For the fiftieth time that day, Yargul roared with anger, how dare the enemy general not come out and fight him!? He wanted to beat the absolute living shit out of him but he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t find him, it was just so damn infuriating. Suddenly, a silky voice wafted through the air to Yargul’s ears, making him even angrier.
“Getting angry at the forest isn’t going to do anything.”
Yargul whirled onto the Trident Lord.
“And neither is doing nothing! By Korvus I will find that wretch of an orc and tear apart his limbs one by one!”
He punctuated this last sentence by throwing his axe angrily, cutting down several trees before finally burying itself deep into the ground. Muttering angrily he stomped over and tore the axe from the ground, seething with fury.
“Seeing you so angry is kind of cute.”
Yargul growled, “Don’t give me that bullshit you whore, he was walking away. I’m not in the mood to deal with your teasing.”
He shouldered his axe and headed off deeper into the forest, too angry to be careful.
The Trident Lord watched him go and sighed, “Even if I tell him he’s likely heading into a trap he won’t listen, will he.”
Yargul—oblivious to this fact—stomped through the forest, almost wishing that something would come to fight him. And indeed, his wish was answered when suddenly, two orcs capable of fire magic suddenly ignited themselves and charged at him.
Seeing them, Yargul tossed aside his axe and charged with bare fists, he wanted to enjoy this fight, to fully let out the rage that had built up inside him. The two orcs, seeming to be twins, split up and came at him from separate directions, Yargul chuckling as they did so. He ran head on to meet them, ignoring one completely as he brutally slammed into the other, his shoulder armored with stone. He knocked the unfortunate orc to the ground but before he could finish the job the other orc tackled him, well at least he attempted to.
Yargul was slightly jarred by the tackle and he turned towards the flaming orc bemused, backhanding the orc and knocking him several feet back.
“You will get your turn soon, for now just be a good little orc and sit still.”
Yargul returned his attention to the orc on the ground, grinning when he found that the orc was still stunned and did not have full control over his senses. He waited patiently for the orc to stand, he wanted to enjoy every moment of this fight, not for it to end so quickly with his enemy’s death. The orc stood, glaring at Yargul, his growing anger reflecting on the size of his flames which began to compete with the trees with height.
Yargul grinned, cracking his knuckles as he prepared to brawl.
“Oh, this is going to be fun.”
He armored himself in ice and stone and charged, the flaming orc charging at him as well. The two opposing forces clashed and this time, Yargul was knocked aside, having underestimated the power that the orc now possessed in his enraged state. He grinned and stood up, preparing to use more strength when suddenly he was attacked from behind. He grunted with annoyance, turning towards the other orc.
“I said you will get your turn!”
“Well I want it now.” the orc retorted.
Yargul growled, “Then die!”
But before he could kill the impudent orc, his twin attacked him, forcing Yargul to turn his attention away. But once that happened he was immediatelyattacked from behind and Yargul was increasingly becoming more irritated by the moment, the attacks of these orcs had suddenly grown in strength and if he were to turn his attention away from either of them, it was likely that he would be injured. Luckily he possessed two defensive abilities so he was able to last longer than most orcs although even he would soon fall against their combined attack.
As Yargul thought on how to defeat them, an orc some ways into the forest sighed with disappointment.
“This is Yargul the Invincible? I expected more.”
He stopped watching through the crude telescope and turned away, not wanting to watch the rest of the battle as he assumed the two fire twins would be able to finish Yargul off. Suddenly, the earth trembled and Yargul’s roar could be heard, causing the orc to check with his telescope, seeing that Yargul had used his ability to terraform his surroundings, knocking the orc twins to the ground.
Back at the fight, Yargul laughed, “I must thank you two! This fight is much more enjoyable than I first thought it would be!”
The two orcs were unsure as to how they were supposed to respond, they had never met an opponent who had thanked them for making a fight enjoyable. It wasn’t from lack of fighting either, they had met many opponents in their life and all of them either faced their death without any qualms or begged for their lives pathetically, most being proper orcs and choosing death rather than to plead for mercy. But there have been some who had asked to be spared and these were always killed the slowest, the twins having developed a sadistic pleasure in doing so.
They had taken to torturing every single orc they defeated in battle, using their flames to see how long said orc could endure their heat. However, against Yargul their flames appeared to be rather useless, the combination of the ape’s earthen armor and ice scales of the Frostwolf King proving to be superior to their Phoenix flames. No opponent of theirs had lasted so long and for the first time, the Phoenix Twins were uncertain, would they be able to defeat this opponent?
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Seeing their hesitation, Yargul mocked, “What? You afraid? What a shame, I thought I finally found some warriors worth fighting.”
He turned and began to walk away.
“This fight isn’t interesting anymore, I’m leaving.”
And he truly meant it, Yargul sensed the tremor in the two orcs’ warrior spirit, since all they knew was victory in their battles, the possibility of defeat was a great fear to them and this fear had reared its ugly head. Yargul also meant to use this to make them push past their fear, he wanted to enjoy this fight but he could only do that if the opponent was willing to fight. If this failed then he did have a more drastic plan but that would halve the fun so he would rather not do this. But it would prove to be rather amusing so at the same time, Yargul was rather excited to see just how he would react.
The two orcs grew angry, their flames growing as a result, a brilliant red conflagration which brought a smile to Yargul’s face as he turned to face them.
“Yes, come at me like you want to kill me!”
The two charged and came at him in a pincer movement, catching Yargul off guard and getting off a few solid strikes before Yargul responded, slapping one and punching the other. With a grin on his face, he motioned for them to come again, the two orcs pushing their flames to the highest intensity, causing Yargul’s armor to melt despite the cold of his ice scales.
But this just made the grin on his face wider, after all, it wasn’t every day that he met opponents he could die against. It was only when he pushed himself to and beyond his limits that he would continue to grow and Yargul was not as foolish to believe that he was the strongest orc of all. He knew that he was still inferior to some orcs out there, namely the Orc King so he still had to get stronger.
Before long, Yargul was having to constantly replace his ice scales in order to keep himself from burning, the two orcs releasing heat of such prodigious strength that their surroundings in a ten-foot radius had already burst into flames and made the ground dry and brittle. Eventually, Yargul decided that enough was enough, he had his fun and now it was time to end this. So he stomped down with one foot, terraforming the earth once more and knocking the two orcs down.
Yargul then calmly made his way over to his axe which was unharmed by the heat, snatching his hand back after nearly melting it to the handle. He winced, orcs had high pain tolerance but that did not mean they were entirely numb. He then reinforced his hand with ice, taking a hold of the axe which began to rapidly melt the scales. Not wanting to burn his hand again, Yargul quickly took aim and threw his axe, the axe burying its head deep into the chest of one of the Phoenix Twins.
The orc looked down at his chest in shock and disbelief before falling down, both fire and life disappearing from his body. His twin looked at his now dead brother and fell into shock, he had never imagined that they would ever be separated. Unlike most orcs, these two had formed a bond since childhood, practically two pieces of one whole. This was a rare thing among orcs who did not appreciate family as humans and elves did, most would have no hesitation to kill their siblings if the time came but these two were different. They really did care for each other and now that one was gone, the other was left in shock and growing anger.
Yargul stood by watching all this with curiosity, asking in disbelief, “You cared for him?”
The remaining twin glared at him and shouted, “Of course I did, he was my brother!”
“What does that have anything to do with caring? My own sister tried to kill me and by my hands, she died. Why would you care about someone who would just betray you in the end?” Yargul asked.
The twin argued, “You’re wrong, my brother would never betray me! He was the only one I could trust!”
Yargul snorted, “The only one you can trust is yourself, I’m honestly amazed that you never learned that.”
The twin gave in to his anger and charged in blindly, his flames reaching a far greater intensity than before, his flames fueled by his grief and rage. Yargul saw this and smiled, he was right, doing this was rather amusing. He braced himself to meet the orc’s charge, although once more he underestimated the power of the twin and soon found himself flying through the air. He smashed into the ground some moments later and almost as he hit the ground, the twin was on him, pounding away with flaming fists.
He yelled himself hoarse as he continued to hammer down onto Yargul’s body, expending all of his energy in this endeavor to kill Yargul. Finally, he stopped and stumbled back to the corpse of his brother, believing Yargul to be dead. He cradled his brother’s corpse and began to mourn, this being interrupted by Yargul’s voice.
“Damn, that hurt a lot more than I thought it would.”
The twin turned to face Yargul who was dusting off his shoulders as if nothing had happened, although there were some rather serious bruises developing on Yargul’s arms and chest. As he inspected them, Yargul walked slowly over to the twin who struggled to stand and summon fire, preparing to fight Yargul again. Yargul snorted at this pathetic attempt, knocking him down with but a flick of his finger as the twin was too weak to put up a real fight. Ignoring him for the moment, Yargul made his way over to his axe, protecting his hand with ice so he wouldn’t burn his hand again.
He then walked back towards the twin, saying, “Any last words?”
The orc just said, “Send me to my brother.”
Yargul nodded and promptly killed the twin, his headless corpse joining his brother’s on the ground. Yargul dropped the still-hot-axe and fell onto his back, taking a small break.
He suddenly sat up, muttering, “I never did get their names.”
He then shrugged.
“Oh well, too late now. What a pity, they deserved to be remembered.”
He then laid back down, yawning before he dozed off. The orc who had been watching the fight unfold just nodded, he hadn’t expected the Phoenix brothers to win against Yargul, their only purpose was so that he could observe Yargul and analyze as much as he could about him. It was a bit of a pain to lose such strong pawns but there would be others, there were always others.
However, looking upon Yargul’s seemingly defenseless form, the orc entertained the thought of killing him. He was about to go over there personally to kill Yargul but his eye caught something, movement in the ashen clearing where Yargul was now napping. He took a look in his telescope and immediately gave up on assassinating Yargul, the Trident Lord had appeared, her presence along with her guard making any attempt on Yargul’s life to be impossible. As he watched, the Trident Lord looked at his general direction, causing him to instinctively take a step back. As a smile appeared on her face, he harrumphed before retreating, after all, to kill either of them was but a secondary goal, his main goal was to delay them for as long as possible.
As he retreated back to his elusive camp, the Trident Lord leaned over Yargul’s sleeping form and poked him with the but of her trident, saying, “Wake up sweetie, now isn’t the time to sleep.”
Yargul woke up rather unwillingly and said, “Couldn’t you have let me enjoy my nap a little more? I just got done relieving my anger.”
The Trident Lord asked, “If you aren’t angry then how am I supposed to be amused?”
Yargul said disgruntled, “How the fuck should I know?”
In response the Trident Lord just chuckled, enraging Yargul a bit more who went to grab his axe only to let go because it was still burning hot. He had shouted a bit louder than he’d liked, much to the amusement of the Trident Lord which in turn made him angrier. Finally, he decided that a tactical retreat was in order and made a quick escape into the forest only to come back moments later because he had forgotten his axe.