Book One – Chapter 13

At least, this is what Nagrak believed.

Because at one point of his misbirth existence, he had been told that the blood of an orich coursed through his veins. From that day on, Gorak had kept him close, offering protection Nagrak had never known. Where once he had been shoved aside, beaten for his frailty and mocked for his runtish size, now he stood in the shadow of the krag’s brutal authority, and that shift in fortune granted Nagrak a new sense of importance that had gone straight over his oversized head. Nagrak’s mind inflated with delusions of destiny, convinced that his future mirrored the likes of Bayazak and Tergak, the horde’s revered orichs, whose mystical insight into the forces of nature guided the warriors with a blend of wisdom and raw, elemental power.

His mind was a steel trap, yes, but the only prey ever caught in that trap was Nagrak himself. Because in the end, not only the truly cunning, but also the utterly daft see themselves as superior to their peers. The difference lies not in their conviction, but in reality. The truly cunning recognise the world for what it is and adapt, while the daft twist reality through their own, distorted perspective. They believe their own fantasies into existence.

Nagrak stood so far on the wrong side of that spectrum, that his subjective self-perception had long turned into self-deception. He believed his rise was inevitable. In truth, he was more likely to be trampled underfoot than to guide anyone to glory, but he was simply too stupid to understand just how stupid he was. In his simplisic leader-and-follower mindset, he was convinced that where the other orks were all brute force, he was strategy. One day, Nagrak was sure the horde would see it too. For now, though, he remained in the background, content to follow Gorak into the fray, biding his time for the perfect moment to prove his worth. Even if that moment existed only in the confines of his distorted trap of a mind.