[Surge]

It had been a long, long time since the Khardran War Machine.

Yet even old cogs could be greased, mechanical bolts oiled. The Orcs from Vortex were descendants from a proud race, a race that had faithfully ruled what had once been the largest Empire thrown together on the continent. Their ancestors were ones of pride and victory; the progeny of what fruitful labor and hard dedication brought. Somewhere along the way, they had missed that. Somewhere along the way, humans, Vysstichi, elves, it did not matter…all had enslaved them. To tie them down. To deprive them of their naturally-born right, to deprive them from surmounting these cruel oppressors and growing to their fullest potential. These humans, they were afraid. They did not want to be vanquished, did not want the tables to turn, to be the oppressed.

It was too late for them now.

Some of the messengers had not made it through the breaches and gates of Paxia. Certainly not the latter half, whom had been easily intercepted by the West Wardens. But the earlier ones, yes, they had avoided detection. Partially because the West Wardens were too busy setting up camp, and partially through the clever and cunning that the Orcs in Paxia were being forced to rely on. Messengers were being interchanged. Most of the Orcs who made it in through the city walls allotted to stay as opposed to try and penetrate the Wardens once more.

But there was one in particular who was let free.

Gurg Thung, one of the few slaves who had harbored a little more intelligence than the rest of his kinsmen, was dispatched earlier that faithful brightening. Equipped in merely his brown tattered clothes, a rusted hand axe, a small crossbow, and a woodland cloak given to him by the Chieftan within Paxia, supposedly a tool that would assist him from being detected by the West Warden scouts. Gurg did not believe it. He did not rely on petty things like cloaks to keep him from being seen. Within the depths of Har’oloth, within the dark shadows and recesses of those caves; oh yes, he knew how to keep to himself.

He arrived to the marching band of Orcs briskly; still some miles south of Paxia, he felt little trepidation in approaching them in the open. He bore in his hand that rusty hatchet, raised as a sign of truce, speaking out to his brothers in that thick and grunting tongue.

“Ju stop, I got message from da chieftan there. Where be da leader here?” questions would be asked, a parchment would be handed over.