Book One – Chapter 15

As Yu stared at the orks now, they looked every bit the monsters the stories claimed. Three of them were hulking brutes, their corded muscles straining beneath their rough-hewn garments, while the other two were taller and wiry, their sinewy frames exuding a precision and agility no less deadly. They radiated a primal savagery that went beyond physicality, as though violence itself was etched into their nature.

Yu had no idea how his party survived.

The fight was chaos, its brutality amplified by the hailstorm that turned the clash into a battle against both the orks and the elements. Yu spent the battle cowering in a hollow of stone and ice. Imbiad, the Worldbender of their group – not the other wizard traveller – had conjured the barrier, sealing Yu between the cliff face and a wall of hastily shaped ice. The barricade held, shielding him from the fray and muffling the sounds of the slaughter beyond. Within the dim, stifling confines, Yu clutched the discarded supplies. His talons scraped jagged grooves into the ice and rock underneath as he trembled, his breaths shallow and ragged.

The echoes from outside pierced the barrier: the wet thunk of blades rending flesh, the furious roars of the orks clashing with Harrow’s guttural howls of defiance. Through the cracks in his ice prison, Yu caught fleeting glimpses of the carnage. There was steel glinting in the stormlight, limbs twisting in impossible angles, bodies hurled through the blinding snow. Each image seared into his mind, visceral and raw.

When the ice wall finally lowered, Yu hesitated, his feet rooted in fear. The sight before him was horrendous. The orks lay strewn across the pass like ripped puppets, their immense forms twisted and torn into grotesque shapes. Some had been crushed beneath enormous slabs of conjured rock, their bones splintering through flesh. Others were torn apart, their bodies bearing deep gashes from fangs and blades alike. Severed heads dotted the blood-soaked snow, their features locked in expressions of rage, pain, and disbelief. Their lifeless eyes stared blankly into the storm-ravaged sky, as if the violence of their end lingered still. It was only when Yu’s gaze settled, when his trembling legs carried him closer to the wreckage, that he noticed that the bodies were female.