Eyes closed, Shaman Ugbok leaned over the herbs burning in the fireplace and took a deep breath. As the acrid smoke filled his lungs, images blossomed in his mind.

A gray surface, flat and straight. He noticed elevations on it, some kinds of pointed bumps, but before he could understand what they were, the image was snatched from his vision, replaced by another one.

A circular bone, a kneecap, broken in half, its edges ragged and splintered. The object oscillated back in forth amidst black smoke, vividly white despite of it. Ugbok felt waves of trepidation coming from the image, as it was supposed to represent something urgent.

A third vision came: the mask of bone and feathers and wood representing the shaman’s God, Gog. The Orcish God wore the wide grin of his aspect as the Trickster. The Shaman noticed that the teeth glistened with the red of blood, a remnant of the bloodied kisses the God had given to the Goddess of Beauty.

Despite seeing his own patron God’s visage, the image suggested only anger to the Shaman. Not the kind he would have felt toward an enemy, hot and boiling, but tinted with outrage, as if the Trickster’s guile was directed against him.

As he tried to make sense of it, the image melted into smoke, and meaning was lost.

Ugbok blinked at the skin making up the ceiling of his hovel, the feeling of beaten dirt under his back.

He didn’t wonder how much time he had been under the effects of the herbs. The aches littering his body were proof enough that it hadn’t been a short vision, even if it had felt like one.

Slowly, he got up, grimacing as his aching joint protested. He blinked several time, until his vision stopped being blurry.

His back hurt something fierce, and his eyes and throat stung from the smoke, but he ignored them, thinking about the vision instead. He couldn’t understand the exact meaning of the images the Ravenous One had decided to show him, not right away at least, but the urgency underlining them was quite clear.

A menace incoming?

He grimaced. Like the tribe hadn’t enough problems already, like he hadn’t enough problems already.

With a snarl, he grabbed the small pot full of water lying by a side and took a mouthful of it, then poured the rest over the dimming coals. Smoke rose with a hiss, but no other vision came. It seemed that Gog had told him everything he wanted for him to know.

Putting the pot aside, Ugbok got up, hissing at the pain. Once, he was as spry as a young deer. Regretfully, those times were well behind him.

He took a moment to straighten himself, starting from his headgear, a complicated affair made with intertwined branches, bones and feathers. He patted some of the dust out of his simple breeches and tightened the knots holding his half-mantle to his hips. It was made from the coat of a Manticore, a terrible beast that he had hunted during his youth and which death had marked his passage from Acolyte to full-fledged Shaman. Lastly, he carefully patted away the dirt from his bare chest, so that the complicated arrays of colorful tattoos wasn’t marred in any point.

Satisfied, he grabbed the staff that leaned against one of the support poles. The numerous fetishes dangling from it, bones and amulets, jingled with a discordant tone.

Moving aside the flap of the skin, the Shaman stepped outside.

A squalid village welcomed him. Mud and thatch huts leaned like drunkards, whoever built them not particularly shining for its craftmanship. Skinny hogs and starved-looking chicken prowled courtyards circled with shabby enclosures, fighting over the random dug out worm.

Ugbok glared hard at a gaggle of younglings, their tusks barely stubs, as they ran past, laughing and splashing in the mud of the path. The two females guarding them followed suit, whispering to each otherwhile they held shabby buckets. They gave him signs of aknowledgement, to which he replied with a snarl, and went his way.

As he walked, he met the inhabitants of the village, busy with their daily activities.

Burly orcs in boiled leather, both male and female, sat by their hovels’ entrances, mending torn clothes, repairing broken baskets, sharpening blades or some other activity. They all gave their aknowledgments to the stooped figure of the Shaman, grim nods or grunts to which the Shaman replied in kind.

As he did, he kept his ears perked up, trying to get a feel of the tribe’s humour. The general impression he got was of an atmosphere full with grim acceptance, just a step away from fatalistic resignation.

Curling his lip up into a snarl, he walked faster.

His path brought him to the only house of the village that was built with timber and stone. To the humans of the sorrounding Kingdoms, the large house would have been a little more than a stinking hole, but to the orcs it was the center of the village, where their chieftain lived and ruled from. To Ugbok, it was the center of his world’s problems.

As he stepped inside, the reek of unwashed flesh hit the Shaman like a punch in the nose. As an Orc, he was pretty used to stenches, and as a Shaman doubly so, but even he had to repress the grimace that fought to reach his face.

The chieftain’s hall was large enough to accomodate the entire tribe. It was here that they congregated for communal feasts or to listen to their chief’s orders.

Ugbok remembered it packed full with bolsterous Orcs, feasting and chanting after great victories, remembered great trays of roasted hog and horns full with mead raised to toast, remembered the cloying heat and the stink of sweat.

Now, only the stench remained. The long tables were empty, rough wooden plates and cutting implements laying abandoned everywhere. Some of the benches laid overturned like battlefield fallen, while the braziers had been allowed to go extinguished, thin trails of smoke and ashes the only remnants of the old fires.

In the back, a wooden dais held another table, where the chieftain would eat together with honored guests and his chosen warriors.

Those were human customs, some that Ugbok hadn’t ever managed to rally behind. Orcs were meant to have their feet planted on the earth, not some makeshift wooden scaffold.

Sprawled in the place reserved for the chieftain, there was Ugbok’s fount of worries.

The orc had to be vigorous once, but that time was clearly far in the past. The muscles were gone, and the skin, sallow and pale, clung to his bones. Glossy gray hair, maybe black once, clung to his face. He stood sprawled over the chair, far too large for his skinny frame, with a leg leaning over one of the armchair, not from indifference as much like someone had tossed him in that position and he couldn’t muster not the will nor the care to straighten himself. What impressed Ugbok the most were the eyes: languid, unfocused, like the Orc was staring far away. That wasn’t a look that should belong to an Orc, and seeing it in a brethren, even a hated one, troubled him greatly.

A massive mound of fur and fat rested at the feet of the sprawled Orc, its bulk so vast that the table couldn’t cover it all. Ugbok wondered if the stench came from it, the sorry excuse of an Orc or it was a joined effort.

Before he could decide on the answer, the Orc noticed him.

“Oh, my great Shaman!” He slurred, his gleeful tone oscillating between mocking and sincere. “Have you come to bring your glorious leader your wisde… wisdro… wis…” He hiccupped, shrugged and took a pull from a bottle he had been clutching.

Not even bothering to mask his annoyance, Ugbok advanced toward the dais.

“You have been drinking again.” He said, and it wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a surprise either. Their so-called chieftain seemed to like his bottle almost more than his own life.

“Of-of course!” The orc stammered. “I have to show my appreciation for my new home, haven’t i? And you, give your greetings to our esteemed guest, you mutt!” Saying that, he kicked the thing sprawled at his feet.

There was a shift in the sea of fur. A low growl rippled into the air, making the Orc laugh.

Ugbok repressed the instinct to step back, and glared at the Orc. “There will be a time when you start to act as a true chieftain, Blazek?”

Blazek, addled by whatever conconctions he had decided to add to the poisons already ravaging his frame, needed a moment to register the question. When he did, he almost seemed surprised.

“What do you mean?” He asked. “I am doing the chieftain already. I am enjoying my superior status. It’s what my dear brother did all the time, after all. With him, it wasn’t a problem or not?” He hissed with venom those last words. Looking irritated, he took another pull.

Ugbok grimaced.

Blazek was the younger brother of the tribe’s old chieftain, Trebak. Still, for two cubs come out from the same mother, two more different Orcs couldn’t be found. Where Trebak was brave, strong and intelligent, Blazek was lazy, fearful and foolish. Trebak was a born leader, knowing how to raise his warriors’ spirits, and how to steer the tribe to glory and victory. Blazek possessed some measure of low cunning, but what qualities he had, he had squandered on edonistic pursuits, ending as the wretch that now stood before him.

More often than not, Ugbok wondered if the two were really brothers, or just some freak accident of fate had conspired to bring them together. More often than not, he hoped that was the case.

“Listen to me, chieftain.” He struggled to use the word. Trebak was chieftain just as much as he was a chicken. “I know that you and your brother had your… differences. But even you must recognize that he was right about many things. The tribe…”

Blazek cut him off with a snarl, drops of alcohol flying around.

“My brother, my brother, my brother. It’s always my brother. Always about great and mighty Trebak.” He let out a raucous laughter. “Too bad that the great chieftain has gone and got himself killed, hasn’t he? So much for all his talk about greatness and whatnot!”

Ugbok tighthened his grip on the staff, his knuckles turning white.

“Don’t you dare speak like that of Trebak.” He hissed, his short temper already reaching his end. “He led us to victory.”

Blazek took another pull, and regarded him with a lopsided grin.

“Yeah, he liked to blabber a lot about victory. And the tribe believed him.” He shrugged. “He got lucky a couple of times, then he overreached, like any fool with a bit of a brain could expect, and got himself killed.” He sneered, full of derision and drunk contempt.

Ugbok bristled at hearing him squander his brother‘s memory like that. “He was the restorer of the tribe’s glory!” He barked. “He talked of bringing back the Redhorns to the greatness of old! He led us to it! He would have led us even further, if he wasn’t cowardly assassinated!”

“Just what the sore losers say!” Blazek laughed.

Ugbok gritted his teeth so hard that he could almost heard them creak. “He was ten times your better! He led and lived like a warrior and a chief! While you wallow in your own filth, like the debauched weakling that you are!”

He had the satisfaction of seeing his insults reach their aims. Blazek stopped half-motion, bottle lingering at his mouth, then lowered it slowly.

“I’d be careful with your words if i was you, shaman.” He hissed. “It’s your chieftain you are talking too. We wouldn’t want another demonstration, wouldn’t we?”

Saying that, he pressed his boot between the fur. A growl rumbled across the dais, wood rattling slightly.

Ugbok drew back, eyes shooting venom.

“Yeah, that’s more like it.” The chieftain laughed, retreating his leg. “My brother was all talk, shaman.” He said with a leering smile. “He spouted a lot of nonsense about restoring glory and whatnot, and look where that got him. Down a grave, while the tribe has a lot less warriors.“ He smacked the bottle on the table, making the cutter rattle. “But that ain’t no more! Now Blazek is chieftain. No more talk about glory and honor or whatever. Now we talk about reality! With me, the Redhorns are really going to survive!”

“How?” Ugbok howled, outraged and disgusted. “By discording our honor? Our pride? Our history? By serving the assassins of your brother? The ancestors turn in their graves in disgust, Blazek!”

The drunk orc shrugged. “They didn’t help us in battle, haven’t they?” He spread his arms wide, a gesture made awkward by his position. “Your favorite ate more than he could chew and got what he deserved! Look at me, shaman. I am the future of the tribe now!” He raised the dirty bottle like it was some kind of weapon of legends. He seemed to realize what he was doing a moment later, and lowered it, frowning. “There’s nothing you can do about it, so get lost. And stop coming here to bother me every day. I got stuff to do.” And like to emphasize the point, he took another pull.

Ugbok trembled with rage. He wanted nothing more than grab that cowardly, traitorous wretch and throttle him. But he knew that even his powers weren’t enough to best the monster he cowered behind.

“We will see about that…” He hissed.

If he heard him, Blazek didn’t aknowledge it. Maybe he had decided that the old orc wasn’t worth the effort anyway.

“Get out of here, old orc.” He burbled, struggling to keep his eyes open. “Get out before i feed you to my hound.”

Ugbok didn’t need to be told twice.

He stormed away and out of the hall, the “chieftain”’s drunken laughter pursuing him all the way.

He was furious, but on one thing Blazek was right. If the shaman left him to his devices, he was the future of the tribe indeed: a sleazy, pathetic wretch that wasn’t worthy of being called an Orc, even less a warrior. If he didn’t intervene, that was the destiny of the Redhorns, there was no doubt about it. Blazek’s notion of “survival” wasn’t any better than death.

Curling his lip into a snarl, Ugbok walked faster. He had tried to reach him with his words. Now it was time to pass to other methods.

After the meeting with Nama, Gorren fell into a routine of sort.

As much as the Goddess’ words had struck within him, there really wasn’t much he could about them right now and so, instead of obsessing over their meanings, he had just received more encouragement to keep increasing his powerbase for whatever the future could hold for him.

Gorren would divide his time between furthering his Gremlins‘ instruction, working on his own experiments, training, summoning materials from the Crucible and overseeing the collection and organization of the specimen he had gathered.

Thankfully, the Gremlins were quick to learn, and soon they were expert enough that he could start to delegate tasks. He left them to handle the construction of basic Mana Cores and Golem Frames, which structure he had standardized, general maintenance of the compound and the management and harvesting of basic resources from those animals and plants they had gathered. His summoning material from the Crucible remained fundamental, but at least he could shorten the time he had to dedicate to simple summoning and lenghten the time he dedicated to the study of that wondrous fount.

The Kobold tribe of the island was another problem he didn’t need to concern himself with, as Leng made an excellent job of keeping them under control. In fact, he even had them start to farm their own food, while before they had struggled to sustain themselves with hunting and gathering. Gorren didn’t care one iota about the little critters’ wellbeing, but as long as they were out of the way, happy or not, he was okay with it.

Still, surprisingly, they had managed to make themselves even useful.

In the complex of caverns under the island the Kobolds used as lairs, his Gremlins had found veins of iron and copper. Gorren couldn’t care less about the excavated product, but the raw ore had its uses. Even with his memory-trance, he couldn’t recall raw ores, having only worked with the already refined product. Having a piece of it allowed him to summon more from the Crucible, that in turn allowed him to start his moulding processes from the very beginning of the process. The results was a general improvement of what he could produce.

Grudgingly, he had to admit that even the Kobolds had their uses.

Still, he would be dead before mingling with those critters. Thankfully, Tur and his Guards, five Gremlins he had allowed him to hand-pick and then arm, kept a good guard over the Kobolds, keeping them out of his sight. The Gremlin Priestess, Dara, stood with them, nominally to offer magical assistance, but in truth because Gorren wanted her watched.

Very casually, meaning that it wasn’t a chance at all, the Gremlin had found her divine calling toward Death and Fate, effectively becoming a Priestess of Nama. The point wasn’t lost on Gorren, and, while he didn’t want to risk insulting the Goddess by caging one of hers, he wasn’t ready to let her scamper around on her own. The magical oath that kept her subservient to him was strong, but divine connection were tricky businesses. Not like he would exploit it as long as it didn’t come back to bite him in the ass. A Priest was a great addition to his roster of servants.

Still, all of this allowed him to focus on what it mattered the most, meaning himself and his own private experiments.

Without repetitive works, he was free to experiment and push the boundaries of his golem-making, so that his craft just kept improving. He still couldn’t do what his artist soul dearly wished, meaning disregard needs and materials and just aim to create masterpieces, but still his new models were as pleasing to him as they were powerful and efficient.

Between his works, he spent much time trying to build a flying golem. It was tricky, since he didn’t want a powerful combatant, but a bird-like form that was both swift and able to fly long distances, and that was surprisingly hard to obtain, but eventually he managed.

The new golem was bird-shaped, built using wood and canvas, with two shining quarts making for its eyes. It looked rickety and was a punch in the eye of Gorren’s esthethics, but as long as it worked he wasn’t going to complain, at least not too much.

He sent the bird-golem scouting the area around the lake, taking detailed notes of what he saw through its eyes.

At the same time, he started to work on his trasmutation abilities, first working on captured animals and then on the rare specimens he had personally captured. He preferred the Golems, they were just the perfect mix between silence and obedience, but, sadly, there were tasks that only living beings could do. And his living servants could always use some improvements…

When these works didn’t occupy his attention, he worked to expand his Mana pool and train in combat magic. Instead of squandering his attention on many directions at once, he quickly decided to focus upon Fire and Darkness. They were the elements that came to easiest to him to control and their destructive potential appealed to him, especially considering that he felt he needed to accumulate power fast.

What time remained to him, he used it to oversee the two creatures that were supposedly his two “sons”. He passed hours seated at the tables before the glass, taking careful notes of what they did or simply standing there and observing.

Argus liked to draw very much, he found, and rare were the moments he wasn’t trafficking with something, building, playing or else. When a Gremlin came to bring him food, he watched him with eyes sparkling with hope, only to slump down when he disappeared. Still, he never complained, and barely talked. He was obedient, orderly and quiet to the point of shyness.

The fire-child, instead, was a ball of restleness. The first thing she did once out of the cage was to blast to pieces the golems that had opened the door, and the following record didn’t change much. She just flew from a point to the other, pacing the cell with snarls and snorts like a caged lion. The golems that brought her food invariably ended ripped apart, with only the Smotherer variants being able to resist her flames.

The situation had improved only when, after heavily drugging her food, he had her waking up to a much larger cell and a self-moving target range. From there, she had lost herself in the game, barely taking breaths between a shot and a laughter and an explosion.

She had a horrible aim, he had noticed.

He had told himself that he would work out what he felt about those two, but that promise was still very far from being fulfilled. He knew the reason why he hesitated. After having lost the closest thing he had ever had to a family, he was greatly troubled by having now something that tried to make itself similar to it. It scared, outraged and entinced him at the same time. In the end, he just couldn’t decide himself and so left the matter hanging.

Despite all of its difficulties, he liked that routine. It kept him busy, away from bad thoughts, and focused upon a clear goal. Accumulation of power, study and, far in the distance, his vengeance. It was clear, and simple.

Still, the evening, when he flipped through the notes he had made during the day, he often found himself thinking about the warnings Nama had given him. What did they mean? What had started with his escape in the Crux and was about to reach its conclusion?

Despite himself, the words of the Goddess had left him with a deep unease, a feeling that returned each time he pondered over them. Ripples, she had said, left by his steps. Those words left him with the frantic wish to look at his back, to start rummaging through his present and past for things he could have provoked, things that maybe would spiral out of control.

But eventually, he would settle down and calm himself. Ripples or not, wasn’t he doing the best he could? Didn’t he keep everything under tight control, so that nothing could escape his grasp? The present belonged to him, and the past, well, there was no point obsessing over things he couldn’t control anymore. In the end, he would face them when their time came.

That he told himself, his conviction banishing any lingering unease, and then he turned back to what he was doing, immersing himself into his work once again.