At day break, from the castle walls, the Skull Lord overlooked the battlefield. He was glad to see that the enemy had given orders to retreat from combat, although it did take some time for this message to spread to all the armies on the field. Fighting had continued long after the order was given and it was only in the morning’s light that the fighting finally ceased. Yargul’s army attempted to give chase but Yargul kept them in line, creating a small earthquake to remind the orcs whose orders they’d disobey should they go fight.
With the two sides having withdrawn, Yargul was free to approach the city, shedding piece by piece the stone armor which encased him. He, accompanied by a small contingent of orcish soldiers, finally stood before the gate. Upon seeing his approach, the Skull Lord gave orders to open the gate, the battered and broken gate pushed outwards, orcish bodies flooding outward as they had been leaning on it. Yargul calmly stepped back to avoid being hit by a corpse and saw the Skull Lord with some difficulty traverse the hill of corpses, barking orders to reassemble the corpses into a barrier.
The two stood across from one another, the Skull Lord finally saying, “Always late Yargul, although I suppose it’s a miracle that you even arrived at all.”
Looking at Yargul’s retinue just to make sure, he asked, “Where is the Trident Lord? Don’t tell me she fucking died on some unknown battlefield.”
Yargul shrugged, “We were forced to split up in order to get past the blockade, she must’ve encountered the orc commander.”
The Skull Lord sighed, “Don’t tell me that you were held up all this time by some mere commander.”
Yargul defended himself, “Well the son of a bitch kept avoiding us and kept dividing our forces. He never appeared on the battlefield and made it so that his orcs didn’t fight like orcs, rather he forced them to fight like the filthy humans, making ambushes and traps.”
The Skull Lord remarked, “And despite the humans being weaker than us, you allowed yourself to be defeated by the means of those filthy humans.”
Yargul bristled, “You better watch your words Skull Lord.”
Skull Lord asked, “Or what? You’ll attack me? Then what? The enemy will be sure to attack you from behind. And if you leave, the enemy will just chase you until you’re caught and killed. You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”
Yargul growled, “I can still take your head here and now and offer it to them for my life.”
Skull Lord hefted his club.
“I’d like to see you try.”
Yargul lifted his axe and said, “Well let’s give it a go then, I’ll be gracious and let weakling hit first.”
Skull Lord smiled, although this was devoid of any niceties, “You’re gonna regret that.”
Yargul smirked, “Yes, I’ll always regret the fact that the only blow I ever received from the Skull Lord was so pathetically weak.”
“Oh that’s fucking it!”
The Skull Lord suddenly swung with his club, catching Yargul in the side of his head, throwing him ten meters away. Yargul growled from the sudden attack, retaliating by throwing a rock with extreme force at the Skull Lord. The Skull Lord managed to block but the force behind it sent him flying into the city’s wall, causing him to bounce off and into no-orc’s land. The two got up and marched towards one another, casting aside their respective weapons and throwing a punch, Yargul’s connecting with the Skull Lord’s face and the Skull Lord hitting Yargul in the stomach.
The two grunted but didn’t fall, instead continuing to exchange blows at a faster and faster rate, the force of their strikes beginning to break the skin and bone. Finally, they came to a stop, the two laughing as if they had shared a most humorous joke, clapping each other on the shoulder. The Skull Lord then invited Yargul into his city, ordering his orcs to collect corpses for the feast that was to come this night. The enemy wouldn’t easily attack with Yargul’s great army ready to swoop in at a moment’s notice, they could afford some time to relax.
As the two began to converse, the situation at the enemy camp was not the best, the orcs grumbling about the fact that they had been pulled from the fight. Yargul’s army was the first proper army that they had the chance to fight, the Skull Lord’s army remaining holed up in his city. But despite their complaints, they did not dare to disobey their orders, the two Orc Lords were not in a good mood and if they even voiced their complaints, it would earn them an instant death.
While orcs did not fear death on the battlefield, they were not entirely apathetic to it. They did not wish to die anywhere else except on the battlefield and to die to anything else, well that was the greatest shame an orc could bear. Meanwhile, the two Orc Lords were busy discussing how they were to deal with this new problem, it wasn’t sufficient to completely ensure their defeat but if they weren’t careful, they were certain to lose.
There was also the matter of Yargul himself, although he himself wasn’t of much importance, the way he led his soldiers deep into their forces was worrying. With this, Yargul could lead an attack into their very camp, endangering both of their lives. While these Orc Lords were not afraid to fight, they weren’t foolish either. They had risen to where they were now because they knew when to abstain from a fight, something most orcs lacked. As such, they were secretly looked down on by most orcs although it could not be denied that they possessed absolute might. After all, one still needs a power to dominate others to become an Orc Lord.
These Orc Lords wanted to become the next Orc King and to do so, they needed to remain alive. Thus they put their lives at the forefront, very much like humans and decided to let other orcs die for them, of which there was no shortage. From this, the Surveyor drew a hypothesis, no matter what the race was, as long as it was sentient and had reached a state of relative peace, allowing for growth, they would become more human. Of course, that statement wasn’t entirely accurate, the Surveyor only had the humans to draw reference to so it could only compare the orcs to them.
A more accurate statement would be that when a race had reached a state of peace and growth, they would begin to treasure their lives far more and seek to do more with it. Of course, all creatures do treasure life but not to the degree as sentient creatures, beasts live because of instinct, sentients live because they seek to do things otherwise impossible with the absence of life. They make meaning into their lives and live by that meaning, although some may never make their own meaning. These people instead, perhaps mistakenly, believe that creating their own meaning is useless, rather there is already one absolute meaning which they do not understand or the exact opposite, that there is no meaning at all.
And if the Surveyor was to choose an answer in all of this, it would be that in the beginning, there was indeed no meaning at all. All of Creation came into being by the mere whims of Light and Darkness, things moving on from there at first from Light’s wishes and then to those her and Night’s children. There really was no meaning to Life, it all began as a whim, whatever meaning mortals thought was there only came from their minds or perhaps of the will of Light or Night themselves. But they were not representative of the Universe, if any being held that title it would be Darkness and currently, Darkness was slumbering.
And the second highest authority on this matter, the Fragments of Darkness, also did not care too much on this. They were simply following the orders of their original, those orders being their meaning. And this was certainly true for the Surveyor, it had no other purpose in Life other than to serve the wish of Darkness, to remember all that comes to pass until Darkness wakes again.
But it did not pay too much attention to this train of thought, instead deciding to connect to the shadows of the dead orcs, viewing the sights that these shadows had been witness to. After all, perhaps more so than one’s reflection, a shadow is the essence of one’s self. It has been their companion from birth and one which never left, watching over them whether it was night or day. It felt what its host felt, it saw what its host saw, it heard what its host heard. It was there when the host was born and when the host expires, continuing to watch over the corpse until the corpse has been reclaimed by the earth. Not that it meant to watch really, it was just absorbing information as a sponge absorbs water, it was doing it naturally.
Anyways, the Surveyor once more immersed itself in the experiences of the orcs, feeling their excitement for battle, the disappointment upon being killed, and the rush of adrenaline upon surviving a fight, the Surveyor felt it all. But, remembering from its experiences with Ieros, it made sure to keep some level of distance, to keep from being too absorbed into the memories of these orcs lest it gain emotions.
While one self was doing this, the other was watching what was going on in the Skull Lord’s city, the orcs within preparing a great feast as they exchanged feats of battle, their feats becoming more exaggerated by the minute, not helped by the copious amounts of liquor and meat consumed. Although, all paled in comparison to Yargul’s, he who threw himself into the thick of enemies, a lone warrior in a sea of thousands. Then there were the powers he possessed, in his drunken state he displayed it, creating ice scales as well as earthen armor.
And as they were celebrating, in sharp contrast, the orcs of the enemy side were glum, disappointed that they could not fight the enemy that lay just a hundred meters from them. Realizing that this couldn’t go on, the Orc Lords decided to let them fight once more, dividing the forces up to keep both the castle and Yargul’s forces busy. It was better to keep these orcs occupied with battle rather than thinking about if they were on the right side of this war.
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They weren’t seriously leading their forces just yet, just as the Orc King planned to do, they were going to lead near the climax of the battle. In doing this, they would get the credit for winning the battle by putting in the least effort. After all, it was almost pathetically easy to manipulate the lesser orcs, they would only remember who won the war, not those who died in it. The dead were those that failed to live and failures were not to be remembered.
As the fighting resumed, the Skull Lord leaned in rather drunkenly, asking about the Trident Lord, “So uh... how is she?”
Yargul, a bit irritated at being drawn away from his drink, asked, “Who?”
He took another drink as the Skull Lord asked, “You know... her.”
Yargul, his words heavily slurred, asked, “I don’t fuckin—uh... what?”
Skull Lord asked again, “Her! Uh, she has the trident thingy.”
Yargul took a moment before his eyes lit up with recognition.
“Oh, her! What about her?”
The Skull Lord mumbled, “How is she doing?”
Yargul snorted, “How the fuck would I know, I’m here and she’s somewhere else.”
Skull Lord patted Yargul on the back, “I mean... how is she doing?”
Yargul repeated, “I don’t fucking know.”
He mumbled, “She and I separated to get past the annoying coward.”
The Skull Lord inquired after a sip, “Coward?”
Yargul nodded.
“Yes, the annoying bastard that kept hiding, not fighting me face to face.”
Yargul began to ramble on about the “cowardly” commander, the Skull Lord only half listening, perking up every once in a while when Yargul mentioned the Trident Lord, although his expression soon soured when Yargul spoke about how annoying she was.
“...I mean first, she goes off and lets me fight without help but then has me help her when she fights alone! I mean what the fuck?! Fuckin’ cunt, making one as great as I to help her.”
Yargul paused to take a deep swig, the Skull Lord now glaring at him angrily.
Yargul, noticing the glare, asked, “The fuck you lookin’ at.”
“Don’t... insult her!”
Yargul turned to face the Skull Lord more properly, “I’ll do what I want.”
The two began to get increasingly hostile until a shudder was felt throughout the entire city, the great siege engines had once more been aimed at the city walls. The Skull Lord ignored this, instead ready to continue the fight with Yargul as he knew that his orcs would soon be returning fire. But Yargul was a different story, he drunkenly stood up and began to stumble outside the hall, the alcohol having loosened his reservations, he just wanted to fight.
The Skull Lord watched him go and shouted, “That’s right bitch, leave before I beat your ass.”
Yargul threw his bottle at the Skull Lord in response, although he missed terribly and hit an unfortunate orc.
Seeing him go on, the Skull Lord muttered, “That’s right, keep moving.”
Meanwhile, Yargul headed up the wall, overlooking the battlefield which raged on below him. He hiccuped and unintentionally leaned forward, grabbing at the parapet to halt his fall. Well, attempted to grab anyways, in his drunken stupor, he missed and instead fell headfirst towards the ground. A bit alarmed, he quickly armored himself with stone, hitting the ground with great force, knocking orcs back and creating a deep crater. Some who had survived his fall went to investigate, hearing groans as a large figure crawled out of the crater.
He stretched, shaking his head a few times to clear his head.
“Oh Korbus, my fucking head.”
He used his palm to strike his head a few times as shaking his head wasn’t enough, his blurred-sight seeing the orcs around him-
He frowned at the rather still enemies, shouting, “Come on, fight me!”
At his words, the enemy orcs surged into action, Yargul greeting them in his golem form, swinging his great log-like arms. Still a bit drunk, he swatted aside enemies, hammered down on them, and crushing them underfoot. He was laughing as he did so, the alcohol allowing him to enjoy crushing his enemies like ants, as a child would find pleasure in attacking an anthill with a stick, watching as the ants scrambled about in a panic. But in this case, the ants were not so small and each weren’t scrambling in panic but rather lining up to be killed by Yargul.
For no matter how powerful or invincible Yargul appeared to be, all one orc had to be was lucky to kill him and then claim the title of Invincible for himself. And out of all these ants, there were several spiders that were also desiring the title of Invincible and they were quickly making their way to Yargul. The Surveyor watched with interest, would it be here that Yargul finally fell? The Surveyor meant it when it said to Yargul all those years ago that it wouldn’t help him ever again, Yargul’s fight with the Earth Ape was the first and last time it would ever interfere.
However, perhaps it had already interfered too much, the black ice armor that it had temporarily bequeathed Yargul was something that Yargul never forgot. Even though he mostly used his stone armor, in his private time he tried to summon the black ice only to fail again and again. But that was when he wasn’t fighting with his life on the line. Perhaps, in the thick of battle Yargul would suddenly evolve. After all, the body was a most fascinating thing, it would do anything to keep surviving, utilizing adrenaline and the like to give the body one last spike of energy to either fight or flee.
A similar thing happened to pregnant mothers, when they themselves were in danger, the body recognized this and will begin to give birth earlier than normal. In this situation, the body would try to awaken the black armor once Yargul was in the direst of situations. Of course, this was all conjecture, Yargul may very well not reach this potential at all and simply die. Disappointing yes but ultimately of no great setback. The Surveyor would only have to wait a century to introduce another Invincible.
But it ceased such useless thoughts as Yargul engaged in combat with one of these “spiders,” the spider being an orc who possessed a divine warhammer, given to him by one of the Orc Lords in return for his loyalty. He wasn’t in possession of a magic ability like the other unique orcs as he believed that magic was something for weaklings to rely on, instead focusing on his body and honing it to the best possible weapon it could be. After all, the humans had been mages and look where that had gotten them, they were now the slaves of the mostly non-magical orcs.
As he pushed through the lesser orcs, the challenger shouted, “Yargul! I, Yolmar, have come to take your title for you are not worthy of it! Those who use magic to be strong are a disgrace to the strong! So I shall make sure to wipe away your disgrace with your own blood!”
Yargul, stopping his rampage, looked down on this impudent orc, finally shrugging as the stone fell from his body.
“You know, I obtained that title before I gained magic.”
Yolmar snorted.
“Prove it.”
Yargul grabbed his divine axe from his back, saying, “But I’m afraid you’ll be too dead when I do prove it.”
Just as Yargul was about to attack, he paused, three other orcs had appeared, these obviously a step above the lesser orcs.
He asked, “Will they be joining you?”
Yolmar shook his head, “If they did I’d be the first to kill them.”
Yargul chuckled, “I think you and I are quite alike. So, fists or weapons?”
Yolmar hefted his warhammer, “I never part with her.”
Yargul raised an eyebrow, “Her?”
Yolmar nodded, “Of course, she is the one who taught me to be strong, she is my only companion.”
Yargul said, slightly weirded out, “You make it sound alive.”
Yolmar nodded, “She is, isn’t yours alive too?”
Yargul looked at his axe and shook his head, “Nope, never spoke to me once.”
Yolmar shrugged, “Guess he or she just doesn’t like you.”
Yargul snorted, “I don’t need it to like me, only that it doesn’t break. And if you’re done being all lovey-dovey with your hammer there, let’s get to fighting.”
Yolmar nodded, grabbing his hammer with two hands as one would hold a spear, Yargul holding his axe above his head with a single hand. Not one to waste time, Yargul immediately charged forward, striking down the axe with all the force and speed he could muster. This forced Yolmar to dodge as he did not wish for his beloved hammer to get damaged by the strike.
The axe buried itself deep into the earth as Yargul snorted, “If you were really strong then why’d you dodge?”
Yolmar retorted, “Unlike you, I care for my weapon.”
Yargul merely said, “A weapon just doesn’t have to break.”
Yargul punctuated that sentence by tearing out the axe from the earth and swinging it horizontally, Yolmar easily able to dodge backward. Yargul took advantage of this and suddenly rammed forward with his nearest shoulder, catching Yolmar by surprise. Yolmar was knocked down and Yargul prepared once hammer down.
Finally, Yolmar blocked it with his warhammer, wincing as he did so. He then kicked out with a foot, catching Yargul in the stomach and throwing him back several feet, Yolmar scrambling up as he swung his hammer down on Yargul’s crotch. Seeing this, Yargul quickly rolled to his side, leaving his axe behind as he too scrambled to his feet. He barely dodged another strike aimed at his head and Yargul continued to retreat, being extremely wary of the warhammer.
Yolmar, a smile on his face, taunted, “Oh no, what will you do without your axe?”
Yargul dodged another strike and said, “This!” as he threw a left hook right into Yolmar’s temple, knocking him to the side.
He then delivered a right uppercut into Yolmar’s stomach and then backhanded him across the face with the same hand. Yolmar fell to one knee and as Yargul prepared to deliver another blow, Yolmar suddenly sprang forward, tackling Yargul. Yargul grunted as he toppled downward, beating on Yolmar’s back as Yolmar kept him pinned.
Yolmar endured and soon realizing that this was getting him nowhere, Yargul decided to grab Yolmar’s waist, using his great arm strength to lift Yolmar and throw him to the side. Surprised at this, Yolmar was unable to do anything except keep a tight hold on Yargul as his body was thrown to the side, Yargul taking advantage of the opening to begin pounding away at Yolmar’s ribs. Grunting, Yolmar released Yargul and kicked himself away, although not fast enough for Yargul grabbed onto his ankle. But Yolmar began to kick Yargul’s hand, soon forcing him to let go.
The two stood up once more, the two covered in bruises, broken skin, as well as a few broken bones. But the two were not yet done fighting, charging at one another again with only one thing in mind: the defeat of the other.