After having his fill, Ludwig moved away from the riverbank. The last taste still clung to his tongue, oil, blood, cold river-sweet flesh, and it made his stomach feel heavy in a way he hadn’t experienced in years.
The mud under his boots turned tackier near the water, and each step away felt like dragging himself out of sothing comfortable and wrong at the sa ti. His hands kept flexing without permission, as if the body was already thinking about the next bite.
Ludwig cursed out loud.
The sound ca out low and ugly, more a breath than a word, because it wasn’t the fish he hated. It was the fact that the fish had been good enough to make him montarily forget where he was, good enough to make his mind narrow into a hungry tunnel the way it did for creatures that lived one al at a ti.
"What is wrong, chieftain? Was the food not to your liking?" Akro asked.
Akro kept a respectful distance, but his eyes tracked Ludwig’s face with the careful attention of soone learning a new master’s habits. The other lizardn hovered near the waterline, wet and refreshed now, tails flicking droplets off their scales. Gale stood beside Ludwig like a quiet wall, watching the surroundings more than the conversation, because Gale didn’t trust rivers any more than Ludwig did.
"No," Ludwig said after he released a loud burp.
The burp was involuntary and humiliating in a way only living bodies could be. It felt like his throat had betrayed him for a second, making him sound like so satisfied beast that had just finished gnawing bone. Ludwig’s expression tightened imdiately afterward, irritation flashing across it like a blade.
"It was actually too damn good. And I hate it, hunger makes one think like a beast," he sighed.
The words ca out with frustration that wasn’t directed at Akro, or even at the river. It was directed at the Tower itself for putting him back into a flesh that demanded, craved, and rewarded the craving.
Ludwig had always been disciplined, even before he died the first ti. After becoming undead, discipline had beco effortless. Now it was effort again, and the effort annoyed him.
"But... we are beasts," Akro said.
Ludwig frowned. That was not right, no, that is completely wrong.
The lizardman said it as if it were obvious, as if the label fit cleanly and comfortably.
It wasn’t said like self-deprecation either.
It sounded like acceptance.
Ludwig’s gaze lingered on Akro’s chest brand for a heartbeat and then lifted back to his eyes, searching for sarcasm or bitterness.
There was none.
Why would any creature think of themselves as ’beast’? Even Orcs think they’re warriors. Lizardn even. Not even goblins would say to each other that they’re beasts. That’s not in the books for them.
No, sothing’s far more sinister is at play here.
The thought slid into place with a cold click. "Beast" was what humans called things beneath them: animals, monsters, savages. It was an insult you hurled downward, not a na you wore for yourself. For a creature to call itself that ant the concept had been pushed into them from outside, like a rule, like a story repeated until it beca truth.
Ludwig’s eyes tracked the lizardn again, how quickly they obeyed, how easily they accepted the idea of endless war even with abundance, how naturally they spoke like conflict was air.
Ludwig thought for a second, ’for a creature to call itself a beast... that’s just wrong.’
He almost asked. The question was right there on his tongue. Who taught you that?Why do you believe it? But he swallowed it.
If Akro believed it, he likely didn’t know where it started. A puppet didn’t know the na of the hand holding the strings. Pushing too hard now would only make them defensive and slow the march.
"Where to?" Gale said, cutting Ludwig’s thoughts.
Gale’s voice grounded the mont. The Tower didn’t reward philosophical spirals. The Tower rewarded movent, decisions, and blood. And they needed to move. They had a mission to complete. Waiting here, thinking of philosophical thoughts, would only slow everyone down.
"Ah, yes, to the Yellow Mountain then..."
The journey took exactly a day before they arrived, and it was not even the ti for the sun to fully set. It was still hanging a bit over the horizon, so they could still see the world around them.
The land shifted through long stretches of open field where the wind never stopped, then scattered forests that slled of damp bark and shadow, then back to open ground again. Ludwig kept the pace steady and ugly, fast enough to matter, not so fast that the lizardn scouts collapsed.
Akro and the other lizardn moved better near water and worse away from it, and Ludwig kept them close to the river whenever possible, using it like a guiding line across the plains.
Having crossed planes of open fields and scattered forests, seeing an elevation in the ground was new to them.
There was a mountain in front of them.
The rise wasn’t subtle. It changed the horizon like soone had pushed a blunt wedge into the world. Even before they reached it, the air had started to carry sothing rotten and sharp.
The yellow mountain stank all the way from over there.
"Sulfur," Ludwig muttered as he recognized the sll.
The scent hit the back of his throat like a chemical bruise, eggs left to rot, smoke trapped in stone, old fire that never fully died.
It wasn’t a normal mountain sll. It was the sll of earth that had once been split open and had decided to keep the wound. Ludwig’s mind imdiately tagged it as volcanic, and his instincts tagged it as unfriendly terrain.
"The whole yellow mountain was probably an old volcano turned to... whatever it is right now, a yellow mountain of stink," Ludwig muttered under his breath.
But that wasn’t the most interesting thing in the view they were looking at right now.
"That can’t be right..." Akro said as he crouched down from view.
His tone shifted from cautious to alard, and his body reacted before his mind finished the sentence. He dropped low, tail pressed to the ground, eyes wide as he stared through brush and uneven rock toward the mountain’s approach.
The rest of the group had also done the sa, even Ludwig, when they noticed what was happening in front of their eyes.
They sank behind a rise of earth and scrub, using it as cover. Ludwig’s eyes narrowed as he looked past the slope, and the first thing he registered wasn’t the sll anymore. It was the movent, too much movent, disciplined movent, lines flowing uphill like a tide.
There were just too many damned orcs here.
Red Orcs. Large in build, similar to Grath’s form. All of them potential chieftain level.
Even from a distance, their silhouettes were wrong for ordinary warriors. Broad shoulders. Thick limbs. The kind of mass that usually belonged to leaders, not foot soldiers. And they moved with ugly confidence, not scattered raiders, but an army that knew it could afford to be loud.
But that wasn’t the worry; it was the number.
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