The Seer was taken from his meditation as the ashen cave began to shake. Screams echoed through the tunnels. Orders and questions. But Kru’Gan remained calm.

  He had known for most of his life that the day would come. That one day, either Dragon or sorcerer would call the ashes for their ascension, yet he had prayed it would not be during his lifetime. A weakling's prayer, he knew that well and now he had to answer for it.

  While the clan ran and shouted, he rose in silence. He leaned on his staff and slowly walked through the tunnels and outside the cave. Around him families ran and warriors made sure the supplies were packed. But to his own surprise Kru’Gan remained calm.

  He was young when became a Seer, at least young for a position like that. He had casted away his sight the day there was nothing worth to see anymore. When he learned that one day it might be the girl he had to raise, the human he had to hide, that would be meant to save the dead. The last that needed saving. He knew the dunes would end and that it was her who would be there to end whoever dared to touch their legacy. Not just their clan’s, not just the north’s, but orckind’s future.

  The more he learned about the mark of humanity she carried, the very people that tried to use them, the more he saw the irony. It needed to be an orc and it would be an orc. She was the dagger to break the shield and he knew she could slit a throat, but it would be an orc to slay whoever dared to threaten the orcs. Such were the ways of fury and such it should be.

  Once he came outside the clans shouting did not subside as they saw how the ash around them was rising. One dune after the other was drained into a gray tornado that became one with a grand cloud above them all.

  The nomads looked around in fear. There was no place to hide. All of their desert was being drained by the distant song of the dragon. Kru’Gan stopped in the centre of the cloud and raised his hand in the form of the tusk. His thumb above middle and ring finger while the other two were risen to form the sign of the tusk. “Shaman’s and singers.” He shouted with a voice unnaturally loud. “With me.” He lowered his hand again while their Chieftain rushed through the crowd. She wore her half mask and had tusks and coins hung from chains in her tusks and her lips. “What are we to do, Seer?!” She asked while her voice told about the desperation behind her mask.

  Kru’Gan thought for a while before he answered her. “Guide the young outside the dunes…or reach the obsidian depths. They might still be safe.” He nodded as the ground beneath them started to shift. “The rest of you, all who can sing, follow me if you dare.”

  She looked at him with concern. “What are we doing?”

  Suddenly the blind gaze behind his hood and his trinkets darted directly to her eyes and he grinned wickedly. “We will call to fight..” He snickered and started to walk through the crowd and the desert. Behind him the Chieftain made some orders but they were already distant in his ears. He had feared this day, but slowly he started to feel excitement in his heart. It was an honour to be there for the end of an age, and he would lead the song at its final moments.

  Below his feet the dunes were shifting and made him fall. Before him another greedy tornado launched its tendril into their lands, and their ancestors. The storms didn’t howl, but screamed as they took their legacy.

  He growled with anger like a young man he once had been and had to laugh right after it. Because he finally felt it again, the oldest feeling of their kind and the one that should unite them. Hatred.

  A younger shaman came by and aided him up again. He wanted to drag him away and to safety. Kru’Gan felt his desperate pull but shook him off. “No!” He declared and threw his hand to the ground and into the ash. His hand was covered in the grey of their ancestors and he felt them stir and crawl and cry at the dragon's distant song. Deep from his throat he started to sing himself. Slowly the tornado at the dune above them started to twitch and turn. It remained greedy yet the ancestors fought against the dragon's song. But the shaman felt it was futile. One song wouldn’t be enough. Other clans might have thought that to be, but the nomads of the spires knew that their home was made of all the clans. North and south, Greenskin and Darkling, all of their ancestors united in ash and battle.

  He shifted his song and while the entire desert was trembling under the dragon’s command, the dune before him would not be taken now. Slowly as the voice rumbled from his throat into his hand and to the ashen dune a tunnel formed before him.

  The shaman’s of his clan gathered behind him. They were never plenty, shaman’s never were, but they were ready to aid the Seer in his song. Slowly he shook his head. “It will not be enough.” He uttered and raised again, his hand held up ahead into the tunnel. “Find your own spire…all of you! And answer my song!”

  “Yes Seer!” a younger shaman uttered and ran away, while an older one grunted in contempt but still he listened.

  Slowly Kru’Gan sang and walked through the tunnel. Shamans, no matter their clan, were told to sing from their heart. How would land and ancestors ever answer their call, if it was but their throat. In his heart he felt a sting. He had felt it for some time now. She knew the truth. The one purpose she was raised to fulfill. He had called her his dagger before, but she was more than a weapon. He never had children of his own, and gave his eyes when the woman died who could have been their mother. And yet if he was asked he would know he knew the feelings of a father. When he heard her voice and her gasps to his stories. When she repeated the wisdom he bestowed on her. She was bright and even without eyes, even with her mask, he could hear her smile. It always echoed on his face and so did it now.

  Finally he reached the end of the tunnel and the obsidian spire he knew that laid behind. His concentration left him for but a moment and the tunnel of ashes collapsed. Above the dune behind him the tornado started to gather it up once more. All around the dunes the storms were taking their land. All around the ashen storms screamed as they were taken.

  He snarled his teeth and planted his old feet into the ground that was escaping him. His hand before him he whispered. He didn’t need to quell the entire storm, not yet. He only needed a few more steps to reach the spire. It was painted like all of them. Parts of it by him, others by seers generations ago. All of their work would be of aid in the battle today. He laughed into the storm for he knew this was the last battle of their people. Such a young fool had hoped others would endure it but him. This was the day of ascension and destiny. Where hatred would beat malice.

  With a final roar he stumbled onward and reached the spire. It was cold below his hand and even below him the dune was shifting. He wanted to sing, yet he knew it was no use if he would drift away with the dunes. He took his rope and like on so many days before slung it around the spire. With his old legs pressing against it he was ready to climb. The storm pressed around him and the desert was turning to the sky. Grey and black until the obsidian depths were visible under the drained dunes. And Kru’Gan climbed. At the horizon, other shamans did the same. They climbed the spires like they had so many days before. Some of the spires had been forming and clawing down. Some shamans were crushed by the obsidian claws others were climbing around them.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Once he was almost at its centre the spire he climbed started to form and claw down. All so slowly yet enough that his rope would make him fall. He held his hands around the claw. He held tight and his feet dangled in the storm while he held on. With angry huffs he pulled himself up until he sat above. It was still clawing down but he would make a stop to it.

  He raised his hand to the sign of the tusks one more time and started to sing.

  His voice echoed through the storm and over the desert. Other shamans had similar fights as he did. Some fell, others remained on their spires and when they heard him sing that one deep tone, they answered his call. Their hands echoed his sign, and their voice echoed his throat.

  Parts of the ashes started to resist the dragon’s song and started to circle around the shamans. The desert was bathed in song yet even that would not be enough. Kru’Gan brought his tusk sign hand down at the spire and shifted his voice. The song became ancient of tongue and tone. The oldest words forgotten by most of their kind left his throat and echoed into the spire and the obsidian below. Once again the shamans echoed his doing until slowly the painted runes on them all started to glow.

  It rumbled through the obsidian and to the deep. The ashes stirred in defiance to the dragon’s song as the shaman’s awakened their spirits. Yet even this was not enough and Kru’Gan rumbled his song deeper and deeper until it travelled through the earth and beyond their desert.

  Part of their voice went to the west and the north, through the earth to the sea and the caves near the mudflats. The bladelands heard the song over the horizon and through their lands. The Seer, Mother Mar’Dak rose from the campfire. She had just prepared a shark for her son and his warriors when they heard the echo in the wind and felt it rumble through the earth.

  Chieftain Lur’Dak looked up but didn’t dare to ask. She wouldn’t have answered. Instead she simply walked away, following the song to the holy sign of battle at the edge of the cliffs. She held her left hand on the stone and felt the song even louder, the echo of pain and defiance, the battle that was about to decide their fate.

  Before she could sing another shaman’s voice echoed over the sea from one of their isles. Then another, and yet even more. She raised her right hand to the sign of the tusks and let her voice rumble from her throat and to the earth. An echo of the nomads song not that far away casted by the shamans of the sea. Their songs rang different, they always did, and yet it became one. Around her hand and the tusk sign she made, crudely crafted tiny sea bells rang with her song. So did other shamans of the Bladelands. From the isles to the flats to the cliffs they sang and their song became one with the nomads.

  Together their echo travelled further and south. To the burning savannah and the path of destruction left by the ogre’s and their mother. A Druid felt the song below his feet and saw the fire stir in its answer. The wind carried voices, and even though he knew it was sung by darklings he knew this sung was more. He jumped while his body turned to the mixture of a lion and an orc and he charged across the savannah. Wherever he ran the song was heard, even through the fire and the destruction of the past battles, even when he travelled further south. He reached a small mesa and dashed around the circling path upwards until he reached the holy grounds of his tribe. There the totem stone stood. A stone that was hammered to show different beasts of their lands and that carried runes of the ancient tongue on each. The oldest rune, the rune of hatred was cast in its centre. It was glowing, answering the call. With a snarl of pain he turned back to an orc and moved closer. He touched the totem stone and felt the song. He growled at the darklings display of power but soon felt more than just them. The ancestors, the very spirits of the dead, were answering the call and they needed the aid. It took him a moment of choice and his was the one that would decide more than his pride. Then he closed his eyes and raised his right hand to the sign of the tusks as he started to sing in the ancient tongue. Other orcs of his tribe heard the song and started to aid his voice. Their drums rumbled through the earth and soon other mesa’s and shamans became part of the song.

  The winds rose and the savannah rumbled. Beast and ashes answered the call and roared and stirred together.

  Up north, shamans of the ashes and the Bladelands sang and soon their song was carried even to the most outer reaches of the Darkling lands. Shamans of even the smallest clans heard and answered the call. Some sang of the sea, others of the sky but all of them of war.

  Further south in the jungles of poison and pelt, another druid felt it. She was young and her tribe of the spider. Her teeth clicked together as she felt the earth and heard the wind. Quickly she ran on all fours through the jungle and back to the holy cave of a thousand eggs. Spiders, both tiny and big enough to be mounted, clicked their teeth at her and she clicked back. They felt the song as well and let her pass. The cave was big and a stone bridge led to its centre where a holy totem stood. It was made of wood yet planted into the stone and the many webs centred above it. The druid held her head sideways and clicked her tongue and teeth before she touched the totem. In its centre the old rune of hatred was glowing. She heard the song even clearer. Her clicking became slower and a hundred eyes of one hundred spiders watched her. Slowly she raised her other hand and made the sign of the tusks before she started to sing. Her song was as deep from her throat as any yet accompanied by clicks and chatter of her tusks. The spiders sang along and soon even more druids of her tribe went to their caves to do the same.

  Further into the jungle another druid and his tribe heard the song, then another and yet another. All of them answered the call and all of their voices travelled through the land and the wind and the rivers and the sea until it reached the white wastes. There weren’t many tribes in these lands yet a lone druid, hidden under a torn hood of leather, heard the call. He looked up at the burning sun and from her to the egg. He nodded dashed through the empty desert of white salt. There was but one holy stone in its centre. The warriors of his tribe asked him about the rumbling and the song, but he couldn’t hear them. He held his hand on the stone, the rune of hatred started to glow and soon he became part of the song.

  Back in the Bristle Pine forests only few had remained after they answered the call of the chieftains. Yet a young druid from a different village than the boar and the wolf felt the tree stirring and cracking. He was a man of the hawk and screeched as he saw the rune of hatred to glow in the tree. Birds around him flew up and echoed his sound before he felt it too and then became part of the song. Around the bristling pines druids sang and warriors blew their death whistles. Their song of death and war became one with the rest.

  The other druid of the Pines, Kazzok the Gruntheart, stopped his ride as they heard the song. Many mounts and druids looked up while they were riding up the mountains between the savannah and the Frostsong Valley. Behind them on the distant horizon they saw the ashes of their ancestors be taken to the sky. And they knew this was the day of ascension. Rika looked down at him from Branak’s back. “Ride on..” He said slowly and gazed up at her. Then his eyes returned and they heard the song. The Dragon was singing from beyond the mountains and the orcs from all over the land. From north and south, druid and shaman.

  Kazzok grunted. “We need to be fast! If there are holy grounds ahead we must take them!”

  He looked at Rika and from her to Thick-Skin. He tried to hide his concern while hers was easy to read to him. The Chieftain nodded, Rika smiled and did the same.

  Third-Fist watched the ashen storms with a cold stare and simply followed. His word would not be trusted among the Greenskins, and his warriors were lost in the loss of their mother. Yet he knew, should the time come, they would sing again.

  Further into the mountains, the riders flew and dashed around the peaks as the traitor heard the song. Mara looked around. “Listen…” she whispered to Ur’Back before her.

  “Is that the clan?” He asked plainly, his mind ready for the battle ahead.

  “No..” she uttered. “It's all of them…”