Vladan could not believe what he was seeing. It had seemed like such a sure thing. Those damned blue orruks had looked so goofy, sliding down the roofs, swinging down pullies, and whacking each-other as often as not has the ran, bellowing like idiots, towards his glorious army. They had torn through the orruk’s ridiculous front lines to shreds, gore had steamed on the snow at their feet, flesh was torn right through, and the damned brutes had barely noticed. And yet, somehow, by some freak of nature, his army had slowly but surely fallen. The orruks had simply danced on, ignoring the danger, ignoring the carnage, they had smiled as the capered over the dead, beating heads together, literally throwing his creatures through his own lines. He himself was barely alive, his own Zombie dragon had perished, it’s last act had been to look up at him in what he thought was complete disbelief, as if it it too could not comprehend what was going on. It’s corpse now lay further up the valley.
The orruks had pushed their lines down the valley, and he now stood as a single line, a rag-tag group of ghouls, two archregents, and a handful of flayers. A riderless terrorgheist stood alone in the distance to his right. And further up the valley, up the road they had taken, he could see a knot of his army being pushed out of the city. One of the archregents fell to his right, a giggling orruk tossing the snarling creature over the sheer cliff behind them. He looked back to the city, at the the towering spire, still glowing red. He had been so close. How had it come to this? All of the work, crossing literal realms in order to survive. Fighting and more fighting in order to have back what was rightfully his. Snarling he took the head off of a brute that swung at him with a tree. A tree!? He parried a naked orruk to his left, and kicked one off the cliff to his right. The terrogheist was screaming as its head was torn from it’s body, and the orruks nearby bellowed in joy at the fun of it all. And suddenly he was falling. The cliff screamed past him. He turned to face his death, and watched as the roaring torrents came rushing to meet him. For a singular, beautiful moment it was pure white, simply nothingness. Icey pain ripped through his bones. And then blackness.
