Deus Necros

Several orcs found themselves in a bad position; others were too slow on the uptake and were killed by random blows.

Goblins were not able to position well to shoot down darts, while Lizardmen were unable to fight properly on the slope.

Everything that had been an advantage in the reeds became a handicap up here. The goblins’ strength was distance, but distance required room, and the slope was becoming a choking funnel.

A goblin tried to pop up to fire and got swatted like a pest. Another dart went wide because the shooter had to duck a stray elbow. The lizardmen were worse off, legs too short for steep ground, tails throwing their balance, claws scrabbling on loose stones. They could fight in water like predators; here, they looked like fish forced into a brawl on dry rock.

Only the trolls were still able to throw down large boulders, but that will soon become useless as the wave of Red Orcs got closer and closer to allied lines.

The boulder tactic needed distance to build terror. Up close, a troll couldn’t throw without hitting friend and foe alike. Ludwig saw that moment approaching like a deadline. Each red orc that climbed higher wasn’t just another enemy; it was another step toward nullifying the one ranged advantage that didn’t rely on mana.

“Are you sure the ward is working?” Dedal asked as more Red Orcs rushed up.

Dedal’s voice had an edge now, less confident, more tight. He wasn’t panicking, but he was watching the same math Ludwig was watching: bodies piling, line bending, injuries stacking. Hope wasn’t something warriors liked admitting they needed, but right now, the ward was the difference between “hard fight” and “we die here.”

“It should be,” Ludwig said as he ducked under a blow and tore away the arm of the assailant, followed by a kick to the chest that flung him into his own allies.

He didn’t have time to sound reassuring. He answered while moving, because standing still was death.

A red orc’s axe skimmed over his head, close enough to ruffle his hair, and Ludwig slipped under it, twisted, and hacked through the elbow joint.

The arm came off heavy and hot, spraying blood across Ludwig’s forearm. Before the red orc could even process the missing limb, Ludwig drove his heel into its chest and sent it flying backward into the press.

The impact knocked two more red bodies off stride, and the brief pile-up created the kind of breathing room that felt like mercy.

The body hit another, and it kept colliding with more dropping them to the ground, a small reprieve.

For a heartbeat, the uphill momentum stuttered. Red orcs tripped on their own, snarling and shoving to regain footing.

Allied orcs seized the moment, stabbing downward into exposed throats and ribs while ogres struck low again, cutting mobility instead of chasing clean kills. Ludwig used that reprieve like oxygen, inhale, reposition, live.

“Just keep holding!” Ludwig howled as he noticed that his forces had begun to bleed too much.

He could feel it, morale leaking with blood. Not fear, exactly, but the creeping awareness that strength had limits and limits were being tested.

Ludwig’s voice had to pin them to the slope. If they broke and ran without structure, the red tide would roll over them and reach the safe lands before dusk.

“Watch out!” Gale’s voice came like the boom of thunder as Damra was too slow to react to a Red Orc that he didn’t see.

Gale’s warning hit the air a fraction before the danger did.

Ludwig snapped his head and saw it, Damra mid-swing, body turned wrong, blind side open. A red orc had slipped into that gap, club raised high, the kind of overhead crush meant to turn a skull into paste. Damra’s eyes widened, but his feet were planted, and on a slope like this, planted meant trapped.

The swing of the orc’s club aimed to crush Damra’s head, but somehow, somewhat it missed, completely, and it hit the ground.

The impact shook dirt loose. The club cratered the soil with a dull boom that Ludwig felt through his boots even from a few steps away. Damra flinched hard enough to wrench his neck, expecting death, then stared at the ground like he didn’t understand why it was still there and his skull wasn’t.

That made Damra swallow hard. He was just about dead there.

His breath hitched. For a moment, he looked less like a carefree ogre and more like a man who’d just seen the thin line between feast and grave.

But instead of the Red Orc correcting itself and repositioning itself to strike again, it struck at the dirt, the same spot again, then lunged on the ground, feasting on dirt and pebbles as if they were prime cut meat.

The behavior was wrong, wrong enough that even the battle noise seemed to thin around it. It dropped to all fours with a guttural sound that wasn’t a laugh or a roar, but something closer to hunger.

It shoved its face into the soil and began chewing mud and stones like an animal driven mad, jaws grinding, throat working. Its eyes rolled, unfocused. Spittle mixed with dirt, and it kept eating like the slope itself had become meat.

This wasn’t a unique experience either, looking around, even further down, several other healthy Red Orcs were also mimicking the behavior.

Damra frowned for a second, looked at Ludwig, then smiled.

It wasn’t a happy smile. It was the kind you gave when you saw proof that the enemy wasn’t invincible, that something, anything, was beginning to fail on their side.

“EVERYONE BACK AWAY! THE WARD IS WORKING!” Ludwig’s order gave everyone hope. Hope that they might still get to see the next morning’s sun.

The shout rippled through the line fast. You could see it in the shoulders easing for a fraction, in feet shifting with renewed purpose instead of blind panic.

Even the goblins, tucked in brush and stone cracks, moved with a little more confidence once they heard it, because hope didn’t make you stronger, but it made you stay.

And staying on this slope was the only way they survived long enough for the mountain to finish waking.