Apostles of Doom

That was actually up from what they’d had when the volcano went down, thanks to volunteers from Doom and full-blooded D’Orc children. When Doom had fallen, there had only been about eighty D’Orcs, due to the fact that over two-thirds of the D’Orcs stationed in Nysegard had been pulled to Etterdam and perished with Orcus. There were another forty or so half D’Orcs like Valg himself, as well as another thirty-plus with some D’Orc blood. They relied heavily on their larger armies of orcs, humans and dwarves to keep the island safe, but Unlife was a plague and on such a large “island,” it could sneak in and start spreading corruption, converting living creatures into Unliving creatures at every opportunity. Fortunately, the D’Orc’s goblin engineers had been doing great work at creating makeshift technology to replace the magic and high technology they had lost with Mount Doom.

Valg completed his second rotation and sighed. He could just feel a sort of tingling, this bubbling in the air and spirit that he had never felt before. He was fairly young as D’Orc shamans went, only fifty-two years old — a babe by D’Orc standards, but up there for an orc — but something that he’d never experienced was now gnawing at his stomach. He would need to consult with Targh. Following his link to the Oracle, Valg noted that Targh was in the henge at the base of the volcano.

Valg stepped up on the railing of the watchtower and dove off, his wings whistling in the air as he dove down the side of the watchtower’s peak towards the henge. It was odd for Targh to be in the henge at this time of day; others did the gardening and maintenance, so one would really only expect him there for ceremonies. Or looking for portents, Valg suddenly realized.

After several minutes of extremely rapid descent, Val spread his wings to break his descent and rotated to come in for a landing on the walkway leading to the henge. Crunch went the gravel under his hooves as he landed.

Targh looked towards him and nodded before returning to whatever he had been looking at or doing. Valg approached him quietly and stood waiting for the elder D’Orc’s attention.

“You have questions, child?” Targh asked.

“Yes, grandfather,” Valg replied. Targh preferred that all his descendants simply call him “grandfather.” He said he was too old to try to remember all the generations of his progeny. As a child, Valg had marveled at his grandfather, who was over twenty thousand years old. Such a time was inconceivable to him then, and for that matter, now.

“Something is off,” Valg said.

Targh paused and nodded. “I am no shaman, but I feel it as well. Something has changed, whether for the better or worse I am not sure. It does not feel bad, per se — in fact, more like a distant memory — but for the life of me, it is a memory I cannot recall.”

“It has been bothering me now for more than a day. It is like the energy in the air before a thunderstorm, yet there are no clouds in the sky,” Valg said. “And as a shaman, I feel a premonition that something is about to happen, yet I cannot say what.”

Targh nodded. “Your senses on this are better than mine. But from what little I can feel, I would have to agree.”

“There you two are!” Valg’s mother’s voice called to them. Valg turned to where his mother, the most beautiful of D’Orcs, was just coming up the walkway.

His mother, Eldebra Death Cheater, at only five hundred and forty-two years old was one of the most renowned D’Orc warriors since the first generation that had come from the Abyss. She had more undead slayings under her belt than D’Orcs four times her age.

Valg was reasonably certain she was coming up from the village and her hut, where she cared for his aging father. His father, Karth Death Cheater, was a great shaman, perhaps the greatest in a thousand years, but he was an orc and at only one hundred and twenty years of age, was feeling the pangs of mortality.

“Child,” Targh said, beaming at his granddaughter, “what brings you up this path?”

“Karth is sensing some sort of disturbance; one that he does not understand, but that he feels might be extremely important.”

Targh nodded. “We were just discussing this. Even I feel something; Valg here has confirmed it for me. Let us return to your home, where we may discuss this with Karth.”

All three of them headed down the path and into the nearby village of Krallnomton. The village was due south of the old city of Krallnomton, which had been destroyed during the War of Recovery over three thousand years ago. The memories of the dead were such that when they rebuilt the much-smaller village, they had done so south of the original city, rather than within the old city boundaries.