No Evil - Finish the Story #30

The Battle of Bloodneck Valley

[The first part of the story is provided by @dirge:]

Shog, called the Bonecrusher by his people, knew they’d lost when human horns roared across the battlefield. The Imperiate had come after all, to aid their elven allies of the Alish’tae Republic. Shog’s people, orcs of the Galak Tribe, so named after the mountain upon which they’d once lived, fought hard and well. But they fought alone.
Orcs no allies. Not even their Gods, the Old Ones, cared anymore.

As the morning sun crept above the clouds, illuminating the blood soaked fields, the Imperiate horsemen charged out from the forest. Muk’nola, matriarch of the Galaks, sounded her war horn, signalling the retreat. But it would be too late, Shog knew. Those horsemen would slaughter them as they fled. Their children, next.

An elf, empowered by the sense of looming victory, stormed forward from their line, straight towards Shog. He parried the elf’s longsword then heaved his mighty hammer, Breaker of Worlds, in a perfect arc. It smashed upon the elf’s helmeted skull, and he proved his namesake for the countless time. The elf’s head exploded in bone and carnage.

“Back!” he heard. “Fall back!” In disarray, the others around him fled towards Bloodneck Valley, where they’d encamped. Their position fell. Shog screamed to maintain the line but knew the day was lost. His people fled. He had no choice but to follow.

He reached the camp, already nearly moving again, fleeing up the valley to the highlands. Shog, exhausted, reached Zee-zee, his daughter, and Gheelah, his love. Gheelah had already packed their yurt and few remaining possessions. “Flee!” he shouted to her.

“And you?” Gheelah asked.

“I stay to hold them back.”

In typical orcish fashion, their utter devotion, love and mutual respect expressed itself only in their shared gaze, never in public, spoken word. He gripped her hand. He told Zee-zee to be strong. Gheelah nodded. Then the doy galloped away with the rest of the fleeing, broken host.

Muk-nola, matriarch, rallied the remaining Galak warriors. They reformed to a single line. Bloodneck Valley was narrow. Rocky. Layered with crimson colored clay. The land elevated as it led to the Highlands, their only advantage.

Maybe at the height of the tribe’s strength, before the humans had come with their purges and stolen their land, before the elves had arrived to ‘cleanse the world of evil’, maybe they would have been strong enough. But Shog saw they had a few hundred left. A few hundred to hold a line against an entire battalion of Imperiate horsemen and Alish’tae swordsmen, the latter no doubt already being reinforced.

The ‘Fair Folk’ would aim to eradicate the Galak now, as they fled.

Shog marched up to Muk-nola. She hailed him. “Yog-Sothoth burns in us,” she said.

“Yog-Sothoth hasn’t given a shit about us since Galak Mountain ceased its fire,” Shog replied.

Imperiate horns loomed. The sun flared, blinding Shog for a moment. Another disadvantage. The ground rumbled with the cavalry charge.

“Either way. I’ll crush his soul in hell. Right after I’m done with these Fair Folk.”

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Photo by me

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No Evil

[This is my ending of the story:]

"It's not fair!" Fran exclaimed standing up.

"What's not fair?" Al asked defensively. "You lost, why do you always make a fuss?"

"You allied against me, you did it on purpose!" The sweet face of the blond girl was pouted. She slapped the miniatures on the table, scattering several of them.

"No!" Billy shouted, hurrying to put them back in the hexes of the map they were in before. "Maybe you don’t lose, you can still have luck with the dice!"

Al greeted the words of the cousin with a sarcastic laugh, which caused two big tears to rise in the eyes of Fran. The girl ran to throw herself on the sofa, hiding her face against the pillow.

"Fran can’t lose! Fran can’t lose! "Al raged.

Billy was wringing his hands, already huge for his age, looking disconsolately at the game that only he was interested to really conclude. He always lost himself in fantasizing between those drawn forests and mountains, he could recall the scenes of epic fights from the plastic miniatures, as if they were happening before his eyes. He was not interested in winning the game, but rather getting lost in the story imagined behind the dice rolls and the hex moves.

"I’m the winneeeeer!" Al shouted, grabbing the miniature of the Imperiate cavalry captain and using it to throw away orcs and elves. "Sdush! Sdush!" he said, imitating the sword strokes with which he imagined the captain would eliminate the enemies, and even the allies.

Billy let him go. Now the board was such a mess that finishing that game according to the rules would have been impossible. He got up and went to Fran.

"Come on, come on, you know what he’s like, he always wants to win," he told her, trying to make her turn, but she moved away her shoulder sharply.

"I'm angry with you too, you did not understand that the orcs are good!"

"Good? The orcs are evil! They are ugly, with fangs, they always make war, they have no friends, they worship monstrous deities..."

"That’s not true!" The girl turned to him, the tears were already drying on her cheeks. "Even the orcs have wives, husbands, children. They just want to live free, with their families, on their land. They are no worse than your elves who want to "purge evil" by exterminating those who do not think like them, or humans who want to conquer all lands to "civilize". "

Billy kept his dark eyes fixed on the blue ones, though a little red, of the little cousin. In the stories he imagined until now, he had thought that being heroes meant fighting evil and defeating it. Perhaps, however, being truly heroes could mean fighting for one's freedom and living in one's own way, without being judged for one's appearance.

After a slow rumination, he took Fran's little hand with his big hand and said:

"We still have some time before dinner, do you want to listen to my drums practice? One day I'll be in a band and we'll do some songs that talk about freedom and being respected even if you're ugly, dressed badly and with a fierce face. "

"Ok, Billy!"

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This is my entry for the week #30 of the awesome contest held by @f3nix: Finish the Story, the best way to earn STEEM and Steem Basic Income Shares.

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Thank you for reading!

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