Observing the End, Volume 3: Protagonism

Chapter 17: Endless War

In other news, a red-skinned tribe of orcs tried to murder us all today. They failed, obviously. It was a pretty exciting battle to be honest. Talia and her friends were raining arrows down onto the enemies, while I was wearing my bone and leather armor, charging through the warzone with a glaive I made.

Oh, it’s been about fifty or sixty days since my last journal entry. It’s been pretty mundane and boring lately, so I didn’t want to waste any pages.

So yeah, I made a glaive out of iron or steel. Let’s just call it shiny silver metal. I’ve been working on platemail, but it’s seriously easier to just hunt wyverns and other animals for their bones, leather and scales. Wood is also surprisingly useful as armor too. At least these trees are really sturdy.

We only had a few hundred people fighting, while they had over a thousand. Of course, there was a huge difference in armor, arms, tactics, strategies and training. I haven’t been letting these guys and girls laze around at all. I knew that a day like today would eventually come to r**e us in our collective ass. Thus, I made lots of preparations.

First of all, and most importantly, we actually have a defensible position. We aren’t exactly on a mountain, but the hill that we built most of the town upon is a natural advantage. Wooden palisades and watchtowers were a must-have. Easy to build, yet they make a huge difference in combat.

We also allowed a few of the gigantic trees to stay intact, near us. Their roots grow down deep into the ground and prevent erosion, giving stability in the event that there’s a bad storm. They also make for great natural barriers and outposts. From the higher branches of the trees, Talia was able to fire her arrows at targets that were half a mile away. The accuracy wasn’t so great, but there were enough of them that it didn’t matter.

The other archers, slingshotters, atlatl-ers and regular slingers mostly stayed on the lower branches or on the watchtowers. Before the enemies could even make it to our ‘walls’, they had to cross a river no matter which side they chose to attack.

Fortunately, they were able to use our bridges to make it across. Yeah, that was intentional too. If they didn’t attack and simply waited on the outside to try and starve us out, it could be bad and we would’ve had to go on the offensive. Allowing them to cross those relatively narrow bridges, only two or three people at a time, let us m******e fuckloads of the dumbasses.

Then they needed to climb the palisades. The tops of those clustered giant branches were covered in poisonous ivys, which had thorns and were allowed to grow unabated. There were also rusty nails haphazardly sticking out of the places where they would need to pass over or grab onto. I know, it’s pretty hilarious, right?

Still, by that point, they were in a position where they couldn’t retreat. Also, angry orcs are a lot like angry humans. They make really bad decisions.

The first wave who made it over the fence were really unlucky… Because we dug pits behind the palisade. Did I mention that they were filled with wooden spikes and venomous snakes?

Don’t worry though. There was another fence to keep people from accidentally falling into the pit. Which made it even harder for the ones who fell down to climb out. After the third or fourth wave, the corpses of their allies were piled up high enough that the orcs were able to avoid falling to their deaths.

That was when the actual battle started for me and the other melee fighters. We were all geared up in badass bone, leather and fur armor. While the enemies were practically naked. Our weapons were mostly polearms, axes and other mid-ranged weapons. They were similar, except the quality was heavily in our favor.

Overall, even if we had less people in the beginning, by the time that their side was able to retaliate, we had more. Plus, aside from when I got bored and charged out into the densest areas of enemies, we were usually fighting two or three to one. They could only climb the fences so really slowly after all.

It was a little overkill, but towards the end of the battle, Silvia came back from who the f**k knows where. She started ramming through the huge crowd on the other side of the river like a bulldozer and totally crushed what was left of their morale… Along with the bodies of nearly fifty unlucky men and women.

Why am I so callous and cruel? Uh, they wanted to murder us, remember? It’s not like I captured and tortured, or enslaved them, after the battle was over. Those that fled, were allowed to leave. While others simply surrendered or begged for help.

We aren’t monsters. Not really. I mean, a little while back, I fought against the Greens. Life is an endless series of wars, battles and skirmishes. No matter how difficult or easy your life might seem, to other people, it could appear to be totally unbearable. That’s the thing about perspective, everyone is different.

As a writer, you learn to see things from other people’s points of view. Even if you want to hate someone and feel totally disgusted by the way that they act or think, when you reach my level… You’ll see things through their eyes. I didn’t need to experience crazy disasters or horrible tortures to write about that s**t. I also didn’t need to go to other worlds, in order to tell stories about them.

Our most powerful weapon is always going to be our imagination. With enough innovation and improvisation, you can turn anything into a tool for creation or destruction. Even your own body. No, especially your own body.

Anyway, I’m pretty tired from all the fighting and killing earlier, so I’m gonna go to sleep. Maybe I’ll write a bit more later… Or maybe I’ll wait a while?

***

It’s been roughly thirty Orcheim days. The Reds have integrated into our society pretty well. As it turns out, there are actually a shitload of other tribes out there. Many of them are even bigger than the Reds were… And they’re all coming here, for some ‘mysterious’ reason.

This honestly seems like something Inari would do, but from what the Reds told us, they were ‘called’ here. Beckoned by some mysterious voice, in their dreams. So it could be Inari or Chaotica, maybe even some other force out there. Like me, maybe?

Regardless of the reason, it’s not a big deal. They aren’t mindless zombies. As long as the tribes are smaller than us, they probably won’t even attack us. After they were defeated in the siege, most of the Reds wanted to come under our protection. There were some that preferred to stay out there on their own, but once they started getting eaten by wyverns or packs of dire jackals, they changed their minds.

Past resentments tend to pale in comparison to future benefits. It wasn’t just about survival either. We have stable food supplies, fresh water, walls and natural barriers. They saw first hand how we won with almost no casualties against a much larger force. They were that much larger force after all.

People like winning. Losing is fine as long as it teaches you how to win… But victory is fun. It’s something that makes all the f****d up s**t we do, seem worthwhile.

Of course, we also have games. All kinds of entertainment. Sports that don’t involve killing each other. Board games and puzzles. We have our own language, English, which allows for a far wider range of verbal communication than grunting and groaning all the time.

I guess the main thing, aside from the overpowered Unicorn Goddess Silvia, is that we aren’t nomads. A lot of these tribes have had stories for generations about some ‘Holy Land’ or ‘Sacred Mountain’ where they can finally settle down. The Greens and Greys from the Prairie were like that too.

You know, it’s kinda funny when you think back on it. There was this whole goddamn grassland, totally safe from the brunt of that ‘Hellstorm’. If we would’ve had mounts and wagons, we could’ve easily made it here and all survived. Living happily together in relative comfort and safety. But all those Matriarchs ever really cared about was their own survival. Their own personal salvation. They wanted to reach their fancy mountain and get to stay there, with the Kitsune, hiding in that bunker. Probably because they didn’t even know that this grassland existed.

I bet that there are tribes all over this world, scattered across every environment. Different types of orcs and maybe even other races. Hopefully one day, in the far off future, they’ll manage to retake this planet. It won’t be easy, and it definitely won’t happen quickly.

I’ll stop making prophecies now, ‘cause we all know how that s**t ends. People will start ‘interpreting’ everything I said in a thousand different ways and make their own spin-off religions, that kinda-sorta believe the same things, but not really. Then there would be holy wars, crusades, political nonsense…

It’s better to just avoid all that here and now. Take what I say literally. I’m a writer for f**k’s sake! I deal in the literal!

I’m also pretty good at metaphors though...