“Raaaaaarrrrghhhh!”

Blackheart turned his head as a flood of yellow-skinned orcs smashed into the lines nearby, screaming their bloodthirsty little hearts out. The armored, mutated humans there, the Warped, took the charge with near-berserker frenzy, welcoming the fight with deep cries of their own.

Alas, the orc chief smashed into the heavily armored commander of the marauding invaders, there was a bit of discourse with over-sized Axes, and then the orc was chopped in half with impunity. Their chief slain, the morale of the orcs fell like their blood, and with every bit as much energy they’d had charging in, they fled yelping in fear.

That was fine. Blackheart pointed, and as the expected rout of the orcs occurred, the urgobs on the flanks of the marauders piled in with glee, swinging morningstars, flails, and tetsubos with energy and strength, ripping through the lines of humans with their greater strength and mass. The chief of them, a sly throatcutter called Nugglib, closed in on the Warped commander with his two favorite kidney-eaters along, rapidly surrounding the man. One of his flunkies was quickly chopped down, but Nugglib took the loss without a tear, his Axe relieving the Warped of his leg below the knee, then coming down to break his neck as he fell, even if his overweighted armor held.

The last of the goblin serfs ahead of them were chewed up by the elite troops of the enemy, all mutated with pincers, claws, tentacles, spikes, or horns, which they plied to deadly effect. However, those were all personal combat weapons, and not much use when tired and facing a shield wall of pikes. Grim higob soldiers in tight formation, knots of control on the battlefield, held up under the powerful blows of the enemy, spears finding throats out of which odd-colored and strangely reacting blood flowed out. Were there minnows leaping out of that one’s jugular?...

To the sides, a howling band of hyen raiders mounted on horse-sized hyenas, their laughing cries eager as they hacked down, smashed into a unit of Warped riders tossing javelins around. The hyen were a strong race, and the jaws of a giant hyena were capable of breaking the necks of even the altered horses of the Warped. Bloodthirsty giggling presaged carnage, and only seeing the effects on those who had indulged kept the hyen from immediately partaking of a feast. Not very sane to begin with, the hyen whose eyes started glowing while they sprouted new appendages, and the hyenas that did the same, all had to be put down.

Their purified corpses made decent hyena fodder, however.

A massive horde of the wretched little dog-faced, scale-bodied kobolds washed up against a long line of Warped men, and shrieking little bodies went flying in several parts as the slaughter commenced. However, the little worm-eaters were small and clever, driving between gaps in the lines of the men, striking low and hard, and soon causing chaos in their lines as they dropped a soldier or two and swarmed over them. Soon, the hundreds of men were fighting kobolds in knots and clusters, separated from their fellows, and heedless of deaths, the kobolds piled in to kill them and be killed energetically.

-Worms must give them courage-, Blackheart thought, and raised his hand.

The bullox riders around him couched their spears and their heavy horned mounts began to rumble into motion.

The goblin serfs had locked the heavy armored unit of elites into place, and the goblins were hanging off their limbs, up on their shoulders banging on their helms, gnawing on their vambraces, and basically being as much nuisance as threat as they tried to find an opening to insert their crude knives and hatchets into.

Still, they did their job perfectly. Blackheart’s line of heavy cavalry trampled right through the goblins, and if they couldn’t get out of the way in time, that was their own fault. The Warped elites could only stare at the cavalry coming and riding right over their own troops, unable to disengage or brace for the charge.

Steel-tipped horns hooked and threw even as barbed lances punched home, and these painted chosen champions of the Warp Gods went flying under the impact of more than a ton of mount and rider, along with more than a few unlucky goblins in inconvenient positions. Massive hooves crushed down on Warp-forged armor, regrettably almost impossible to salvage and re-use without inviting corruption, and although a few lucky individuals survived, some even keeping their feet, their lines were broken, and their fate sealed.

Blackheart closed in on the mounted leader of the force, yet another mutate clad in impressively embellished and oversized demonic armor, wielding a Dire Axe in the demonic pattern. He offered a challenge with a flourish of his Lance, declaring the scornful spite of his people’s gods with a curse upon the other’s head, and charged him.

Naturally, he wasn’t going to take this fool blow for blow in a formal pass. Sharing the power of divine wrath, Glumgrin swayed out of the side of the enemy’s path, veering directly in to face it, trusting in his greater mass and strength to overcome the mount of his foe. The other tried to avoid the swift sidestep, but his bullox was inordinately quick and strong, buoyed by his own prayers, and Blackheart caught him on the turn.

His Lance punched right through the horse’s neck as Glumgrin’s horns caught it and lifted, throwing off the massive Axe blow aimed at the bullox’s head, and drove through to crash into the rider. Massive armor and size and all, the mutate was still smashed off his horse’s back by the impact, as Glumgrin bowled the dying mutant horse over and Blackheart let go of his Lance ere he followed it.

He pulled out his own long barbed dire Scimitar, in the very precise barbed pattern of Hell, while Glumgrin pursued the Warped commander savagely, head lowered and trying to gore and trample him beneath thousands of pounds of weight.

With impossible ease for someone in so much armor, the Warped human got to his feet, swinging his Axe and chopping into Glumgrin’s neck, splitting the armored barding there and drawing blood. Glumgrin smashed into him in response, but proved unable to lift and throw the man for some reason... which hardly mattered as Blackheart’s Scimitar came down once, twice, thrice, splitting the man’s fantastic helm and sending him staggering back, but not before a backfist like a battering ram sent Glumgrin staggering and almost falling down.

Blackheart dismounted with speed and ease, giving his opponent no chance to catch his breath. The poison on his Scimitar would already be blinding the freak, despite his supernatural vitality, and the Illrigger surged to the attack.

Instead of taking the descending Axe on his shield, he parried it, turning it just enough to lock it away, and spiked shield and barbed armor screeched and skirled against one another, looking for weakness. Before the Warped could pull back his wailing demon-haunted Axe, Blackheart let go his Scimitar and drove in with his hand to the open and bloody wound in the man’s massive helm.

Dark energies poured out of his fingers, the deadly touch of the gods sweeping through the half-blinded invader’s brain, directly warring with and consuming the energies that animated him.

Purple-black flames erupted out of the champion’s glowing crimson-blue eyes, and he lost his energy. The Warped armor about him creaked and began to settle, locking about him as it lost its animating magic, and Blackheart spat as he pushed the corpse backwards. As stiff as a statue, it fell over flat with a crunch of final impact, the higob pulling out the oversized Axe that had somehow reflexively bit into his side even as the warrior died.

“Now you know how a true chosen of the gods can fight!” the higob sneered, following that with a quick prayer to seal the wound and render it little more than a nuisance. Repairing the breech in his armor would take a little more work, but there was still killing to be done.

Another healing spell took care of the wound on Glumgrin’s neck, and he remounted his bullox, surveying the battlefield as the last of the enemy’s elites were barreled over and stomped into mush between massive hooves.

His horn-like call garnered their attention, and they finished up their enjoyment of the slow deaths of the invaders with some brutal thrusts and crushing of skulls, riding up quickly to gather around him.

There was another line of marauders swinging around to flank some orcish berserkers going off on more of the enemy, leaving themselves nicely exposed to another charge. The timing would be fine, hitting them as they attempted to sandwich the orcs between two lines. One rear charge deserved another!

=========

The harvest was pretty good, and if he lost two-thirds of those fighting, he didn’t much care. The majority of those who died were expendable, and their meat didn’t need to be purified to feed their replacements. Thousands were still streaming down their narrow trail through the unnatural waves of stone and floating rock islands, and the silent yet lethal black plains and their ominous white pillars.

Threetusks had gathered up his tribe and clan, and invited in some trolls and ogres to help them out with some additional muscle. The boar riders were chafing to get into a fight, all of them staring at the meat being hauled off the battlefield hungrily.

Behind the battlefield, great pots and cauldrons were ready and waiting for their own dead, and the white fires there for treating the meat of the enemy... which, since they had so much of it, they ended up giving away to those incoming, to get them in the mood after the dangerous trek to the battle here.

Soulhunter’s disciplined army of huul rested, waiting for Threetusks to take his chance for meat and gold, buttressed by several hungry hill giants, and the fearsome dire wolf cavalry of the huul. Lines of brow-beaten hyen formed the loose infantry lines, and a great number of the archery corps that would support them.

There had been a force of ogres led by an oni, with many giants in support, who had found themselves facing off against many demons Summoned in to deal with them. The resulting losses had been pretty bad, and so the bigger races now worked in support to the smaller ones, spreading out their power and appetites so the Warped didn’t bring in so many dangerous forces to counter their strength.

There were other great tribes of higobs here, their own goblin vassals swelling in behind them, with the urgob strikers supporting, occasionally with a leashed drake, great lizard, or similar behemoth brought along to be expended against the enemy. Blackheart had considered Summoning in aid from the Hells of his gods, but knew that would just mean they’d be facing demons on the field, effectively negating the value of the tactic.

The fighting was done, his troops were heading home with spoils of meat, what metal could be purified and used in the next battle, and the magic of the enemy, to be burned down and turned into something useful by the Shamans. Another elder Shaman had died in battle with the enemy’s Sorcerer, but his apprentice was very happy to take his accoutrements and possessions and prove himself in his new position.

It wasn’t like the fight to the west.

The higob Illrigger’s red eyes narrowed, debating whether he should follow the gouged line of hills around and observe the battles taking place over there again. He closed his eyes and banished the thought.

He did not want to see them win again.

The battles the forces of the plains and hills of the East fought were merciless and bloody. None of them ended without at least two-thirds of the forces of both sides dead, often as high as ninety percent. The Warped were fanatics, with the presence of their gods Right There, and the tribes themselves were united by the words of all their gods, and the call of so much endless meat.

The battles of the west... were nothing like this.

Those walls of dwarven Spears. Those merciless gnome infighters. The terrible precision of the dwarven ballista and crossbow teams. The eruption of hundreds of spells at once from the Elves. The lethal silver rain of their archery. The impossible precision of their pass-through marching, and even cavalry charges through their own ranks. The folding and surging of their lines, drawing in, collapsing, peeling this way and that, scissoring the enemy’s advance as if one hand, one mind was drawing and guiding everything.

Their losses were miniscule, and their annihilation of the Warped complete. Any Warped who fled were chased down and eliminated without fail. No word of the tactics or lethality of their enemy was allowed to get back to those coming out of the Rift behind them.

They had hills piled up of the armor and weapons of the dead. Army after army slain by the same cycle of forces...

And the demons, and the Greater Demons...

His breath hitched. Disposed of. It was the only term he could think of to describe it. They would enter the battlefield, and they died. Seeing a burning, Axe-bearing colossus of a demon butchered...!

And his underlings complained about why they hadn’t swept into the rich lands of the west and made them their own...