Crack! Crack!
"!!!" The female humanoid bat's head snapped in the direction of the sound, her small black eyes narrowing. She had heard something.
Crack! BOOM
However, before she could locate the source, a shower of rocks and dust rained down from the cliff face above the clearing. The rocks crashed into the clearing.
ROAR!
The creatures who were busy in their mindless sex frenzy roared in pain and confusion as they were pelted by the falling debris. But some who were close in the vicinity of the rockfall halted their movements, their eyes turning back to normal.
The impact sound snapped them out of it.
Unfortunately, they were all beasts; they had no brains to understand what was going on or what had just happened. They looked around, dazed and confused, before they started to fight each other.
A bear who had his dick inside a wolf just a few seconds ago now roared and swiped at the wolf with his massive claws, tearing flesh. The wolf, now free, snarled and lunged, its teeth sinking into the bear's throat.
The orgy had turned into a bloodbath.
The bat-like female screeched in frustration. Her perfect ritual was ruined. She swiftly moved to the pink orb, her long, slender fingers caressing its surface. The orb pulsed, releasing more pink smoke, trying to calm the enraged creatures, but it was too late. The chaos had already taken hold.
Her attention was diverted, and for some reason, she didn't think that there was someone behind the rockfall. She just thought it was a natural phenomenon.
And this is exactly what Valkar was counting on.
Using the confusion as a cover, Valkar moved like a shadow, his small frame a blur of green skin and painted sigils. He skirted the edge of the clearing, staying low, using the petrified trees as cover. He kept his shield held high, ready for anything.
His target wasn't the creatures.
It was Grosh.
The big orc was still trapped, his struggles weakening as the pink rope tightened around him. His eyes were wide with a mixture of pain and fear, but they also held a flicker of defiance. He saw Valkar dashing toward him, and a glimmer of hope appeared in his eyes.
He didn't dare to shout, knowing it would alert the female creature.
Fortunately, the monsters' moans and screams covered the sound of Valkar's footsteps.
He reached Grosh's side in a heartbeat, quickly picking up the axe that was dropped by the trapped orc.
"Valkar help," he grunted, not wasting any words.
He raised the axe, slicing the pink rope binding Grosh's arms. The rope flinched as if it were alive, glowing a brighter pink, but the sharp blade cut through it with ease. The severed ends writhed on the ground like dying worms.
"Valkar help brothers." He didn't linger; he threw the axe back to Grosh as he moved to the four orcs that were... busy with each other.
"Grr?" The female creature had noticed that two of her pink ropes were cut.
Her head snapped towards Valkar, her small black eyes locking onto him. However, she didn't attack; instead, she waved her hand, sending pink smoke toward him. Her main focus was on calming down the other creatures and resuming her ritual.
The pink smoke was slow, allowing Valkar to reach his orc brothers first. He wasn't gentle with them.
They didn't have the luxury of waking up gently.
BAAM!
He kicked one in the head.
In his eyes, they deserved it.
Doing mating with males and wasting precious seed... It's disgusting and a disgrace to their race as orcs.
"GRAHHH!"
The kicked orc howled, blood spraying from a split lip as he rolled away from the tangled pile of green limbs. His eyes—glazed pink moments ago—cleared in an instant, replaced by the familiar red haze of orcish fury.
"WHO—?!" he snarled, scrambling to his feet, fists already clenched.
Valkar didn't answer. He simply moved to the next one, boot connecting with jaw in a clean, brutal arc. Teeth clattered across the stone. Another orc jerked awake, roaring in outrage and confusion.
The third received an elbow to the temple. The fourth got the flat of Valkar's shield across the face—hard enough to ring like a struck gong.
Four orcs. Four thuds. Four rising growls.
"GET UP!" Valkar snarled through clenched teeth.
They staggered upright, naked, smeared in dirt and fluids and shame. For one terrible heartbeat, they stared at each other—at the evidence of what they had been doing—and something primal snapped inside each of them.
No words. No excuses.
Only rage.
"RRRAAAAAAGH!!"
They turned as one toward the source of their humiliation.
The bat-thing.
She had frozen mid-gesture, one webbed hand still outstretched, pink smoke curling uselessly from her fingertips. The orb above the pillar pulsed frantically, but the creatures it had enthralled were no longer listening. The beasts—bears, wolves, boars, goblins—continued tearing into one another in a mindless storm of claws and teeth, but the orcs… the orcs were awake.
And orcs remember.
Grosh, now free, snatched up his dropped axe again. The handle felt right in his palm once more. He spat pink-tinged saliva onto the ground and rumbled low.
"Kill… the… thing."
Valkar stepped forward, placing himself between the newly awakened orcs and the pillar. Not because he wanted to protect the creature. Because he wanted first blood.
But the smoke reached them.
It was a wave of sweet, suffocating perfume. The world wavered at the edges. The rage wavered. A pleasant warmth bloomed in their chests, spreading down to their groins, whispering promises of easy pleasure, of forgetfulness, of the soft bodies pressed against them just moments before.
It didn't affect the orcs much since they had just woken up from it, but Valkar, who was exposed to it for the first time, started to feel dizzy.
But this was an Orc.
His will was forged in fire and pain, tempered by a mother who showed no mercy.
He didn't fight the feeling. He embraced it.
He used it.
RAGE!
The sigils on Valkar's chest flared, burning a brilliant, violent red. The dizzy warmth of the pink smoke was ripped apart by a furnace of pure fury. His veins bulged, thick and dark, tracing paths of fire beneath his skin. His muscles swelled, straining against leather and bone.
His skin turned red.
Not the dull russet of old blood or the flush of exertion.
Crimson. Living crimson. Like molten iron poured over green flesh and left to cool in the shape of rage.
The sigils carved across his chest and arms no longer merely glowed—they blazed. Each twisting rune spat sparks that hissed against the pink smoke, still trying to coil around him. The sweet perfume recoiled as though burned, thinning and fraying at the edges like paper held too close to flame.
Valkar's eyes—always an amber—now burned the same violent red as the markings on his body. Pupils narrowed to slits. Tusks seemed longer, sharper, pressing white against lips pulled back in something that was no longer a snarl.
It was a promise of absolute, uncompromising violence.
ROAR!!
They roared and charged. A big red angry orc leading four naked, enraged orcs, their shame burning hotter than any fire, their minds cleansed of everything but the need to rip and tear.
They were a wave of green muscle and fury.
Grosh attacked from the side, trying to flank the creature.
"QUEE!!!" The bat-thing screeched, a sound of genuine surprise. She had expected shame. Hesitation. Confusion. Submission.
She did not expect this.
With a fluid motion, she unfolded her massive wings. They were not for show. They were weapons.
WHOOSH!
The wings swept forward, not to fly, but to batter. The air pressure alone was immense, a wall of wind and force that slammed into the charging orcs like a battering ram made of storm.
Grosh took the brunt of it on his left shoulder. The big orc skidded back three paces, boots gouging furrows in the dirt, but he didn't fall. His axe stayed raised, edge glittering with pink ichor from earlier cuts.
The four naked orcs staggered, arms windmilling, feet sliding on loose gravel. One of them—the one with the split lip—actually went down hard on his ass, cursing in thick orcish gutturals.
But Valkar—crimson-skinned, sigil-burning Valkar—did not slow.
The wind hit him square in the chest and parted around him like water around a boulder in a river. His forward momentum barely faltered. Red eyes locked on the bat-thing's face. He saw the instant her black-bead pupils dilated in realization.
She had miscalculated.
Badly.
Valkar closed the last five strides in a single explosive leap.
He didn't swing a weapon. He didn't need one yet.
He simply drove his forehead into the flat bridge of her wide, ugly nose.
CRUNCH.
The sound was wet and final. Cartilage gave way like a dry reed. Pink blood exploded outward in a fine mist. Her head snapped back so violently that one of her pointed ears folded sideways against her skull.
She reeled.
Valkar didn't give her time to recover.
His hands—now corded with veins like black ropes—shot forward and clamped around the base of her right wing where it joined her shoulder. Rubber-leather skin stretched, then tore. He ripped downward in a single savage yank.
A long strip of membrane peeled away like wet hide from a fresh kill. Glowing pink ichor sprayed in a wide arc, hissing where it struck the ground. The wing flopped uselessly, half-attached, flapping like a torn sail in a gale.
"QUEEEEE—!!" Her screech this time was pure agony, high and piercing.
However, when Valkar attempted to rip the other wing, he froze, staring with wide eyes at the figure that suddenly appeared before him.
"Valkar my son..."
It was his mother, Zura'thrax. Naked, her body glistening with a faint sheen of sweat, her arms were wide open, welcoming him.
"... come to mommy."
She slowly approached him, her hips swaying seductively, a wide smile on her beautiful face. A gentle smile that Valkar had never seen before.
"Come, Valkar. Mommy loves you." Zura reached out and gently touched his cheek, her fingers cool against his burning skin.
"Let the anger go, my son, and—"
Thud!
She couldn't finish her sentence, as a knife made from bone stabbed her in the heart.
"...why?" Her expression was one of pure shock and betrayal as she stared at Valkar, then down at the knife protruding from her chest.
"Mother," Valkar spoke, his voice cold, devoid of emotion, as he pushed the knife deeper. "Not weak like you."