Disclaimer: I do not own Kuroinu or Lord of the Rings or any other franchises, that will be referenced and/or used within this story.
End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. - Gandalf
Chapter 1
Middle-earth, East Rohan
The heavy downpour washed over the land from dark clouds covering the sky entirely. Strong gusts of wind threw the rain around like whips of water and one could barely see ahead of oneself nor hear one's own voice over the sounds of wind and rain. The previously hard soil under the grass quickly became supersaturated with water and became slippery mud with large puddles of water forming in the deeper parts where the water couldn't sink in fast enough. Occasionally lightning illuminated the land, shortly followed by thunder rolling over it. It was as if the sky was trying to drown the world and wash everything away. Or perhaps to turn the world into a massive ocean and sink the land entirely.
The thought almost had something calming to it. To just sink to the bottom of a lake or sea with all senses numbed and eventually slipping away into unconsciousness to never wake up again. Though he despised thinking like some pinkskin, he barely had any strength left to fight such thoughts off from worming their way into his mind as he laid in this godforsaken battlefield. What used to be a fertile meadow of grassy hills and valleys was now a place filled with death and decay. The corpses of orcs and men alike littered the ground and were stacked on top of one another, here and there forming small piles of bodies. Weapons and pieces of armor laid scattered across the field. The ground was already soaking in their blood before the rain came shortly after the battle ended and its survivors retreated, leaving the dead bodies to rot there.
Not that his kind wouldn't have done the same except from eating some of the dead as there no need to waste somewhat edible meat, but now he was laying in a pit among a pile of orcs like himself and watching the rain slowly swallowing the land while he was drawing his last breaths. Gimûb knew that this was the end for him. His body was growing colder with every passing moment and he didn't have the strength to pull himself out of the dead bodies to at least try and survive. But no, some orcs just had to fall on top of him after he lost consciousness. Specifically on his arms and legs, which was why he couldn't move at all. An arrow stuck out of his shoulder, but it no longer stung and burned when it first hit him. Now it was just numb like most of his body. If it wasn't for him breathing and feeling the resistance that the bodies on top of him put whenever his chest slightly painfully rose and fell, he would have assume that he was dead already.
Knowing that his life was about to end, Gimûb couldn't help but look back onto his life as he got nothing else to do anymore other than waiting for death.
His life had begun like that of all orcs, deep underground in the vats from which they pulled them out of. The first things he recalled hearing upon awakening had been the hammering and sizzling of forges and orcs shouting orders at one another as well as the sound of whips being swung and hitting flesh. After he was pulled out and pried from the slimy cocoon-like membrane, he recalled seeing more orcs like himself running around like ants in an anthill, the orange glow of fires illuminating the dark rocky caves, dozens of platforms that had been dug into the rock with wooden ladders and bridges connecting the various levels of the place. There he was suddenly in the world. Hairless, dark green skin covering him from head to toe. A hideous face no mother could love with a mouth filled with uneven but sharp yellow teeth, a flat nose and a pair of yellow eyes to look around. He really didn't look like anything special among the orcs.
Not even more than a few minutes old, he stood upright and walked around as his batch of newly made orcs was pushed towards the training grounds by older orcs where they were relentlessly trained for combat. From the very first moments on, the orcs already had an inherent tendency to brutality, cruelty and killing. Therefore, it was only natural that some of the new orcs also ended up dying on those training grounds. It was frowned upon since it meant they needed to make new ones to replace the dead, but nothing the instructors couldn't change by threatening and hitting the new recruits. But it was never discouraged. In fact, others were excited about the brutal bloodshed and laughed at the misery of the unfortunate losers.
Once the newly made orcs knew that the pointy end of the weapon was meant to go into the enemy and not oneself (and yes, all the orcs cut themselves at least once), the batches had then been given some crude makeshift armour and weapons and then were designated to larger groups of orcs to fight in the armies of their dark lord Sauron. The batch that Gimûb became part of a rather small warband. As soon as they joined the captain's ranks, they were part of Sauron's armies and already sent out to fight for their Dark Lord. Their warband's purpose was to take part in small skirmishes outside of Mordor's borders as well as scouting ahead before the main forces would eventually follow, softening up the target's defenses.
While this line of work sounded rather simple, it was something entirely different in reality. Due to their small numbers and task, they were only given the bare minimum of supplies and as a result there was fights among the orcs almost every other day once food began to run out. He had killed a few orcs trying to steal his rations, even if it was old, hard and moldy piece of bread he could barely chew and was repulsed by doing so. Even the captain was always in a bad mood and taking his anger out on some complaining orc certainly helped to both get the others back in line and to release pent up fustration and anger. Seeing an orc practically tear another one apart, while he was still kicking and screaming was certainly something that made Gimûb realize to keep him mouth shut and his head low if he wanted to survive longer than the ones next to him.
What was constantly grinding on his nerves and probably everyone else in the warband was the constant marching with little to no breaks in between. Ever since Sauron had mobilized his troops into full-swing, orders had been ushered almost constantly throughout the entirety of his armies, themselves included. Once they were done at one place, they practically were on their feet again to head to the next village to terrorize. Regardless of wind and weather and distance, the orcs marched on through the countryside. If it wasn't for the pillaging of villages, they would have starved at least three times over as hunting and foraging for anything edible wasn't an easy task with so many mouths to feed, even with a relatively small warband like their own and it taught them how to be self-sufficient. It also helped that sometimes they came across human stragglers and bandits, who more often than not failed to run away fast enough, easing the orcs' food problem once in a while with pinkskin meat at least. Plus, fighting humans certainly kept the orcs from turning on one another.
In what little downtime the warband got, Gimûb heard a lot of things from the older orcs in their unit that he became interested in. Stories about their homeland of Mordor, which he barely recalled as the only time he spent there had been in the vats and the training grounds before being designated to the warband. The perhaps clearest memory of that place was when they marched to the Black Gate, watched the massive structure open and then walked through it, leaving Mordor for good. Tales of the orcs there, the uruk who were stronger and better than other orcs like himself, how they apparently were divided into tribes, each specializing in some other field of warfare and having fought amongst one another for supremacy in Mordor not too long ago. And then there were rumors of some "Bright Lord", who had been fighting Sauron and challenged him for supremacy over Mordor some time before Gimûb had been pulled out of the vats. There were more tales, some clearly exaggerated like how one orc apparently killed a graug in his sleep and woke up next to its corpse the next day, others questionably like some saying that the the Mystic Tribe believed in some Great Serpent that would come and devour the world once the orcs cleansed the world off manfilth. All that had made him more curious and secretly wish to see it all for himself one day once they would go back there.
But sadly that day never came.
The last assignment took them into the east of Rohan. The place was already besieged by marauding stranglers, Saruman the White's uruk-hai and some small orc warbands like their own in the Westfold, but they were still ordered to go there. The orcs marched for days through the grasslands. Rations were used up rather quickly, because of them being forced to move fast without much of a break and the mood was getting worse with every day. They had no wargs or any other beasts of burden, meaning they were forced to carry everything themselves. While it would make sense for shock troopers like themselves, who only had so much compared to an actual army to begin with, it was the distance and lack of rest that made it a monumental task for even the already experienced orc warriors. Tensions kept rising between the warriors and more than once the captain killed a couple of them to keep them in line and quell his anger, though it was obvious to anyone that it was a futile act. The unit had become unstable and it would only have taken so much to make the whole thing descend into revolt, anarchy and chaos.
It didn't come to that though. In the middle of a night, Gimûb and the others had been woken up by the orcs on nightwatch screaming and shouting when a group of Rohan's warriors attacked them on horseback. The orcs were disoriented, exhausted and outnumbered, yet their instincts as born killers kicked in and compelled them to attack the men with utmost ferocity. Orcs were trampled under the horses, skewered on lances, swords and arrows, while men and horses were viciously slashed, hacked and clawed at, if not just bitten. It had been an uneven battle that the orcs were doomed to lose from the start, but they would not go without a fight and not without taking down as many pinkskins with them as they could.
In the middle of that chaos, Gimûb remembered little more than running and slashing at any human that got close enough. His rusty and dented armor had creaked and groaned as he swung his weapon, a cleaver-like sword at the enemy. Metal banging against metal as a shield banged against his helmet, which made the strike to the head less lethal, but still caused him to fall to the ground and his helmet to break apart. Another orc saw the distracted human, that was about to kill the downed Gimûb and tackled him to the ground, viciously tearing him apart. Getting back on his feet and grabbing his sword again, Gimûb continued to run across the battlefield, determined to sink his weapon into the closest living human he could find. Then a burning pain erupted in his stomach as an arrow hit him between the loose plates of rusty metal that were his armour. Then another hit his shoulder and he lost balance. Falling was the last thing he knew before darkness had consumed his mind and the sounds of battle faded away. Only later he awoke to the thunder overhead on the silent battlefield when the rain had just begun, leaving him in his current state. Laying on his back in that pile of corpses and metal on the verge of death with no way to escape.
In retrospect, his live really wasn't all that good. He may not have had been an orc slave, being whipped all day, digging tunnels and vats and building fortifications, but it was still not exactly a good life. He wasn't any more of a slave than any other orc was a slave to to the Dark Lord Sauron.
'Why am I even thinking like that?' Gimûb thought to himself as he tried to move his limbs again, only to once more find himself unable to do so at all. 'It's not like it would have been much different if I had been captain or warchief or something.' The feeling of defeat was beginning to fill his mind.
They were made to be fodder for their dark lord's armies. They were all very aware of that right from the start of their lives. It was simply what they were made to be. Whatever an orc did in their life or how high he climbed up in the hierarchy of their group, they all were just expendable pawns. And even if they did become a captain or a warchief, the orcs were very well-known to betray one another in prospect of becoming the new warchief oneself. Essentially, orcs couldn't trust other orcs, not even the ones they bossed around. Some might have higher aspirations, to become legends that other orcs would tell one another long after they had passed, but for what exactly? To ultimately be someone else's whipping slave? The Outlaw Tribe had once attempted to free themselves from the rule of the Dark Lord and the Bright Lord from what he had heard, only to be conquered anyway. Resistance was just futile in Mordor as the Dark Lord ruled with an iron fist.
It all appeared so nonsensical to Gimûb in that moment. So useless. The cold began to sink deeper into his body as the water now reached his chest. Lifting his head off the corpse it was laying on, he saw that the rain had made the water rise up high enough now to form a small pond, submerging the rest of the dead bodies aside from himself and some others at the top of the pile. He could no longer feel nor move his arms and legs in an attempt to get out. Gimûb knew he was finished and let his head lay down once more in defeat.
'So this is it, huh?' He thought to himself as his eyelids grew heavier despite the rain whipping his face and lightning and thunder roaring over his head. 'I got no idea what's gonna happen now... Well, maybe I get reborn as an orc in the Misty Mountains or somewhere else, far away from any "Dark Lord" one barking orders at me.' With that thought in mind, he closed his eyes. Death could claim him now for all he cared.
That was when something disturbed him in his dying moments.
"Do you not seek revenge?" A voice suddenly said. It spoke in a quiet tone, but it was loud and clear enough for Gimûb to hear over the sounds of the rain and the thunder. The orc's eyes shot open as he raised his head and tried to look around for the source of the voice. The rain impaired his vision, but as another lightning cast light upon the land for a second, he saw it. A shadow appeared in the dark and muddy water. In the low light thunderstorm everything was already dark, but that thing was like a pitch-black void that swallowed even the shadows. Then the spot started to grow bigger before breaching the surface as a long tendril. It rose higher and higher, towering over Gimûb and piles of bodies around him. Like a snake, its head, or what seemed to be its head, slithered through the air as if looking around in a daze, before abruptly turning towards him specifically and moving in closer. At an arm's length it stopped its advance and simply seemed to stare at him.
To say that Gimûb was terrified would be an understatement. Despite the shadowy entity being so dark, that he couldn't make out any eyes, mouth or even the texture of its skin, it felt like that thing was staring at him. He knew it was staring at him. A formless thing made out of shadows. He had seen and heard a lot of the horrors Sauron was supposed to have in his armies. Spiders, that ate men and orc alike or dragged them into the deepest caves to feed an even bigger one. The ring wraiths spreading terror and chaos anywhere they appeared. Fire-breathing drakes that could reduce entire villages to ashes in a matter of minutes. But this was something he had truly never seen nor heard about. Something that defied common sense simply by looking at it.
"Do you not seek revenge against the ones that wronged you? Do you not want more than this?" The being asked again as it wriggled around a little, making a sound like a mass of worms crawling around and all over one another. Gimûb felt bitter bile rise up in his throat at that, but he managed to swallow it down. Who knew what such a thing might do if he vomited on it and he definitely didn't want to find out. Though, the words the being spoke resonated with him and he felt anger rising inside of him.
Ever since Gimûb had been made part of Sauron's armies, he had harbored resentment and envy towards the other forces under the Dark Lord's command. The orcs of his main forces got more food to last for the duration of the journey to the next battlefield and the time after that. They got great beasts of burden and enslaved graugs and trolls to also bring siege weapons with them to topple even the mightiest fortresses and castles of man, elf and dwarf. They got better weapons and armour, whereas Gimûb's warband was walking around with old weapons in old torn leather and rusty metal they scavenged from some battlefield. The orcs and uruk-hai in Isengard even got wargs to ride as cavalry and scouts, whereas an entire warband meant to be marauders, scouts and shocktroopers was travelling onfoot for days and days without food and water. And the Nazgûl, the ring wraiths nowadays were riding through the skies on fellbeasts and drakes.
How could he have forgotten all this until now? How could he have possibly thought of peacefully dying after all of this unjust mistreatment of the backbone of Mordor's forces? The anger washed over his mind in ripples, growing stronger and stronger the more he thought about it. Despite, being on the verge of death and absolutely terrified of that shadowy figure to the point where he wouldn't have dared to breathe in its presence if he could have stopped merely a minute ago, he replied with a loud and clear voice.
"Yes." The being slithered back a little, giving him more space and air to breath as thunder rolled over the land once more, growing more distant as the storm began to travel further.
"Mhm. Yes, I can feel it. Your resentment towards your so called superiors. Such is rather bad mismanagement of an army. But that's not all, is it?" The being said, suddenly growing spindly long arms along the side of its formless body. It slithered around the pile of corpses, coiling around it like a centipede around its prey. Despite the bizarreness of the situation and the unsettling feeling this thing caused him, somehow Gimûb felt himself compelled to answer.
"I hate them... To hell with them all! Throwing us into the fires of war like that with nothing but our own skin and teeth to fight. Not even giving us weapons to fight with and having us plunder broken things." Gimûb's voice grew louder and angrier with each word as his lips pulled back revealing sharp teeth. "All the while that stupid eye can't do anything but look on and whisper commands to his servant!"
"Mhm. " The being hummed, not interrupting the orc's tantrum as it seemed to watch in amusement as the orc was getting more and more riled up.
"And the pinkskins, they are so cowardly even with their armour and horses. They have to attack us at night to even hope to kill us! Useless pieces of shrakh! All of them! The humans, the dwarves, the elves! And especially that "Dark Lord" and his big mouthed pet! Where do they get from ordering us around like that?! We don't need them! We can just fight ourselves! At least, we wouldn't fight with no armour or clothes on our back and no weapons in hand!" Gimûb shouted at this point with all the unease he felt earlier gone. The entity chuckled a bit as it crawled around the pile one more time before stopping in front of the orc and looking at him.
"So if you had the chance, would you take revenge on them? For the unjust mistreating you had to endure all your life since the very start? For denying you what you think you deserved? Would you slaughter all your enemies standing in your way?" It asked in an intruiged voice, though the answer was obvious.
"Of course!" The orc replied, making the being chuckle once again as it leaned closer to his face again. What it said next, caught Gimûb off-guard.
"That is no longer possible."
For a moment, neither said a word. The only sound rolling across the battlefield was the now distant thunder and the still relentless rainfall. The orc could only blink as the faceless, formless thing before him kept staring down at him. It seemed to notice its confusion and spoke up again.
"Unfortunately, your injuries are too great and you are on the verge of death. Soon you will depart from this world." It said. Of course, Gimûb knew that, still it stung a bit after he had gotten so riled up about it. "But while I cannot save your life and grant you the revenge you crave, I can offer you something else." The being spoke up once more, getting the orc's attention. "This world is but one of many. Plenty of them are also home to humans, elves, dwarves and orcs. Here's the deal. I grant your plea for vengeance by sending you to another realm, but only if you prove to me that you are worthy of such a second lease on life. What do you say? Certainly a better deal than to die here and become food for crows, dogs and worms, isn't it?"
Gimûb was silent once more, thinking and contemplating the offer as best as he could. Not other lands, but other realms with orcs and pinkskins? The idea sounded so outlandish, even he had to question it. In general, the whole situation was surreal. And proving that he was worthy? How? He was as good as dead like that thing said. His arms and legs were buried in corpses and numb and the only thing he could move were his eyes, his mouth and his neck to some degree.
And still… There was this flicker of light in this hopeless situation with that offer. A chance to survive that he had to take or to die like that. He might have been created for the sole purpose of being fodder for Sauron's army, an expendable creature which hundreds could be created on a good day, yet he was also alive. He wanted to live. To survive. No matter what it took. His mind was made up and apparently the shadow noticed it as well.
"Good choice." Was all it said as it reached out with one of its many arms and the last thing Gimûb knew was its palm covering his face, before the darkness engulfed him once more.
Eostia, Land of the Dark Queen
The continent of Eostia was a land whose inhabitants had been in conflict with one another for as long as the could remember. While the southern areas were predominately inhabited by humans, elves and other civilised races, the north was inhabited by monsters of all varieties. These creatures seemed to harbour hatred for all other life ever since their beginnings and were notoriously known to attack, murder, pillage and defile the lands of the other races. While these monsters certainly existed and relished in their heinous and vile acts against others, there never has been any sort of large scale invasion of monsters heading into the southern lands. Same went for the people of the south, who didn't make much of an effort to expand further into the north. While small skirmishes and incidents of monsters attacking villages, stealing lifestock and defiling the women to spawn more of their own happened rather rarely, these same incidents were also quickly repelled, restoring normality.
All that changed 1000 years ago when the queen of the dark elves, Olga Discordia declared war upon the southern lands. Somehow she seemed to have managed to rally the monsters of the northern badlands under her banner and used them to attack the south. Roughly at the same time, the Dark Fortress appeared seemingly overnight in the borderlands between the north and the south. No one knew how it came to be or whether these two events happened independently from one another or which one came first or if one actually allowed for the other to happen. But Olga Discordia made the Dark Fortress her base of operations and to this day sends her monstrous hordes from there to the south to attack the people there, spreading chaos, death and destruction.
In retaliation, 7 city states formed an alliance under the command of Celestine Lucross, the reincarnation of an elven goddess in the body of a high elf, who in the years to come became more commonly known and revered by the people as the Goddess Reborn. The Seven Shield Alliance united the people under one banner and ever since have been doing their utmost to keep Olga's forces at bay.
For a millennium, this war has been raging on and no end was in sight.
The Dark Fortress' appearance, however, had more effect than simply giving the dark elf queen a fortified residence. Its corrupting powers altered and poisoned the land around it, making life itself rather difficult for most living beings. There was no day or night in the land effected by its presence as the skies were always dyed in a crimson red like spilled blood. The air was filled with marsh gases, making even the act of breathing to a risk for one's life in the long run. The dark magic killed off the vegetation and turned the freshwater bodies into murky swamps, reducing the once fertile land into a truly uninhabitable and barren hellscape. Soon afterwards these lands were given a new name in relation to their ruler, the Land of the Dark Queen.
Ever since the fortress had appeared 1000 years ago, the corruption of the land has slowly been spreading further and further in all directions, including towards the border of the Shield Alliance's territory. While slow, it was clear that it was only a matter of time until its influence would allow the dark queen's forces to launch attacks more easily at the south as the land was deadly for people to live in and harder for counterattacks to be effective without any way to seek cover or survive long enough in those badlands. While in general not very populated due to the threat of monsters and the limited protection these settlements had due being further away from the city states of the Alliance, the people in these outskirts would also soon be forced to abandon their land as the corruption would swallow them whole like it had many others in the past.
Somewhere along the outer regions of this poisonous realm, laid rather small pond in the middle of nowhere. The corruption had killed off most of the plantlife a long time ago and what at one point could have been pond of clear freshwater was now a muddy cesspool. Even around this body of water, only little vegetation grew in patches of sickly-looking grass, that had mostly died a long time ago. Fumes of some sort rose from the stale waters in barely visible trails of smoke as they emitted a foul smell, that caused even insects that would normally swarm towards decaying flesh like flies to stay clear. No animal or monster would be insane enough to drink from that place unless they had no other choice and though some of the monsters were immune to the poisonous effect the Dark Fortress had on the land, they'd still rather not drink from that sludge.
Suddenly, there was movement in the otherwise still and dead waters of the pond. At first, it was weak ripples, that were barely noticeable as they occurred in long intervals of several minutes between one another. One might have blamed the wind for them at first, despite there being no wind. But about 20 minutes later, the ripples became more frequent and each stronger than the last. The truth was that it wasn't the wind that was causing the waters to move. Instead, the dark magic corrupting the land was gathering and concentrating in that place as violet sparks of electricity danced across its surface. More and more of it amassed down in it as something was formed from it down at the bottom of it.
After a while, it stopped, the sparks slowly stopped appearing and the ripples began to ebb away once more, returning the water back to its calm state.
Then something rose from the mud only to collapse back into it with a splash. Again and again, this unknown thing rose and fell back down, revealing more and more of itself as it seemed to pull itself from the pond's muddy bed. A short arm swung at the air above the pond with a thick lump of mud at the end, only to snap in half at the elbow and fall back into it. After a short while, it came back up again. This time with a fully developed hand to claw the air and slam into the pond to pull the rest of its unformed body out when a second arm emerged as well. At first, the body was little more than a lump of mud with only a vague distinction between its head and torso due to a slight difference in size and shape. It also did not manage to pull itself out at first, falling face first back into the cesspool and submerging beneath the surface only to rise again. But as the mud run down, it became more and more defined. The tips of ears began to peek out the dark mixture of water and soil oversaturated in the corrupting powers of these lands. Shoulders formed above the arms as it pushed itself further out of the substance it was birthed from.
A gap appeared on its head and the being took its first breath as it shortly grew teeth and a tongue. It began crawling through the mud on its arms as they grew thicker with thin muscles around the bones. It let out animalistic birth screeches as it shook around, trying to free itself from the constraints of the muddy waters. Not long after, it reached the shore and dug its sharp nails into the soft dirt to drag itself out. More mud fell off its head, revealing a hideous humanoid face with a rather flat nose and pair of still closed eyes. Sharp teeth filled its mouth now as it crawled out howling. Dragging its midsection across the ground, it left the pond at last, revealing a pair of legs ending in human-like feet with short but sharp nails. Then the creature flopped onto the ground with its upper body and laid there, while drawing deep and shaky breaths from exhaustion.
After a while of simply laying there, the creature opened its eyes, revealing bestial yellow irises as it groaned and pushed itself off the ground onto its two slightly shaking legs. The mud had dried up a bit, caking the skin in greenish-brown dirt from head to toe. Looking down on its hands and then its whole body, it struggled to keep standing.
Suddenly, it felt a sharp pain in its head, causing it to fall on its knees and grab its head with both hands. The pain was so much that it grit its teeth, while digging its nails into its still pounding head. Hunching over to the point its forehead almost slammed into the ground, it could do nothing but tremble and bite back a scream. Its eyes darted around wildly, looking around for anything on the ground that might cause the pain or something to make it stop. But before long, the headache began to ease up. The being still kneeled hunched over on the ground, gripping his still slightly throbbing head and panting for a minute or so until its breathing finally calmed down.
Slowly, it stood up. It was no longer shaking and only slightly panting as it first looked around itself. Behind it laid the cesspool it had pulled itself out of. Around it some patches of grass grew on an otherwise barren ground. The skies were covered in thick dark clouds filled the skies, yet they emitted a strange red glow that illuminated the land in a dimmed light. It was still clear as day though. Finally, it looked down itself once more, before opening its mouth.
'Did... did that thing actually sent me to another realm? It sure looks a bit like Mordor, but less hot and more wet.' Gimûb thought to himself as he shifted his gaze from the scenery around him to himself. 'Barren land and ominous red glowing skies overhead. The only thing missing is Mount Doom and the blasted heat.' He thought as he suddenly became aware of something. Despite the fact that he stood on his own two feet, the grass around the pool he had crawled out of seemed rather tall, almost as tall as himself. In fact, the rocks sticking out of the barren soil around him also appeared rather large.
Now, Gimûb had been traveling outside of Mordor for most of his life, so he definitely could tell something was amiss. For a moment he stood there as his brain kicked into overdrive to figure out what it was. Then he saw something sticking out of the ground. Walking over, he crouched down and dug it out of the ground and saw that it was a broken wooden bucket or at least the half of it still somewhat intact with the rope used for the handle being covered in dirt and falling apart as well as the wooden boards that had turned green and dark from rotting. But it was rather large. In fact, he barely was able to wrap his fingers around edges of the rotting wood. If it was whole, he probably could have stood in the thing. While the orcs were not the craftiest beings in Middle-earth, he sure knew how a bucket was. With that in mind, it finally clicked in his head.
"Shrakh, I'm smaller than a bloody dwarf!" The reborn orc shouted in frustration as he dropped the rotten bucket. This was a rather troublesome revelation to Gimûb. Since orcs were basically made fully grown, they all were basically the size of a regular human. Now he was shrunken down to something like this and no idea if it was going to be a permanent thing or not. How did that even happen? Was he even still an orc? And if not, what the bloody hell was he now?
But before he was asking himself more existential questions, Gimûb's ears perked up at the sound of distant thunder. Turning his head in its direction, he saw how the blood red glow of the sky seemed to get stronger in that direction, presumably the source of it. But that wasn't all for Gimûb. He could sense something. Having lived long enough under the rule of Sauron as well as having seen what some orc tribes could do, he could tell the dark and evil magic. And something beyond the horizon was definitely oozing with that sort of stuff. Not as much as the Eye of Sauron, but it was still rather strong.
Part of him felt compelled to head towards it and to figure out what it was, but then Gimûb remembered just how that life of servitude had turned out to be and the feeling of resentment he had felt in his last moments came back with a vengeance.
'No! I'm not going back to that shrakh of a life!' Gimûb thought hatefully as he glared in the general direction the feeling came from, before tearing his gaze away from it and looked around the place. 'I'm a free orc now. I'm my own master. Never am I getting back to being a slave! So let's see…' He looked around himself once more. In the opposite direction of from where he felt the dark magic come from he could make out some vegetation further away and even some trees. If Gimûb knew one thing, then it was that as long as there was some plantlife around, there was also a higher chance that there was something that he could hunt for meat than a place with no plantlife. 'Probably a good idea if I go the opposite way of that glowing thing. Gives me the creeps. But first, I gotta find something to use as a weapon. Then I can hunt me some food… And some clothes to hide my bits would be good too…' He thought as he finally realized that he was as naked as on the day he had been pulled out of the vats. Without further delay, Gimûb began to wander off into the wilderness.
He might not know how he got into this place or what that being did to him. It felt like a big part of his memories were missing from the moment on when he had agreed to take the deal of that thing and it reached out to him. But he could figure all of that out later. For now, he had to put his past experiences to good use and be self-sufficient like all the times his warband set up camp between their raids.
Hours later
The Land of the Dark Queen was a dangerous place, that no sane person would willingly enter without precautions or a motive that would justify them crossing it. There were more than enough tales of overconfident would-be heroes and heroines, who set out into that blighted and forsaken land for one reason or another, only to meet a fate worse than death and of counterattacks in retaliation that followed such foolish actions to make anyone think twice before entering or even going to its border. While Olga Discordia concentrated most of her troops around the Dark Fortress and the northern lands the monsters originate from, the lands at the border were less guarded. But this was not the case, because out of the dark queen's carelessness. The lands at the outskirts of her realm simply did not her to deploy her armies to secure it.
While its unnatural hostile environment to most living things was not as strong as in the immediate vacinity of the fortress, it was still a hazardous place inhabited by wild monsters that might lack the militaristic discipline of her troops, but were still very deadly to any invaders that might cross their path. A naturally and unnaturally defense against the campaigns the Shield Alliance had launched in an attempt to capture the Dark Fortress and put an end to the war or at least to get a foothold for the former.
Therefore, it was rather uncommon to find troops of the dark queen in this place and in low numbers at that. Silently, a shadow flew over the skies. From the ground one might have mistaken it for a hallucination of the mind when looking at the dark clouds overhead and thinking that something was moving in them. That was actually the case and only as the being lowered its altitude and left the clouds completely, it became clearly visible. It appeared to be a large bird of prey akin to an eagle, though its head had a crown of feathers akin to that of a secretarybird and a long neck like a vulture. It's underside appeared dark grey in colour while the upperside was dark brown. Despite the bird being large enough to pick up horses with both of its talons, the heavy beats of wings were almost completely silent. The bird drew a few circles before finally descending down onto the barren ground, where a pair of figures jumped off its back.
It was two dark elves as once could tell by their dark skin color and long pointy ears. Both were beautiful women clad in rather scandelously revealing clothes. One had short deep red hair. She wore what could be described corset that covered her large breast, but still left a deep cut from above. Her lower body was covered by what could be seen as short pants with a few small throwing knives stuck in holsters, where as the main weapon was the bow on her back next to her quiver of arrows. The other had long silver hair reaching all the way to her shoulder blades. Her clothes consisted of a similar corset but only covering her bosom only half way, creating a window at the lower and upper side of it, while her lower half was only covered in a thong. In one hand she held a staff that looked like a tree branch that had somehow been twisted into a straight rod, while the top resembled the leafless branches of a tree. Both of them wore steel reinforced leather boots and dark stockings that reached up their lower legs just a bit shy of the knees.
"And you are sure it was supposed to be in this area?" The dark elf archer asked the mage as the two of them walked away from the large bird they arrived upon.
"Yes. From what little mana was still lingering from this sudden event, this place seems to be the most likely location of the phenomenon." She said as the archer stopped abruptly. "Huh? Is everything alright, Alexandra?" The mage asked her companion.
"Are you telling me that we might not even find what we are looking for in this forsaken place, Marlene?" Alexandra asked as she glared at the mage, who looked a bit sheepish at her.
"Well, the event was rather sudden and quickly over, so it is in general hard to trace it back to its source due to how the mana has dispersed over time..." Marlene said as Alexandra balled both of her hands into fists as she started shaking.
"So you are telling me... we went off on a wild goose chase for perhaps nothing and in the middle of the night at that?!" Alexandra shouted at Marlene, who backed one step away from her companion.
"Now now Alex. Calm down, deep breaths." Marlene said, while holding both her hands up. "Her highness herself appointed not just us with this task and she wouldn't have if it wasn't important." That seemed to work as Alexandra stopped trembling, before sighing. While the Lands of the Dark Queen had not experienced a day and night cycle in 1000 years, it didn't mean that the dark elves had no need to rest or sleep. And still, their queen had called upon her forces immediately in the middle of the night for a search mission.
Alexandra herself wasn't as adept in the arcane arts as Marlene was, but from what their queen had told them, she had been alerted by a sudden spike of magic in her lands. What that exactly meant was not clear as such an event could have a variety of reasons, but figuring it out was their mission. Immediately teams of scouts and mages were assembled to figure out what had caused it and to determine whether it was dangerous or not. The ideal case would have been to find the source and to capture it if it was something useful or to destroy it if it posed a threat. Olga herself couldn't partake in the search herself, leaving it to the dark elves that had at least some affinity to magic to detect the highest unusual concentration of mana and then use that as the tool to pinpoint where it was.
Unfortunately, this was basically as easy as to find the location of a burnt out campfire by following the trail of smoke that had already dispersed. And due to that, the area that would need to be covered was rather large as the location could not be pinpointed to one specific place and the certainty of actually finding the source was rather, whether that source was moving or not.
Perhaps it was Alexandra's own ignorance or lack of understanding of magic, but she surely didn't understand her queen's orders sometimes. She didn't doubt them or her for that matter, though it sure was an inconvenience to be thrown out of her bed in the middle of the night to go and look for something at the outer edges of her territory, while it wasn't even specified as to what it even was they were looking for.
"Alright, let's see if we can find whatever caused this." She said, causing Marlene to visibly relax as she released a breath she didn't know she held back. Turning around again, Alexandra stepped on something hard. Looking down, she spotted the rotten remains of a wooden bucket. "Tch!" Clicking her tongue, she kicked the decaying piece of wood, splintering it into pieces and sending it flying as she looked on with disdain at the remains of what used to be a tool of the previous inhabitants of this land. Marlene chose to not comment her companions actions and instead closed her eyes as she held her staff with both hands before her. For a moment she simply stood there in a state of deep concentration to feel the mana around her, before opening her eyes again.
"Nothing. It looks like the mana of that event has completely dispersed now." She said with a sigh, while Alexandra groaned.
"So this really was all for nothing. What a waste." She said, while kicking a pebble into the nearby pond of muddy water as it skipped across the surface of the stale water once before sinking below its surface. "Let's go back. I doubt the roc appreciates being out so long at night as well." Marlene only nodded in agreement before the two walked to their mount and headed back the Dark Fortress.
In the end, none of the parties sent out managed to find anything. This irked Olga Discordia a little, but it was how it was and she couldn't change that. All she could do was to keep an eye out for anything unusual happening in that area, if such an incident repeated itself. Meanwhile, one particular duo of dark elves had been completely oblivious of the drag marks out of the pond and its continuation in a trail of small footprints leading into the distance.
Greetings dear readers. I have returned from hibernating and sorting out some things in my existence with a new story. Apologies for the long absence. *looks at posted stories, last updates a year ago* Was I really gone for that long? I only felt like 70% of it... ANYWAY!
For those of you who know me, this comes to no surprise, but to say that I like monsters is perhaps as obvious as to say that pure water doesn't conduct electric currents. I just really like to make use of them and see not a lot of people doing so in fanfictions. Now as to why I chose a Lord of the Rings orc for this story concept, there are a few reasons, but the simplest one is that these orcs really don't seem to get a lot going for them. Which is honestly a shame, given the fact that they are pretty much the stock monster adversaries of the fantasy genre aside from goblins.
Sure, there isn't a lot to focus on them due to there not being a lot as Tolkien himself never went through with his original idea of the orcs being a warrior race, practically reducing them to drones for Sauron to throw in masses at the kingdoms of the free people. But that's why I liked Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War as these two games had more of a focus on the orcs and fleshed them out as people, making them feel more organic than just being flesh puppets for Sauron to command. Plus, I really despise how Tolkien basically killed the orcs off after the War of the Ring in his books, where they all just went into such a heavy depression they retreated into the darkest corners underground and died, just because he had to tied up the loose ends which feels more like an afterthought.
They honestly deserved better in my opinion.
There isn't much of a reason why I chose Kuroinu other than it being one of the default settings I can make great use of when it comes to unleashing chaos, mainly because even that is a better outcome for the place than the canon one... which means quite a lot when you think about it. That place is screwed... literally!
For now, I'll say that the next few chapters will focus a bit more on world building to set up the story that follows, mainly because of the fact that Kuroinu as a offbrand franchise never really seemed to have put a lot of thought into world building to begin with and rather focused on the monster and NTR offbrand actions. Not that I complain as it allows me and other authors to include other things into the setting to flesh it out fittingly to the narrative one wants to tell.
See you next time and have a good one!