“Better to be killed in battle than to die in bed.” - Old orcish warrior’s proverb.

Warchief Buknug of the Redhorns felt the searing pain when the blade of the sword pierced through his sculpted chest, cut its way through one of his lungs, and even poked out from his back. He ignored the pain. All he did was to grunt audibly as one of his burly arms struck the swordhand of the knight that stabbed him right at the wrist, hard enough to wrench the man’s hand away from the hilt of his sword with a cry of pain as the blow dislocated the joint.

Then he hurled the head of the other knight towards the surprised man’s face hard enough to cave in his nose before he descended on the prone knight and used the helmeted, decapitated head to smash his opponent’s face to a bloody pulp. The knight struggled underneath his bulk at first, but quickly his struggles grew weaker, and before too long his body stilled and moved no more.

A pair of the less well-clad soldiers gathered their courage and pierced him with their spears, but Buknug only roared as he brought his battered body back on his feet, the shafts of the spears grasped in his hands. He knew that his injuries would kill him, maybe not now, but soon, and he also knew that with Aideen present, none of those injuries would have mattered if she were to heal him.

He had asked the everlasting woman to be allowed to die, however.

It was a fate he chose for himself, to perish in one final battle, as gloriously as he could, rather than to live out his final years as his body deteriorated around him, until it reached the point where he would have to be assisted to do anything at all. Buknug had been a warrior all his life, it was part of who he was, and a chance like this, to be able to perish in battle at his final years, was one that some would probably have envied him for.

Everyone who had volunteered to join the delegation had thought the same way, and all of them welcomed death with a grin on their faces, though none of them were content to go down without having taken at least several of the human invaders down with them to the afterlife. After all, how could they call themselves warriors and be proud of it if they couldn’t even take an enemy down with them?

Buknug watched Losare, the elderly Shaman from the Stonehooves, impale four of the soldiers with spikes of stone that suddenly skewered them from below, right between their legs. The old orc shaman then panted as he had expended most of his mana from the feat, and a human soldier who was fortunate enough to avoid the spikes ran him through with a spear.

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The old shaman just grinned widely as he called for the last of his mana, even burning his own dwindling lifeforce to fuel one final miracle of magic. The result of his final work made itself known when two stone slabs rose from the earth to either side of the soldier and crushed the surprised man between them, until all that was left of him were bloody pulp and minced meat, encased in the soldier’s clothes and armor like a gruesome sort of sausage.

Only then did the old shaman allow himself to fall backwards and expire. He still had a bloody grin and a pleased expression on his face even as he died.

Buknug shared a last grin with the dying shaman as he gathered what strength he had left – he was starting to feel weak from the blood loss and other injuries – and heaved mightily, lifting both the soldiers who held the spears stuck in his body into the air before they wised up enough to let go of their weapons and fell on their backs.

Then he yanked the spears violently from his body, the deep wounds they left behind bleeding profusely even as he stepped forward and stabbed through the soldiers who were still on the ground with their own spears. He stabbed them so hard that the spears went all the way through those soldiers’ bodies and embedded themselves into the ground, with nearly a third of their length buried.

Since the dying soldiers – or maybe not, he was not too sure if he struck them at a vital spot and could care less at that point – were pinned by the weapons and unlikely to bother him for the time being, Buknug turned to the last bits of fighting that still took place within the tent. He saw Aideen engaged with two of the knights, and an old warrior from the Blackshields engaged with another, also bleeding profusely from many wounds and clearly on her last legs.

Everyone else, both orc or human, had already been incapacitated, ran away, or died by then.

With a beastial roar Buknug hurled his dying body towards the knight from his side. The knight had just landed a blow that caved in part of the skull of the orc he was fighting with when Buknug’s larger form barreled him over and pinned him to the ground. To the knight’s horror, the orc he fought had stubbornly clung to life all that while, and picked up his fallen shield, then raised it high.

Then the elderly orc smashed the tip of the shield down on the knight’s head as hard as she could.

The metal rim bent, the wood splintered, but the force behind the blow also shattered the knight’s skull and embedded his nose deep into his own brain, which caused his body to convulse wildly for a brief moment before he stilled. The elderly orc also collapsed, her body draped over her opponent’s face like a veil of flesh.

Buknug strained his neck to look up from where he laid on the ground. His sight already mostly blurred out, though he caught a glimpse of what he thought was the everlasting woman’s silvery hair in motion. His lips curled up into a grin even as he coughed up blood and slowly lowered his head. His strength had mostly left his limb, and he knew he had but moments left to him.

The old orcish Warchief mouthed silent words of gratitude to Aideen, for having allowed him and the other the end they wished for, before he exhaled and closed his eyes for the last time.