Borgut’s eyes flickered open. The sun blazing into his eyes, he turned his face away from the searing light, and groaned.
‘This one’s waking up’ a gurgled voice said to his right.
Ever so slowly, much too slowly for his taste, Borgut sat up, and stared in disbelief. He was caged. Not only caged, but shackled as well, huge weights tied to his legs and arms in rings of metal. Never had he ever been tied in his entire life! Knocked out, sure. Had the snot kicked out of him when he was younger, many times. But never shackled, never caged.
‘Eh! What’s the meanin’ of dis ‘ere den?’ he asked no one in particular.
A sneer sounded as a winged woman came into his view.
‘Khinerai…’ he spat, eyeing her warily.
Following her was another Aelf, a water-born one, with a halo of sea flowing around him. The air seemed to slow around the creature as the two started to talk to each-other in some tongue that sounded sharp to his ears. Full of extra syllables, and unnecessarily long words.
‘Eh! Look ‘ere den! Someone get me out of these chains, or a beatin’ is gonna happen!’
As he finished yelling at the pair, the Deepkin slowly turned. Water turned around the Aelf, flowing towards Borgut, up his nose, through his eyes, and down, slowly down, his throat.
Sputtering, and on the verge of panic, Borgut thrashed about, trying to remove the water. And then, without warning, it all flew out of him, and he wretched onto the ground.
Sneering, the Khinerai spoke, ‘Silence, or I will take your tongue. You need not a tongue where I intend to take you…’
‘He is not yours. Yet.’ the other said, calmly, as the words bubbled around him.
‘You ask too much kin, he is not worth what you want’ the other countered.
‘I guarantee you this one meets your needs, and then some. If I did not think he did, he would be soulless like the rest of them. We both know you will take him in the end, let us move straight to the finale of this particular discussion and be done with it.’
It was only then that Borgut actually started to really notice where he was. Normally so aware of his surroundings, his little black-out had left him foggy, and now, as his brain slowly pieced itself together, the world around him started to come into greater focus.
It seemed they were in a vast desert, within a small trading township, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It bustled all the same. Aelves, men, and duardin walked to and fro, bustling up and down the main street. A market area, full of trinkets, creatures, food and other wares, the whole street was a-buzz with activity.
To his left were a handful of other orruks, varied in both shade and stature. None, though, close to his size, mostly young ones. But all shared a single common trait; around their right bicep, a single marked band. Borgut had always had that band, from as long as he could remember… it was odd seeing it on others, so similar to his own. He could not see Durkol though, and his stomach turned at the thought.
The sound of gold clinking brought him out of his wondering thoughts, and he saw the Deepkin walk away. The Khinerai just stood there, wings flexing, and eyed him up and down.
Over a sand dune in the distance, Snikrit was absolutely petrified of the sounds around him. The rumbling. The whirring. The crack of lightening. He was struggling to not simply scream and run away, so he settled on just a vague shaking. Not that anyone could tell, everyone was shaking, every thing was shaking atop the machine they rode. nnHe still couldn’t quite believe what was happening, and glanced about him, again, just to be sure that he wasn’t going mad. Doomwheels, Warp-Lightening Cannons were positioned on either side of him, surrounded by a hoard bristling with guns, jezzails, warpfire-throwers, as well as a seemingly endless number of knives, spears, and other pointy objects.
‘It’s not enough! We need more-more!’ he proclaimed out-loud.
He was starting to realize that if he could just have an opinion about everything, it seemed the rest just assumed he had a plan. And he did have a plan… It was just a very simple plan, and wasn’t all that well thought out. Nor, did he suspect, was it actually good.
A single rat came scampering up the the tunnel. Looking nervously from side-to-side to see if anyone had noticed it’s absence.
‘Okay, that will do then! Now, we have enough, we will take-take what is ours!’
He faced his hoards, and raised his weapon above him.
‘What do we want!?’ he screamed.
‘Frosting! Frosting! Frosting!’ came the reply from a hundred tiny little hungry mouths.
The rumbling came from below. They could feel it as well as hear it. Someone cried out.
‘Skaaaaaavvvvveeeennn!!’
Suddenly, hatches were being pulled down, lines were being tied up, cloth roofs came down in a rush, and it seemed the whole market turned in on itself. A bell tolled somewhere. The Khinerai that had been there standing just a moment before disappeared, a shadow rising into the sky. Swords, axes, knives, and spears flashed, as groups sought out their own, scattered battle lines drawing up in front of the now disappearing stalls.
‘Eh! Get me out of ‘ere!!’ Borgut bellowed at the nearest person to him, an aelf holding a long spear of some kind. The woman just looked at him, and hurried away towards a line of similarly clan warriors. He struggled against his bonds, but it was no use. Still, he continued trying, cursing all the while, wounds started to form on his wrists.
Suddenly the sky was on fire. Green lightning streaking overhead. The sand around him exploding in huge thwumps has it turned into huge glass structures, mid-explosion. He couldn’t make head or tail of what was going on, he could barely see around him, and was forced to stare off in the wrong distance. Thwump, thwump, thwump. Three more explosions, much too close. He twisted so hard on his chains he felt as if his arms were going to rip out of their sockets. What made it all the more worse was that he thought he was going crazy, that maybe he hadn’t quite gotten over his black-out because he thought he could hear chants among all the screaming and the racket that he just knew couldn’t be part of a battle…