The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre

by Brian McGoldrick

  “Taking over for Talon?” Danleib's words are delivered in an ambiguous tone.

  “A kick to the balls always worked wonders for him. Remember when he brought the Kerran Emperor to his knees?”My frown is filled with bitter regret.

  “Heh! Good times. Good fucking times.” Wihtred's comment is followed by his cackling laughter.

  With the exception of Ahlred, the others chuckle at the memory of Talon kicking an emperor in his balls in the middle of his own throne room. As usual, Danleib's simple words served their purpose. For all but one of us, he pulled our minds back from the anger and hate surging from within our bodies. I don't know why we seem to suddenly be feeling such overwhelming emotions that are apparently related to our bodies, and it scares me.

  “RAAR! RAAAARRRRRR! RAAAAAARRRRRRRR!” The bellowing comes from inside the flames. Even as a Dvergar, I can't reach that kind of volume, and the Power carried within the sound is disturbing.

  Despite my worries and our banter, the orcs are falling around us with only a handful of blows needed to take down each one. The superior strength of our Dvergar bodies almost makes a mockery of their attempts to stop our blows. From the memories of the real Thorrin, the only way orcs defeat Dvergar is by outnumbering them hundreds to one.

  “RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!” Louder and more pain-filled than the previous roars, the sound seems to reverberate from the cliff and sea.

  THUMP!

  A gust of gale force wind scatters the flames, and a massive orc charges out. Its face is a motley of black and red: charred black in places and raw burned flesh in others. Its blackened armor is filling the air around it with a heat shimmer. That orc must be cooking inside its own armor.

  “RAAAARRRRRR!” Its pig-like eyes filled with rage, the beast sprints into the cold, grey water of the sea. Trailing behind it, howling in agony, another four orcs hurtle into the water in its wake. The abrupt hissing and steam rising from them gives testimony to the brutal heat of the metal armor enwrapping their tortured bodies.

  Growling, snarling, and cursing, the orcs splash huge handfuls of water over the parts of their armor that are not already submerged. The glares that they direct toward the wall burn with unquenched hate and rage.

  As orcs and players stare at the five orcs squatting in the waves, a collective pause settles on the battlefield. Whether shock, fear, awe or other emotions, their impact is enough to still the vicious combat.

  *Connor, get as many people up the wall as you can, while the orcs are distracted.*

  My message, sent via my whisper charm, sparks Connor into action. From behind, the sounds of people continuing to scale the wall as quietly as possible reach my ears.

  After a couple minutes, the first orc stands up and stalks out of the water. Its bloodshot, beady eyes rake the battlefield and the wall, before settling on the pyromaniacs on top of the wall.

  The words it growls to the orcs around carry clearly across the strand, otherwise silent except for the susurrus of wind and waves. I can pick out maybe one in five words from this orc dialect, but it is clearly talking about fucking and killing.

  “Just like an ass-fucking orc to think with its needle dick, course its brains are nothing but the shit in its ass.” While he wiggles his pinkie in the air, Ahlred's words boom out in one of the orc dialects form the Lands of Despair.

  The orc's glare locks onto Ahlred. It may or may not have understood the entire sentence, but it knows it's being insulted. Raising a maul with a head bigger than a quarter keg or beer, it snarls something else in its dialect.

  All six of the orcs begin to chant something in a language I don't recognize. It's definitely not an Orcish dialect, and I don't remember ever hearing anything quite like it. As their chant continues, faint auras of bloody light spring up around the orcs.

  The other orcs that are trapped on our side of the flames begin to clash their weapons together or pound them on their shields. The clatter is in time with the six orcs chant.

  “Look at the Power threads around that orc! It's Coalescent!”

  “Fuck, all of them are.”

  “No. Only three are Coalescent. The two on the left haven't completed Coalescing their Power.”

  Altering my vision so that I can see patterns, I stare at the orcs. Within their aura, threads of Power are writhing. Looking closely, I can see that each thread of Power is made up of twisted smaller threads of Power. It's not just the lead orc. All of their orcs are Coalescent or on the path to it.

  We don't really understand Coalescence. Despite all of us having memories dealing with it, none of the bodies we've been put in have ever begun to Coalesce their Power. All we really know is that it's a type of meta-magic that allows a Power user to somehow increase or magnify the level of their Power. Every Power user can use one or more of three types of Power: Mana, Ki, and Psi. Even if you can't use one or two them, there is still a latent pool of those Powers inside of you. Coalescence allows a user to somehow use all three of those pools at once to fuel their abilities.

  “We really have shit luck. God must be punishing us.” Farnulf frowns, as he stares at the orc champion.

  “Which god? The biblical one, The Nameless, or one of the others?” Dacbold's comment is delivered in deadpan.

  Farnulf's frown deepens, but the rest of just snicker. Farnulf is a Christian in real life, one of the few left in America that dares to be open about it. Or maybe, I should say he was one on Earth. He takes the Nameless' claims to be a god as a personal insult. Any mention of a god beyond the Bible offends him, but he has never been able to rationalize The Battleground of the Damned or The Lands of Despair with the Bible. It must he hard on him.

  “Now is not the time for this. We have Coalescent orcs to deal with.” Danleib's soft word cut off the argument before if can get started.

  “The leader's mine!” Ahlred's words are a vicious snarl.

  All seven of us whisper the mnemonics to trigger our buff spells. Since the beginning of the Great Fuck Over, I've increased the number of buffs I can maintain at once to nine. I seldom use that many, but right now, I cast six of my strongest support spells and my three most destructive attack buffs.

  My eyes are drawn to the side as Ahlred is surrounded by flames as red as his hair. He taught me the spell for that damage shield, and it burns Mana faster than anything else I know. He'll have about twenty to thirty minutes tops before he's suffering from Mana depletion with just that damage shield running.

  The intensity of the pyromaniac's fires appears to be waning. Glancing at the wall, I see several of the weaker ones already leaning heavily on the roughly made parapets.

  “RRAAAAARRRRRRRR!” The lead orc bellows in rage as it charges toward us.

  Ahlred's lips peel back in a nasty grin, and he starts charging at the orcs. “EAT SHIT, ORC FUCK!”

  The rest of us follow Ahlred's charge. There is nothing else to do. If we don't break the orcs on this side of the flame wall before it fails, we are going to be in deep shit.

  As we close with the Coalescent orcs, a few of the normal orcs begin to rush toward us. Seeing the few moving toward us, tens and then hundreds more follow, while others turn back to their interrupted battle with the other players. Spells and missiles weapons rain down from the top of the wall in support of the human players.

  “Cwichelm! Wihtred!” I gesture toward the incoming orcs.

  “Fucking, fucked fuckers!” Wihtred digs out a couple more of his fire necklaces.

  “Hurry up with those Coalescent bastards!” Two of Cwichelm's crystal lasers float up over his shoulders.

  Boom!

  A couple seconds later Ahlred and the orc leader slam into each other. The explosive force of their weapons impacting one anther sends sand and small stones flying in all directions. As the sand settles, the orc stumbles back a few steps, and Ahlred falls back one.

  Ahlred should have the advantage. He just needs to finish the battle before he runs out of Mana. He's not like Talon who drags, would drag,
out fights for the sheer love of fighting. Ahlred always goes for the fast kill.

  BOOM! BOOM! Zap! Zap! Zap! BOOM!

  The explosions and crystal laser fire from Wihtred and Cwichelm fill the air, but I don't turn to look. One of the Coalescent orcs is right in my face, with another coming up beside it.

  Clang! Boom! Bang! Clang! Boom!

  The orc is wielding an axe and a hammer. As it hammer meets my axe, my weapon buffs detonate the air, but the bloody aura around the orc seems to absorb much of the force. The impact of its axe on my shield sends a tingle up my arm to the shoulder. If not for the defensive buff on my shield, I think that axe blow might have punched right through it.

  Boom!

  Danleib intercepts the one coming in on the left flank of mine. His shield charge sends it flying backward a dozen feet, but the orc twists and leaps to its feet like a wild animal.

  Orcs are brute force creatures. They're not much different from other beast-man races. They only think about being stronger. They almost never use Power-based attacks. All of their Power is consciously or subconsciously used to enhance their physical prowess. They're ridiculously strong, but they're not Dvergar. My orc is less skilled and weaker than I am, and after thirty or forty exchanges, it's reeling backward. As it stumbles, I take a quick look around.

  Danleib's orc is bleeding from a wicked gash in its chest. He'll finish it in a moment or two. Dacbold has his orc on the ropes too. Farnulf has already killed the two orcs that were only partially Coalescent and had gone to the aid of Wihtred and Cwichelm.

  Ahlred is the only one with a serious fight on his hands. Both he and the orc are wounded. Though, none of the wounds look serious. Physically, Ahlred is the strongest of us, but that orc seems to be just as strong, if not stronger. That orc leader must be a horde champion, a monster that is strong enough to crush most of the horde, but not strong enough to challenge the chief.

  As my orc steadies itself, I shield charge it, knocking it back again. While it's off-balance, my Dvergar steel shod foot plunges into its groin. Its brownish-grey skin turns greenish, and almost comically, it crumples to its knees.

  “Skeevy whore what dumped me out...” At least, I think that's what it says. I guess that's 'mommy' more or less in Orcish.

  “Orc boy's got nards.” It takes real effort to maintain my frown and not smirk. I love the old movies, the ones that were on the banned media lists for so many stupid reasons, before the lists were banned as well.

  My words are in English, and the orc just stares at me in dumb brute confusion. It doesn't even try to resist, as my axe takes its head off.

  “Talon would be proud to see how well you've learned, Grasshopper.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Danleib laughs, as he rolls the corpse of his orc over, and cleaves open its throat for good measure.

  Only Ahlred hasn't finished off his Coalescent orc yet. Dacbold has already engaged the oncoming orc tide with the others.

  “Ahlred stop fucking around and kill it. What do you think you are, Talon fighting for the fun of it?”

  Ahlred's beard seems to bristle at Dacbold's words.

  *Was that a smart thing to say?*

  *He needed a kick in the ass. That damned orc is stronger than we are. It's probably to the second level of Coalescence already.*

  Without waiting for Ahlred, Dacbold and I charge into the cliff side flank of the orcs pressing in around the other Dvergar. Even with the destruction wrought by Wihtred and Cwichelm's weapons, there still six to seven hundred orcs still alive.

  With a whispered mnemonic, I put a one-shot buff on my shield.

  Thud!

  As I slam my shield into an orc's shield, the buff goes off. The explosion shatters the orc's shield, and the wave of fire and force hurls it back into the orcs behind it. Knocked over by the blast wave, eight or ten more orcs fall to the ground, with burns and obvious broken bones.

  “HOOYAH!” Ahlred's bellow drowns out the cacophony of the battlefield. Even fifty yards away, the Power driving the sound is palpable.

  The orcs in front of me are staring past their fallen brethren and over my head, with slack jaws.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I almost smile.

  Ahlred has his axe raised over his head, with the head of the orc champion jammed onto the top of one of its bits. His malicious grin and the hint of madness in his eyes would give pause to anyone or anything.

  “Fuck me sideways with a dragon's dick. I never knew he was a fucking squid.”

  Wihtred's quip causes Cwichelm to snicker, and I can't keep from snorting.

  Spinning in a circle, Ahlred launches the orc head into the middle of the surviving orcs.

  “Die, mother-fuckers!” Wihtred digs out another one of his necklaces and flings it toward the arcing orc head.

  BOOM!

  As the necklace impacts the head, it detonates in midair. A huge fireball and concussive wave slam down into the orcs on the ground

  “AAAARRRRGGGH! RAAAAAARRRRRRRR!”

  Howls of agony erupt form the orcs, and the survivors from the edge of the blast try to force their way out through the packed mass of other orcs. Some squabble and fights break out in the middle of the orc bands.

  “NOW! HIT THEM HARD!”

  Stomping on the fallen orcs, living or dead doesn't matter, in front of me, I attack the nearest still standing orc. Danleib closes ranks with me on my left launching his own attacks on the orcs. These orcs aren't Coalescent, and they go down after a handful of strikes at the most.

  “RRAAAAARRRRRRRR!” Ahlred's wordless roar is more bone-chilling than the orc champion's was. The madness that is normally barely visible rings out clearly.

  Slamming into the orcs, between myself and Cwichelm, every swing of his axe scatters orc body parts and orc blood around the battlefield.

  As brutal as Ahlred's fights normally are, this time he is in a whole different realm. He's never been this out of control before. Could the cause be whatever is causing the unbridled hatred we've been feeling for the orcs since first seeing them today? What is happening to us?

  The walls of fire are clearly thinner and far less intense than they originally were. I don't have time to brood about what ifs and angle toward Ahlred, as I cut down more of the orcs. Orcs kill Dvergar by outnumbering them hundreds to one, but we aren't just seven Dvergar. With the added numbers and attack power of the other players, we continue to slaughter the orcs, but we are in a race against time. All around us Dvergar, the orcs are closing in.

  “JACKHAMMER!”

  With Ahlred on point and Dacbold on drag, we form into a 1-3-2-1 formation, with a Dvergar wide space between each of the 2s. Danleib releases two clockwork bats that circle overhead, while Cwichelm's lasers float over the middle.

  “DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP!”

  Ahlred drives into the orcs, with Farnulf and myself a step behind him. The crystal lasers lay down a crisscrossing pattern of fire behind us, and the clockwork bats cover the side with subsonic attacks. The few orcs that push through the brutal weapon's fire are cut down by Dacbold, Danleib, and Cwichelm. While singing, Wihtred stays in the middle ready to backup anyone who needs it.

  “If you're havin' trouble with the high school head.”

  Wihtred backs up, and Ahlred steps back between Farnulf and myself. The crystal lasers change their fire from the back to the front carving up the unsuspecting orcs with their beams of coherent light. In the back, with the sudden lack of laser fire, Dacbold, Danleib, and Cwichelm carve into the hesitant orcs waiting for a chance to get at our backs.

  “He's givin' you the blues.”

  As the lasers pause, Ahlred steps out and we shift back to our forward movement. The laser once again covers our backs.

  “You want to graduate but not in 'is bed.”

  Again, we attack the orcs behind us.

  As we move through the orcs, continuous shifting our attack pattern based on the lines of a song they can't even understand, the orcs are cut down
one after the next. It takes around ten minutes to whittle the orc numbers down to a bit more than two hundred, and the walls of fire are already guttering. Glancing at the wall, all but a few of the firebugs are barely able stand. Their suffering badly from Mana depletion. There are still too many humans down below the wall. If the firebugs' Mana gives out before we finish off these orcs, we're fucked. We need to get our people up on the wall now, before the rest of the horde gets to us.

  “HUMANS, PULL OUT! GET UP ON THE WALL!” My bellow should be clearly audible to everyone in the battle.

  The people who stayed down to fight are all from the better guilds, with the stronger, more battle savvy combatants. They start a fighting retreat to the wall, reducing the width of the combat lines while covering each other.

  “THE SAFETY DANCE!”

  “Ah we can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind.” His Dvergar singing voice is terrible, but before the Great Fuck Over, I saw videos of some of his performances. As a human, he wasn't bad.

  Dancing and bouncing in time to music that only exists inside his head, Wihtred is having the time of his life performing for this unappreciative audience.

  The people up on the wall are looking at us like we're insane, or maybe, like we're monsters. We Dvergar are the only ones out in the middle of the remaining orcs. Ahlred turns toward the orcs still pressing the human players.

  Fear and desperation are visible in the little pig-like eyes of the orcs, as they turn to meet our onslaught. They've seen hundreds of other orcs and know that they have no more chance than the trails of orc corpses marking our path.

  Fwoosh!

  A carefully controlled wall of fire springs to life behind the orcs directly engaging the human players. Led by Connor, archers mercilessly slaughter the orcs inside the wall fires, while they're occupied by the melee battle.

  The last of the players jump, climb, and levitate to the top of the wall. Now, the only ones left outside with the orcs are we Dvergar.

  With the easy targets gone and seven Dvergar hunting them, the orcs begin to scatter toward the dying walls of fire separating them from the rest of their horde. When they have an advantage in number and strength, orcs are merciless blood-thirsty enemies. When they are a disadvantage, orcs are cowards.