An Orc in New York, Chapter 2.

Here's the next chapter in the orc series as well as an illustration of a Krixnas from War Core. The War Core 2 outline is going well and I should have the first chapter of it ready next week for War Core Wednesday. Cat core is also starting and the cover art in production now.


Chapter 2.

Gub was no coward, he would defeat this creature, confident that the gods of the system would reward his bravery. Readying his weapons, Gub began to stride toward his foe, the warriors between him and this Iklox creature parted to allow his passage. His orcs of his army gave Gub a look of admiration as he passed, strength and bravery were valued highly by his kind. As he approached, the gods of the system made their calculations, granting him some consideration.

Do you wish to engage in melee, ranged, or a mix of combat styles for this contest? Should you win this personal combat, the defenders of Deadhold will be required to make a significant sacrifice. Should you fail in your fight, not only will you lose your life, but the undead city will also be granted a reprieve from any further hostility for a period of 30 days.

Gub selected mixed combat, Iklox looked like a melee specialist, but the necromancer and its minions were devious, and it could be a ruse. As he neared the enemy, Gub could see into the city itself for the first time. Another mass of skeletons, some armed with simple firearms lined the area behind the breach. In the distance a pair of siege engines with their supply of bone and flesh projectiles were loaded and ready to fire. The system began to highlight undead in Gub’s line of sight, indicating to him those that would die if he slew Iklox. Indicators lit up for the pair of siege engines, the entire mass of skeletons, and those were just the ones within his field of vision. Pharox would lose a large portion of his defenders when Gub killed this thing.

Pharox must be truly desperate to risk the destruction of so many undead upon this duel. Sure, the undead were all but beaten, but Gub thought the necromancer a coward to risk such a toll. The thought of losing the fight never entered Gub’s mind. He had never lost a fight and was sure he never would. He would prove his worth to the army and spare himself more casualties.

As he closed on his foe, Gub activated deadly aim, zeroing in on the undead champion. Confirming his belief that the melee skill was a ruse, two tubes of bone appeared over the shoulder of Iklox and began to spew forth bone shards at the warbringer. Gub steeled himself against the pain as some shards made their way past his armor and into the soft green flesh beneath. The twin barrels of his own deathspitter roared, both rounds hitting Iklox square in the chest. The runes on its armor flared, several winking out as they expended themselves to deflect Gub’s shot.

“Fancy armor with tricks is nothing against the might of Gub. I will strip your protective runes and then I will kill you…for good,” Gub threatened as he activated Barrage. Fire and smoke belched from his deathspitter as the ninety-eight remaining rounds cycled through at a fantastic rate. Many—make that most—of the shots missed, but with nearly a hundred landing in such a small area, twenty struck true. Runes winked out of existence over nearly the entire surface of the undead creature’s armor. A few holes were even breached through, doing negligible damage but weakening the armor for any follow up attacks. Gub activated Ammo Dump and charged into melee range.

Iklox continued its barrage of bone as Gub approached. The pain and damage mounting as he closed. Thankfully, his impressive constitution rating allowed him to shrug off the necrotic corruption that each of the bone shards tried to spread within his body. With his health down to 80% and his fatigue at 55%, Gub activated Rejuvenate, the ability slowly replenishing health and removing fatigue. Shards of bone were pushed from his wounds, the pain lessening as the healing power of the system ability went to work. As he neared axe range, the bone tubes on the undead creature retracted and it readied its swords.

Iklox twirled its twin swords, the blades were just over an inch wide and the sword length was just a tad longer than most of the shortswords that Gub had seen used. The weapons became almost a blur as the creature picked up speed and stepped into range. Gub didn’t care about whirling blades, he didn’t worry about flimsy short swords, he was the warbringer, to face him was to die.

Gub swung, the head of the axe was intercepted by the twin swords and the horrible screeching sound of enhanced metal upon enhanced metal fill the area. Muscles bulged in Gub’s chest and shoulders and he pushed on his axe. The twin swords held as Iklox resisted, the blades trapping the head of his axe. Iklox’s strength was bolstered by dark magic, tendrils of which swirled around the arms of the creature.

“Heh, your death magic makes you strong. Gub doesn’t need magic to enhance my strength. Gub is strength!” He shouted. With a final screech of failing metal, the swords held by the undead creature shattered, allowing Gub’s axe to split the monster’s head in half.

Gub pulled his axe free, the power swirling around it burning off any gore that clung to the weapon. Iklox stumbled, black necromantic energy pouring from the wound as the spells binding it together failed. It made one final attempt, swiping with the broken blades of its swords, an attack that Gub swatted away, cleaving the hands from his foe. A cheer broke out from his warriors, who streamed past him into the breached city.

Undead that had been selected by the system lost their binding and fell to pieces. The shield wall that had held back his army was now a crumbling pile of bones. Behind the shield wall, the great siege engines collapsed, their horrible ammunition leaving a rotting pool of filth behind. Sporadic fighting was heard, the sounds diminishing as his forces pushed further into the city. Their goal was the temple at the center of the city. There, they would find Pharox, cowering in fear, Gub assumed.

An imp tugged at his leg, motioning for his deathspitter. The little slave struggled under the weapon’s weight as is began to feed fresh rounds into it from the box it had dragged over. Impatient to be back in the fight, Gub resisted the urge to hack the little imp apart for being too slow. No, Gub had risked all to prove his worth, it was time to let his army shoulder the burden for a while.

His progress to the next level had jumped to 64% for defeating the undead revenant. When he finally defeated Pharox, he would likely ascend to the sixteenth level. Few of the orcish hordes had gone that high, most were pulled down by enemies or consumed by challengers from within their ranks long before. The life of a Warbringer was a short and bloody one, at least for most orcs. Gub intended to live forever, the blood and battle would never end for him.

The sounds of battle continued toward the center of this city of the dead, his forces pushing ever closer to their objective. He gathered up his honor guard and walked toward what he hoped would be the last action against the necromancer. A few of the undead that had either been missed by his forces or had lain in wait made their presence known now. From empty buildings, and up from the sewer drains, the spectral undead of Pharox emerged. These were the opponents his troops feared the most, as normal weapons did much less damage or failed entirely against these ghosts.

Special units organized around the tribe’s remaining shamans began their sweeps to clear out the specters, their magics dealt with such creatures easily enough. Some of the spectral undead slipped through units designed to stop them and made their way toward Gub, intent on killing the leader of the orcs. Attacking Gub and his honor guard was a foolish thing to do, especially for the specters. Every member of his guard were powerful, and that power wasn’t just in their physical forms, their power was manifest in the enchanted weapons each of them bore. As the ghostly attackers swooped in, hands outstretched to pull the very life from their victims, Gub and his men casually swatted them aside, each blow of their magic weapons, killing an attacker.

Wails of undead agony howled from the dissipating specters, the attacks thwarted by steel and spell. The imp handed back Gub’s deathspitter, he checked the weapon’s operation, verifying the rounds were loaded correctly and that no sabotage had been done to it. While unlikely, it wasn’t unheard of for another contender to terrify and imp enough that it was willing to disable another orc’s weapons. Gub didn’t take chances, he always checked for threats, which meant he would always lead.

“Warbringer, we have reached the temple and our assault teams are pressing inside. Subcommander Blarix wanted to inform you that he will reach Pharox’s command tomb shortly. He is also reporting a buildup of magic energy inside the tomb, not all of it necrotic,” the messenger advised. His subcommander had done correctly, informing him of his progress, but not making a move to take the final kill from him. Of course, Pharox was a deadly foe and Gub doubted that one of his subcommanders could best the creature.

“Run back and tell Blarix that he has done well, I will be there to deal with Pharox in a moment,” Gub ordered, dismissing the runner. Gub waited for other reports to come in, wanting to make sure the necromancer wasn’t trying to do something to elude his inevitable fate. From what his other subcommanders advised, the undead had made no attempt to leave the city and were being taken down quickly with only small pockets of resistance remaining. Pharox had lesser minions, just like Gub did. Skeletal mages, master ghouls, lesser revenants, and the like would gather the weaker undead minions to make their stands throughout the city. His army would crush them, it was only a matter of time, and the proper application force.

“Come, I will deal with this Pharox and we can finally be rid of this land of starvation,” Gub told his entourage. The jogged toward the temple in the distance, and as the report had stated, Gub could feel the magic overflow wash out from inside the building. There was the taste of familiar necromancy, but also other things, the new mana tasting more like trees and light, not the familiar tang of death.

The stone doors of the temple had been blasted open by his troops and he could hear orcish war cries and the clash of weapons echoing in the depths of the place. Piles of crushed and battered undead littered the area, mixed in with a few of his own troops. Their blood was up with the end of the campaign so near, his line troops feeling the berserker rage of their kind empowering them in this last and final push.

The ancient stone temple that was the heart of this dead city rose hundreds of feet in the air, but it was underground in the catacombs where his quarry would be waiting. Ordering two of his honor guard forward, the two least loyal, he pressed ahead, wary of any traps. His caution proved the correct move as the devious Pharox had left a welcoming gift for Gub, one that waited to trigger based on his presence. On either side of the wide hallway, stone panels dropped, and four immense undead creations spilled out, already attacking the two honor guard in front of him.

Roughly humanoid shape, the twelve-foot-tall monsters were made of oversized bones, their skeletons a mass of spikey bits that Gub could appreciate. Each arm had been replaced with a bone scythe, which the skeletal monsters wielded with some skill. The one shaman accompanying his party cast a cantrip, green energy flowing into Gub’s eyes, revealing system information about their foes.

Bone Reapers, Level 12 (elite). The bone reapers are an undead amalgamation fused from the bones of a long dead species. Necromantic energy infuses their arm blades, allowing the normally brittle bone enough power to cleave through steel. Weak to crushing damage, the bone reapers have a high resistance to piercing damage and a modest resistance to slashing.

Nothing too difficult, his deathspitter would be of little use, but his axe was another story. Unlike other weapons of its kind, his axe dealt both slashing and crushing damage, the magic infusing them choosing the most appropriate for the task at hand. One of his honor guard was sliced in half, while the other hacked away with his sword. The minor enchantments on the sword allowed it to fling chips of bone from the undead monster with each hit.

Never one to shirk from a fight, Gub leaped forward, landing next to the nearest bone reaper and activating rapid strike. Five blows lashed out, his axe shattering bone with each hit. By the time he was done, the first bone reaper was now a pile of bone shards. His party were working on the other three, and assisted by the magic of the shaman, they were having little trouble hacking the skeletal constructs to bits.

“Warbringer, the magic below reaches its climax. I don’t know what spell the necromancer is casting, but I fear it is far more powerful than anything he has attempted before,” the shaman added.

“We go, let’s end this,” Gub ordered, his party jogging deeper into the tomb with him. They passed groups of his warriors that battled with the remnants of the undead that still lurked in the dark corners of the temple.

Their path ended inside a huge underground chamber, the place lined with stone sarcophagi, the lids on which were all removed. Given the number of bone fragments and piles of rotting meat in the place, undead must have emerged right into the weapons of his horde. A few of his orcs had fallen in the fight, the sight of the blackened and ruined flesh of his kin caused Gub to give a snort of disgust. What kind of foe ruined perfectly good meat? Dozens of his troops were attacking a glowing magical barrier that sealed the deepest part of the tomb off.

“Use your magic and get rid of that,” Gub ordered. The shaman, fear etched on his face, nodded and began chanting a spell of cancellation. Green magical beams shot from the shaman’s hand, but when the touched the glowing barrier, black lighting lashed out, melting the only spell caster with his group. From similar piles of orcish goo near the door, it looked like other casters had already tried that tactic and failed.

“Boss, do we blow it up,” the little imp following him asked excitedly. Gub didn’t give them names, but he recognized it as the one he had rewarded with the Zobguz hand earlier.

“Yeah, bring the big one,” Gub ordered. He was done playing around. Magic was good and all, especially when it enhanced his weapons, but even magic couldn’t stand up to a big enough explosion. The call went out and eventually a crew of imps entered the temple, pushing a narrow cart that held a large iron ball inside. The ball was covered in spikes, as all good creations should, and filled with the black sand that explodes. Written on the side of the bomb was, Dis is the big one! Gub didn’t know how the black sand worked, and he didn’t care so long as it did what it was supposed to do. Tinkering was beneath an orc; it was the work of imps.

“Master, we should leave the temple, the explosion will be big, and you don’t want to be inside when it goes off,” the imp said, groveling in fear that Gub would take some offense at his words. Normally, Gub would have been happy to find offense and eat the little imp, but he needed it for now. He hated needed others, which further reinforced the need for this one to die once the battle was over.

Taking the imp’s advice, he ordered the orcs out of the temple. Once Gub and most of the others were clear, he ordered the device activated. The imp got a devilish glow in his eyes as it turned the knob on the black box his minions used to make stuff blow up. The ground beneath them shook and the distant rumble of explosion was heard even on the surface. A few moments later, the blast wave erupted from the temple entrance, pushing flames, smoke, bones, and bits of orcs that were too slow to leave the temple. Gub fished up a couple of juicy pieces that weren’t too burnt, snacking as his forces moved back inside to survey the results.

“It didn’t work, I thought you said this was the big one?” Gub said. The magical barrier was still there, but its surface glow was off, stuttering as it tried to recover from the forces brought against it.

“Yeah boss, I thought it would do the trick, my main concern was bringing the whole temple down. The big one wasn’t enough, but we still have the bigger one!” The imp said. His desire to blow stuff up causing it address Gub without the respect he deserved. Yep, this one was going straight into the cookpot once the battle was over.

“Fine, bring out the bigger one,” Gub ordered. The imp and his fellows cackled in glee as they raced from the temple to gather their other explosive device.

Gub’s warriors continued to hack at the magical barrier. He wasn’t an expert in magic, but Gub knew that these types of barrier spells had a limit to the damage they could absorb. Whack at them enough and the mana holding them together would be expended, dropping the shield. His attention was drawn to the chamber entrance as the squealing sound of metal on stone overcame the grunts of his warriors hitting the barrier. Ture to his description this new explosive barely fit through the passageway and, sadly, it looked like several of the spikes had to be removed to get it through.

“That is the bigger one, will it work?” Gub said. Just like the other bomb, this one had Da Bigger 1 written on the side.

“Yes master, it will bring down the barrier and shouldn’t bring the whole temple down. Of course, if we was using da biggest one, the whole place would be rubble,” the imp said. Gub didn’t want to destroy the temple until he had killed his foe. After the battle, though, it might be fun to watch da biggest one blow the place apart. They trotted back out of the temple, and the imp trigger his new device.

Just like before, the ground shook and flames blasted from the temple entrance. Gub could feel and hear the stones groan ominously as the force of this more powerful blast was unleashed. While they waited for the smoke to clear, Gub was informed that the last undead holdouts in the city had been destroyed, only Pharox and whatever dead things he kept with him deep inside the temple were left.

Making his third journey into the temple, Gub could see the barrier, and half the room, had been taken down. His troops pushed forward, bellowing war cries and brandishing weapons as they went. He was just about to join the attack when a weak shout from the shaman Lazbax drew his attention. The magic wielder didn’t look good, his face had gone from a healthy green to a sickly greyish color and he was using a deathspitter as a cane to hobble over to Gub. It was a shocking display of weakness and had there been another shaman in the chamber at the time, Gub had no doubts that Lazbax would be killed, and his killer would become the new head shaman.

“What are you blathering about,” Gub demanded.

“Warbringer, stay your advance, the system demands we allow Pharox to complete his spell. Once completed, you will be given a great honor, so it is promised,” the shaman said. Gub dismissed his concerns. If the system wanted something from him, it would demand it, not send this weakling beg on its behalf. With a casual swipe, Gub chopped off Lazbax’s legs. They would grow back, but the pain of that process would deliver the message that his time wasn’t to be wasted on stupid prophecies.

Gub charged down to the final level of the temple, ready to deal with the necromancer once and for all. The warriors ahead of him began to collapse, dropping their weapons to cover their ears in pain. Just when he was about to chastise them for their weakness, the high-pitched squeal hit him. Pain exploded in his head, and he could feel green blood begin to drip from his ears as something inside ruptured under the assault. The noise was magic created, and Gub was not going to give in to any pain that was created by magic. He stomped on, using the mind-numbing pain to fuel his anger. Pharox awaited his axe.

The winding stairway ended in a small chamber, devoid of any furnishings save for an altar to some forgotten god in the center. There, atop the altar was a glowing orb that gave off the horrible sound. In the glow of the orb, Gub could see a shadowy figure, his foe, Pharox was here. Instead of threats, pleas, or hurling magic at him, the necromancer simply grasped the glowing orb. A clap of thunder blew Gub off his feet, his health dropping to half from the magical backlash that had just occurred.

“Warbringer, the globe, touch it before it is too late, the system needs you to go through. Do it now,” the shaman pleaded. Surprisingly, the old orc was tougher than Gub had thought, dragging himself down the stairs despite having his legs severed. The pain of that in addition to the horrible sound, should have left him writhing on the temple floor.

“What does this do?” Gub asked, walking toward the glowing sphere. Colors flowed and sparkled, magic from all the schools were joined within. Magic was stupid though, and Gub could already see the threads binding all the magics together were fraying, soon the globe would either explode or dissipate into nothing.

“It will take you somewhere else, another world to conquer. Wherever it takes you, Pharox will be waiting. Do not leave this new world to the whims of the necromancer, conquer it for our tribe! Take this, when the new year on this far away world dawns, place it in the square of time and the portal will open again for you and I will make sure that your army is waiting to cross over. Do it now, hurry my Warbringer!” Lazbax exhorted, sliding a small charm to Gub.

Picking up the charm, Gub could feel the magic contained within. When the conditions were met, it would activate, but not before. The shaman should have known better, Gub was blessed by the system but couldn’t conquer a world on his own. Other orcs would be needed, orcs that could feed on their foes and create more of his people. If the magic in the glowy thing was strong enough to transport Gub, it would be strong enough to bring a few of his orcs with him.

“A new world to conquer, that is the destiny of our people. Honor guard, join me,” Gub ordered.

“No, it is too many, you must go alone,” the bleeding shaman whined. If he had been one of the weaker races, the magic user would have bled out by now, but orc bodies were better, they didn’t spill all their blood out like a halfling or human, no, they kept it inside where it belonged, just leaking enough to let you know there was a problem.

“I go with my honor guard,” Gub commanded. His guard gathered around him, the little imp he meant to kill included. Gub touched the orb.

“No, there are too many for the magic to support!” the shaman shouted as Gub touched the orb. Stupid magic wielders, always thinking they could boss everyone around. Gub did as he pleased, and the system loved him for it. A flash of light filled the chamber as Gub and his party were transported to another world.

“Maybe I should have gone alone,” Gub said as the magic energy strained under the burden he was placing on it. One by one the orcs of his honor guard dissolved into nothingness. Gub could feel time pass but had no idea how much before the glow brightened once more and he felt himself falling.