Koruk’s heart leapt in elation when he saw the cliffs finally come into view as the sandskimmer slid over the peak of a dune. Brittle Teeth wasn’t far now. How he had missed the shade of rocks and trees!

  It had taken some weeks to get back. Truthfully Koruk had no idea exactly how long they had travelled. He had stopped counting at some point. The days had passed by with gruelling monotony, seeming to blend into one another in his memory as they passed through the unchanging landscape.

  Around midnight their battered vehicle finally came to a rest, having completed its long journey. Perhaps its last journey. The sand had begun to give way to rocky ground, and the ad-hoc wheel repair refused to move over the uneven terrain no matter how hard they tried to shift it. There was still some distance to the town, and so they opted to abandon the sandskimmer and walk back to civilization.

  The final leg of the journey was done in silence. Every member of the party was lost in their own thoughts as they contemplated the adventure, and dreamed of soft beds and good food and drink.

  The rows of sandskimmers that had been previously been parked outside the western wall of the city were gone, as too were the impid merchants who had maintained them. As the orcs passed through the unguarded gates of the city, they found that the community was completely bereft of the red men that had previously taken up residence there. As they passed various orcs going about their business, many of them shot Kiwai with curious glances, his red skin marking him as a now unusual guest in the vacated town.

  Kiwai, Koruk, and Moktark flopped down on soft straw padded beds in familiar seeming rooms at the tavern. They bought them for the price of a drink downstairs, and were the only guests staying as far as they could tell. Semthak had bid farewell and gone home to his own house.

  Koruk found he couldn’t sleep. His mind swam with intrusive thoughts, and try as he might he couldn’t calm them. Eventually giving up, he climbed out of the nook and go to his feet, tossing his now ragged clothes back on. His stomach growled, and he realized how famished he was after more than a week of half rations.

  After poking his head into Moktark’s room and asking if he wanted anything to eat, which the big orc declined, Koruk decided to go for a walk to see if he could sate the ache in his belly. Finding the kitchen downstairs closed up for the night, he ventured outside.

  It was late, or perhaps it can be better said that it was very early in the morning. The sun hadn’t quite begun its rise yet, and the stars still shone overhead. Koruk was lucky enough to find a merchant selling iguana on a stick, but realized with sadness he had no money to pay for it. The adventure had left the party rich in experience and a few new weapons and tools, but monetarily broke.

  After being rebuffed by the merchant, he decided to pay Semthak a visit. Maybe the old orc had some food squirreled away and didn’t mind sharing, Koruk thought mischievously.

  As he walked towards Semthak’s house, Koruk felt a shadow pass over him, occluding a few of the stars overhead. He looked up towards the night sky, but it was gone after an instant. Koruk’s first thought was that it might be a bird, like one of the enormous monsters he had helped rescue Kiwai from, but he felt a foreboding, and it was answered by the sound of a strange, low roar reverberating through the air.

  His mind turned over as he wondered what it could be. There was a connection he was trying to make in his brain, something about it that seemed so familiar. And then he remembered. When the dragon’s egg carrying Oben had passed overhead, all those months ago, it had made a similar sound, albeit much louder and much closer.

  Koruk hastened to Semthak’s house.

  He knocked on the hatch on the roof and swiftly dropped down into the house, sliding down the ladder. Semthak was still awake, cradling a cup of tea between his hands. His look of contemplation turned to alarm as Koruk landed on his floor.

  “What are you doing here so late lad?”

  Koruk told him about the object he had witnessed a few minutes prior. Semthak’s eyes narrowed, and he stopped sipping his tea.

  “You think it’s another human? You mentioned you thought it was a bird at first.”

  “I am sure of it! The sound was like…” Koruk mimed the object flying overhead, and made a whooshing noise to the best of his ability. “Well not like that but it was like when Oben’s egg fell from the sky kind of.”

  “I see. Well I suppose we should inform your broth…” Semthak began, but was interrupted by a loud cracking sound coming from somewhere outside.

  “What was that?”

  “An explosion, or I’m a novice. Come on!”

  The two orcs climbed up onto the roof of Semthak’s house and looked around, trying to determine the source of the noise.

  “There!” Semthak shouted, pointing. Koruk followed his finger, and his eyes widened in alarm. A fire was sending up a plume of smoke, somewhere near the eastern gate. Voices started to be raised as groggy orcs climbed out of their homes to see what was going on.

  A second explosion rung out, and a large chunk of the archway over the city gate disappeared in a flash of fire and flying debris.

  Koruk ducked instinctively. The raised voices around him changed to full on shouts of panic as confused orcs ran. Koruk noted that a majority of them were actually running towards the blast, eager to see what was going on and heedless of the danger.

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  “Do you have your bow?” Semthak asked, raising his voice over the din of the crowd assembling on the streets.

  “No! I left it at the tavern!”

  “We’d best go back for it, and your meathead brother. I think we’re going to need them.”

  Commander Vissald watched the scene of chaos from his perch on the cliffs above the rude settlement. A few metres to his left, the mortar recalibrated its pitch.

  “They seem to be clustering at the archway.” He said, lowering his binoculars. “Put one in the middle of them, that should scatter them. Then we can send in the mobiles.”

  The mortar crew complied, and another shell streamed into the air. It landed on target, blasting a hole in the brickwork and taking a few of the green skinned creatures with it. The rest scattered in fear and confusion, mostly heading towards an open plaza near the centre of the town.

  Vissald smiled in satisfaction, and snapped the visor of his exo-armour shut. He flicked a switch on the wrist of his armour, and heard the buzz in his ear as his radio changed to the tactical frequency.

  “Your approach is clear Storm Team. Move in and disperse through the settlement, see if you can herd any stragglers towards the centre of town. Shoot any runners, focus on larger groups.”

  +Acknowledged. Just like herding cattle sir!+

  “You know it lieutenant. Let’s get it done quick like!”

  The commander watched with interest as a tracked armoured transport rumbled towards the town gate. It plowed through the archway, sending it tumbling to the ground in a cascade of broken mud bricks. A ramp lowered out the back, and a squad of exo-suited soldiers piled out, their gold visored helmets glinting in the light of the rising dawn sun.

  “Keep that mortar fire up. Keep them pinned in the square.”

  Koruk’s efforts to get back to the tavern were foiled by the sheer mass of bodies crowding the streets. It seemed like everyone in town had piled into one place, right in front of the building he wanted to get to.

  Orcs don’t panic easily. When the fight or flight response kicks in, it usually leans toward the former, and that psychological trait was manifesting itself in full view here. As the crowds piled into together, they started pushing and shoving one another, and shoving was starting to turn into full scale brawls as the crowds vented their confusion and anger on the only thing they could find: each other.

  Another explosion rang out, and a cloud of smoke and fire rose into the air from somewhere to Koruk’s left. An orc tried to flee from it in mindless panic and slammed into him, shoving him to the ground. Semthak grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back to his feet, lest he be trampled.

  “This is madness! We have to get out of here!” The old orc yelled over the cacophony of noise. Another explosion. Another surge of bodies in the opposite direction.

  “Moktark!” Koruk yelled, but got no reply. If his brother was in the midst of this, he was nowhere to be seen.

  “He can handle himself! He’s a big orc. Come on, we need to…”

  A series of small pops sounded, and a pair of orcs dropped to the ground dead beside them in a spray of blood and viscera. Koruk looked about, trying to see what had attacked them, and spotted a pair of tall figures standing on the roof of a building opposite the square, black silhouettes against the dawn sky.

  For what seemed like a long moment he stood there watching them. Death’s cold hand seemed ready to strike him down. But they simply stared back, unmoving. Like dark carrion birds, waiting. He saw more of them, encircling the plaza. If an orc looked like he was going to make a break for it, he fell in a flash of fire and blood as struck by a thunderbolt.

  As Semthak prepared to break for a street, Koruk put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

  “Wait. Look. We’re trapped.” He said, gesturing.

  Semthak’s words caught in his throat, but he nodded grimly.

  As more of the crowd took notice of what was happening, the panicked brawl subdued somewhat. The two groups faced each other in a standoff, the orcs unwilling to take a charge that would result in their instant deaths, and the dark giants seemingly content to keep them penned up in the plaza.

  A dark shape appeared in the sky, accompanied by the roaring sound that had startled Koruk earlier. It stopped directly overhead, its wings extended outwards like the monstrous birds that had attacked them in the desert, but it stood still in the sky unlike any bird. Slowly it began to descend, and a bright light shone out from it, blinding Koruk and forcing him to shield his eyes. The roar intensified as the monstrous shape approached the plaza, and orcs quickly cleared to make way for it.

  It sat down with a thump and a gust of wind which blew dust into his nose and eyes. As the noise and the cloud of dust started to dissipate, Koruk saw that the object was indeed alike to the dragon’s egg that had fallen from the sky so long ago. A sleek shining thing, dark in colour, as though a bird had been crossed with a great fish.

  A ramp lowered from the back, grinding on its mechanisms, and thudded onto the hard brick below it. From that ramp a bright unnatural light was cast, and several figures stepped out into the open.

  Koruk saw at once that they were human. They had helmets of gleaming gold not unlike what Oben had worn when they found him unconscious and injured, but while Oben wore a thin suit of leather, these humans bore bulky suits of black metal. They strode like giants into the pale sunlight, the ground shaking under their heavy footsteps.

  He knew at once that these were warriors. Human warriors. Their suits were armour, and the strange devices they carried were weapons of some kind he had no frame of reference for. Behind the towering warriors a number of unarmoured humans emerged, wearing finely made grey tunics speckled with bronze gilding.

  Amongst those humans, was a familiar face.

  “Oben.” Koruk breathed, barely daring to raise his voice. Semthak nodded.

  “Damn traitor. Wasn’t enough for him to try to bury us alive, he’s come back to finish the job.” Semthak said, spitting on the dusty ground. “Well, what’s he waiting for?”

  Oben made eye contact with them, and quickly averted his gaze, turning instead to a shorter human with short grey hair and a scowl that could melt lead by its sheer intensity. He said something to her and gestured to them.

  A pair of massive armoured figured approached, and roughly grabbed Koruk and Semthak by the arms, lifting them effortlessly into the air. Semthak tried to resist but received a punch to the gut for his trouble, and hung limp afterwards. The giants roughly deposited them into the flying craft, where their hands and feet were swiftly bound, and the ramp slowly ground shut behind them, shutting out the last rays of the sun.

  The last thing Koruk saw was Moktark’s face in the crowd, looking back at him.