The Last of the Giants

[Narthok 9213]

The Last of the Giants

Karliene - The Last of the Giants

In my youth the Elders told me of the great sagas of history. Not just the tales of the Urukhim, of the exploits of Krug, his sons, of Mogroka the great Rex. The Elders also spoke of the Heroes of the lesser races. Mortals of honour, of wit, of great courage.

 

Where now dwell the heroes of this world? Where now dwell the light against the darkness, the best of each race, who inspired yet greater heights from their followers?

It is clear that their days have passed. The gaze of the descendants looks no longer to the stars. To the example of our creator and our ancestors. Rather, the gaze of the mortal realms graces the boots and the soil.  

 

The first concern themselves not with the spreading of virtue, the building up of civilization, the revelry of creation. Rather, they concern themselves with the preservation of their corner of the world. Their little patch of creation, clutched desperately against the sands of time.

 

Surely, words, lathered as they are in gilt and gold shall banish the march of time. Shall bestow upon them who bear them notoriety and status. For it shall be by innumerable goldwords that the worth of a mortal is now known.

 

But who am I to speak? Am I not amongst their number?

 

-From the Uruniad
 

 

The mountain was tall, its height obscured by the thunderous clouds that swirled about its summit. Its face lashed with the searing gaze of the great golden sun, great tyrant of the desert, giver of life and death. Today the Orcish chieftain would climb.

 

The years had aged the young Hordespeaker far beyond the steady march of the seasons. When he had first ascended to the throne of Krug’s chosen many of the elders had considered him little more than a kub. Yet the Ologoth had selected him from the Horde, the wisdom of the dying behemoth a mystery to all. Here tradition had been broken, A Rex had ascended to the throne of Krug without bloodshed, without fighting.

 

Perhaps an omen for what was to come. The young Rex had spent his early years engulfed in an almost fanatic energy. Great structures had been smashed into dust, replaced by new ones within a year. The lands of the Urukhim buzzed with energy and passion. The forges fired day and night, the Feuruk tanned the hides of the innumerable cattle of the Horde.

The clans, scattered and broken before his time had been absolved of their offences and returned to the embrace of the Horde. Then war. Grommash had never pretended to understand the traditions of men, the ‘Huways’. The Hurexes and their innumerable Chieftains marched to war once more. Such was the nature of the Huriim. 

 

The Rex grunted to himself, for once he was utterly alone, in the true sense of that word. Isolated not only in mind but in body from the endless parades of pettitioners. Unplagued by the incessant whining of the village. There was no one nipping at his ankles to resolve their inane dramas and endless petty feuds. News of the antics of foolish warriors, warriors who had yet to subdue their blood rage did not fill his ears. Emissaries from foreign lands, full of requests, yet offering little were no longer polluting his gaze.

He was alone. His company the desert wind and heat of the sun. Peace.

 

Grommash advanced slowly, his bare feat, calloused from a harsh life of hunting in his native land, from conquering the rugged mountains of the south, and from the many campaigns he had fought pressing deeply into the sand. The familiar ritual was comforting. More comforting than he had expected.

 

The burden of the Rexdom had weighed heavily upon him. Gone were the days of his easy smile. The days when he had donned the spirit masks and danced with his brethren about the great bonfires of the Urukhim. Giving glory to the spirits through the leaps and swirls of his immense form, a gift from the Orcfather. 

 

All of that had changed when he had been called to lead, to rule, to speak for the Horde. Anointed by fate, the Rex stood apart from the rest. Surrounded at all times, yet utterly alone. The Hordespeaker chuckled to himself as he placed his hands against the sheer face of the mountainside. The searing heat of the sunbaked stones provided familiar comfort to his thickly callused hands.

 

To the Rex, the Orcfather granted the charisma of command. It was by the will of the Rex, chosen of Krug that the lives of the Urukhim were spent like so many coin. And spent them he had. The Great War in the Midlands had taken many lives.
 

 

Hand over hand the Rex ascended. He had chosen to ascend the western face, far from the easy ascent provided to those not of the blood of the Orcfather. Today he wished to feel the burn of his muscles, the sear of the sun upon his flesh, to be accompanied only by the song of the desert wind. Pulling himself onto a thin ledge, still far from the summit, the Chieftain turned his gaze to the expansive desert below. In the far distance the mountains of Numendil could be seen rising out from the sands of the northern desert. In the west the lands of Hyspia and the Qalasheen.

 

His dreams were once more consumed with the warsong. The screaming of the dead and dying, the clash of blades, the scent of blood, the hill of rusted swords. He had dreamed this dream so many times it often felt more familiar than the waking world. 

 

The war had been harsh on the clans. Many of the Horde’s greatest hunters had fallen, their immense bulk brought low by the innumerable pikes and arrows of the flesh tide. The scars of the war ran deep. Rarely a day passed where Grommash was not called to restrain some bloodmad warrior still seeking vengeance upon the nations of the midlands. 

 

But the war was over. For how long that situation would last the Hordespeaker could not know. He had cast the die on preventing the unification of humanity. For the sagas and tales of the Elders had made clear the consequences of that cycle. Now the rumblings of new Empire could be heard across the lands of Aevos. And now, once neutral nations such as the Elfin of Haelun’or were threatened.

Grommash shook his head, banishing such thoughts from his mind. The various Chieftains of Veletz had made many oaths during the war. Oaths of everlasting friendship with the Urukhim. So many oaths. So many promises. The traditions of men confused Grommash. Of what use was an oath if the oathmaker had broken oaths before. Why insist on so much tonguedance, so much wordgold if everyone knew, even if they did not say, that the oaths were mere decoration, having no binding authority on the giver of the oath. 

 

So many of the mortal races spoke of ‘honour’ and ‘courage’ as if these virtues were known widely and practiced by many. Yet what was honour if not binding oneself to disadvantage for the purpose of doing what is right and true. The oath givers were gone now, scattered to the four winds, their oaths as binding as the breath upon which they had been spoken.

 

In this sense the Rex was doubtful of some of the teachings of the Elders. To him it seemed clear that the quality of descendants dwindled with each passing generation. Ever since the betrayal of the evil one, and the fall of the four brothers, the world had become more and more broken.

Often the outriders of the Rex reported the children of the evil one consorting with mortals and descendants. Rexes and Chieftains doing business with peddlers of undeath, of black magics, of all manner of foulness. His whisperers spoke of strange lizard people hiding in plain sight amongst the great realms of the descendants. Offering up worship to their evil lizard God.

The world was not just broken, it was breaking. Evil abounded in the lands, growing with each passing day. Those supposedly assigned by providence, given great power, to defeat said evil spent their time in endless internecine feuds and sordid romantic affairs. 

 

All of it was so pointless. 

 

The Orcfather had given him his gifts. When he spoke others listened. When he commanded, others obeyed. Yet the world of mortals disgusted him. Bickering in the mud like dogs. How dare the first of the Urukhim appoint him to this task. Who was Krug to shackle him with the chains of leadership, to bind him with so many invisible bonds to the Throne.

 

And what of ‘the way’? So often spoken of by the Elders, by the spirits. So often ignored by the Urukhim. The curse of the blood. The betrayed had cursed the Urukhim, the descendant of the greatest of the four with black rage in their hearts. Never could any Urukhim hope to escape their curse. Another cruel joke. The Orcfather demanded of them honour, that they suppress the fruits of his defeat for their entire lives. Battling incessantly against the red hot rage that boiled in their hearts. Ignoring the sneers and jests of the lesser races, the races who consorted so frequently with the children of the betrayer. Who knelt at her feet and partook in her poisonous gifts.

 

A world of slaves. Slaves to their pathetic impulses. Forgoing honour, surrendering to the rage in their hearts, looting and pillaging like animals. No wonder theirs was called a race of beasts. No desire for more. No hunger for mountain summit, no burning love for the stars.

 

Perhaps this was the great burden of the ‘noble’ mortals, a term so abused by the Huriim. ‘Nobility’ one of the innumerable words of mantongue. To Grommash’s mind they used it to describe ‘one of great honour’, this ‘great honour’ coming from the quality of their blood, of their breeding. Yet so many who bore the title of ‘noble’ could not be described as possessing ‘great honour’. If anything they would be more accurately described as the ‘stained knees’, forever grovelling and debasing themselves in pursuit of ever more gold coated words with which to sign their documents. 

 

The Chieftain no longer knew and no longer cared. Having caught his breath he continued his ascent. Honour, Command, what did they matter anymore? The sharp rocks tore at his hands, each new handhold being coated in light patches of blood. Sweat drenched his brow, stinging his eyes and obscuring his vision. He pressed on. His shoulders screamed, his hands and feet, slashed and scraped by the gift of the mountain. Yet finally, his right hand gripped the edge of the summit. 

 

Collapsing beneath the harsh gaze of the sun Grommash knew quiet. Blood still dripping from his hands, dyeing the sands of the summit red, the Rex pushed himself to his feet. He proceeded to the center of the summit, the great ritual bonfire gracing the center of Stonetalon peak. 

 

His vision shimmered, the edges of things fading, no, blending together. No longer did the fire merely burn, it danced, leaping and twisting, the fire glorified in the brightness, in the brevity of its life. The wind did not blow it sang, its many tones filling the peaks with the chorus of creation. The peak, once bereft of life now teemed with activity. From the stones emerged the innumerable lesser spirits of the mountain. The innumerable spirits of loose stones, the bane of any climber. The fathers of the avalanche and the rockfall, creatures of great heft. The siren-spirits of the mountain winds, their harmonies enchanting to the ears of any who could hear. Even the minor spirits of the sun could be seen, galavanting around the edges of the peak, the rays of the setting sun highlighting the edges of the summit in a warm glow as the sun paid its last goodbyes.

 

 

As night fell, to the wonder of the Rex the great procession of the night parade emerged. First the spirits of the dusk and the moon. Glowing softly with all the tones of twilight, it was they who led the grand procession, their path trailed by innumerable shimmering stars. The troupe of twilight was soon followed by the middling spirits of the deserts, lords of sand and dune, these spirits, clad in great robes of shifting sand, cloaked in the shimmering gems of the desert were followed by yet grander spirits. Towering beasts of shimmering azure water, cloaked in palm frond and reed. The great Lords of the Oases. On and on came the night parade, the uncountable river of spirits proceeding in a great circle 

 

Finally the sun began to crest the horizon, the emmissaries of the great spirits of Stargush’stroh arrived. The emissary of Enrohk, a titan of fire and black steel, at his feet scuttled endless courtiers, here strode one of the great retainers of the war spirit. In his wake, a great blanket of dancing flame, the sound of drums, of screams, the clash of steel on steel.

 

Grommash squinted, peering deep into the flames, the scenes he saw were familiar to him, he had seen them countless times in his dreams. The screams, the clashing of steel, the blood running so thick it lapped at the knees of all but the largest of the warriors of the Urukhim. He saw what had been, what could have been, and perhaps what was to come. His warriors pierced with innumerable spears, laughing as their flesh failed them, and their mouths filled with the blood of their ruined lungs. He saw the great iron rain of the Huriim flame spitters, with horror he watched his warriors torn in twain by a foe they had never seen. Their ruined bodies adorning the shattered fortresses of the Midlands.

 

He saw his warriors putting blade to kneck. Again and again, the blades fell, crowned heads separated from bodies clad in finery and gold. More blood, more fire. His warriors losing themselves to their curse. The warsong growing louder, the warriors of the Horde falling one by one to savagery. Putting fang to soft pale throat, snarling and roaring as the feral beasts the betrayer had always intended to be. And laughter, beautiful laughter, for the betrayer glorified in the fruition of her plan. At last she had cast down the Urukhim, the children of the hated Krug, the one who had seen her for her lies, who had wounded her, who had wounded her pride.

 

Look upon the fruits of the Orcfather, look now upon the destiny of the children of honoured one. And in this truth know despair. 

 

Grommash tore his eyes away from the rippling flame of the emissaries cloak. The beautiful laughter of the vision subsided. Yet he was shaken to his very core. Of what use was all his labours, all of his efforts if the depravity of his people was irresistible. Already so many warriors had abandoned the path of the Orcfather, had abandoned the way of honour, had embraced the bestial nature of their curse. Bandits and thugs, compelled by their base instincts to take whatever they wish, no desire for the path of their progenitor. No desire for the fruits of honour, for civilization, for the banishing of the darkness from the realms as was the duty given unto them by their father.

 

 

Then as the final scraps of darkness were banished by the rising sun, the last and the greatest of the night parade could be briefly seen. The spirit of the great mountain. A cloak of swirling wind, a raiment of shifting stones, eyes of precious gems. For the duration of the night parade none had stopped, none had acknowledged the presence of the Chieftain. Yet in the final moments of dawn the great spirit looked down upon the exhausted form of Grommash. The sands about him dyed red, dried blood yet clinging to his hands and feet. He looked deep into the eyes of the Rex.

 

And he nodded

 

The night parade had come to its end, the pilgrimage of the Rex had left him with more despair, more questions than when he had departed from Orcgrimmar. He did not know if he would keep the throne of Krug. He did not know if he could save the Urukhim from the betrayer. If he could save them from themselves. The future was grim, and the spirits had offered him little solace.

 

He began his descent
 

“The days of heroes and the giants of history have long passed, distorted by the years of telling, there are none now who can claim the mantle of the past. I am tired Minto, yet more is demanded of me. Has our father not asked enough of me? Have I not served as a son should serve?”

[Nowak 877]

[TeawithFrisket 2635]

Ember stood at the edge of Aluria, her son playing on the tree behind her as her husband approached to her side.

 

she then spoke 

 

“Beloved, do you think even orcs dream the dreams of absolution?”