A Song Dedicated to the Big, Beautiful Green Mass (4)
The prince jumped down from a pile of corpses and drew his sword as he came out of his combat roll. In this single movement, he had cut into the waist of an Orc Warrior, blood gushing from the wound. The Orc attempted to grapple the prince with its arm, yet Adrian had already moved past him towards the thick of the battle.
The blow had been true, and its timing well-judged. Had Adrian cut too deeply into the Orc’s gut, his sword would have stuck fast, and the beast’s hand would have pulped his head like an overripe melon. Vincent watched as the prince’s sword clashed with that of an Orc.
“Impressive,” he muttered as Adrian’s sword danced into the Orc’s armpit, pulled back, and slashed at its exposed throat. The beast threw its hands over the wounds as its lifeblood spurted out.
The prince’s display of swordsmanship had not a whiff of mana to it, and the style of itself was beautiful and terrifying all at once.
Another show of his skill as the prince blocked an ax that had been thrown at his exposed back, the weapon clattering to the ground.
At that moment, the royal infantry fired their arrows into the mass of Orcs, took up their swords and shields, and charged down the slope to close with the foe. The Orcs diverted their force, some charging at the soldiers and others thirsting rather for Adrian’s blood.
* * *
I watched as many of the Orcs chose to fight me and me alone.
“I know much of the ways of war, yet my experience at wielding a weapon is far less than my experience of being one,” I muttered under my breath as I observed their approach. I guessed that facing so many foes was a good thing, as it would force me to give my utter best in the battle. How wrong I was.
* * *
Vincent flicked a hand at Pilsen, who stood next to him. Pilsen whistled, and with this signal, Rangers and knights appeared on the slopes that stretched toward the battlefield from both sides. These were the troops of the Third Legion, who had followed the prince’s own force as a secret contingency made by Count Bale Balahard.
“When I give the signal, fire into the Orc’s to ensure the prince’s safety,” Vincent commanded, though he held no intention of ending the show too soon. The royal infantrymen were doing better than he had expected, their skill in battle greater than he had at first assumed.
He had looked at them as decorative knights, yet it seemed that they had a proper grasp of tactics and were consummate swordsmen. While considering the field of battle, Vincent noticed the prince vault into the air. He clucked his tongue, expecting the green-beard prince to be overwhelmed by the chaos of a real battle at any moment. He raised his hands, signaling for the Rangers to ready their crossbows. Knights had drawn their swords, and their bodies were taut as they expected to rush into battle at any moment.
Vincent knew he just had to lower his hand to end this farce of a skirmish, yet he could not bring himself to do so as he studied Adrian.
“How does he fight so well?” Vincent asked to no one in particular. Adrian had just severed both the arms of an Orc Warrior. Two more Orcs rushed at him, and these were felled in swift succession. In the next graceful movement by the prince, he sliced his blade in a wide arc, cleaving four Orcs in twain.
“Commander,” came Pilsen’s voice as he drew Vincent’s attention away from the battle with a tap upon his shoulder. The man pointed toward the northern foothills of the mountain.
“Oh shit,” Vincent cursed as he jumped onto a boulder. An entire Orc battle unit was moving toward them, their banner fluttering in the wind. Vincent gave new orders to his men, his rangers losing a rain of bolts at this new threat.
“First platoon, remain here as a reserve force, aiding those below once their lines become strained. The rest of you, with me!” The Count’s son ordered as he joined his troops who were marching to face the Orcish reinforcements.
“Fuck, that’s their combat troops. Why are they here?”
At times, the combat troops did indeed move with the scouts, especially if they were looking to hunt larger prey. It was unheard of, however, for more than one hundred orcs, both Warriors and Scouts, to hunt a measly group of thirty humans. Vincent had no choice, the enemy had appeared, and he had to face them. He had only five platoons of rangers and seven knights—and-fifty-seven men against a hundred Orcs. The numbers were surely not in his favor. Ten giant Orc Warriors ambushed his men from one side, and Vincent started drawing power as he rotated his three rings.
“Knights, deal with the Orc Warriors! Rangers, kill every fucking Orc you lay eyes on!”
The Rangers who had made their descent down the slope halted to reload their crossbows. As one they fired, fifty bolts slamming into the charging ranks of Orcs. Just before closing with the Orc Warriors, Vincent gave one last glance at Adrian.
The prince’s battle was nearing an end, not many Orcs still standing to face him. It would surely soon be over. Hearing the great battle roar of the Orc Warriors, he wrenched his attention away from the prince. As one the beasts sprinted towards him, Vincent let the mana flow into his blade.
* * *
The royal infantry had fielded a mindless, almost berserk defense. The Rangers who had rushed in to aid them came to a halt as they saw the prince slice into the Orcs.
“Fire!” Their platoon commander ordered as they loosed their bolts at any Orcs who still stood. They then continued their descent of the slope. They could see the disgusting green tide of the Orc army rush their position as the beasts blew their horns, their banners flapping in the wind.
“Ignore the second wave!” Arwen shouted at the infantry. “Our mission is to guard His Majesty the Prince! Leave those Orcs to the Third Legion!”
Her command only brought stupefied and confused expressions to the soldier’s faces, and she did not understand this reaction. As she readied her sword, she saw the prince blasting into the enemy with a sapphire beam of pure light. The corpses of Orcs exploded into the air, their only survivors being an Orc Warrior who had lost his arms and a scant few regular Orcs who were still hale. Amid all the chaos, Adrian raged on as he showcased his ferocious skill, requiring aid from none.
Adrian paused to catch his breath, the coruscating, blue glow of mana fading from his body. For the first time during the battle, Arwen stared into his bared face, which was devoid of any expression. It almost seemed as if his soul had escaped his body.
“Are you well, Your Majesty?” she shouted at him. Upon receiving no answer, she rushed toward him. She reeled to a stop halfway there, though, for she noticed the look in his eyes. Adrian’s eyes were empty and filled with bottomless grief. She saw a terrible, almost ancient sense of loss within those eyes.
The prince opened his mouth, his eyes still dead. She heard him whisper something in a cracked and sunken voice. At that moment, the great and terrible roar of Orcish battle horns washed over them. Adrian’s head was tilted at an odd angle, and a deep blue light sparked and then faded in his eyes. He tightened the grip on his sword and broke into a sprint, heading directly at the hundreds of charging ravenous Orcs.
“Your Majesty! Stop!” Arwen screamed as she saw what he was doing. He paid her no heed.
“Move out, and stay frosty!” she ordered the surviving infantry. “Hans Dek, you are in command,” she fired off as she rushed after the prince.
* * *
I wandered across endless plains for what felt like an eternity. I only came to a halt when my eyes sighted accursed green-skins, who had chosen to interrupt my solitary journey.I cared not for their number, or their brutish lusts and intentions.
No, if I sighted one of the abominations, I ended it. If I heard one, I tracked it until its blood stained my blade.
Now, there I was: Tearing into the most recent one foolish enough to approach me. Into its flesh, I cleaved, drinking deeply from the vile rivers of blood that flowed from its many wounds.
I chewed its flesh until my hunger was sated. Yet, never did my stomach remain full for long and swiftly came the time when I sought to feed once more. Yes, my hunger never truly left me; it was that severe. No matter how many of these beasts I destroyed, no matter how deep the rivers of blood flowed: Never was it enough.
Not once in my endless travels across that barren Orcish realm did my longing subside. Even my constant tally of victories brought me no sense of elation or even achievement.
My hunger and my bereavement were like an endless abyssal pit down which poison was poured. No matter the many torrents of blood and poison I let flow into that pit, no matter… No, the hungry beast within it never died and was never sated.
Indeed, I wandered that barren land in my accursed search for blood and battle. As time went by, wounds came to my body, and these became scars. My skin was ravaged and flayed, my bones shattered. Every step I took was an exercise in pain, yet I could not stop wandering.
I recalled memories of my wife and a daughter. Yet, at the ceremony… yes, she was killed, her flesh never found. So I battled, I fought, again and again, day after day.
My heart of mana had been depleted so many ages ago, yet, my blade still shone with a glint of light that banished the darkness around me.
Indeed, the powers that were sapping my life-force were the very things ensuring my survival. In each and every battle, I grew older, my lustrous dark hair fading to a lifeless white. My fair, blood-drenched skin wrinkled until I looked like a haggard beggar.
I marched on, my hideous body not once faltering on its never-ending trudge through desolation.
Once more, I met a force of green-skins, and for the first time since I have entered this desolate wasteland, I spoke:
“Alas… Alas.”
It was more of a sobbing groan that escaped from my withered lips than any coherent word. These beasts carried a banner, and upon that banner, there was a phrase spelled out in their crude language. It was a phrase that told me that here was the foe I had been seeking for all these eons, the foe that had taken my love from me.
I cried out like a wounded and cornered beast then, a cry that held great fury. I held my withered arm before me, the arm of a hundred-year-old man. Even with this wrinkled and withered appendage, I still clutched my sword.
I charged at my nemesis.
The first green-skin to face me lost its head, and so did the second. As their necks spurted blood, my sword was already raised before me once more.
An abnormally large green-skin swung its great rusted ax at me. I made no attempt to dodge, my blade glowing with power as it blocked his foul weapon, and wrenched it to the side. I readied myself to deliver the killing blow, yet the energy within my blade petered out, and once more, I was naught but a century-old husk of a man.
The attacks that the great green-skin now launched at me could not be fended off by a being as elderly and decrepit as I. The beast had regained his weapon, and this time it was my sword that clattered to the earth as my arm gave in under his frenzied assault.
His battle-ax slammed into my chest, cutting into my flesh and fracturing some ribs. The last image that flashed through my mind was my wound and the fact that not a single drop of blood flowed from my desiccated corpse.
I awoke, and my arm was limp and shattered at my side, yet I felt no pain. The day that my wife had died, my soul had gone with her into the realm of death. My life had long ago been forfeit, and wounds done to my limbs and chest were mere trifles when weighed against the reality of my damnation.
“Kruhuhu, kruhuhuhuhuhu,” the damnable green-skin laughed as it shoved its finger into the gaping mess that was my torso.
It ground its digit into my wound, causing me to fall back as the pain finally invaded my consciousness. I shook my head as if to clear the fevered dream that I so sorely hoped this was. The green-skin looked at me in silence and then stomped on me with its heavy foot, breaking my sternum as my chest caved in under its might.
* * *
The withered old man stretched his hand out at the Orc, who still stood upon him. I watched then as his fingertips started to become like dust; I watched as his entire body quickly faded into nothingness. As he disappeared, he held a small smile upon his cracked lips, and it seemed that he wished to say something. Yet, the dissolution of his body soon claimed his head as well, and soon, nothing of him remained.
That man, whose life had been marked by his burning lust for vengeance, had disappeared from the desolate plain. Where to, no one knew.
His end under that Orc was a story that was never beheld, and so none could ever recount it.
I am the only one who recalls his ceaseless wanderings and his eventual demise… I alone remember, after all these centuries, I remember.
* * *
There was something mushy and squishy under me. I finally opened my eyes and twisted my head to study it, seeing that it was a bloodied and wounded Orc, and I was practically face-to-face with it. Its face was distorted into a demonic scowl, and it was trying to form some words in a weakened voice as blood dribbled down its chin. Suddenly, its hand shot out and grabbed my ankle as it snarled, showing off its sharp cuspids. A blade flashed and cleaved right through the beast’s neck, its head rolling some distance. Blood spurted from the open wound, the warm liquid spattering onto me. I was amazed more than horrified at the sensation.
“Die, you abomination!”
“Waaagh! No, you die, man-thing!”
Within a second, my world exploded into a chaotic maelstrom of sound, where before silence had reigned. The sound of stomping feet and the clash of weapons. The agonizing wails from the wounded and the dying. Such things forced themselves into my auditory canals all at once.
It was only then that the realization fully came to me: I was upon a field of battle. Once I knew where I was, I started to consider the memory of the suffering old man in a more objective fashion, for it was indeed my memory, as he had wielded me upon his quest for vengeance.
I knew what I had to do. I had to finish [Poetry of Revenge], I had to honor his quest. I then noticed an elite Orc combat unit, much like the one my former wielder had faced moments before his death. The banner was different, yet, this mattered little to me. I readied my sword and started to sing the poem, the mana within me intermingling with the words.
“I piled up green carcasses, raising myself a mountain!
Red streams flowed from it, as bloody nails.”
Blood spattered, and bodies toppled as I flew at the Orcs like an avenging angel of death. I wandered from one side of the battle to the other, my blade drenched in their lifeblood.
“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” Sounded a clear, high-pitched voice from somewhere not in my immediate vicinity. It was Arwen, and I tried to determine her position. It was then that I realized all the Orcs were dead, all except the one I now stood upon with my left leg. The thing beneath me struggled to get free, though in vain, for Twilight pierced his heart soon enough, and he grew still.
『A new verse has been added to [Poetry of Revenge].』
As I saw this message, I knew what this verse was. I whispered it under my breath.
“I piled up green carcasses, raising myself a mountain!
Red streams flowed from it, as bloody nails.
I honor your soul before this mountain of mine!”
『[Poetry of Revenge] has become [Poetry of True Soul].』
It was at that very moment that the forgotten man’s name came to my mind. My gaze roved over the battlefield, finally seeing a man with a bloodied cloak who held the tattered battle banner of the Orcs.
“The Orcs are annihilated! The day is ours!” Shouted Vincent, eldest son of the Count Balahard, and the namesake of the ill-fated avenger who had once wielded me.
I knew what that age-old Vincent’s last words were, even if he had not spoken them. I nervously wet my lips as I repeated the words, softly, over and over again, all the while looking at the young Balahard:
“I shall return in the next life.”
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