“What are you doing here, humans?” The orc shouted at the top of his lungs, and the humans on the other side were wondering the exact same thing.

“None of your business, but what are you doing here?”

The orc did not respond to that final question and instead rushed forward with his axe high, cutting through different goblins like hay. The humans were more tactical about their approach, and spread out like a wave through the camp.

The goblins didn't stand a goddamn chance. The smell wafted towards the orcs, and they froze, sniffing once and twice and thrice before freezing. They realized the source of the smell, and a red colour invaded their faces. Bloody veins showed on their eyes, and they seemed to lose all sense of rythm as they went wild, attacking everything not orc, for they had smelled the burnt orc.

They struck the humans too.

The clever goblins ran away, and the scarecrow wanted to follow suit but sadly the sun was out in the sky, making it quite impossible for it to do that. It was in quite a troublesome position here.

There was a fire mage standing at the very back for the human casters. He was throwing different fire oriented spells all over the camp, burning up the few tents there was and setting flame onto the floor in some areas. The smoke rose, and the scene looked quite barbaric.

The flames also almost spread onto the scarecrow which made them quite problematic as the scarecrow's body was highly flammable. It directed the gas it controlled towards the fire mage, but an unexpected event turned out.

There was no coughing, instead, the mage’s eyes shone slightly blue, and he began casting spells at a much higher rate, setting the whole field ablaze. It was more than enough to turn the fight in the humans favour, which had so far gotten crushed by the orcs.

The orcs were brutal, and much bigger, and also ruthlessly beat the guards, which were mainly sons of farmers, and not at all trained for combat with these orcs.

The scarecrow did not enjoy the rise in flames and quickly changed the cloud to aim towards another spot. The mist went towards a human soldier, making him cough, and also get sliced through.

It realized that in this moments, the orcs were its allies, and that if they won, it would have the highest chance of surviving. It systematically shifted the mist to make whatever human in front of the orc cough, and make them lose their guard, which always led to their demise.

The orcs wwere pissed, really fucking pissed.

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It was quite ridiculous how pissed off the orc was, unless you knew that the very orc that had been captured and burned was this orc’s son. It was also the fact that this particular orc got mad over quite literally the smallest things, so when something devastating happened, he went berserk for at least a week.

This was merely the start of that, or it would have been, but a dagger found itself wedged into the throat's jaw, by none other than a goblin, the very same goblin that had carried the scarecrow.

After killing the orc, the goblin ran over to its trusty scarecrow, grabbed it, and ran towards the forest. This was quite beneficial, the scarecrow thought. The further away from the flames I get, the better.

The orc was not done however, as even a dagger shoved straight into its jaw, and into its brain, was not enough to stop the fury that it had become. It sprinted towards the little goblin, fully ready to crush him, and the gas from the scarecrow did absolutely nothing.

It was then that a fireball hit the orc right in the head, making it disappear into a ball of fire. And then, it came out of the other end, its skin burned charcoal black and crispy, and falling off as it ran. It seemed that nothing would stop this particular orc.

But somehow, at that particular moment, when the scarecrow’s brain stressed itself to find some sort of way to deal with this problem, he was pushed away. Some sort of magic created a very powerful gust of wind that pushed the orc back.

The act of pushing mana through the throat was very, extremely, similar to a spell which involved blowing a powerful gust of wind. At that particular moment, in its stress, the concentration on the mist of mana had lessened for a brief moment, and that led to it blowing very powerfully at the orc.

This did not stop the orc however. After the brief gust of wind, it continued running forward, but it was suddenly tackled by an orc from its own tribe. She was the burned orc’s wife, and she had also gone berserk, and after killing everything within sight, including the fire mage, which had sadly missed his fireball on her, she targeted the orc chief.

The goblin safely got away, and ran through the forest. He climbed up into a tall tree, with the scarecrow in one hand, accidentally twisting one of the scarecrow’s arms, and making the scarecrow vow to kill it in its sleep.

Up in the tree, the scarecrow was put leaning flat on a branch. The goblin quickly fell asleep and snored. Goblins were nocturnal creatures, and currently it was day, and the poor fellow had gone through quite a traumatic experience of its parents and friends and siblings dying tragically, hich would be forgotten over the course of sleep.

The scarecrow was finally safe, it was satisfied for the briefest of moments before continuing the math in its head. It didn’t particularly require to make any goblin cough at the moment, and the mana cloud seemed quite useless for anything else.

1+1, 2+2, 4+4, it began until it passed out, and then it did it again, and again, and again, until night came and it could finally twitch its limbs trying to finally move, but finding itself way too weak for that to happen.

The chest mouth, which lacked any way of seeing, relied solely on its auditory cues, and began humming once again, and now, the goblin that had wondered where all the humming was coming from all this time, finally figured it out.

“Scarecrow? You can talk?”

“Oh shit,” the chest mouth said.