Book One – Chapter 13

The orich wielded his stones with an uncanny deftness, a skill as much honed by learned discipline as it was founded in an instinct embedded deep his being. His scarred hands moved in a trance of command and control, as incantations slipped from his lips in a language birthed from the mountain itself. The frosthearts responded, resonating with his intent. Their surfaces were etched with runes that glowed with soft spectral luminescence, casting a light that seemed to draw in the cold from the very air. This glow waxed and waned, synchronised with the orich’s breath, each surge sending ripples through the storm and transforming the tempest’s fury into targeted blasts that reshaped the battlefield below.

In stark contrast to her wizard’s intricate glass magic or the fluid mastery of worldbenders over water, the orich’s ice shards were crude, relying on sheer mass to overwhelm rather than finesse and precision. Yet, beneath their raw surface, there was a savage elegance, a strategic symbiosis of elemental force and primal intent. As Midnight delved deeper, she felt something ancient and vast, recognising the orich’s magic as far more than mere elemental manipulation. Midnight suddenly understood that he could do what she had failed to master; grasping the elusive.

She could feel it deeply through her connection to the Albweiss, through every instinct intrinsic to her darkness — this was deeply rooted mastery. His power carried the weight of centuries of bitterness, the raw resentment of ork-kind, amplified by a mastery of magic that had once been perceived as unattainable. He was a harbinger of a new era of ork magic, one that dared to challenge the wizards’ established order and threatened the magical balance of the Northlands.

Though Midnight had not grasped it initially, she recalled the initial upheaval when reports of such abilities first reached Emery Thurm a decade prior. The consensus was that where wizardry drew from the world’s free energies with precision and discipline, ork magic drew savagely, as untamed as the beasts that wielded it. Unlike the refined channelling and convergence of energy through a wizard’s body, ork magic drained the world around the orich. Orks had found a way to tap into external resources, most commonly gemstones such as frosthearts. In realising their magic, both the conduits and the energy sources were irreversibly destroyed, rendering the process one of sheer depletion. Such powers carried a potential for limitless alteration and destruction of nature, rivalling even the most feared witchcraft.