Path of Dragons

“Don’t like this one bit,” growled Kurik as he knelt next to the tracks. He looked around the pass, seeing a story that had played out months before. There were hundreds of tiny arachnid corpses, all in various states of decay. He recognized the species, which on his home world, had been referred to as sovereign spiders. Typically, the creatures were incredibly territorial, and left unchecked, they were capable of approaching sapience. They had no natural predators, largely due to the fact that their flesh was infused with poison that would painfully kill anyone or anything that ingested it. As a result, there was little reason for natural predators to have evolved.

But something had killed the budding community, as evidenced by the piles of corpses and half-rotted webs.

“We found somethin’, boss!” came a shout from up the pass.

The dwarf pushed himself to his feet, then knocked the dust from his pants before following the shout to its origin. The pass was narrow, but it was more than large enough to accommodate Kurik and his team of scouts. They had been tasked with finding a way through the mountains, and it appeared that they had discovered just that. However, the spider corpses had brought them all up short.

After a few moments, he found his way to a yawning cave. From experience, he knew it would have been a perfect location for a sovereign spider queen to nest. But judging by the smell, something large was rotting inside. Kurik didn’t need to lay eyes on the corpse to know what he would find.

But he’d always been thorough, which was why he’d been given leadership over the scouts of Ironshore. It was also why he’d survived as long as he had. So, he squared his shoulders and headed through the mouth of the cave. Only a moment later, his dwarven eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and he saw the rotting corpse of a full-grown sovereign spider queen.

He also saw his subordinate, Rasana, kneeling next to the thing. She was short, even for a gnome, and her blue hair stood in stark contrast to the hulking monster’s corpse in front of her. She looked back, her eyes shining, and grinned. “It’s a real queen, Kurik! Do you know what this means?”

“That somethin’ even nastier is out here,” he muttered.

“No. I mean, yes. Of course that’s a possibility. But I’m talking about the venom!” she went on. “Do you know what we could do with something that strong?”

“No! Well, yes. But I talked to old Biggle – you know, the alchemist – and he said that a potent poison is the only thing he’s missing for a body cultivation potion!” she said, her words spilling out in a rush. “With the amount I could get from this big of a specimen, I bet he could make ten or maybe even fifteen doses! That’s huge, Kurik! Like, super huge!”

Kurik didn’t need her to tell him the value of cultivation. Back home, his people would make pilgrimages to the lava pits far below the city and use the dense, ambient ethera as well as the lava itself to spark the evolution into the first stage. Of course, even that had required alchemical assistance for all but the most naturally gifted, so he was well aware of how valuable something like that could be.

“A poison based body cultivation? Seems less than optimal,” he muttered. He and the rest of his clan had been exiled before he’d ever had a chance to start his own cultivation, and he’d all but given up on taking the first steps down that road. However, a newly integrated world offered many opportunities, which was why it was like a magnet for outcasts like him.

Like everyone in Ironshore, really.

“I think it would be brilliant!” she squeaked. Even after more than two years living side-by-side with gnomes, Kurik still wasn’t quite used to them. None of them had proper beards, and they were far too excitable. Still, he didn’t want to be prejudiced, so he’d tried his best to be as accepting of the other races as possible. Because of that, he had one of the most evenly integrated squads in the entire city. “Imagine what that would do for your poison resistance. I heard it’s great for hunters and alchemists.”

Kurik wasn’t so sure if he’d accept a poison-based body cultivation even if it was available. A proper dwarf had a fire constitution, after all. Any dwarf with anything else, regardless of how advanced their cultivation, was worthy of mistrust. Or at least that had been the case back home.

But he wasn’t back home anymore. He was on Earth, and he needed to adjust his expectations accordingly.

“What killed her?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.

“Looks like an animal of some sort,” the little gnome answered, pushing herself to her feet. “But I don’t think I’d want to meet the sort of creature that could do this to a queen sovereign spider.”

Kurik had some ideas about that, but he didn’t give those thoughts voice. The entity who called the mist-wreathed Isle of Slaughter home was not to be mentioned, lest he visit some calamity upon their heads. Still, he’d heard some stories from the goblin Callix who was the lone survivor of the expedition sent to that island. Unless she’d been drinking, she never spoke of the slaughter she had seen, but that changed when she was in her cups. So, Kurik had made it his business to facilitate that by spending a few nights buying her one drink after another. After all, if there was some murderous monster living only a couple of miles away, he needed to know. He’d rather take his chances in the wilderness than ignore that sort of threat.

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What he’d learned had very nearly sent him running. But then the human had visited their city, and during that time, he’d acted perfectly reasonable. So, Kurik had resolved to stay. However, he had also decided to take no chances at risking that man’s ire.

Whatever the case, he’d learned enough to match the human’s fighting style with the old wounds he saw on the spider’s corpse. Certainly, it could have been his fears manifesting to make connections that weren’t there, but Kurik had always prided himself on his ability to look at things objectively. More than that, he trusted the instincts that told him that he was looking at the aftermath of that man’s passage.

He was just about to order Rasana to organize the processing of the monster’s corpse when another member of his team raced into the cave. Pavi was a goblin, but unlike his more urbane brethren, he’d taken a liking to the outdoors. That had translated into his joining Kurik’s scouting team.

Pavi bent down, catching his breath as he said, “Boss. There’s tracks up ahead. You need to come see.”

“What kind?”

“I’m not sure, but there a lot,” the goblin panted. “I think…I know I’m not the most experienced, but…”

“Spit it out.”

“Hundreds. Maybe thousands, boss. I don’t know what made the tracks, but there were a lot of them.”

“Show me.”

After that, Pavi led him outside and up the trail through the pass. After a few minutes, they came upon the tracks Pavi had mentioned, and Kurik saw precisely why the young goblin was so alarmed. There weren’t just hundreds of tracks. There were thousands leading to a rough path that ran perpendicular to the main trail. A few felled trees lay nearby, telling Kurik yet another story.

But most troubling of all was that he recognized the tracks. Not wanting to believe his own first impressions, he knelt at the edge of the trail and examined an isolated footprint. That confirmed his fears.

“Orcs,” he said.

“Orcs?” Pavi echoed. “Here? Where’d they come from?”

“I don’t know,” Kurik admitted, pushing himself back to his feet. He ran his hand through his vibrant red hair, then let out a sigh. “Gather the other scouts.”

“But –”

“Now, Pavi. We might already be too late.”

“For what?”

“Do you know anything about orcs?” Kurik asked. The goblin admitted that he didn’t, so Kurik went on, “They have a very distinct cycle of social development. When they first appear, they’re little more than intelligent beasts. Like the crag apes back home. But if a pack grows past a certain point, they start working together. Their society starts to evolve, becoming a primitive tribe. For a while, that’s how they stay. But if they’re left alone for too long, they go to the next phase.”

“What’s that?”

“Conquest. Throughout the universe, on every planet connected to the World Tree, orcs are considered a menace that must be eradicated the moment they’re found. Otherwise, they will rapidly grow into a force that will sweep across a planet, conquering everything in their path. Eventually, they will develop sapience. Do they not teach the story of the Dredlock Empire on your world?”

“Nobody taught us anything where I’m from,” Pavi stated.

“Well, they should. This many orc tracks means only one thing,” Kurik said before pausing for a moment. When he continued, his voice was grim, “Ironshore is in grave danger.”

After that, the young goblin sped off to gather the others. Meanwhile, Kurik waited, his mind churning with a host of possibilities. Each one was worse than the last, so by the time his ten underlings joined him, he was on the verge of panic. Still, he kept his wits about him as he gave out his instructions.

Two of his scouts, he sent back to Ironshore. Six were tasked with following the tracks to their origin. Meanwhile, he and Pavi – who happened to be the stealthiest of all the scouts, save for Kurik himself – would follow the tracks until they found the orcs who’d used the pass. With any luck, they would have missed Ironshore altogether, but even as that thought crossed his mind, Kurik knew that it was a longshot.

Once everyone had their orders, they set off into the wilderness. For his part, Kurik led Pavi along the alternate path for almost a mile until they reached another trail that led down the mountain. It showed plenty of signs of having been used, but not recently. That was somewhat comforting, but Kurik knew enough about orcs to know that it wouldn’t last. If they’d sent a war party out, there was assuredly a village in the other direction.

Still, he didn’t want to make any assumptions, so he continued to follow the tracks, using Camouflage to mask his passage. Pavi did the same, though his ability wasn’t as advanced as Kurik’s.

For the rest of the day, they descended the mountain on the crooked and winding path used by the orcs, and just before nightfall, they found their quarry. The orcs were big, with jutting brows, sloped foreheads, and jutting tusks. More distressingly, they were all wearing primitive clothing and carried stone-bladed weapons. That suggested that they’d reached a reasonably advanced stage of development.

As he knelt in the bushes a few dozen yards away, Kurik could only take solace in the group’s size. There were only twenty orcs there, which was far more than he could fight alone. But even with the bulk of Ironshore’s defenders having been slain by the man on the island, they had enough capable warriors to fend off such a group.

Still, after Kurik had seen everything there was to see, he and Pavi circled around the group of orcs and continued down the narrow pass. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the group they’d encountered was only one among many. Over the next day, they found many more like it until, at last, they reached the base of the mountain.

There, they encountered the bulk of the orcs’ forces.

A hundred or more fires burned among a forest of tents. But more distressing was the sheer number of orcs present. If there were less than five thousand, Kurik would have been incredibly surprised, and he suspected that the true number was probably twice that.

After he’d observed enough, Kurik grabbed the young goblin scout’s arm and guided him away. He didn’t relax until they were miles into the wilderness, and even then, only slightly.

He said, “Pavi, I want you to promise me something.”

“What is it, boss?”

“What’s about to happen to Ironshore is going to be horrific. I intend to fight until the very end, but if it comes down to it, I want you to promise me that you’ll gather as many people as you can and flee.”

“But boss…”

“Those orcs there are more than we could’ve handled before we lost the mercenaries,” he said. “We have almost no chance of winning now. You owe it to yourself to escape what’s coming.”

“What about you?”

He fingered the axe at his waist. “Orcs are good for leveling, I’m told. I intend to see for myself.”

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