Durok awoke three days after the battle, his body a battlefield of scars and pain. His left arm was bound tightly, shattered beyond easy healing, but still whole. Varsha and Tarn watched over him day and night. The entire tribe waited.
And when he rose — pale, limping, but alive — a cheer erupted through the camp that shook the very bones of the Hollow.
In the months that followed, the remnants of Redfang Hollow were transformed. The corpses were burned in ritual pyres. The shattered stones reforged into walls with openings to let the sun in. What was once a citadel of terror became the capital of a new orcish future.
Durok ruled not from a throne of bone, but from a circle of stone, surrounded by advisors and warriors of every blood — half-orcs, full-bloods, and even foreign prisoners turned allies. He renamed the place Skarth’Darun, “The Ground of First Unity.”
He no longer called himself a chieftain.
He was Warchief Unifier of the Pact of Blood and Earth.
The reforms expanded. Slaves were treated not as tools, but as teachers. Weapons were refined. Crops were planted using knowledge stolen and now studied. New hunters were trained in both blade and strategy.
Children laughed in streets where blood had once flowed.
“We’re building something real,” Durok whispered to Tarn one morning. “Something they’ll remember long after we’re dust.”
And for a while — it was true.
But in the deepest vault of the old Hollow, the war mace remained.
Too heavy to lift easily. Too fused with dark energy to be destroyed. The runes had dimmed, but they never died.
Durok had ordered it locked away, stored with the weapons of the fallen, wrapped in cloth and warnings. But still, some came to see it. Curious. Whispering.
Some warriors began to speak of visions in the fire. Some felt stronger just standing near it. Others grew violent in the practice yards, injuring their sparring partners without reason — saying the weak had to be “burned away.”
Durok was busy — recovering, rebuilding, integrating the warriors who once served Gorrath. He didn’t see the signs clearly.
When Varsha raised concerns, he waved them away.
“They’re adjusting,” he said. “Give them time.”
When Tarn asked why the old priests had refused to bury the mace in sacred ground, Durok only sighed.
“It’s just steel and magic. Nothing we haven’t faced before.”
But as weeks passed, incidents increased. Patrols returned bloodied, not from enemies — but from infighting. Some warriors began performing old, forbidden rites. Others claimed they had heard the voice of the War God calling them to “cleanse the weak.”
And always, always, the corrupted mace pulsed faintly in the dark, as if feeding on their unrest.
The orcish future was blooming in sunlight — but in the shadows, something was growing. Twisting.
Something that Durok, for all his vision and strength, had not yet recognized for what it truly was.
Then came the first killing.
A young smith apprentice — a half-orc — found murdered behind the forge. No sign of struggle. No one saw anything.
Durok buried the boy with honor and summoned the warrior circle. He demanded unity. Demanded truth. But none came forward.
Then came another.
And another.
Until blood once again stained the streets of Skarth’Darun.
It was Tarn who uncovered the truth.
In a cave just outside the main settlement, he found a gathering of pure-blooded orcs, scarred with rune-burns etched crudely into their flesh — mimicries of Gorrath’s daemon markings. They practiced in silence. They meditated before a charred effigy, whispering prayers Durok could not understand.
At the center stood a massive orc, once a loyal war captain: Vargosh Stonejaw.
A veteran of the Redfang days, Vargosh had always walked a narrow line between discipline and brutality. Under Durok’s rule, he had bristled at the idea of shared leadership — of mercy for slaves, of elevation for half-breeds.
Now, he spoke of a return to true strength.
“You lead us into softness,” he spat when Durok confronted him. “Into shame. We are orcs. We do not bow to the world. We burn it.”
Durok could have slain him there. Tarn was ready. Varsha, blade in hand.
But Durok hesitated.
Killing Vargosh would only feed his myth. It would tear the tribe apart.
Instead, he chose a different path.
Before the assembled tribe, Durok passed judgment.
“Vargosh Stonejaw and those who follow him are no longer welcome among us. You leave at dawn. You carry no banner. No name. And should you ever return — you will face steel.”
The gasps that followed were thunderous.
Execution was the old way. It was what the orcs expected.
But Durok’s voice did not waver.
“Let the world see that this is no longer the Redfangs’ dominion. We are not beasts. We are builders.”
Vargosh only laughed, bloody and bitter.
“You will regret mercy, half-blood. When your dream burns, I will dance in its ashes.”
And so they left — thirty-six warriors, all pure-blooded, all marked. As they marched into the wilds, the air seemed colder. The trees whispered. The shadows stretched.
Skarth’Darun remained whole.
But Durok knew the price had only just begun to be paid.
In the weeks that followed, patrols began to disappear again. Crops failed near the forest edge. Scouts reported hearing chanting in the ruins of Redfang Hollow, long abandoned.
The air grew heavier. Dreams darker.
Tarn came to Durok one night, speaking of ill omens. Of the mace, still buried beneath stone and soil.
“We should have destroyed it,” he said. “Or at least buried it far from here.”
Durok, weary, shook his head.
“It’s just steel. Powerless without a hand to wield it.”
But the truth lay elsewhere — in whispers carried on ash-laced winds, in the gathering storm far beyond Skarth’Darun.
And far away, in the deep wilds, Vargosh knelt before a flame that did not burn with light — but with hunger.
The nights had grown colder.
Even near the forges, even with fire stoked high, Durok felt a chill that crept through his bones. He sat alone outside the great hall, wrapped in silence, watching the last embers of the fire pit flicker and die beneath the pale moonlight.
He stared at the stars and whispered to no one:
“Did I do the right thing… letting them live?”
The decision to exile Vargosh and his followers had brought momentary peace — but not clarity. Durok still saw Rugar’s corpse when he closed his eyes. He still heard Gorrath’s jeering, echoing in the stone. The weight of command was no lighter for having stayed his axe.
In the stillness, Durok thought often of the world beyond the Profaned Region.
He had begun to speak with the freed slaves — the humans, dwarves, even a lone elf healer — not as masters and prisoners, but as people. He sat beside them as they worked, asked them about their homes. Their faiths. Their laws.
“They see us as beasts,” one old dwarf had told him. “Because that’s what you’ve always been in their stories.”
Another, a young woman from the western valleys, had looked him in the eye and said:
“But I see what you’re trying. And if they saw this place — your vision — maybe they’d believe in it too.”
That idea took root. If he could build not just a stronghold, but a civilization… a home… then perhaps the rest of Astravara would no longer see orcs as monsters.
Perhaps they would see them as people.
But the land disagreed.
First came the sicknesses — mysterious fevers that struck only the non-orcs, often the youngest or eldest among the freed folk. Then the crops, carefully nurtured in long-prepared soil, began to blacken before bearing fruit.
Rain became sparse. The wells turned bitter.
Wolves, which had once skirted the edges of the camp, now lunged at sentries by night, their eyes glassy, their hides mangy with infection. A wyvern, rarely seen this deep into the region, descended on a merchant caravan, tearing beasts of burden apart before vanishing into the black sky.
And through it all, the people whispered: the land is turning against us.
But Durok would not yield.
He gathered his shamans and smiths. He called on the wisest of the freed folk. Together, they burned herbs, tested soils, dug new irrigation lines, and fortified the perimeter.
He gave up his own rations when supplies ran short. He trained recruits personally, even as his injured arm still ached from the duel with Gorrath. When a stable collapsed in the storm and killed two oxen, he helped rebuild it with his bare hands.
“If we lose hope,” he told Varsha, “then we’ve lost everything. We’ve bled for this dream. We’ll bleed again. But it must live.”
Still… in quiet moments… he would find himself alone with the ancient mace once wielded by Gorrath, now sealed deep below the camp in stone. No one touched it, but he could feel it, like a heartbeat beneath the earth.
And sometimes… he thought he heard it whisper his name.
The fields lay fallow.
Not from neglect, but because nothing would grow. The few crops that dared to rise from the poisoned soil withered under red-tinged skies. The rivers had receded, their waters darkening to a murky gray. Flies bred thick in the stagnant pools. And in the healer’s tents, the moans of the dying were constant.
They were the freed ones — humans, dwarves, half-elves — those who had once been enslaved and now were free under Durok’s banner. But freedom hadn’t spared them the curse that settled over Skarth’Darun like a silent plague.
One by one, they perished — their bodies pale and drained, as if the land itself rejected their presence.
And the orcs, once unified under a common vision, grew restless.
It began with murmurs in the shadows.
“This is not the orcish way.”
“He favors the weak.”
“Half-breeds eat while warriors starve.”
Small acts of rebellion followed — a stolen tool, a burned tent, a missing goat. But then came blood. A young half-orc, cousin to one of Durok’s guards, was found impaled through a totem near the outer fields. No name. No warning. Only a message carved in crude Orcish:
“PURGE THE ROT.”
Tarn buried the boy himself.
And Durok said nothing for hours.
That night, the war council met in the iron hall — now cold and quiet. Durok stood at the edge of the firelight, gaze distant.
Varsha, arms crossed, voice trembling with suppressed rage:
“If we stay, they’ll destroy us. These whispers… they’re not whispers anymore. They’re knives.”
Tarn, quiet but firm:
“Not all are lost. Many still believe in you, Durok. But the air is thick with fear. We are living in a dying place.”
One of the old smiths — a human who’d lived long under the orcs — raised a hand weakly.
“This place is… wrong now. It’s not just the land. It’s like the world itself resists us.”
Durok listened, unmoving.
Then he looked at each of them, one by one, his voice low but unwavering:
“Tomorrow, we gather the loyal. The faithful. Those still strong in the dream.”
“We leave Skarth’Darun behind.”
“We find new land. We plant new roots.”
“If this place is cursed, then we do not wait to be buried in it.”
There was no cheer. No oaths. Just nods. Eyes full of fatigue and silent resolve.
That evening was the quietest Skarth’Darun had ever been.
The sky was overcast, but no storm came. The wind had stopped. Fires burned low. Mothers held their children close. Guards looked out into the forest, but saw only stillness.
It was as if the world itself… was holding its breath.
Durok walked the camp one last time, his broken arm stiff beneath the bandages, his legs heavy. He touched the wooden carvings children had made near the hearth, admired the unfinished plow being crafted in the forge. In every stone, he saw the shape of his dream.
“We could have been more,” he whispered to himself.
But that hope… would never see the dawn.
Durok woke to the sound of thunder.
Not the kind born of storm, but something heavier — metal splitting earth, timber bursting into flame, and the wet, sharp ring of steel meeting bone. Durok’s eyes opened to a flickering orange glow dancing across the roof of his tent.
Smoke. Fire. Screams.
He scrambled upright, still clutching at his half-healed ribs, his shoulder burning with pain from his still-broken arm. The sound of a warhorn cut the night like a blade — not one of theirs. He stumbled toward the tent flap just as it was torn open by one of his guards, face covered in blood.
“They’re inside the walls,” he gasped. “It’s Vargosh. He—he’s… he’s not the same—”
A flaming arrow pierced the man’s back. He fell mid-sentence.
Durok froze.
From the rise above the camp, he saw Skarth’Darun engulfed in chaos.
The great forge was aflame. The training pits had collapsed. The banner he had raised — the crimson hand over a white flame — now torn in half and trampled beneath the boots of monstrous figures. He could barely tell corrupted orcs from daemons — some moved like beasts, eyes empty and glowing, spitting blood between laughter.
And amid it all were the innocents — his people. Halfkin families, freed slaves, young recruits — caught in the madness, some trying to fight, others to flee. Many simply fell where they stood.
Durok ran.
His mind shattered with every step.
He saw Lukarr’s apprentice crushed beneath rubble. He saw the scribe-boy who once read poetry by the fire with his sister split in two by a corrupted axebearer. The herbalist, who healed without asking names, dragged screaming into shadow.
“No. No. Not again,” he whispered. “Not again…”
He remembered the first fires of unification, how he’d stood tall with mud on his boots and hope in his chest. How he’d said, “We will be more than war.”
And now, everything burned.
“I failed them…”
He found Tarn and Varsha holding the square, surrounded on all sides. The bodies of fallen loyalists lined the barricades. Their faces twisted in pain, or peace, or disbelief.
“We can’t hold this,” Durok said, voice raw.
Varsha’s face was smeared in soot and blood. One eye nearly swollen shut. She smiled anyway.
“That’s the point.”
Tarn threw him his traveling cloak.
“The exits are gone. Only the mountain tunnels remain. We’ll buy you time.”
Durok’s fists clenched. “No! If I run now—”
“You will run. Because what you gave us was more than walls and meals. You gave us dignity. We’ll die with that. So you can carry it onward.”
A fireball struck nearby, sending the air into a cyclone of debris. Varsha grunted, dragging Durok toward the tunnel entrance, while Tarn and a few of the old guard charged into the blaze, war cries drowning out the roar.
Durok, his arm still healing, tried to fight — but Lukarr seized him, shouting:
“No! You’re not dying here! Not like this!”
“Let me die with them!” Durok roared, heart broken. “Let me buy them time!”
Varsha, face bloodied, shoved him toward the back tunnels, already collapsing from the tremors of dark sorcery.
“Then all of this was for nothing,” she growled. “You carry us now. You are the dream. Not the walls. Not the banners. You.”
A young half-orc tried to follow them, crying out — and was struck down by a bolt of daemonic fire. Durok turned, eyes wide, teeth clenched — but Varsha held him fast.
“Don’t make his death meaningless too.”
In the inner corridor, Lukarr, the blacksmith, stayed behind to collapse the tunnel with a barrel of black powder, tears streaming as he said:
“Tell my sons I gave them a name worth remembering.”
Varsha was next — wounded, limping, bleeding from her side. She gave Durok her pendant — a small carved bone sun — and said:
“You believed in me before I believed in myself. Now do the same. Go.”
She turned to face the darkness.
He never saw her fall. Only heard her last scream before the tunnel thundered shut.
Chronicles of Astravara 