The air pulsed with the steady rhythm of axes.

  Badunk-Badunk.

  Orc Cohort swung their mighty blades, their green skin slick with sweat and fury. Before them, the Sorcerous Forest writhed, birthing monsters in defence. Beasts lunged, roots lashed, blood spilt – but the orcs were relentless. The forest bled, and the Legion pressed on.

  The First Legion, 5,000 strong, carved through the Sorcerous Forest with brute force. Orcs led the charge, their axes relentless, while Fiends and Demons ensured discipline through fear and might.

  Behind them, the Second Legion advanced – 5,000 more, a force of magic and precision. Succubi, Kenku, and Tieflings wove destruction, their spells scorching what the axes couldn’t fell. Lizardmen guards formed an unyielding shield, protecting the spellcasters as they rained fire upon the cursed woods.

  Monsters poured from the trees, but they met their match in WarFiends and Balrogs. The First Legion crushed, the Second burned, and the forest shrank before them. The Sorcerous Forest was thinning, the Legion close to what once was the Centauri Territory. The Demonic Advisor had surmised that the overgrowth acted as a type of wall surrounding the territory. Just a bit more, and they would breach it. They would deal with the source of it.

  The final tree fell, and the Brave Orc’s axe bit into more than just wood—it pierced something unseen, something wrong. A thick, unnatural darkness erupted like floodwaters from a shattered dam, devouring the afternoon light. Shadows churned and rolled, spilling forth with a dreadful weight.

  Orcs and Demons did not fear the dark, but this was different. The Brave Orc, Centurion of his Cohort, took a wary step back. The others followed, gripping their weapons tighter. The air felt heavier, thick with something unseen. Something wrong. Foul.

  “…Sorcery.” His voice was a low growl. He turned sharply to a Kenku Scout. “You. Go. Inform the Legion.”

  The Kenku Scout flapped her crow-like wings, vanishing into the darkened sky, a fleeting shadow against the encroaching abyss. Below, the Orcs fell into formation, gripping axes and jagged blades, their breath steaming in the unnatural chill.

  Then, one by one, they emerged.

  Figures stepped from the darkness as if born from it – small, silent, clad in obsidian-scale armour. Cloaks of shifting shadow billowed behind them, their movements fluid, unnatural. Each held a weapon: short, curved, wickedly serrated. Gatherer’s sickles, and yet, unlike tools for forest forage – it was for reaping something far more precious.

  The Brave Orc's grip tightened. Something about them felt... familiar. The way they moved, the way the darkness clung to them – it gnawed at the edges of his mind. He had seen something like this before. No, not entirely like this. It was like a memory which was twisted. Corrupted.

  “… Almost like Elves.” He grunted.

  The figures had long ears, their faces unnervingly symmetrical, almost beautiful. But something was wrong.

  “… No, not Elves.”

  That resemblance was twisted, warped into something darker. And yet… there was more.

  “Aren’t these creatures just children? Bah!”

  The Brave Orc abandoned caution, stepping forward, battle axe ready to draw blood. Whatever these corrupted whelps were, they would die all the same. The children were outnumbered twenty to one. A mere handful against his Orc Cohort.

  The enemy had no chance.

  “This will be easy.”

  The obsidian-clad figures only grinned, their teeth coloured in bright crimson. They showed no fear, no hesitation. Was it bravery? Or madness?

  Then…

  A flash of purple split the darkness. Lightning danced, tendrils of energy weaving the shadows into something… something out of this world. The void twisted, threads of night coiling and folding into a shifting, ill-defined mass of sinister will.

  The crackling grew sharper. The shape solidified.

  A giant head emerged – vast, menacing, and monstrous. A spider’s visage, carved from living shadow, its eyes burning with insatiable hunger.

  It opened its mandibles and spoke.

  “SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!”

  The words struck like a shockwave, rattling bones, tearing loose debris from the ground. Then, just as suddenly, the entity unravelled, becoming one with the Darkness.

  The Brave Orc wasn’t sure if it was a challenge for his orcs or a command for the twisted children to attack.

  Either way, he didn’t care.

  “[Rally], get them!!!” The Brave Orc bellowed, his voice thunderous, as the orcs behind him surged forward, their axes ready to carve through anything in their path.

  The obsidian-clad children didn’t hesitate either.

  “Children of the Dark Cavern, kill them all! [ShadowStep]!”

  The words came as a hiss from one of them – a boy, though his youthful face was anything but innocent.

  The Brave Orc snarled, disgust crawling up his green skin. Corrupted Elves. He could feel the ill stickiness of the dark magic that surrounded the children. His blood boiled. He hated Elves, he hated mages, and these were both of those things. These were Elves, twisted with some foul and dark sorcery, not just Dark Elves but Drows.

  “Bah! Pitiful Cowards!” He spat the words, furiously waving his axe. “Orcs, to me, [Fortress]!”

  Before his command could settle, the shadowy children melted back into the darkness, vanishing like shadows. Then, with a blud curdling killing intent, they reappeared behind the orcs, striking with deadly precision. Dark blades tore into flesh, and the orcs howled in pain and rage. The orc warriors swung their massive axes, but their strikes hit only air, for the children vanished just as quickly as they appeared – near impossible to hit.

  “Cowards!” He roared again, boiling with frustration. “Is this all you can do? Run and hide? Come at me! [Taunt]!”

  His keen eyes tracked a near-imperceptible flicker in the darkness. A shift. A subtle change in the black void around him.

  This was his moment.

  “[MightyCleave]!” He swung his axe down with a power that could split a boulder.

  Just as the blade descended, the child appeared in its path. He predicted it well! He would get the welp! However… The boy bent backward with an unnatural dexterity, like some nimble imp, his shadow-weaved cloak rippling as he evaded the orc's deadly arc by mere inches.

  “[DarkStrike]!” The boy hissed, his voice a chittering whisper. A quick, cursed incantation, and his sacrificial dagger gleamed with an oily, black sheen – the weapon of a soul-harvester, forged in the Dark Caverns.

  The curve of the child’s blade was too short to strike the Brave Orc. He knew this. The orc was already swinging his own axe for another blow, the boy’s feeble attempt easily dodged.

  But then, something was wrong.

  A searing pain suddenly gripped his belly. The boy’s sword hadn’t connected, but something had. A ripple of black magic, an afterimage of the dark blade, seemed to slash across his body with a cold touch. He felt the corrosive magic eat at his flesh, penetrating deep. It felt so cold.

  The orc tensed, his instinctive reaction making him miss his swing, the child evading the killing blow by the thinnest of margins once again. However, the child’s cheek was nicked, a thin trail of blood oozing from the wound.

  "Tch!" The child clicked his tongue, a hissing sound. “You’ll pay for this. [ShadowStep].”

  And just like that, he was gone. Disappeared, swallowed by the darkness once more.

  The Brave Orc cursed under his breath, his eyes searching the void. Everywhere was too dark. The boy had vanished – but the others, the other twisted children, were still there. He could hear them, feel them, moving in and out of the shadows like ghosts.

  “I am a Centurion of this Cohort! Do not mock me!” He gritted his teeth, a growl of fury building. “[InduceRage]!”

  The command coursed through him, then spread to his men. Their rage intensified, their bloodlust a tide that could not be stopped.

  Stay focused. Stay strong! – He barked to himself, his hands tightening around the axe’s hilt. They were nothing. Fleeting nuisances. His orcs would bring them down, just as they always did. It was a simple strategy: ignore the strikes, take the hits, and strike back at the pesky things.

  Sooner or later, these cursed children would pay. But he had to move quickly – before another cohort could claim his victory. The glory was his!

  A faint whisper reached the Brave Orc's orcish ears, hissing from the shadows.

  “Sarah, stop messing about. Do it already!”

  “Alright… alright. [Summon…],” a crackling sound, purple and electric, buzzed through the air, a warning of something darker about to come. “Aww, :3. Aren’t they cute?”

  Cute? What madness was this enemy conjuring? Treating the battle as some kind of game? He frowned in a disgusted grin, and with a raging roar, he charged forward into the abyss, muscles straining, the ground trembling beneath his massive feet.

  But then…

  The darkness fought back. The shadows stirred beneath him, creeping and pooling in a whirl of black tendrils, wrapping around his ankles, pulling at his legs, slowing his Charge.

  “What is this? More magic? Those cowardly mages! Accursed children!” He growled, frustration and anger flaring. “Rah! [RAHH]” His roar was pure fury, a barrier to ill mental effects, but it did little to dispel the advancing dark mass.

  His instincts flared – a warning. His charge faltered, and with an instinctual shift, he readied his axe for whatever cursed magic was about to spawn.

  And then he saw her.

  The summoner child.

  She wasn’t like the others. Her appearance, twisted and strange, gnawed at his mind. A girl, younger than any warrior he'd ever fought, but corrupted beyond measure. She wore no proper armour. Instead, she was wrapped in a ragged, vividly blue sack, its hem frayed and stained with things that should never be named. Her neck and wrists were adorned with barbed collars, the woody spikes biting into her skin, but there was no pain in her expression – only an eerie calm, a kind of madness flickering behind her wide eyes.

  Her face was a mockery of innocence. The crazed, pitch-black eyes seemed to pierce through the darkness with a look that could unsettle even the most seasoned warriors. There was no sanity in her gaze – only the hollow, twisted remnants of a mind consumed by the very darkness she wielded.

  In her hand, she held a staff. But this wasn’t any ordinary rod. It was midnight black, forged from the very essence of night itself – MidnightRod. Intricate carvings snaked their way up the shaft, depicting webs and spiders – symbols of power, symbols of the hunted and the hunter alike. The rod thrummed with a dark energy, radiating thick, choking mist that seemed to suck heat and light out of the air around it. She raised the rod as if to challenge him, a smile splitting on her face in two —one that was too wide, too unnatural.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  And then, with a cruel giggle, she slammed the rod into the ground. “My summons, [Converge]!”

  The earth beneath his feet shuddered, and to his horror, it actually bubbled. Not with life, but with something else. Something corrupted, something born straight out of the void. Shadows surged from the very soil, seeping into the air like smoke from a dying fire. And then – spiders. So many spiders!

  But these were no mere creatures of the forest. They were made of pure shadow, each one with a faint, pulsating purple core at their centre – a throbbing heart of sinister will. They crawled over one another, a swarm of writhing, squirming bodies, and with them came a wave of suffocating Dark magic.

  The Brave Orc swung his axe, cutting through the nearest Shadow Spider with ease – but it did no good. The blade passed right through them, the creatures dissolving into black mist. There was no true flesh to cleave. Only shadow.

  “Rahh!” He roared, swinging again, but the spiders were everywhere now, crawling over his boots, his legs, sinking their fangs into him. The dark poison burned where they bit, a necrotic sting that crawled through his veins, draining his strength with every passing second.

  "[Whirlwind]!" He spun, a tornado of rage, sending spiders flying in all directions, but it was futile. The swarm didn’t stop. They came back, more of them, always more. Their dark-imbued attacks were nothing like ordinary strikes. They passed through his armour, depleting his Stamina with each bite.

  Where were his reinforcements? – He thought bitterly, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of the endless onslaught. This wasn’t a battle – It was an infestation, a nightmare that wouldn’t end. This was pure chaos!

  The summoner child, that cursed thing, stood just out of reach, watching him struggle with an amused, twisted giggle. Then, without warning, she vanished back into the depths of the shadows, her eerie laugh, “hehe, :3!”, echoing in his ears.

  The Brave Orc's muscles burned from the effort, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop. Soon enough, the small swarm had been dealt with, but the chaos of the battlefield was far from over. His orcs were scattered, disorganized, picked apart by those damnable assassins darting in and out of the dark. Their movements were unpredictable and highly vicious. And harder to hit than any foe he'd ever faced.

  But the Shadow Spiders were the worst.

  They crawled low to the ground, making them hard to target. Worse yet, they never stopped coming. More and more seemed to materialize as the battle raged on. They were endless, just like the darkness itself. And with every bite, the dark ailment worked its way deeper, sapping the strength and stamina.

  He clenched his fists around his axe, he couldn’t let the chaos continue.

  “This will end,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Orcs pull yourselves together. Help me! [Rally]! Fall back to me! Form ranks! [Rally]!

  The Brave Orc, the mighty Centurion of the Orc Cohort, fought in vain. His orcs – his warriors – were scattered, their wills shattered. Terror gripped them like a clawed hand, webbing their minds, darkening their thoughts. Something was shrouding their resolve, diminishing their will to fight. It was more than just magic – it was a curse. The Dark spells were working their insidious magic, weaving their threads of Dread and Weakening his command over the Orc Cohort.

  Health-wise, his orcs were still going strong, but the mental effects were stacking up. They were faltering, mentally drained, stamina depleted, edging closer to collapse. If this continued, they would either fall from exhaustion or simply rout, lost to the relentless assault of Terror.

  “What can be done…” His voice shook with frustration. His instincts screamed at him to hold the front. “I must keep it together. [Rally]!” His command failed to take effect. The earlier use of InduceRage had been a mistake. His orcs’ aggression had faltered, now there was only confusion in their eyes. "Is that it? Do I get only a few orcs at my side?!" He seethed, looking at the scattered remains of his Cohort. There weren’t even enough to form a proper Century. “Rahh! What madness is this?” He cursed into the void.

  His eyes flitted over the battlefield. The summoners – they had to be dealt with. He found comfort in the cold steel in his hands, a plan started to form. “[UnderTheBanner]! My orcs, come to me! Back to my band! Come!”

  This time, he didn’t rely on his innate abilities. Instead, he invoked the command spell given by his equipment – a trump card of sorts. It helped him to wretch the orcs back under his control, to fight against the Dread and Terror that ate at their minds. The buff wasn’t permanent. It drained his stamina with every use, each passing minute tugging at the pool of his STA. But it had to last long enough. Just enough to buy some time.

  “[Rally]!” His voice boomed, this time more forceful, a rallying cry to the broken warriors who still clung to the fading remnants of their discipline. One by one, a third of his orcs began to regroup, the others lost to the shadows. There was nothing he could do for them now.

  Under his renewed command, they began to push back against the summons, fighting with greater cohesion, driving some of the dark, writhing creatures back into the darkness.

  Then… the battlefield changed again.

  From the enveloping blackness, bulbous projectiles rained down on the orc ranks, tumbling from the dark sky like an angry hail. The orcs barely had time to react before the impact. The tight formation that had been their strength turned against them. The projectiles struck with brutal force, splitting open on contact and birthing out barbed vines that curled and wrapped around the orcs, binding them in a living web.

  “To the hell with this!” The Brave Orc swung his axe, desperate to cut one free.

  “Argh!” A nearby orc yelled in panic. “It’s Draining me. My strength… It’s leaving me…” The words grew weaker with each passing moment.

  The Brave Orc hacked at the vines, but his swings weren’t quick enough. The orc he tried to save slumped forward, drained of life. The webbing was feeding on him – on them all. The web-vine swelled with the strange bulbs, they pulsed and ripened as they absorbed what little life force the bound orcs had left.

  “Curses! What is this foul magic?!” The Brave Orc’s voice trembled, the sound of it drowned out by the shrieks of his warriors.

  He stepped away from the living web just in time. The swollen bulbs burst with violent force, releasing oily mist in a small, suffocating explosion. It stank of arcane and foul magic. He wisely avoided the blast, but others weren’t as fortunate. Orcs who tried to rescue their comrades fell victim to the Drain debuff themselves, their Stamina siphoned away by the vicious vines.

  “Gah!” One orc cried out. “Ahh! It’s sapping me!” The cries echoed through the battlefield.

  The Brave Orc could do nothing but watch as the bodies of his men fell one by one. Nothing was working in his favour.

  “This is not a fight for Orcs…” he muttered bitterly. The enemies continued to swarm, the Shadow Spiders dragging his fallen comrades into the dark abyss. The obsidian-clad children darted in and out of the darkness, relentless, always vicious. The summoners – the source of all this – were nowhere to be seen, but their laughter echoed through the darkness, cold and mocking. The battle had turned in favour of the Children of the Dark Caverns, or whatever those creatures were.

  As the weight of dread and terror threatened to break him, he caught a scent – a sickly smell of sulphur. It burned his nostrils, and yet, it was a strange, unexpected relief.

  And then, a FireBall – FINALLY! It soared overhead, a streak of fiery brilliance, crashing into the swarm of spiders with an explosive, hellish force, burning the webbing vines. The spiders were incinerated in an inferno that filled the air with the acrid smell of burning oil and spent mana.

  “At last!” The Brave Orc roared, his voice full of the first genuine hope he had felt in what seemed like an eternity. The battle wasn’t over – but at least, for the first time, the tide was turning in his favour.

  A fresh scent of sulphur tickled his nostrils just before a light tap landed on his shoulder. He turned to face the source, expecting the fiery aid of his own Legion, but instead, it was a Succubus, clad in red robes that clung to her like molten lava. She was the Centurion of the Fire Cohort, a force from the Second Legion. Her smirk was suggestive, her presence a tempting danger, like a flame waiting to scorch.

  “Well, well, Brave Orc, you’ve done well to keep it strong and going for so long,” she purred, eyes hungering for action. “Let my girls give you a helping hand. Everyone, with me, [Synchronise], [Barrage], [FireBall]!” She shouted, and her women followed, firebombing the entire line of spiders to ash in a single breath.

  The fire engulfed the darkness like the wrath of the underworld itself. The shadows chittered and recoiled, sizzling in defeat. The orcs, grinning from their shadows of torment, felt the light return, banishing the oppressive terror and dread from their souls. Even in the face of such madness, they found relief in that brief warmth. They had long since forgotten the sun.

  “See? All done. Extinguished in one fiery kiss.” the Succubus purred in his ear, her breath thick with the scent of brimstone. “Fight fire with fire, darling. Magic with magic.”

  The Brave Orc stiffened. His hate for her, her kind, and their magic had no end – but in this moment, he almost felt a strange, ill-fitting gratitude, almost as if he could hug her. No… He must have gone mad. He clenched his jaw, looking away from her intoxicating presence. There was no time for such thoughts. He couldn’t lose himself in the heat of this battle, no matter how alluring.

  He raised his head away from the temptress, away to bask in the fleeting rays of the sun, even as a chill in his gut told him that the darkness would soon consume it again. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something strange. A massive flying ship loomed overhead, an illusion, perhaps, or something far worse. Before he could ponder it further, the darkness surged back, swallowing the light and suffocating everything in its wake.

  “It starts again…” He muttered, eyeing the purple flashes deep in the dark abyss. “They’re summoning more spiders.”

  The Succubus giggled behind him, her voice lathered in syrupy honey. “Just keep your weapon straight and pointed, big guy.” She pressed herself against his back, her heat a stark contrast to the cold dread around them. “Us girls, we’ll deal with them from the rear, hehe~.”

  The Brave Orc grit his teeth and shoved her away with a grunt. “Cast your magic.”

  “[Synchronise], [Barrage], [FireBall]!” The Succubus purred hotly, launching a pre-emptive strike into the heart of the dark.

  The flames pushed the darkness back, but it didn't retreat as far this time. Then, as the black tide roared louder than before, it spat Fire back towards the orcs with a terrifying ferocity – twice the might of the succubus spell.

  “What… How?” The Succubus Centurion was momentarily stunned, but not for long. “[Boost: FireResistance]!!!” she cast just in time, targeting him and not herself.

  The fire rained down, but where it touched her, the heat was resisted, leaving the two of them unharmed. The Brave Orc barely had time to shield his face from the fiery assault. But the other orcs… they weren't so lucky. The stench of charred flesh filled the air.

  He ignored it all, focusing instead on the source of the flames. This wasn’t a simple FireBall. No, something was far more sinister lurking behind the curtain of shadows. His mind raced, the possibilities dancing inside his tired mind. A dragon? No, dragons weren’t easy to command or subjugate.

  Something far worse… emerged from the dark.

  “...” The Brave Orc was speechless, as the last shreds of darkness revealed a line of figures. A hundred or so men stood before them, their eyes burning with hatred, their weapons – tubes – flickering with ember-like light at their ends.

  "Not a dragon," the Succubus breathed, as if reading his mind.

  The vats on the emerging soldiers’ backs could only mean one thing: they were wielding something far more dangerous than mere fire. The flame that came from the dragon's breath. They had somehow bottled it!

  The Brave Orc braced himself. No, this didn’t bode well. Succubi and Tieflings aside, Orcs weren’t naturally resistant to fire. He looked back at the Succubus, her smirk never leaving her face as she relaxed a fraction for unknown reasons.

  “[Overcharge], [Inferno]!” She cast, sending an infernal blast toward the enemy ranks. But the fire crackled harmlessly against their crimson armour, their bodies unharmed by the flames. The Orcs, too, could feel the heat, despite the distance. The fire didn’t stop, and they were just barely hanging on.

  “I hate this! [Rahh]!” the Brave Orc roared, his frustration rising.

  “Relax.” She purred, her arms winding around his waist. “I’ll give it to your men too. [Multimagic], [Boost: FireResistance].”

  The enemy soldiers fired again, fire licking at the orcs. They were now resistant, but not immune. A sense of dread settled in his chest. What did the Succubus Centurion and her Tiefling Fire Mages plan to do? Fight fire with fire? – What a stupid idea. It was utterly insane!

  “No… We can’t win this. Not without the Fiends.” He muttered, rallying his orcs with a deep shout. “[Rally]! Only one option remains. We Charge them.”

  The Succubus sighed, a long, drawn-out sound full of mock sympathy. “Your stamina would expire before you’d finish the job. Don’t do that. Let’s call for reinforcements,” she said with a lazy wave.

  Rather conveniently, a Kenku Scout descended beside them, her wings beating weakly to disperse the clinging shadows. The Brave Orc turned to issue a quick order, but his words faltered as he took in her condition. Her robe was charred and tattered, the banner she carried barely discernible amidst the burn marks. Her feathers were singed, clumped together in molten patches of blackened mass. It was a miracle she could even stay airborne.

  “An urgent order,” the Kenku cawed, her voice strained. “We were ambushed on all sides. The Legion master commands a retreat.”

  “A retreat? Now?!” The Brave Orc was in disbelief. “After all I’ve sacrificed?” His blood boiled, rage flickering in his chest as he glanced at the wounded scout. “Who gave this order?” If it was from the Legatus of the First Legion, he would have no choice but to obey. Otherwise…

  “Orcus the Bloody,” the Kenku wheezed. “Now retreat and reform.”

  Orcus the Bloody. It was his Master. The command was irrefutable. Reluctantly, he nodded. But the weight of the order felt like chains wrapping tighter around his chest.

  Their hurried exchange was suddenly interrupted by a thunderous crack of lightning above them. The sky split open, a violent burst of purple light searing through the air. The very atmosphere trembled. And then, as though summoned by the void itself, a massive spider’s head emerged from the crackling storm – a now familiar abomination. Its eyes gleamed with malevolent intelligence, and its twisted mouth curled into a sneer.

  “NOT SO FAST,” it chirped, its voice a fusion of whispers and screeches, as currents of air pressure slammed into the ground. “I TOLD YOU… SHOW ME WHAT YOU’VE GOT!”

  The darkness surged, thickening, swallowing the last remaining light. The earth groaned beneath them, shuddering as though it, too, feared what was coming next.

  “…” – All three, Kenku, Succubus, and Brave Ork were left stunned.

  Was this just a game to some dark entity? Was it just toying with them?

  “W_W.”

  Will this nightmare ever end?