Observing the End, Volume 3: Protagonism

Chapter 5: Climbing the Mountain

Had a dream last night where I was still at home, with my parents. There was no warning this time, just zombies. I had no armor, I wasn’t prepared… Obviously I still survived, but my family wasn’t so lucky. And I had to watch them die, knowing that there was nothing I could do to save them.

Then I went down to the docks and tried to find Cassie. She wasn’t in that boat. Maybe she was in the city when it happened? Who knows. Throughout it all, there was one person I struggled to find the hardest.

Fortunately, when I woke up, she was right there in my arms. Smiling up at me. Talia is growing so fast. Pretty soon, she’ll be a toddler. She can already crawl around on her own and say a few words like “Daddy, Mommy and poopoo.” Yeah, she’s already past the stage where she’ll s**t or piss herself without any worries.

Why don’t I feel so close to my other children? There’s just this emotional void between us that goes both ways. Sure, I take care of them and try to teach them but, they’re much more attached to their mothers. Even Scarface’s kids have started avoiding me lately. They all flock to the Matriarch though… The Green, not the Grey. But I’m sure that the Grey Matriarch will end up becoming the favorite ‘Mommy’ after the other Greys are dead, right?

I’ve become so damn cynical lately. No wait, I’ve always been that way. I laugh at some of the most f****d up s**t imaginable, because that’s just who I am. I have an amazing sense of humor. Otherwise I’d probably be really boring.

***

We’re finally there. It’s been almost forty days and we moved at least five times, but we made it to the mountainside. Rather than that tiny stream, there are actual rivers here. Unlike the prairie, there are tons of trees here, so we should have plenty of lumber. Animals and edible plants are everywhere. Even with our huge group, we shouldn’t have any trouble avoiding starvation… Assuming that things remain the same.

The bigger concern is that we aren’t alone on this mountain. There are other orcish tribes all over the place. Most of them are small, so they stay away from us. For example, I saw the Brown Orc Camp the other day and there were only two men, along with an adolescent girl. That was it. I’m guessing the rest of them probably died. They didn’t even have a Matriarch or Chieftain. Hell, could they even be considered a tribe at that point? More like a small family.

I think the Grey and Green Matriarchs wanted to recruit them, but they refused. It wasn’t a big deal though. The men were only a little over seven feet tall. That girl was my height. Overall, I don’t think that the two tribal leaders offered them very good terms. Maybe they even said “We need some obedient slaves! Are you interested?”

If you’re wondering why I still haven’t learned how to speak their weird grunting language, it’s because it literally makes no sense to me. I’ve never been particularly good at any other language besides English. Even then, when you consider that I’ve been speaking it since I was less than a year old, it took me a long time to reach my current level.

There are a lot of Albino Orcs, who have skin whiter than mine and pink irises. I’m guessing it’s probably from all the inbreeding. From what I’ve guestimated, all the tribes banish their Albinos. They’re forced to survive on their own or band together, into small groups. Overall though, they aren’t that bad.

The real problem is the umm, I don’t wanna say ‘Black Tribe’, even though their skin is pitch-black. They’re all over eight feet tall and even their tusks are dark-brown. Essentially, they’re the rulers of this mountain. Their advantage at night is pretty extreme. The brown irises of their eyes are so large that you can’t even see the sclera. They’re usually nudists or only wear the furs of black, green or brown animals.

I’ll call them the Obsidian Tribe, because their skin is darker than any human I’ve ever seen. Even without getting much sunlight, they still look like that. Almost as if they were designed to be stealthy assassins. Actually, for all I know… All the Orcs could have been genetic experiments of Elves or humans, maybe even some other races.

The Orcs could have been the original inhabitants or the invaders who destroyed civilization on this planet. Regardless of whatever happened back then, the people today have nothing to do with it. Even if they did, it’s not like I knew anyone that lived here, right?

Anyway, the biggest, most dangerous and most annoying tribe are those Obsidian bastards. They aren’t particularly smart or strong, at least not from my perspective, but they’re hard to deal with. This redwood-looking forest has trees that are absurdly tall. Some are over three-hundred meters. In case you don’t understand how high that is, imagine three football fields stacked on top of each other.

Those Obsidian Orcs climb up the trees and live on the branches. It’s rare for them to even come down to the ground, but they can. At any moment, dozens or hundreds of giant assholes can swarm our camp. Even if they don’t want to attack us directly, they can just drop rocks or spears from the sky.

The tents don’t really provide much protection either. As for cutting down the trees… Umm, have you ever seen a redwood before? These are even more ridiculous. How many days would it take to hack down one of these giant fuckers? Will our stone tools even work? I can’t burn them down either, but the nice thing about fire, is that it produces smoke. I mean, I always hated fire because of the smoke, but it’s actually useful now.

There are certain plants that produce a horrible odor when you burn their leaves. Plus, some of them obviously have poisonous fumes. It’s not that bad for us on the ground, but for those douchebags in the trees, it’s deadly. Fortunately though, they don’t seem that intent on f*****g with us so far.

At most, I hear them growling in the sky and see s**t or piss falling nearby. Honestly, the real threat isn’t from the Orcs, but the animals. Wolves as big as lions, panthers the size of grizzly bears, red pandas the size of polar bears and lots of bugs. One of the Greys died last night from a tick bite. Another got killed by a tree branch the size of a normal tree. Pretty sure that was an accident, but who knows? When something the size of a tree falls on your tent while you’re sleeping, you gotta be pretty damn unlucky. It didn’t fall sideways, but just kinda fell down and impaled her through the gut. We tried to save her… Didn’t work out very well.

The moral of the story is that this forest is way more dangerous than the prairie, so why the hell are we here? What the f**k is about to happen that we can’t even stay on the outskirts and have to keep climbing this really shallow mountain?

On a side note, I’ve seen a few Obsidian Orcs fall to their deaths too. In case you were wondering why we don’t just climb the f*****g gigantic skyscraper trees. It’s definitely safer to be on the ground.

***

Okay, now I know that it’s definitely safer to be on the ground! Holy f**k! I thought those were birds when we were walking over… I mean, they looked like hawks or vultures from a distance. But up close? Nah, they’re goddamn dragons!

They look small compared to the trees, but some of those bastards have a wingspan of fifty feet! Their height is way bigger than an Orc. They’re the real owners of this mountain. Rather than generic Eastern or Western Dragons, these are wyverns. Their front legs are winged, while the back ones are thick like a bird. They have brownish green scales, so it’s hard as hell to notice them until it’s too late to do anything about it. Fortunately, they’re loud and too big to fit in between some of these trees. Also, they prefer to eat the Obsidian Orcs, who are obviously much easier to reach.

Still, one of the smaller ones almost ate Jacob earlier. I’ve been spending so much time taking care of my younger kids, that the older ones have been escaping my view lately. They’re at the age where they know how to walk and talk, so they think the world is some kinda awesome place that was made for them to explore. No matter how much I tell them to be careful, brats always end up learning s**t the hard way.

Speaking of my children, Skullface and Black Hand had two more sets of twins. Unlike Scarface though, they were healthy enough to survive the ordeal. I think Scarface probably had a few kids before Talia. Maybe Rune is one of them? She was the most upset about her death, aside from me.

If you’re wondering about my new babies, they’re actually almost thirty days old now. The first two were Black Hand’s, Molly and Henry. They both have blue eyes and white hair. The second pair are identical boys, Ronald and Conor. Both of them look really similar to their elder brother, with brown eyes and black hair.

So now I have eight girls and seven sons. Ugh, that number will probably increase once the three Greys give birth but I… I’m gonna stop naming them now. I know it sounds cruel or heartless, whatever. Have like fifteen or twenty kids with a bunch of different orcish women you barely know, then see how it feels! I don’t have the time or energy to take care of so many people!

Until recently, I could barely even take care of myself! f**k! Now we’re in a weird forest, with killer ticks and giant dragon-birds… God damn it! I hate being so powerless! It’d be different if I could at least tell these idiots what to do! But I’m basically just a damn bull, trying to protect my herd of needy cows!

Sure, the other men and women are giant orcish brutes who are actually pretty good fighters for the most part, but they can’t do s**t against a wyvern. The one I fought with was young, but it was still over three meters… Probably ten feet or more. I used a stone warhammer to break its left ankle and forced it to drop Jacob, but the bastard didn’t just fly away. It got all pissed off and tried to tear me apart with its giant shark-like teeth. Their heads are kinda like a velociraptor's, or at least the ones they put on display in museums. Their eyes are golden or silver and glow in the dark sometimes. Not sure how or why that happens, but it does.

Wait, maybe that’s magic? Can I see mana now? Regardless, the asshole tried to eat me, so I broke its nose. However, I couldn’t actually kill it. The moment the orcs realized what was happening, they gathered around and started surrounding it. Obviously it f****d off and flew away while it still had the chance.

No, I won’t stop having s*x. What kinda question is that? Well yeah, I won’t do it anymore with Skullface and Black Hand, because I don’t want them to die. But there are still a ton of Greys that want to make babies with me. Even if I neglect them and their kids, they probably don’t care. There’s the whole language barrier anyway and I don’t think they’re even slightly attracted to me. Honestly, most of them are pretty below my standards too. I’ve just become a manwhore lately. A sexaholic of sorts. It’s also kinda fun when they gang up on me and hold me down, riding on top of me… Okay, now I have a b***r, so I’m gonna go take care of that.

I’ve been trying to train them to use their giant tongues. Even if they can’t give blowjobs, it doesn’t mean that they can’t lick it, right? As long as I can avoid being gored by their tusks, it’s pretty awesome.