Belanor lounged on the Great Chief's throne like he owned the wood itself, one leg hooked over the armrest, that permanent, bored grin carved across his face. The hall smelled of ale and iron and the faint, sour tang of old blood. Torches guttered along the walls, throwing long, hungry shadows that seemed to bow to him as they passed.

Rikon bowed, eyes flicking everywhere but the human's face. He kept one hand on the pommel of his knife as if it might steady him. "The preparations are almost ready, Great Chief," he reported, voice thin. "I've recalled all patrols. The hunters are back in the ring. The war bands are sharpening blades as we speak."

"Good," Belanor purred, not moving his chin. "Very good. Bring me the banners."

Rikon flinched but obeyed, retreating a few quick steps to fetch the battered standards. He handed them over, hands trembling. Belanor toyed with the cloth, letting it unfurl across his knees. The sigils looked ridiculous here, straw-gold runes over red leather, but under Belanor's fingers they looked like knives.

"Perfect," he said, letting the word roll out slow and satisfied. "So when do we leave? I'm running out of patience. If we don't march soon I might have to start cutting down some Orcs myself, just to keep my hands busy."

A ripple of forced laughter leaked from Rikon. "We can go at dawn, Great Chief. The scouts will recon tomorrow night. If the humans are where you say, we'll find them. We'll..."

The hall hummed with a low, anxious buzz until a shout cleaved through it.

"A dragon! A dragon!" someone cried from outside. "There's a gnome on its back... and a human!"

Heads snapped toward the archway. The torchlight jittered. For a moment the murmurs fell away to a single, stunned silence.

Belanor didn't bother to stand; he simply moved. One breath, and he was already at the hall's threshold, faster than any eye could follow. In the next heartbeat he was outside, the wind from a receding shadow still brushing the banners. He watched the dragon shrink toward the horizon, a dark blot climbing the sky.

"A dragon, huh?" he said, as if tasting the word. "Summoned by a player, perhaps."

An orc near the gate, eyes bugging, stammered through a bow. "Y-yes, my lord… there was a human on it. And a gnome."

Belanor cocked his head, the grin spreading slow and dangerous. "A gnome and a human?" He made a small, amused noise and then, leaning forward, asked the question the orc's terror had been too clumsy to answer: "You know what a human looks like?"

The orc's voice trembled to a whisper. "It… looked like you, my lord."

Belanor's smile sharpened into something colder than the cave-draft. He reached out without thinking and the orc's head dropped to the ground like rotten fruit, then the body parted neatly into thirds as if cut by invisible threads. Blood spattered the flagstones; the smell of iron filled the air.

Around him, several warriors flinched, stepping back as if the floor itself had taken a breath. The orc let out a small, ragged sound; men gripped hilts like they'd been struck. The one who'd spoken first now stared at his severed comrades with a frozen, animal horror.

"Wrong," Belanor said, voice smooth as oil. "I am not a man. I am a god."

He pivoted, long coat catching the torchlight, and stamped his heel into the stone. "Where was the dragon headed?" he demanded.

"Kareth'Zul, my lord," the surviving orc squealed.

Belanor's eyes glittered. The grin returned. "Then we don't wait for dawn." He drew himself up, suddenly enormous in the small square of torchlight. "Call Rikon. Sound the horns. We leave now."

The hall's drums answered, a single, raw pulse that beat like a war-drumiferous heart. Outside, shadow stretched thin across the plain as men and beasts stirred to a summons that smelled of blood and conquest. Belanor slid back into his throne like a knife into a sheath, already tasting the hunt.

Rikon bowed with shaking hands, then vanished into the corridors to rouse the clans. Around the palace the torchlight flared and the night tightened its grip, waiting for the roar that would mark the beginning of something far darker than a raid.

The horns of war still echoed through the mountains when Belanor stepped onto the fortress plateau. The sunlight was harsh, gleaming on crude iron armor and jagged blades. Before him stood sixty Orcs , towering, scarred, and restless, their green skin streaked with ash and blood paint. They had gathered in ranks that were more a snarl than a line, their breath steaming in the dry heat of midday.

Belanor looked upon them like a sculptor admiring his half-finished masterpiece. His eyes swept from one face to another, sharp and unreadable. Each Orc carried the same look, hunger, fury, obedience barely restrained by awe.

Rikon stood at the front, hand pressed to his chest, sweat glinting on his brow. "The warbands stand ready, Great Chief," he said. "Sixty in total. Every one of them eager to serve."

Belanor's smile was slow, deliberate. "Eager," he repeated, almost tasting the word. He began pacing before them, boots crunching over the cracked stones. "Eager is good. It means you're breathing. It means you understand what waits beyond this mountain."

He stopped. His eyes lifted to the horizon, a blazing strip of gold and red where the desert bled into distant ruins. "Out there," he said, voice low, "flies a dragon. Not some beast of legend, not a story to scare children....a real one. And on its back…" He let the silence hang for a heartbeat. "A human. A gnome."

The Orcs growled, some muttering curses, others spitting into the dust. The thought of a human, bold enough to fly over their territory, stirred something primal in them.

Belanor's grin widened. "Good. You feel that, don't you? That insult burning in your blood. A human... a worm.... soaring above your skies, mocking the dominion of the Orcs. Tell me, does that not make you angry?"

A chorus of roars answered him. Spears rattled, axes struck shields, the ground itself trembled beneath their feet.

"Then listen well," Belanor said, his voice slicing through the noise like a blade through silk. "We march for the abandoned city of Kareth'Zul. That is where the dragon was headed, and where we will begin our hunt. We will scour the sands, tear through the ruins, and paint the stones with their blood."

He stepped closer to the front line, eyes burning. "And hear this, the one who finds the humans first, the one who brings them before me alive or dead, will walk beside me. Not as an Orc, but as something greater. A chosen. A creature reborn to stride beside a god."

The words struck like thunder. The Orcs froze, their eyes widening. For them, it was more than a promise, it was revelation. To walk beside a god.

Then came the roar. It started with one voice, deep and rough, then spread like wildfire through the ranks. Sixty throats bellowed as one, a single, terrible sound that rolled over the valley, a war cry that made birds scatter from the cliffs and sent sand tumbling from the mountain's edge.

"Blood for the Great Chief!" they howled. "Blood for the God of War!"

Belanor closed his eyes, breathing it in. The vibration of their devotion hummed in his chest like music. When he opened them again, his grin had become something monstrous, beautiful in its cruelty.

"Rikon," he said quietly.

"My lord!" Rikon straightened instantly.

"Ready the drums."

Rikon snapped his fingers, and at once, the first beat rolled through the ranks, a slow, thunderous rhythm struck from hides stretched over bone. Thum. Thum. Thum.

"Now," Belanor said, turning toward the horizon. "Let's remind the world what fear sounds like."

The drums quickened. The Orcs fell into motion, not in tidy rows but in a tide of muscle and iron, banners snapping in the wind. Dust rose beneath their boots, thick and golden in the afternoon light. The air filled with the scent of sweat, oil, and bloodlust.

Belanor walked ahead of them all, cloak trailing like a black flame. Each step he took left faint cracks in the stone, tiny fissures whispering with the heat of his power. His presence alone was enough to silence the world around him; even the drums seemed to pulse to the rhythm of his stride.

He glanced skyward one last time, the dragon now far beyond sight. His fingers twitched, and for a brief moment, threads of crimson energy flickered between them like living veins of light. "You can fly," he murmured to the unseen rider. "But I will find you. Even gods hunt from the ground."

The march began.

The Orcs followed their god-chief down the slope, the sunlight catching on their weapons like fire. Behind them, the fortress of the Great Chief faded into shadow. Ahead, the wastes of Kareth'Zul waited, an empty city, ancient and cursed, soon to echo again with war.

The drums kept pounding, steady as a heartbeat. The air itself seemed to bend beneath the sound, carrying their fury across the plains.

And at the center of it all walked Belanor, calm, smiling, unhurried, as if he already knew the outcome of every battle, every death, every scream.

Because for him, this was not war.

It was worship.

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