With a roar of equal parts rage and wild pleasure Ghorak, blessed of the gods, ripped the tiny green imp's shoulder open with his teeth. He swallowed a chunk of flesh, though it was not particularly tasteful. No it was polluted, ripe not with the glorious rot of the Crowfather but with something fouler. It was something that represented defiance to the works of the gods and natural order of the Beast; something that every true Child of Chaos hated with depthless loathing. It was something civilized.
The flesh smelled like the foul black clouds that came from the dwellings of Manflesh, tasted like the terrible liquid that the prey race used to power their abominations. It offended him. Hate already present grew further.
With a snarl the Wargor slammed the injured creature to the ground. Green-imps were a cowardly race that had warred against—and sometimes with—the true Children of Chaos since the rise of the First Beast. So the Shamans said and through them the gods spoke. That imp race—Goblins, in the man-tongue—always ran from battle unless attacking in ambush backed by great numbers of their kind. They bickered, stabbed each other in the back and had a low cunning that made them frustrating to exterminate.
Not from lack of trying. The Children of Chaos butchered them whenever they were found but they always came back. Turnskins say that before their blessings they fought goblins many times, and that the other damned races of the world—Elves and Dwarfs—do as well. Perhaps they were—like the Beast—part of the natural order of things. Perhaps the gods would have their children fight and kill them for all time in their honor, as the Children of Chaos did with everything else.
That did not mean Ghorak would stop hating their existence. Knowing the gods, they likely approved of this. Yet now he found a new reason to hate. These goblins did not run as easily as their forest kin. Ghorak's warherd of thirty-five had ambushed a pack of fourteen goblins. The green imps should have run away unless they had three times that number. They did not. Nor did they bicker among each other or stab each other in the back. This was unnatural. Northmen had said these goblins were different, only alike from others in appearance, but Ghorak had not believed them until now.
Around him six of his band already lay dead. Two had died from goblins emerging from the shadows with envenomed blades, another three dead by the foul smoke-spewing, cracking guns of the goblins. The last—a worthless Ungor—had been hit by a strange magical bolt that shrunk him to one-fourth his original size. Unfortunately for that miniaturized Ungor, he had been in the path of the Minotaur that Ghorak had been able to coax along. Now all that remained were crushed organs were stuck to the Minotaur's foot.
Yet the Warherd had caught the imps by surprise, in melee and their foe was puny. More than half lay dead already, their bodies split open by the sheer force of their foe's weapons. At least two were proliferated with arrows, shot by the Ungors. Now Ghorak would add to that death tally.
With a howl he brought his axe down just as his wounded foe with a grimace of delightful pain, reached to the strap of leather that crisscrossed his groin. Something red was pushed.
The world beneath Ghorak ignited as the boots ignited. Ghorak bleated in shock, dropped the axe and tripped over a fallen corpse backing over. His bleats turned to a brief cry of pain as his legs were burned by the jet of fire. Before he could punish the little imp the creature's boots propelled it through some bushes and behind a clearing.
If Ghorak was furious before (for in truth the Children of Chaos always are) he was apoplectic now! Primal rage extending back to the beginning fueled him; all the fury of his slighted race filled. The creature had escaped using the ungodly tools that Man so adored! The tools Mankind brought everywhere with him and that allowed him to warp the land into something offensive to the gods. Something a turnskin had called tech-kno-ligy. Or something similar.
More than that the goblin had made a fool of Ghorak in front of his herd! Made him look weak! There would be challenges later tonight from the other Gors, maybe even the Minotaur now!
Roaring, Ghorak leapt to his feet and ran for the clearing. The Goblin had revealed his cunning, another similarity to their forest cousins. Yet their cunning only ever delayed the Fury of the Beast, not stop it. He would find this little imp and rip the creature's guts out with his bare hands for the crime of making the Wargor seem weak. Then he would defecate on his dying corpse for the goblin's crime of using that word. Techno something.
In truth the Wargor was not certain why his race hated the word or represented it so much. The Shamans had spoken that one day the ancestors had lost their dominance over weak Man, and that tools had played a part, but Man used tools all the time, and beasts still dominated the forests. Indeed Man with their tools could only dominate a few safe havens surrounded on all sides by the immense forests. If anything Man was still as much prey as ever, just prey trapped in their dens.
Suddenly, there was a great yell from another clearing to the side. Four wolves carrying Orcs leapt out, their lupine forms immediately tearing into a pair of unlucky Ungor cowards that had hovered away from the melee. They gave a cry that was unlike the normal Orc battle shout, but equally insensible.
Ghorak snorted in contempt. Another similarity. Just like Goblins needing their bigger cousins to pull them out of danger. Five of the Goblins—and the strange creature of earth they had summoned—still fought, but the rest of the herd that were out of combat charged these new intruders foreseeing greater glory in fighting the Orcs over the Goblins, even if they appeared punier than usual.
Yet if they were puny, they were also cunning. Three of them pulled out great nets and hurled them at the forward ranks of charging Gors and Ungors. One, poorly adjusted for the Beastman's speed, missed entirely. Another was blocked by a Gor's great axe as the Beastman raised it to defend. It still wrapped up and entangled the weapon, forcing the snarling Gor to halt and fumble with trying to remove it with undexterous hands. The third wrapped itself along the legs of the forward most Gor tripping him. His companions showed him no mercy and he was quickly crushed under foot.
Ghorak leapt through the air at the first Orc, fury filling every fiber of his being. He brought his axe down in a great overhand arc. The Orc, with comparable strength, blocked it with his great glaive yet such was the force of the Wargor's blow that beneath him the wolf staggered. The Orc's eyes were focused and clear, but the Wargor had won his place by besting Gors and Ungors alike. Moving quickly he slammed his horned head into the Orc's skull. A human face would have caved but the Orc was knocked from his perch.
The now recovered wolf leapt for his throat but, from beside him, the remaining Beastigor tackled the creature to the ground. Ghorak nodded. The Orc was his to finish, though it was not a worthy combat.
Before Ghorak could bring his axe to bear he was interrupted by a noise unlike anything he had ever heard before. It was a shriek that sounded like the mixture of several dying birds and the rhythmic cutting of axe on wood. No, that is what it reminded him of, but it was not exactly that. With wariness that he had not felt ever before, every Beastmen briefly glanced at the new sound.
From the clearing they came, a pair of minotaur sized metal giants. In one hand they had a vile claw, in the other a spinning circular blade. It was a giant tool, a tool that could move on its own—think on its own. Their very existence was an anathema to the creatures of Chaos that stared, mouths agape. For a second they were so torn between colossal hatred and horror that they could not move.
The distraction was fatal. Goblins took advantage of it to press home their attacks with strange devices, envenomed blades, or, in one case, a fireball. The other two remaining Orcs that were still moving howled and bowled over some Gors, mount and rider working together to tear them to pieces. The Wargor's Orc pulled out a second blade and with the same nonsensical war cry drove it through the plate armored chest of the Wargor.
Lok'tar Ogar!
If the Orc thought this was victory, he was a fool. Instead he found only death. The Wargor was a champion of the gods, if only a minor one, and was endowed with the resilience of two hearts. Ghorak brought his ax down on the surprised Orc and with a smash split the head below in many pieces. Another Orc, who had lost his wolf but just finished his other opponent with a decapitation, howled in outrage and leapt at the Wargor, who met his charge head on. The Orc was knocked down and, wasting no time, Ghorak raised his ax to death a swift blow so he could turn his attention to the metal giants…
Only for the claw of one of them to reach out over his hand and clamp down. A moment later the Wargor howled and then bleated in desperate pain as it squeezed, smashing bone and ligament to ruin in a gory pop. The axe was dropped but curiously the creature of metal did not bring the blade around. Instead it began to lift him up.
Through his bleats and blurry eyes, the Beastman caught a glance at the rest of the battle. It was a massacre, though not the type he would have liked. Four of his herd was in pieces as a result of the living tools, with another getting disemboweled by the brutal shrieking blade even as he watched. The rest of the herd was retreating, though the pursuing Orcs and goblins were running them down. Only the Minotaur, having just finished greedily devouring a few goblin corpses, still fought. It charged the second metal giant which hastily turned to meet it.
As the Wargor was raised so his head met the tool's head, the thought briefly passed through that he could maybe break open its skull with the unwounded hand and still prevail. This same thought seemed to occur to the living tool, which stopped the spinning blade but used the weapon to brutally pin the Wargor's remaining arm to his side. The Wargor screamed in pain as the Minotaur bellowed in rage, its giant ax coming down at the other living tool's shoulder.
Then the head of the living tool lowered, revealing Torn-Shoulder, the Goblin with the boots of fire. Its face lit up in a horrific grin, and the Wargor was reminded of the terrible malice of the little imp race, comparable only to the cruelty of the Ungors as they sought to take out their frustrations on whatever they could. No, this was worse, for an Ungor or Goblin could only pick out your eyes, cook you alive or perhaps disembowel you slowly. This smile held malice of the unknown, of horrific means of torture using tools that could not be devised in any sane mind.
To the side the other living tool had caught the axe of the minotaur with the clamper, and was in the process of brutally disemboweling with the blade.
At the last the Wargor finally understood his race's long hatred of technology. It was an advantage that they could never have, a mystical set of tools that they could never overcome, only rage against. More than that he understood it to be fear. It was a sense of foreboding that the Beastmen were outdated and irrelevant in any era where the tool, where this technology was dominant. This was the doom of the Children of Chaos, a foe that would one day break the forests, tame the wildlife and scour his race from the land forever.
At his side the blade began to turn.