The plains to the west burned with campfires and laughter that smelled of blood and iron.
From his perch along a ridge of cracked stone, Vris watched them hundreds of hulking orcs in piecemeal armor, their tusks glinting orange in the firelight. The Blackgrin Clan. Raiders and killers. Hunters of men.
He’d seen the aftermath of their hunts gutted caravans, burned villages, corpses hanging from the jaws of their warbeasts.
Now they were here, less than a week’s march from the Burrow.
Their banners were black hides painted with white jaws. Their laughter rolled like thunder across the plains.
“Dunzok,” Maggra had said when her scouts brought word. “Warchief of the Blackgrin. He eats hearts for luck and dreams of gold.”
“He’ll find none in the South,” Vris had answered.
“Then he’ll make his own.”
And so the game began.
Vris watched from the shadows with his loyal and growing tribe. He watched as the Orc Warlord’s forces eventually provoked a strong response from the humans that now sent out large columns of footmen flanked by crossbowmen, and knights on horses gleaming with armor and resentment. The initial battle was intense but the Orcs had been sent into a retreat though the human’s victory had been bought in blood having taken casualties themselves in droves.
The rivers ran red with blood still the Fanglord watched plotting, and scheming.
Vris struck first.
The Blackgrin were large, strong, and loud all muscle, no subtlety. Their encampment spread wide and thick, lined with firepits, weapon racks, and barrels of fermented drink. To the orcs, this was safety. To Vris, it was invitation.
Each night, shadows crept closer to their fires.
Supplies vanished. Food rotted overnight. Horses spooked and snapped their reins.
Once, when a warband rose to march at dawn, they found their water barrels filled with offal and blood.
The orcs began to whisper about ghosts in the dark.
The laughter around the fires dulled to uneasy muttering.
And always, Dunzok’s temper grew.
The Warchief was a brute carved from iron skin like dark clay, eyes burning red. His grin, wide and white, earned his clan its name. He ruled through terror, not charm. When something failed, someone bled.
It couldn’t last forever.
Vris knew that.
He just didn’t expect the net to close so soon.
It happened in a blur of moonlight and flame.
He’d slipped into the camp again, intent on spoiling another food stock. But this time, the barrels weren’t full of grain they were full of ash. A trap.
The nets fell from above, thick and iron-threaded, weighted with hooks. They tangled his limbs before he could vanish. Orcish hands each the size of his skull dragged him across the ground, kicking, biting, snarling.
They brought him before Dunzok’s fire.
And the laughter returned.
They tied him to a post of bone and sinew. For days, the orcs made a sport of him. They burned symbols into his flesh, poured ale on his wounds, laughed as he spat curses in a dozen tongues.
Every time they came close to breaking him, he smiled.
A thin, bloody smile that unnerved even his tormentors.
“You want screams,” he rasped through cracked lips. “You’ll get whispers instead.”
When Dunzok finally came, his shadow blocked the firelight. He looked down on Vris with curiosity more than hatred a, predator studying another that refused to die.
“You’ve teeth for one so small,” Dunzok growled, crouching low. “Tell me, goblin… did you think to steal from me?”
Vris coughed a laugh, dry and rasping. “Steal? No. Only… test.”
The Warchief’s grin widened. “Test what?”
Vris met his gaze, yellow eyes gleaming. “Your worth.”
That earned him another blow, but the orc’s smile didn’t fade.
Time blurred. Days bled into nights.
Outside, the goblins of the Southern Fang tried to free their Fanglord.
Each attempt utterly failed. Met with slaughter, the grass stained black with their blood.
Eventually, even courage began to rot.
But Vris never stopped thinking.
When Dunzok returned to the pit on the third night, Vris spoke before the Warchief could.
“You want Fairehaven,” he said, voice hoarse.
“How would a worm like you know that?”
“I’ve seen your scouts. Watched your blades rust under their walls. You can’t breach them, can you?”
Dunzok’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Vris continued, his tone low, conspiratorial.
“I know the gates. I know the watch patterns, the blind towers. I can show you the path. The walls are high, but the shadows are higher. Let me lead you in… and you’ll dine on silver and wine instead of carrion and loss.”
The orc laughed. “You think me fool enough to believe a goblin’s tongue?”
Vris leaned forward as far as his chains allowed, whispering through blood-streaked teeth.
“I think you’ve already lost enough not to care.”
That silenced the laughter.
For the first time, the Warchief didn’t grin.
That night, Dunzok did not sleep. He stood at the edge of his camp, staring toward the faint glow of Fairehaven’s walls beyond the horizon. His warbands were restless, his supplies dwindling, his pride bleeding out beneath his armor.
And now, a goblin a thing he would have crushed without thought a week ago whispered promises of victory.
Could he be lying?
Of course.
But what if he wasn’t?
By dawn, Dunzok ordered that the goblin be fed and kept alive.
In the darkness of his cage, Vris smiled to himself, eyes gleaming faintly red from the firelight outside. The pain still burned through him, his wounds throbbing with infection but the seed was planted.
The Fanglord’s war wasn’t over.
It had simply changed shape.
The cage was iron, and the air reeked of sweat, smoke, and blood.
Vris sat cross-legged in the corner, his chains clinking softly whenever he moved. The orcs thought the sound meant weakness they didn’t realize it meant rhythm. Each jingle mapped the steps of guards, the change of sentries, the timing of torchlight along the perimeter. Every sound was a note in a pattern, and Vris was memorizing the song.
Pain had dulled into a constant hum. His left arm burned where brands had been pressed into the skin, still blistered with the Blackgrin symbol. Infection crawled under the wound, but he welcomed it.
Pain made him think sharper.
At night, when the campfires dimmed and drunken snores rolled across the tents, Vris whispered into the dark.
Tiny shapes stirred in the grass the Webmothers’ brood, the spiders that had followed him even here. They moved unseen among the orcs, weaving delicate silk paths between wagons and corpses. Vris closed his eyes and reached out through them, his thoughts flickering down the strands like electricity.
Burrow still stands, he thought. Wait. Watch. Follow the wargs.
Far beneath the plains, Maggra felt the whisper crawl across her wards. She understood. She began to prepare.
Dunzok visited him often.
Sometimes to mock. Sometimes to listen. Always to test.
“You speak of towers and walls,” the Warchief said one morning, crouching by the cage. “Tell me, goblin if you know the path so well, why hide in your holes? Why not take the city for yourself?”
Vris smiled, lips cracked. “Because I am patient. Men build walls to feel safe. Orcs build fires to feel strong. I build both in the dark.”
Dunzok laughed, but there was unease in it. “You think yourself clever.”
“I know I am. Clever enough to see that you don’t want a servant. You want a story one where Dunzok breaks the city that mocked him. I can give you that.”
The orc’s eyes narrowed. “And why would you help me?”
“Because every empire needs a monster at its heart,” Vris said softly. “Let me be yours.”
Vris learned the orcs’ names, their tempers, their jealousies.
He saw how they looked at their chief with pride, yes, but also resentment. Dunzok ruled with blood, and blood always dried.
When guards grew too close to his cage, he spoke softly, just enough to be heard.
“Stronger than Dunzok, you are.”
“He wastes you on humans while gold rots in the south.”
“What if the goblin spoke true?”
Small words. Harmless on their own.
But poison didn’t need volume only time.
By the fifth night, two guards had drawn blades on each other over whispered doubts. By the seventh, one was found dead behind the latrine pits.
The Blackgrin laughed it off.
Vris smiled in his cage.
When Dunzok returned again, the Fanglord was ready.
He drew shapes in the dirt with one claw crude marks resembling towers and walls. The Warchief leaned closer despite himself.
“Here,” Vris murmured. “Fairehaven’s west gate. The guards change every thirty heartbeats. There’s a hidden drain beneath the bridge small, but not too small for those who crawl on all fours. If you move by moonless night…”
Dunzok’s eyes glittered with greed. “You’ve seen this?”
“I’ve bled beneath it. I’ve watched their children play by the water while their fathers sharpen spears. You could burn them before sunrise.”
The orc’s breath came heavy. His fingers twitched around the hilt of his axe. He could already taste the victory, the loot, the songs of conquest.
He didn’t notice the faint smile curling on Vris’s lips.
That night, when the camp slept, a single warg howl split the horizon long, distant, and mournful.
The guards stirred but didn’t rise. Wargs were common on these plains.
But Vris knew that cry.
It was Skara’s.
He pressed his palm to the iron bars and whispered a single word:
“Begin.”
Far to the south, in the Burrow, Maggra and the goblin packs began to move.
Spiders carried silk cords soaked in oil. Ogres lifted their bone war drums.
The tunnels vomited forth the Southern Fang.