Garnash sat on his throne, a pair of shamans attending him, as he stared at the image of the blue and green planet in the viewing crystal. Numerous servitors shuddered as he shifted his bulk, afraid that they would draw his attention. When Garnash became angry, he was known for adding his servitors and thralls to his seat of power, a rough piece of craftsmanship cobbled together from black iron and bone. He grinned, an ugly snaggle of tusks and serrated teeth. It was good that they feared him. It showed intelligence on their part.
He leaned forward, blinking his beady golden eyes before pointing at a mote of light above the doomed world. A void ship hung in orbit, sorely out of place for the largely pre-magical society that he had been promised.
“What’s this?” He frowned, his tusks jutting out from his massive jaw. “We were told that the elves had withdrawn from this world.” He stared accusingly at the shaman in charge of the expedition’s spies and scouting. Of course it was a shaman. A proper warrior would never stoop to such a task.
“Can the agent that fed us this tip be trusted?” Garnash’s deep voice rumbled out, echoing through his hall. “Or should he be fed to Grosk for betraying the Horde? I’m sure Grosk would want the name of the Orakh negligent enough to allow our expedition to be misled.”
“Horde Lord!” One of the shamans dropped to both knees, pressing his forehead to the uneven surface of the citadel’s floor before responding. “The elf that gave us this information hates the noble house from this region. He foolishly believes that we will halt our conquests before we reach him. Allegedly, the elven invasion of this planet failed, and the locals managed to steal a void ship. Even if they have it, they are only humans, the elves’ thrall race. Without elven support, they should be easy prey.”
“Good,” Garnash grunted, slouching back into the throne. “I will enjoy the look of surprise on that elf’s face when I add his spine to my collection. The very purpose of the Orakh is to expand. For all their vaunted intellect, the forces in Tellask that believe we can be compromised with are dumb beyond belief. Maybe the elves will stop us, maybe they won’t, but we will not stop on our own. Even the basest thrall can see that.”
“Of course, my lord.” The shaman held his position, unmoving.
“Bring the Citadel toward the planet,” Garnash waved his hand at the shaman, dismissing him. “Make sure the brood mothers are prepared for our descent. I will fertilize their egg pouches before we land. The war chiefs and shamans should be prepared to attend to their brood mothers as soon as I finish.”
Both of the shamans scurried from the room. Garnash didn’t trust either of them. Grosk had created them from the elves, forcing prisoners to fertilize a brood mother before killing the treacherous beings. Their offspring were useful, borderline essential given the low rate of mana sensitivity among mainstream Orakh, but they still reminded Garnash too much of their foes. They fought with magic and cunning rather than a good, old-fashioned war club or axe. Worse, their internal hierarchy was ruled by a complex series of politics and alliances rather than simply deferring to the most powerful shaman. It was unnatural. As far as he could tell, they were barely Orakh.
He stood from his throne and began stomping to the exit of his great hall, preoccupied and slightly worried by the existence of the void ship. A servitor ran up to him, an elven skull filled with mulled wine held in its shaking grip. Garnash backhanded it, reveling in the feel of its weak limbs snapping from the force of the blow. He didn’t trust servitors, either. They were descended from humans in the same way that shamans came from elves. Unlike the shamans, the servitors were barely useful. Too weak to fight properly and more or less incapable of magic, they were only kept around to service the equipment that proper Orakh warriors were too proud to touch.
Garnash stalked through the halls of his Citadel, all of the Orakh fleeing from his heavy footsteps in fear. He smiled to himself. This is what it was to be a Horde Lord. Their terrified pheromones hung heavy in the air, spurring him on as he stepped into the chamber of the first brood mother and dropped his breeches.
She gurgled mindlessly down at him, her elephantine bulk wobbling precariously above him. Brood mothers were little more than digestive, circulatory, and reproductive systems. There was no need to complicate things with any sort of cognition or emotions. They existed for one purpose: to produce more Orakh warriors for the Horde’s advance.
Grunting, he methodically stroked her egg sac until it opened, revealing thousands of glistening, fist-sized eggs. When she landed on the world beneath them, she would be needed to produce strong warriors. To do that, she would need strong seed, and truly, who on this expedition was stronger than the Horde Lord? It was both his duty to the Horde and his right as the expedition’s Lord to ensure that the first wave of warriors were his progeny.
“Calm yourself, Apo.” He spoke to the almost-mindless sphere of flesh as she trilled at him. “Soon we will land, and you can perform your duty. Until then, rest. You will need your strength to nourish our young.”
She calmed as he patted her glistening side. Fertilization always agitated the brood mothers, but soon she would return to her usual activities: dozing and consuming the platters of flesh needed to sustain her massive size brought to her by the servitors.
He returned to his hall, barely phased by the exertion of going chamber to chamber ensuring the strength of the next generation. On the viewing crystal, the planet was much larger. Garnash could already make out the outlines of continents resting in a great blue ocean. He grunted in satisfaction. Although the Orakh lived most of their life on land, their skin needed occasional moistening, and their young grew up almost entirely in the water. The new planet would provide fertile soil for his young to grow up in.
The citadel tumbled into the planet’s orbit, past a glittering array of satellites and the unmoving elven ship. He resisted the urge to target the vessel. As much as he hated the elves, today they weren’t his primary purpose. The citadel was here to make landfall. To turn the slumbering world beneath him into a breeding ground for the Horde’s next advance against the elven fortress worlds. For now, a single void ship could wait.
He frowned slightly as a series of projectiles floated up on plumes of flame from the planet below. Apparently the planet had defenses of some sort. Yet another important fact glossed over by their informant. Garnash reached forward and crushed the control crystal, triggering the citadel’s dissolution. He didn’t know what sort of weapon the projectiles were, but there were only four of them.
The citadel shattered into twelve different pieces, each with its own mana forge, teleportation drive and brood mother. Garnash guided his own shard toward one of the continents, well above the planet’s equator. Around his vessel, the others split up, each quickly selecting their own landing site and accelerating away.
The projectiles from the planet separated as well, each seeking one of the scattering shards. Garnash blinked as a sudden flare of light illuminated the dark of his hall. One of the projectiles had exploded, annihilating a landing shard.
He frowned. When the time came, he was going to enjoy torturing the informant that sent them here without proper information. Whatever spellcaster produced those projectiles wasn’t to be trifled with. The force of the blast easily outclassed an Arch Mage’s output. If this planet had an Archon, it would make the invasion that much more difficult.
Then another projectile erupted in a sphere of white light. This time, it exploded too far from the landing shard, knocking it off course and damaging it severely, but ultimately not destroying it. Garnash gripped his throne in frustration. Even if the shard landed intact, that blast had rocked it too much. The brood mothers required stability, or the fertilized egg sacs would rupture. It was why citadels didn’t simply teleport to a planet’s surface; it would expose the fragile young to energies that would sterilize them in a millisecond.
The shards tried to avoid the projectiles, but there was a limit on their maximum speed. Each pilot knew that their life mattered less to the Horde than their cargo. It was every Orakh’s hope to make it to the surface of the planet alive and prepared to raid for the biomass that the brood mothers would need, but ultimately their survival was meaningless if the egg sacs didn’t make it to the surface intact.
A shard began firing at the projectile approaching it. Tinsel like strands of fire and light reaching out toward the projectile. Garnash rubbed his tusks. None of them hit the mote of light as it dashed toward the Orakh vessel. He grimaced as it exploded, taking the landing craft with it.
Then his shard hit the atmosphere, and Garnash no longer had the time to concern himself with the projectiles. The rock and metal of his landing shield glowed red as he urged the drive shamans to steady the vessel and slow its descent. It tried to shimmy, but Garnash touched a stud on his throne, unfurling the gliding sails. The thick leather of the sails flapped in the rapidly thickening atmosphere before the shard’s drag pulled them taut.
Garnash adjusted his grip on the steering stone, leveling out the shard’s flight. Landing was always a tricky operation. The shard was much too heavy to glide properly on its own, but with the aid of the shamans, its bulk could barely be lessened enough to prevent it from simply plummeting to the planet below. Still, it was a race against the forge’s dwindling mana supply to land before the spellcasters gave out.
A trio of grey flying objects approached the vessel. Garnash tapped another stud, indicating that the gunnery thralls could open fire. For a second, nothing happened, then the attackers disappeared in a flash of light as a burst of fire mana wiped them from existence.
The details of the world began to come into focus for Garnash. Empty fields of green leading to great forests dotted with cities made of metallic towers. Here and there, he briefly spotted large farm fields alongside paddocks filled with herd animals. His mouth stretched into a ghoulish grin. This world was fat, filled to the brim with protein that could be turned into new Orakh.
Finally, he spotted his target. An island just off the coast of one of the planet’s largest cities. The island itself was covered in structures of its own, some of the largest towers stretching even higher than his shard. Garnash touched the final stud on his command interface, initiating the landing procedure.
The vessel crashed into one of the towers with a shriek of metal on metal, spraying sparks into the air. Garnash stood from his throne and began walking toward the landing craft’s cargo bay. Soon the doors would open, unleashing the Horde on yet another unprepared world. The locals would fight. They always did. But in the end, their meat would feed his young, and their water would nourish them.
It was inevitable.
