142 (II)
Structure
“Anyway, how are we gonna do this?” Shiv asked. “Actually, which direction are we headed again? I have no idea where Fortress-City Diego is." He looked on as the few hundred orc Dimensionalists continued walking outward, increasing the spell perimeter as the rest of the orcs started sorting themselves into mobs.
"South," Adam said, but his attention wasn't on Shiv. Rather, he was staring at the orcs, trying to figure out what they were doing. "I can't quite make out the logic here. They're not sorting the magi into dedicated spell columns. They have mounted riders mixed in with pure infantry. The only ones that stand apart from the others are the Shadows and Thieves. Some of the Assassins are mingling with the Vanguards as well."
"Perhaps their order is instinctive," Uva suggested, but even she was confused. The Arachnae Order was an organization that was built off of hierarchy and discipline. Her training as a Psychomancer gave her insight into other cultures, especially the First Blood. However, the orcs were something foreign to her as well.
Shiv's gut told him there was an underlying reason behind how the orcs organized themselves. He watched the orcs, studied how the Heroes and Masters mingled without issue, watched as magic-focused orcs stood side-by-side with towering brutes of Physicality or Toughness. But there was one thing missing in the way they arranged themselves: chaos.
If people didn't know exactly what they had to do or weren't experienced enough, there would be a lot of questioning, a lot of talking. The orcs did very little talking about organization. They simply went to a place and settled there, taking on a role Shiv didn't yet understand. Maybe Uva was right. Maybe they'd been fighting together for so long that everything they did was purely intuitive by this point.
"Or maybe it just doesn't matter at all," Shiv said. He thought back to what Helix said about having a complete set of skills. To evolve broadly, not just deeply, for specific skills. "They're all capable of filling in each other's roles," Shiv muttered. "They might not be as good as the orc next to them, but they could respond in a pinch. Adapt."
"Correct," Helix said without looking at the Deathless, but Shiv could see the sides of the orc's face stretched back in a smile. "Among orcs, there is a soft hierarchy decided by Cycle Ratios. However, beyond that, it is about performance and understanding. There are no new orcs here. No, those are the Initiates, and they will be given the chance to blood themselves in combat later. But mostly they will be doing the dying. After all, you must experience some death before you finally get the taste of what not to do."
"And the rest of the army," Shiv said, "they're already so experienced that it doesn't matter?"
"Oh no, everything matters. I wouldn't say we are perfect," Helix replied.
"We're not perfect at all," Bonk called off from the side. He chewed on an apple of some kind as he looked Shiv up and down. "When are you going to dose yourself anyway? I'm getting tired of looking at you so shrunken. How do you even live being so damned small?”
"Later," Shiv said. "When the fighting actually starts, I don't want it to wear off."
"Just dose yourself again," Bonk replied. "I don't see what the big deal is."
"The big deal is that the dose needs to keep climbing higher."
"That's not a problem. Just find more poison. New poison. Hell, you're a Biomancer, manufacture your own diseases."
"It's a work in progress," Helix answered on Shiv's behalf. "He’s more likely to stop his own heart instead. Now, if you don't mind—"
"I do, actually," Bonk said as he marched right next to Shiv, towering over him. "He's looking for structure, but there is no long-lasting structure among us. There are, however, orcs that other orcs listen to. You see those over there?"
He gestured, pointing at Whisper, at Mortar, at himself, at an orc Psychomancer whose mana resembled a glowing tower of translucence that rose from his temple rather than anything spherical or strand-like. "Those are maestros, the closest thing you can find that can be compared to your human commanders. But they're more like conductors, in a sense. They direct other orcs. They point them, or they create opportunities for other orcs to exploit. And that is the individual's job. That is the individual's duty. For we live in a world decided by personal legend, rather than collective effort."
"Still, it seems that could leave your effectiveness diminished by far," Adam said. He frowned at the orcs, but now his gaze was settling on specific members of the gray-skin cohort, the Maestros, as Bonk mentioned.
"Hardly," Bonk replied, grinning at Adam. He leaned down and stared at the Gate Lord.
Adam's posture grew tense. "Don't worry," Bonk said. "I'm not going to do anything. If I was, I'd do it directly. You see, I'm not like the other orcs, or at least not like most other orcs. If I were to kill you, Gate Lord, I would declare it first, and it would be a good and proper fight. I love good and proper fights—”
Then Bonk grunted and staggered backward as Adam's The Righteous Dawn Prevails flared. Orcs all around Adam reacted the same way, with a few even falling over as a swell of weakness washed over them. "What is...?" Bonk let out a shudder and looked at his hands. "Why is my Physicality Skill Level dropping?"
"Because it is unwise to continuously threaten me," Adam said, his voice sharp with frustration. "I've put up with it for quite a while, but let's make a few things clear. You do bother me. You do scare me. I do despise the fact that you can see through me in certain ways. But keep playing this game. Do it. Talk to me as if I'm a child awaiting abuse. You'll find a lot less pleasure fighting me than you think."
Bonk closed an eye and squinted at Adam before he finally shrugged and nodded. "Very well. I guess we might find out in time."
"You might not," Shiv said coldly. “Stick to the topic.”
Bonk just grinned. "You want to look at this army of ours like an organism."
"An organism," Shiv repeated. "It sounds like something Helix might say."
"Because he would be right." Bonk let out a long, suffering breath. Helix simply looked up at the sky, or where the sky was supposed to be if it wasn't clouded by a veil of Dimensionality.
Bonk continued. “An orc Symphony can be characterized by the eyes or senses on the exterior. There is no unified term for this, but understand that to be the Shadows, the Thieves, the escape skirmishers. And behind them is the skin. These are usually Assassins, or, more often, those with high Reflexes levels. They'll move fast, they'll hit fast, they'll exploit breakthroughs, or they'll simply run back and tell the others where spots of fun might be discovered. Then come the bones. High Physicality, high Toughness, high Magical Resistance. The ones that are hard to break, that keep the enemy held in place for the true music to begin. And after that, there is the meat: the magi, the destructive orcs meant to break and bloody. But our armies are also different from you humans.”
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Bonk gestured at the massing army. “We are each our own nervous system, our own mind, and we don't have any veins, no logistical backline. If we are caught out, then we simply feed on inflicting suffering. Aggression, dear Insul, that is our way. Attack, always attack. Everything must pivot into an attack. To defend is to starve, and death is not a final consequence."
"And comparatively, our armies care about logistics and the command structure," Adam mused, frowning. "Interesting, but I suspect that you Maestros..."
"The Maestros are like nerve clusters," Helix added. "Killing them will reduce harmony between the orcs, but it will not stop us, not completely."
"He understates the point," Valor suddenly said. The Legendary Pathbearer’s words echoed in Shiv's mind with gravitas. There came faint flashes of old memories, of human Saboteurs and Assassins slashing their way through orc Shadows and creating a breakthrough before the grayskins knew what was happening, of an ocean of liquid fire spilling over a collapsing orc army a million strong and drowning it entirely. "The orc claims they are aggression. I disagree. They are momentum, Shiv. Momentum. When they force the opposition onto a defensive, that is when they are strongest. Regardless of their obsession with individualism, it is when they are most coordinated, when they are most in tune with each other, that they are most dangerous, the hardest to overcome.”
More images appeared, of an orc Vanguard smashing through a line of elves just as an orc Shadow ripped through the elven magi protecting their front with Dynamancy spells. “But when the enemy turns to fight them, when they are not afraid, when they stand their ground and bleed the orcs for every meter they gain, there is a fighting chance. The orcs right now are selling you an illusion of omnipotence. They may seem to be more effective than conventional fighters, as they might pride themselves on their own individual intuition and initiative.”
Even more flashes of memory. A grand archway shattering and burying countless orcs beneath it. Orc skulls being crushed by canine feet as an army of bestial figures howled its defiance at the sky.
“But a Symphony is nothing close to undefeatable. When orc armies collapse, they are actually defeated more easily than many others, because they refuse to consolidate. They break apart into pockets, or more often, solitary, frenzied figures. And there, they can be overwhelmed. Adepts can kill Masters, Masters can kill Heroes, and Heroes can kill Legends. They are right about the System favoring the individual. Why, there are no group skills after all. But what is the individual without the group? We are shaped by the masses. We exist among our kin and our enemies. They think otherwise, but they are blind to this. You can no more dominate the world than you can make it cease to exist, for you are part of it, part of Integration. The orcs have not dominated all that exists under the purview of the System for a reason; they chase a fantasy beyond them, and they do so because their maker is the same."
Shiv consumed Valor's words, transfixed by his words and the glimpses of memories. However, he wondered just how much of that was the Legendary Pathbearer’s own bias. “You don’t much like the orcs, do you?”
"No sensible man likes the orcs, Shiv, but that is the lesser matter," Valor said. "It is that I think they are fooled by their own true flaws. They think they understand their own limitations better than their adversaries do, but due to their warped psychology, they are incapable of noticing their actual faults."
"I guess we're going to be finding out about their actual faults real soon," Shiv said.
Just then, a loud call came from the orc Dimensionalists. "Spell ready! Prepare for singular veiling! Prepare, prepare, prepare!"
The orcs all began to cheer and chant. They held their weapons high, and before Shiv or Adam could ask what was happening, the dimensional veil collapsed inwards. However, it was not a chaotic breakdown of Dimensionality; rather, it came splashing back toward them like a receding wave. It blasted over Shiv's body, but it didn't impact him.
Rather, it wrapped him in a shadowy barrier that soon ceased its quivering, adapting to the environment around him. And just then, he realized what had happened. The Dimensionality spell was the very same that protected Whisper from notice. It was effectively a dimensional shell that couldn't be viewed from the outside, though it could be seen through from the inside.
"Broken Godsdamned Moon," Adam hissed. He looked at his own hand, at the faint black static coating him. As he let his gaze travel across the army, he saw that the orcs nearby were shrouded in the same blackness.
"Insul," Whisper suddenly said. Shiv nearly jumped out of his skin as he realized the orc was right behind him. The stealthy orc’s dimensional veil was blending with Shiv’s as well. "We are prepared to depart at your order. We know the location of Fortress City Diego, but would like to ask if you would be partaking in festivities at the Vanguard, or remaining here with the Gate Lord."
"In the thick of things," Shiv said, "as always—”
“I have them,” Adam suddenly said, his eyes glowing bright. “They accelerated.”
“What?” Shiv asked.
“The Expeditionary force. They’re moving faster than expected. Coming right for us without stopping. They just passed Magerita Point. They’re fifty kilometers away.” The Gate Lord sneered. “Bloody lying bastard. Sijik said two days. He was going to arrive in one.”
“Ah,” Whisper breathed, chuckling. “Trust is such an ugly thing. But this is good. It saves us a long walk. Shall we even intercept, or set up an ambush here?”
“Intercept,” Adam insisted. “We don’t want any of the Necrotechs to notice what’s happening. We do this in the wilderness.”
Shiv immediately received images from Adam's mind, filtered over by Uva, and the bulk of the expeditionary force came into sight. The point of Adam's Seer of Horizons was hidden in a cloud. Shiv guessed that the young lord did that deliberately so that his Awareness wouldn't be noticed somehow.
"Can someone notice your skill?" Shiv asked.
"I am not willing to disregard the possibility," Adam said with a scowl.
The expeditionary force traveled aerially. A mass of clouds carried them across the sky, and formations of griffon riders, aerial magi, and flying automata formed their protective perimeter. At the center of the formation was a tall, bald man. A swirling mass of shadow constituted something of a coat around his body, and he had a staff planted in the middle of the cloud. His eyes were black, and the air around him was choked with flakes of spinning ash. By his side was a large automaton sporting four arms and six legs. The automaton's head was also more of a drill than a face, and wires dangled from its body, dragging behind as if something of a skirt.
"And I suspect we have eyes on our Inquisitor Sijik."
"The bald one?" Shiv asked.
"Correct," Adam replied. "The automaton talking to him, I suspect, might be Master-Interrogator Harare, or Salamander Glass, a Heroic-Tier Captain he mentioned before. He could also be someone I am entirely unfamiliar with."
“Heroic-Tier?” Whisper breathed. “Good. Perhaps this will be more battle than slaughter.”
“There are only two thousand of them still?” Bonk asked.
“Yes,” Adam confirmed.
The large orc sighed mournfully. “Yeah. I think that’s not going to be possible, Whisper. It’s gonna be a slaughter. You can’t match two thousand against twenty.”
“What happened to the world is for the individual?” Shiv asked.
“Basic arithmetic,” Bonk replied.
Shiv just laughed. “Alright. Orcs! We got eyes on the target. We—” He hesitated as he thought of how to frame this. “Keep all the bald Inquisitors alive. Especially the ones that have ash-shrouds for coats!”
“And the other elites too,” Adam added.
“Take some of their Heroes and Masters if you can. The rest…” Shiv shrugged. “I guess you can finally scratch that itch of yours.”
And though he could see the orcs pump their fists high, he couldn’t hear them cheering through the veil. But he could hear the ground tremoring, and he could taste their excitement.
“Those poor, poor surfacers,” Uva muttered. But her heart wasn't in it.