“Turn around.” The voice ordered. Koruk slowly and deliberately rose to his feet, and pivoted to turn his assailant.

  A pair of humans marched into the chamber, flanked by two armoured giants. They cast blinding beams around the room, and Koruk strained his eyes against the glare to better look at them.

  “Oben…?”

  Oben cast his gaze downwards, suddenly finding the floor very interesting. An older human with greying hair stood next to him, with a smug expression on her face.

  “You were a fool to come back here, thieving beast.” The older woman said, and Koruk realized that the voice before had belonged to her. He glanced toward Kiwai, only to find that the imp had vanished. “Drop the rock, and maybe you can walk away from this.”

  “What do you want it for?” Koruk asked, closing his fist around the stone. “Why are you even here? What do you want from us?”

  “We found your kind here squatting on our world. We’re just taking back what is rightfully ours. That includes that stone. You have no idea what it even is do you? It’s worthless to you, so hand it over and we can each go our separate ways.” The human said. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, which were as hard and cold as the obsidian walls around them.

  Koruk opened his palm and looked at the stone. It was definitely glowing now, and he could almost feel a faint tremor ripple through it. He slowly rotated his palm, and the stone slid across it, edging precariously toward a fall toward the hard floor. The older human gasped and took a step forward, betraying herself. Koruk quickly caught the stone again, and smiled.

  “I see. You’re worried your prize will be damaged if you kill me. That’s why you didn’t shoot me in the back.” Koruk said. A glare of the purest hatred was levelled at him, confirming his theory.

  “You are doomed, beast. Your pathetic excuse of a civilization will be forgotten. Your bloodline will be extinct. There is nothing you can do to stop us. Even now thousands, millions of us are coming. The rivers will run red with your blood. Your very existence as a race is at our whim, and if you’re lucky we’ll put you in a zoo and let you rut with one of your ugly females for our amusement. Give me the stone and maybe I’ll let some of you live.”

  Koruk weighed his options for a moment.

  “Nah.”

  With the flick of his hand the axe was out of his belt loop and in his hand. He hurled the weapon at the human, and jumped. The axe clattered against the stones as the human jumped aside in the nick of time, and the armoured humans opened up with their barkers. Koruk hit the ground rolling, and ducked behind a pillar as the ground exploded behind him in a hail of dust and fire.

  When his ears stopped ringing, he heard a human shouting angry commands. He risked a peek around the pillar, and bit his tongue as his heart sank. The human was holding a struggling Kiwai, a small barker aimed at his head.

  “Give up orc! Or this one gets it!”

  “You must not give in to the demons! Forget me!” Kiwai called out. The woman silenced him with a blow to the head with the butt of her weapon.

  “Come out from behind there! You have to the count of ten, or this one’s brains are going to paint the walls! One!”

  Koruk put his back to the pillar. His heart was racing, and panic was starting to set in. The stone felt like it was burning in his hand. No, it really was burning in his hand. The twinge of pain returned him to his senses, and he opened his hand.

  Faint light streamed through his fingers, and he felt a tug on his mind. A familiar feeling washed over him, and he began to see a flicker of movement at the periphery of his vision. The wisps.

  “You’re still in there, aren’t you oracle?” Koruk whispered to the stone. “I need your help. Please.”

  “Five.”

  “Please.”

  “Six.”

  Koruk closed his eyes and calmed his breathing. He focused on the feeling in his mind. He reached out towards it, beckoning it for aid.

  “Eight”

  “Do something!”

  The flicker of movement around him changed to a flurry, a bright spasm of light that he could see through his eyelids. He opened his eyes, and watched a wisp dart past him. The humans were shouting again. Abruptly he felt a pain in his skull as the link was suddenly severed, but before it disappeared a single word echoed through his mind.

  “Defend.”

  The air split with the crack of a barker being fired, and flashes of white fire mixed with blue as the chamber lit up. Koruk peeked around the pillar once more.

  The air was teeming with motes of light, which danced and twisted like leaves caught in a storm. The humans were shouting, and firing their weapons randomly, to all the effect that attacking the wind might have. The wisps swirled, twisting together like a knot, and then exploded into a lance of light that penetrated one of the giants. He screamed, and his suit glowed intensely from within, the light burning its way through cracked metal and fabric, and then he lay still, hunched over, smoke rising from his ruined body.

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  The second giant met the same fate a moment later. Koruk felt a pain shoot through his ear as the stone around his head exploded. The woman emptied her barker at him, the shots thumping and zinging off the stone column. She screamed as the wisps burned through her body, and burned her to ash.

  Koruk panted. The stone in his hand had grown dim.

  “Kiwai!”

  “I am alive. Look! Look at the table!”

  The remaining spirits in the room were congregating in a clump in above the ruined table. A few lights began to flicker to life unsteadily, throbbing like the heartbeat of some enormous creature.

  Light twisted into shape and form. Arms and legs materialized, and a face emerged from a wall of dancing spirits, streams of azure hair flowing out behind it. Kiwai gasped and fell to his knees at the sight, bowing his head in worship. Koruk remained on his feet, and couldn’t help but notice that the oracle seemed different. Weaker, less distinct, as though struggling to manifest. Her glowing face almost seemed to show pain.

  “Oracle, we need your help. The sky demons, humans have returned, and there are more of them on the way.” Koruk said. The apparition seemed to flicker, and when it spoke, its voice reverberated weakly.

  “I know. I have seen the threads of fate, although their weave is beyond my sight. Death has visited this world, in a way that it has not seen for countless generations. Doom stalks your steps, the white moon sends its emissaries, and this world will be forever changed by their arrival.”

  “...What?” Koruk asked, bewildered.

  “Oracle, I beg you, allow this humble servant to speak.” Kiwai asked. When he raised his face to look at the face of his god, tears ran down his red cheeks. “The sky demons have come. They have laid waste to all they have seen. I beg you, you must help us. Drive them back.”

  “Child of the kindly sun. You make me glad. I am glad to see my children… together.”

  “We have stood together as you asked. Even now an army of imps rushes to do battle with the humans, but I fear it will be too late to save my people. Please, if there’s anything you can do…” Koruk implored.

  “I am weak. So very weak. I am not long for this world. But one last time, I will help untangle the thread of fate to protect this world.”

  “What? No, please, you cannot die! What will we do without your guidance? How will we live?” Kiwai stammered.

  “I am no longer needed in this world. You, my children, have learned to stand on your own at last. I am proud of you.”

  An image appeared in the air above them as motes drifted off the body of the oracle. They streaked overhead by the thousands, a swarm of tiny orbs falling slowly towards the floor. In each of those tiny balls of light, Koruk saw faces, their eyes closed as though asleep. Men, women, children, humans of every shape and size drifted slowly past him like snowflakes, uncountable in number. He held out his hand to catch one, but it simply passed through his palm.

  “What is this?” He asked.

  “The emissaries of those who once claimed ownership over the sands and the seas. Lives lost, but not forgotten. They are coming, and should they touch the ground the world my children knew will never return. Yet, I sense no malice in their hearts. They are afraid. Their minds stir in their sleep, and they do not know what will become of them.”

  A sword appeared overhead, drifting above the falling snowflakes.

  “Yet not all are lost. Some have purpose. There are those who would scour this world clean, to create by fire the conditions for their sleeping kin. In this, all share a common purpose. A common guilt. They burned this world to ash once, and they would do so again.”

  Streaks of light lanced out from the sword, streaking toward the ground. Towards Koruk. He raised is hands instinctively to defend himself, but the vision blinked out a heartbeat before it touched him, the motes drifting uneasily back toward the body of the oracle.

  “This world is yours now, my children. Its destiny is in your hands, as are the lives of those who come to claim it. I have power enough for one final act of deliverance before I must go, but choose quickly, for time is not on your side.”

  Koruk looked to Kiwai for aid. The young man was standing now. He looked shaken.

  “Who are we to determine the fate of a world? Are we gods ourselves now?”

  Koruk looked around the room. In the corner, a small body was crouched with his legs up against his chest. Oben still lived. He stared back at Koruk wide eyed, like a child not knowing if he was to be punished. He looked fragile, almost harmless, as he did when Koruk had first pulled him from the dragon’s egg long ago.

  But he was far from harmless, wasn’t he? Koruk thought. He had almost singlehandedly unleashed a catastrophe that had claimed the lives of thousands of orcs. How many of those drifting faces were future Obens, or future slavers, or future warriors? How many would be future farmers, fishermen, mothers, and fathers? Koruk sighed.

  “No. We’re not gods. We’re just people. We go through our lives, we make choices, and we live with the consequences of those choices. Same with anyone, even the humans.” Koruk said, eyes still locked on Oben. “We can’t damn those people for choices they had no part of, or haven’t even made yet.”

  Kiwai nodded.

  “I would not… have their deaths on my hands. I would not be as they are.”

  “Oracle, can you stop the invaders, but spare the sleeping humans?” Koruk asked. The oracle seemed to flicker, as if contemplating it.

  “I can. I can save this world from the flame, for a time. But I cannot say what the threads of the future would hold.”

  “If even a god can’t say, who am I to guess? We’ll worry about the future later.”

  Koruk thought he saw the oracle smile slightly, and he felt a parent’s pride for her child wash over him.

  “It will be done. Goodbye, my children.”

  With those parting words, the face winked out, wisps scattering into the air like fireflies. The floor began to vibrate, and strange machinery lit up around them.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “That seems wise.” Kiwai agreed.

  Koruk hesitated next to the doorway, and then grabbed Oben’s arm and hauled him to his feet.

  “Come on, you too little drake.”

  “Why?” The human asked. Koruk shrugged.

  “Well, I can’t say you’d do the same for me unfortunately, but I’m tired of people dying. Come on, this place is going to blow.”

  Oben followed.