground.

"Hey! Is anyone there?" Their chanting in the otherwise quiet village was not unnoticed. A human voice! Or at least something that could speak like a human.

They went to a hut and found a wooden cage. Inside there were four knights, all of them wounded, two unconscious. Dawn rushed to their aid.

"We are here to rescue you."

She reached inside with an arm and used Healing Light on the four. With Lifesight, she could tell none of them was in mortal danger.

"Pull your companions to a corner, I'm going to open the cage." She told the knights. Aidan needed to rest to recover his mana.

"Ash Compression."

"Incinerate."

Their expertise and affinity allowed them to target only part of an object. In Dawn's case, only the far corner of the cage. The small ball of compressed ash clattered to the ground and the knights came out.

"Thank you. To whom we owe the favor, milady?"

A mage that could waltz into an orc village and wield at least three elements, the length of her hair and her countenance, she had to be a noble.

"It may not be my true name, but you can call me Dawn, an adventurer. I am here on behalf of the Marlimar family. All are safe within the town gates. Of your companions, I only know of Sir Timberlight. He fell defending the Countess."

The knights cheered. A tear ran down Dawn's face. Decent knights for a change.

"We should work on getting you out of here. Your companions, let me heal them and we can escape this place."

The ground shook.

'Some of the undead are coming to the surface. probably chasing orcs. But they are dying fast.' Dawn thought.

"Something huge is coming." She warned everyone.