23:21, Rotation 264 / 365, 232 AE, -67.281789, -68.771627, Reath

  After pulling herself out of the K-hole, Lawrah awakened to find her wrists krimped to a bamboo tree with a gryphantene ziptie. This was one ziptie that orcans could not break, even when raging.

  “Githarie!” she shouted. But there was no answer, and the forest remained dark.

  “Mm. Zug.” Vyerna approached her from behind, “Sha make a fine tribute to the Goddess.”

  Squirming around to look at her captor, Lawrah spat, “Go skai shaself, elf whore.”

  Crinkling her brow, Vyerna tsk-tsked, and replied softly, “Language, sha.”

  “WAAAAA-AAAAAGH!”

  Using berserker strength, Lawrah tore the gryphantene ziptie straight through the bamboo tree trunk that she was bound down to. Her wrists were still tied together, but she could move freely now. The felled tree crashed into the ground.

  “Rr-”, the Durban’s daughter dropped low, and claws sprouted from her fingers.

  Skai! Stick with the plan! Anticipate – don’t improvise!

  Vyerna had dropped her bow nearby before she approached the krimped zug, assuming she would probably need it at some point, but just not quite sure how. This was a skaiza strong zug. She took an arrow from the quiver slung on her back – thankfully only one fell out while she was swinging – and nocked it from the right side of the bow for a quickshot.

  Meanwhile the wagh was turning into a WAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

  There is a difference between a simple ‘wagh’- a shitshow, a mess, a snafu, a fiasco, and a ‘WAAAAAAAAAAAGH’- a calamity, fubar, a wagh of apocalyptic scale. It was easy to know when a wagh had become a WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

  It was one thing for a Wurl Stah to resolve itself, when two orcans beat each other senselessly until they made up, or one was killed. It was another thing when the rage spread from orcan to orcan like covid did, during the Harbinger of the Catastrophe.

  Whynnetah had popped orcboi’s head like a zit, but then was gored by orcboi’s horn. As she lay, the horn still impaled through her body, her wife Khloe was at her side, providing comfort and warmth.

  The San Martin Triad had originally tried recruiting orcboi. But orcboi refused because their little subdivision within the San Martin Hyenas was unanimously considered by the rest of the thugs as way too tweaked out on ice and unreliable for jobs, especially their ‘leader’, Kullmang. So Kullmang decided to go pay orcboi some orcan ‘justice’. But they were beaten to the punch. So, they attacked Khloe.

  Khloe raged out, and moreover, with at least two thirds of the crowd cheering on for Whynnetah’s Wurl Stah against the orcboi being Lions who hated the Hyenas, they rushed the triad, who then promptly had to wagh out too.

  Whipping out her forty-five, Khloe blasted Sarvok – she usually hit the biggest guy first – before hurling herself into a berserker rage powered drop kick with stilettos and all, which knocked Sarvok back, hard, and left deep stab wounds, but as he raged in the middle of the impact, he was able to smash his legs down to the ground and stop his momentum by grinding his boots, leaving a deep scuff in the earth.

  He gave Khloe a diabolical cackle and then used his signature move, the Darthrak - the Deathbringer Assault. Powering his immense body up with berserker rage, he instead focused his wagh into one single powerful strike so that he could conserve his raging for just the moments that count. He smashed his fist clean through Khloe’s abdomen, grabbing a tight hold of her spine along the way, and ripped it out from the back, killing Khloe.

  That’s when five or six raging orcans went at Sarvok all at once. Sarvok was hit with three shotgun blasts, took a halberd to the armpit and still somehow his arm was not severed, and his right hamstring was skewered by an envenomed javelin. Abandoning his Darthrak strategy, Sarvok went full rage – bhaal mode – and seized the closest nakaz wagh skai, held him aloft in the air, before dropping his lumbar into his raised knee, breaking his back.

  Kullmang was shot in the face with a high caliber revolver, but the bullet only went through the cheek and jaw hinge. Now, half his jaw was missing, the other half hung by the other hinge, and he looked like a mindless undead, a gul. Three more Lions went at him, so he unraveled a steel chain whip, welded with sharp blade petals, which he always kept rolled up around his waist – he avoided cutting himself by padding his abdomen with a thick roll of hemp fabric – and sliced it at his attackers. The spiked chain wrapped around the neck of a thirteen-rev-old zug trying to tackle him into a takedown, but she raged out and grew thick, wagh-mogged, armored scales all over her neck- she wasn’t down for the count yet. Preoccupied with this failed attack, Kullmang failed to parry a stone club blow to the flank, knocking him down. Unable to withdraw the chain whip for the thirteen-rev-zug had grabbed it with her bare hands to keep him from taking it back. The spikes cut deep into her hands, and now it seemed like she had been entirely doused in blood from all of it gushing out of her palms, but she didn’t look like she felt it, for she didn’t. The berserker rage protected.

  Bheely got hit with the shotgun too, and that knocked him down. He pretended to play dead or unconscious so the Rotherans would leave him alone – Bheely was by far the most craven of the three – but the less experienced with combat in the crowd just went for the safe option and now they were together pummeling him with kicks. So Bheely raged out. A great big bone skewer erupted out of his right arm, and he shoved it into one of the kicker’s buttocks, so the kicker raged out. The kicker stumbled back, then with berserker strength smashed the bottle of Vostok that he was swigging – a whole silver! – right into Bheely’s forehead as he fell back. The glass bottle shattered, glass shards sprinkling into Bheely’s eyes, with vodka still in it so it splashed all over his new cuts. Bheely screamed and, in his delirium, pulled the pin on his emergency grenade he had hung on one of his backpack straps.

  That’s how the fire started, as the grenade erupted it ignited the spilled vodka – it was a magnum – and one of the girders of the Ziggurat. Very quickly all the girders lit up because the Ziggurat had not been covered by tarp so the wind could easily breeze through the whole structure. The winds were picking up now as a hypercane slammed its way through the Screaming Sixties many clicks offshore, slowly being shorn apart. Now the pyramid became a conflagration, and since it was never structurally sound, it quickly collapsed – anyone still underneath was roasted alive, not even the berserker rage could help them – and flaming bamboo started flying everywhere.

  They had already lit up the ends of the arch and all the Burning Orcans and obstacle courses in the clearing for the one remaining live performance to finish, but the flaming, flying bamboo flew right into the center of the arch igniting it from there too, and so the arch fire burned far faster than was planned. With the embers spinning through the air, caught in dust devils as the ambient heat began whipping up chaotic pressure gradients, any who stayed for these final hours of the razza would all have to agree that it was pretty metal.

  It was because of these swarms of minute meteors that the temple got lit up. With the arch rising as tall as it did, the embers it cast drifted much further, all the way to the temple fence. Someone who wasn’t part of the festival organization had taken over the decks and was spinning his own nuk-nuk, but the orcans who had yet to complete their rolls or trips and wanted to keep partying had gathered here. With many still inside the temple completely unaware that the fence had caught fire until it was too late, there was a mad rush to get out of the only opening – it quickly became impossible to squeeze through the double slits that were casting the pentagram lines from the bonfire – and as orcs trampled over each other, more and more of them started to wagh.

  And now almost every single bamboo structure on the grounds, including the Ziggurat and the Temple Fence, which were not supposed to be on fire, were set on fire. The clearing arch now looked like a yawning chasm, a flaming portal to hell. Metalbois were still playing, despite the madness, but no other stage stuck to the sched anymore and had abandoned their posts.

  The pop-up beer bar was still functioning normally though. Better than normally, they were killing it.

  As the Triad was getting rekt though, the rest of the Hyenas had planned a terror strike against the razza when the Lions were most vulnerable, and they were most certainly vulnerable now, and so Hyenas began to attack any Lion they saw.

  Lawrah had ditched Zholl with a gang of assholes at the temple nook, and they just so happened to all be from San Martin. They had savaged him. Though the two Lawrah had hit with eye gouges had run away, and the one she hit with a throat slam was still laying on the ground very still, there were still three more assholes and two of them had his arms pinned over their shoulders, holding him up as a target as the third went to work.

  “AH Hahaha! His zug fights better than him!”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The third asshole was named Tcha-wunge Lungh, and he was the son of one of the wealthier raider’s confederates who lived on San Martin, Akur-wunge Lungh. Akur-wunge, or just Akur, managed all the accounts on the ethereal chains for the San Martin orcans. Since there was much rogue trade going through San Martin, and Akur would get an extortionary cut out of each withdrawal, Akur was possibly even wealthier than Chief Raigo. He had eight children, but Tcha, his second born, but first son, was spoiled silly. Each fortrote, Tcha would show off a new gat he had bought, always something naz and shiny, but he was a terrible shot.

  He wasn’t that bad at boxing though, and he smashed a haymaker – high risk, high damage, but here was a target that couldn’t evade – right into Zhon’s right eye, leaving it swollen and bruised.

  Zholl was perfectly still. He looked up.

  This was not his first rodeo.

  “Wagh.”

  And just like that, Zholl’s strength outmatched both the orcs – one Nook Krant, and one Keef Khung – holding him, grabbed the back of their necks and smashed their heads into Tcha-wunge’s ugly mug. The assholes dropped to the floor.

  But he had taken quite a beating, having sustained eighteen body hits, a couple of kicks, and he had a little shank still sticking out of his upper arm. And now he had a shiner. A big black eye. He yanked the shank out, grimacing. A streak of red blood fell down his arm, trickling to his palm, and he held it in front of him, gripping his fist tight.

  Seeing red now, in his controlled berserker state, he howled,

  “LAW - RAH!”

  Over at the other side of the Yurt, where Zhon and Deyandra had finally found each other again, and were snogging, and were just about to make it as far as Zholl and Lawrah had if they had just found a damn spot, were facing off two more San Martin thugs that had targeted them, easily recognizing the ubiquitous cocaine dealer Deyandra Ghadaz.

  “DIE, YA SNAGA FUCKS!” Zhon dropped his guard and went for a flying elbow.

  Murca Jheckyr let his own momentum sail past – she leaned away to dodge – before promptly wrapping Zhon in a bear hug and body slamming him to the ground. She was much bigger, stronger, flexible, limber, quick, as well as clever, which became all the more important as she planned all the many ways that she could fold Zhon’s body into a broken knot.

  Now she had Zhon’s extended arm trapped- pinned to the ground, but still not locked as Zhon could still try to slide it around. Wrapping one of her legs around the other way and then pressing the heel against the other side of Zhon’s body to give two-way leverage, she got the lock. Berserking out and then pulling as hard as she could from both directions, she popped Zhon’s shoulder socket right out of its joint, dislocating it. She kept pulling and the flesh began to tear, and it seemed like she would rip Zhon’s arm off entirely.

  “HRAAAARRGH-”, Zhon bawled, then “H- W-AA-AA-GH!”

  He berserked, but having already been submitted with an arm lock, there was nothing he could do. Almost nothing.

  His canines elongated razor sharp into venom fangs. The rage granted him Death Adder Venom. Zhon bit into the thigh of Murca, and the pure neurotoxin shut down her neuromuscular system. Going limp, she could only stammer, “SK-SK-SKAI” from a paralyzed and half open jaw, drool falling in a puddle on the floor. Zhon shook himself out of the roll and examined his arm.

  All the ligaments had snapped, the muscle fiber itself had torn so his arm was completely useless now. The rest of the arm, cut off from blood, would simply necrotize- he couldn’t stitch it back on himself with orcan troll regeneration anymore.

  Zhon was still in full wagh though.

  “WA-AAGH!”

  So Zhon ripped his own arm off and started clubbing another San Martin skai sha hai with it, the rigor mortis that was quickly setting it making it an effective bludgeon.

  Deyandra was facing off against Karyn Blatpukor, who had pulled out an orcan clone of an old Godlike firearm design – a fully automatic submachine gun pistol – and was spraying and praying suppression. Deyandra rolled away from the blatta-blatta-blatta bursts of nine-millimeter parabellums, and drew out her trusty thirty-eight, an ergonomic classic. She waited for the click-click telltale sound of a spent mag, popped out from her cover, and blasted Karyn in the dome. Karyn went down, but then with a “WAA-AGH!”, popped right back up, reloaded, now with a missing chunk of her left hemisphere, which she used to talk, so as she sprayed again, she said:

  “WAAAGH! WAAAAGH! WAGH WAGH, WA- WAAAAGH! WAGH WAGH WAGH WAGH WAGH!”

  Dey leapt away as Karyn completely lost her shit, for Karyn was a talkative orcan, and she couldn’t be Karyn without her phony sounding, nasal voice. She could not communicate with WAGHs. No orc could. WAGHs were not communication. Dey felt a little bad about this one, but it didn’t matter now, she needed to survive!

  Every orc for sha self now! It was a WAAAAAAGH!

  Karyn slumped backwards, and passed out, as the trauma was too much to bear.

  Then Dey saw Zhon warding off a circle of Baybois with his severed arm. He was badly outnumbered. They saw a wounded, weakened orc and were going in to neutralize permanently. No amount of the wagh would get him out of this WAAAAAAGH. He needed help.

  Pham for Tar. Bet.

  Deyandra slid in, loaded a fresh clip as she did so, and popped off. She emptied the entire magazine, ripping lacerations out on a bicep, an ankle, eight raking across torsos, and burying three into one especially unlucky skai’s abdomen. Looking to neutralize one of his attackers one at a time so he wouldn’t need to fight them all at once, Zhon swung his arm down on the skai who got hit in the abdomen, who had fallen to his stomach, bashing him right in the exit wounds. Three bashes and the skai died for real, the damage to his liver preventing him from getting any wagh in him.

  Deyandra went in for the tag team to handle the remainders and used some moves she learned from the pros from Carvajal- she shot her leg straight out to throw a teep kick at a snaga hai, but it missed. The snaga hai assumed Deyandra was a striker and not a grappler, so she went for the takedown, but Deyandra stayed cool and let it happen, letting them tumble to the ground. As they rolled, Deyandra proved herself the superior jiu jitsu practitioner, and got the snaga hai in an omoplata- Ai-sha, her Carvajal Sex Worker Martial Arts Sifus really knew what they were talking about. Zhon kicked the immobilized snaga hai in the face and she went down. They made a good team.

  Zhon extended his remaining hand and lifted Deyandra to her feet. Zhon’s wagh was fading out, he had sustained major damage, and he couldn’t keep it up.

  “We gotta gul, mubru.”

  Zhon looked around him. It was… well, it was a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH now.

  “How’re we gonna gul outta this, sha gof hai? It’s a WAAAAAAAAAA-”

  She put a hand over his mouth to stop him from screaming. “I get it, Zhon, it’s not that hard to figure out the difference between a wagh and a-” she paused, her palm started vibrating again as he screamed, “WA-” to finish her sentence, so she clasped harder and led him away.

  It’s not possible to stick with a plan that just fell apart.

  She did not anticipate this.

  She was improvising right now.

  It was just a job offer rejection, relax, Yep!

  ‘Bhaal’, orcish for ‘demon’, or ‘murderer’, or, with a specific context, ‘God of Murder’.

  You merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a grown orcan, but by then it was nothing to me but blinding!

  All the bottles were magnums. Orcans could drink approximately three times as much as an Upper Jhiryan Godlike, roughly thirty liters in one revolution.

  Skai that, you do it.

  Indeed, it was a hurricane it spawned that surged ahead of the parent that had created the swell that the Thraxes kids surfed earlier.

  Master of Puppets. A classic.

  For there was nowhere else that matched their vibe.

  This is fine.

  It was his father’s way of making it up to him for his absentee parenting, as his father, Aker, was too busy traipsing around in Carvajal seeing prostitutes.

  Maybe Zholl wasn’t exactly the best at hand to hand melee combat, but he knew his way around guns, and especially- polearms.

  Classic Art of Eight Limbs.

  Sometimes, when stuck in a truly dire jam, the berserker rage gives the orcan something really bubhosh gof.

  An UZI. It was basically an orcan UZI, that is, with a few cut corners here and there.

  If you want peace, prepare for war.

  An orcan clone of a Glock. It was basically a Glock, that is, of course, with a few cut corners here and there.

  ‘Fucking’

  ‘Goddammit’

  ‘That hurt.’

  ‘Wait…’ Karyn realized at this moment that she couldn’t speak properly anymore.

  ‘CUNT!’

  ‘You will pay for that!’

  Passive aggressive, always complaining about the Dining Mess getting her orders wrong and demanding to see the manager.

  It really isn’t that hard to tell the difference between a wagh and a WAAAAAAAAAAGH. Compare, say, to the football game. Now that was just a wagh.

  When she transmogrified her brain back, she found herself significantly more talented at mathematics. It took a long time to get there though, and forevermore, Deyandra would be Karyn’s sworn nemesis. This only went one way though, Deyandra quickly forgot about Karyn until the next time they met.

  Which really shows the contradictory nature of orcans, because didn’t she just think- every orc for sha self, now?