The party had been raging for hours. By the way the soldiers were celebrating, you’d have been forgiven for thinking they had wine in their mugs instead of water. Their joy was derived from a combination of two things; firstly that the deadly battle they’d been preparing for had been averted, and secondly that their impossible position had been turned around and they were now safe. For a few decades, anyway. Longer, I hoped, if the orcs could see sense. I looked back at the silent, brooding mountain, and wondered what was going on in the caves, miles below the surface. Were the goblins rampaging, putting the beaten orcs to death? Or had the orcs repeated their butchery of the engineering bay and finally put their masters down for good? I had no idea. In truth, they were both likely back with their own kind, wondering what went wrong when they had been unstoppable.

I’d happened, that’s what, and my pride did another little jig. When my inner dancer had slinked off the dancefloor and sat down, I moved somewhere quiet and pulled up the final tabs. One of the flashing lights had me bubbling with excitement, but I left it for last. The title of the first achievement was a crime against the English language.

Achievement Unlocked – Gutrender Ender

Description – The mechanical monstrosity is nothing more than a pile of scrap, ready to be melted down. He thought he was indestructible, but you proved otherwise.

Reward – Ring of Looting

It was more a utility piece than a boost to my character. Equipping it meant I no longer had to think about picking through the corpses of my enemies. Their salvageable goods would automatically enter my pack. I’ll admit I was a little miffed that it wasn’t better, but I had received a massive amount of top tier loot already, and I was only in the first world. I moved on to the next.

Achievement Unlocked – Saviour of Kherrash!

Description – The people of the kingdom can breathe easily once more. The green menace has been crushed beneath your boot heel. May peace last for a thousand years.

Reward – Ability – Shimmer Strike (Level 1)

My tab was flashing, so I checked over the ability.

Skill – Shimmer Strike (Level 1)

Description – When wearing light armour, you may phase from the shadows without moving to inflict a stealth strike on the enemy. Higher level enemies and bosses have resistance to the skill.

By the sounds of it, the skill was a small scale teleportation spell, which gave me hope that at some point I might get an actual teleportation spell. There would be no way around it if it ever came up as a reward. I would boost my stats to utilise that skill, no matter what it cost my fighting proficiency. Being able to pull an Alwyn when in combat was just too valuable. She’d made me look like a noob. There was one more waiting to be opened.

Achievement Unlocked – Unstoppable!

Description – The first world is completed, and still you elude the skeletal hand of Death. Though he stalks your every step, you show the middle finger to the scythe wielding horror, which only makes him angrier. Beware.

Reward – Bottomless Large Health Potion (Locked to you, will not affect others)

It was a shame I couldn’t go full Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman on people, tipping my liquid into their gullets, but I did have over forty of the consumable ones left. At least the reward meant I had one less thing to concern myself with.

I was left with the last tab, which had been greyed out until now. I selected Celestial Affinities and two options popped up.

Affinity - Xorakk, god of Orcs and the Endless Hordes

Description – Warchief of warchiefs. Xorakk laid waste to twenty-six worlds with his greenskin army, until the gods saw fit to challenge him. Their champion, Temeriel, was slain, and so the orc took his rightful place in the Realm of the Watchers. He now looks down on all orcs, everywhere.

Effect – +2 to Juggernaut

+2 to Frenzy

+2 to Damage Absorption

- 1 to Paladin Divinity

Affinity – Allazora, god of Elemental Magic

Description – Allazora, third daughter of Danyel, Elder God of Magic. From her first days in the heavens, she displayed an affinity for all things elemental, mastering earth, wind, water, and fire. Her father, sensing her love for the natural world, made her the deity of it all.

Effect - +2 to Casting Speed

+2 to Spell Power

+2 to Mana Regeneration

+1 to Paladin Divinity

“Well, that sucks,” I grumbled. If I picked the god that most suited my combat style, it meant I had to sacrifice some of my paladin status. How much it would take to make me fallen was unknown, as were the consequences. There was always the option of wasting the affinity entirely, but I wasn’t prepared to do that. I knew the threats I faced, and selected Xorakk. I heard a dark, orcish chuckle echo in my mind as the power flooded through me. As I became an honorary greenskin, I wondered again at the alien’s efforts to weigh the loot, and now affinities, in a darker direction. They’d arrived as infallible exterminators from another dimension. Over time, I’d started to doubt they were as all-seeing and all-knowing as I’d first thought.

Happy, or as close as I could be, with the choices and loot, I’d then spent a good while outside of my comfort zone, walking between the burning campfires and talking to the men. Some I had fought with on the wall, others had been part of Milton’s forces. What made me even happier was that they were welcoming to the barbarians too. A few groups kept to themselves, but for the most part, the two armies mingled with a casual ease. Judging by the conversations I’d had, the fighting had been brutal in the south. The orcs within the docks and port fortress had been well entrenched. Blood had been shed on both sides by the bucketful. A bond forged in battle had formed, one that hadn’t existed before during the times of trade. Now, all was cheerful camaraderie. Our soldiers demonstrated their fireside games, and the barbarians did likewise. The ogres did their best to join in, but their massive fingers couldn’t play with the dice properly. Some of the brutes put on a display of wrestling, the ground shaking as they threw each other around. The three disparate armies in the camp cheered them on as if they had always belonged.

Kur had stayed by the grand marshal’s tent with the others, feeling completely out of place. Another reason I had spent time with the men was to inform them of the orc’s kindness and how they literally owed their lives to him after his efforts in destroying the crystal. Once I finally returned, the whispers had done the rounds of the entire camp and no one was glaring at him anymore.

“Hey, mate,” I said, joining them all. “You ok?”

“Just getting used to being the odd one out all over again.”

“Give it until morning. They’ll be singing a different tune.”

Milton nodded. “I agree with Mark, my friend. You must appreciate, we’ve marched for days for a confrontation that never came. You’re a reminder of what has happened, and what has been avoided. A warrior will get themselves into a state of mind where they need the release of battle.”

“We call it psyching yourself up. You get the adrenaline surging, ready to fight, and then if nothing happens the body is still primed. They’ll be calmer by tomorrow. This,” I said, indicating the rowdy camp. “is them letting off that steam.”

“That’s exactly right, Mark. Might I ask you a question?”

“Go for it,” I said.

“Will you be staying with us? I can use a man like you in my council. It would come with a sizeable estate and title, of course.”

“I can’t stay,” I replied, bluntly.

“That’s a real shame. Where will you go?”

“Wherever I must,” I said, cryptically. Only Sun knew what my words meant.

Leaving Kherrash was more than an unwillingness to hang around on my part. Once I’d finished talking to the grand marshal earlier, a timer had appeared in my screen indicating the countdown to my removal from the world entirely. I had just under two hours left, and I absolutely loathed the aliens for it. I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to my new friends. I’d hoped the sorcerers and their returned homeward stones would’ve been able to get me to Astrid, Romund, and the others, but the nearest portal to their location was a half days ride away. In my rage I’d tried to banish the countdown and only succeeded in messing up my HUD. A tree deep within the surrounding forest had sated my wrath and I emerged drenched in sweat, covered in sawdust, my sword-arm numb.

I’d had to settle for a few hastily scribbled notes on the grand marshal’s advisor’s paper with quill and ink. And let me tell you, that shit is harder than it looks. The feathers are delicate, and my hands were used to ballpoint pens. I broke several before I found the right pressure. My scrawl was less eighth century monk and more current-day meth-addled spider monkey. Just in case, I gave further messages to Thomas who would spend the next few weeks distributing them among those who had given me friendship and comfort in their strange land. He assured me of the strength of his memory, and even hours later my pop quizzes had been answered correctly. I raised my cup to him, and he did the same.

“We have some noble beauties who might sway your decision,” Milton offered with a wry smile.

“I’m sure they’re lovely, but the decision is out of my hands.”

Milton raised his own goblet to toast me. “Well, wherever you go, know that you go with our thanks, and love. I have no doubt your calling is a worthy one. To Mark!”

The group chorused my name. It then spread to the next fire, and the next, until the night was alive with the ringing of my name throughout the camp.

I blushed furiously and turned to Thomas, hoping to change the subject. “How’s Marcus?”

“Fit and well and acting like a fool brother always acts,” he replied. “The grand marshal is right. We owe you everything, my friend.”

“Deliver my messages and we’ll call it even,” I said with a wink.

“Cyril sends his best wishes too,” said Trystan who had been staring at the flames intently for over an hour, barely sipping at his water. I’d noticed him come out of his fugue a few moments ago, looking around at us as if seeing us for the first time. I guessed it was his way of working through the horror of the past few months, or at least the first step on a very long journey.

“Say hi when you pass back that way. Tell him I hope the wall stays up a little longer this time.”

“Without rolling boom wagons to knock it down, I think it might be fine,” he replied.

I snapped my fingers as the mention of the wall reminded me of something. “Oh, that reminds me, Marshal. Did you send a crow to the wall to summon him? The technology inside the cave there,” I pointed back up the gently sloped base of the mountain. “will completely transform your way of life. I don’t mean that lightly, I’m talking about automation and machines that will revolutionise farming, and everything else in this world.”

“You speak as if you know of these wonders,” said Milton.

“I’ll share some things with you all, not that you’ll believe it. We had this technology mastered hundreds of years ago. It propelled our society into advances that allow us to travel into space.” I pointed up at the ghostly sphere half hidden by the clouds. “We’ve put men on our own version of your moon. We flew them into space, like birds.”

I watched with amusement as my companions looked back and forth between me and the object hundreds of thousands of miles away.

“What is it made of?” asked Thomas, eagerly. “Our mother always said it was mouldy cheese, that’s why its grey and has holes all over it.”

I laughed. “We used to say the same thing. It’s actually just a dead rock. It has no air to breathe, no life on it whatsoever. It’s that ball of floating rock that controls the tides. It pulls the water in and out as it cycles around the planet.”

I felt like a teacher again. The gaping mouths were not of children, or even in my early days here, a heavily tattooed barbarian, but of great leaders and warriors.

“Are you saying we too might fly up there one day?” asked Trystan. He was completely enthralled with my lesson. “Like a great bird? With wings?”

“Not in your lifetime. Maybe not in your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s lifetime, but one day, yes. Before then, you’ll create a world far different than the one you see today. I pray you don’t follow in our footsteps, though.”

“How so?” asked Thomas.

“Because as much as we use technology to help us, so too do we use it to kill each other. Imagine a machine that can fly on its own, able to drop bombs that make the goblin explosives look like a rain dampened cookfire. We have weapons that can shoot the equivalent of fifty, sixty, seventy bolts a second.”

“A second?” Thomas gasped. “How do they crank it so quickly?”

“Like I said, we’re way ahead of you folk, but you have a chance to do it better. If anyone suggests using the inventions to make things that kill, banish them to the forest. Or dump them in a hole. You’ll be saving countless lives.”

“Hundreds of millions,” Sun added, recalling our chat.

We talked for a good while about my world, most of it being met with incredulous faces or similar gasps to that of Thomas. What I’d described was just too big, too interconnected, too fast, for them to comprehend. When I explained that you could fly halfway around the world in a single day, I lost them. They couldn’t comprehend the speed, when in Kherrash it took weeks to cover just a few hundred miles. We turned to reminiscing about the friends we’d made, and those we’d said goodbye to. This was a kingdom in mourning, and that would last for a long while after I was gone. I would take my own grief with me, and it was only going to build as I encountered new challenges.

My timer was at five minutes, and I stood up to leave. “I’ve got to go now. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of you. My arrival was a bit of a trial, but after Sun had finished with me in her chair, things just fell in to place. Your world is lucky to have such great rulers. Hæfnir, be loyal to Sun. She’s an angel. Try and keep Ak and the other ogre lords in line if you can. Milton, listen to your people. Your common people. They have bled as much as anyone in this war. Spread the advances and wealth that it will create far and wide. Do not hoard it for yourselves, or I’ll come back for other reasons. And Sun, you’ve…”

“Quiet!” she snapped, jumping to her feet. “Come with me!”

She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me through the camp, much to the amusement of the soldiers. When we were safely out of sight in the forest, she stopped pulling.

“I only wanted to say goodbye,” I protested. “I’ll be gone in fifty two seconds. Fifty one.”

“The words on my screen are asking if I want to join you,” she said.

My jaw fell open. “What?”

“It says join Mark yes no.”

Why had I taught her to read? “No, you’ve got a life here. Stay and be with your parents, with Cuthwin.”

“They will wait for me.”

“Sun, no!” I said firmly. “I’m going to vile places to fight vile things. I won’t put you through that.”

“You’re not putting me through that. It’s my choice to go with you.”

“Please, don’t!” I begged, becoming desperate as the ten second mark ticked away.

“You need me,” she argued.

“Kherrash needs you. Your parents need you. Cuthwin needs you.”

She stared at me as the last seconds ticked away.

Three.

Two.

One.

And boom, the world of orcs and goblins vanished in a supernova of white light.