Flames soared into the sky over the valley basin.
This was no longer a home, but a purgatory. Several breaches had been torn through the tribe's defensive line.
The elderly Half-Orc Old Chieftain, a Werewolf with gray-white fur, stood on a crude platform piled from corpses and broken timber.
He raised the Giant Axe in his hand and shouted to his tribespeople before him:
"For the children! For our tribe's survival!"
"It's time for us old bones to give the last of our strength!"
Tens of thousands of Half-Orcs gathered before him.
They were old, frail, or disabled.
A one-armed Minotaur swung a notched iron axe with his remaining arm.
An old, blind Bearman tilted his head to listen, pointing his sharpened wooden spear toward the oncoming Demon Clan.
They were the tribe's old, weak, sick, and disabled, its first line of defense at this moment-and its last.
Behind them was a breakout force of more than twenty thousand elite young adults.
They were escorting all the tribe's children and young females, preparing to fight their way out through the weakest defenses on the western side.
This was the law of survival etched into the Half-Orcs' bones over tens of thousands of years.
When annihilation loomed, the old, weak, sick, and disabled had to give their lives to buy the young warriors and the little sparks of their future time to escape.
No one thought it unfair.
Nor did anyone shrink back.
The blind old Bearman suddenly shouted:
"Patriarch! Did the messengers sent for help... still fail to get out?"
"Yes."
The Old Chieftain's voice was dry and hoarse.
He looked beyond the valley, where the endless Demon Clan army surged like a black tide, threatening to drown everything.
Shortly after Warwick left, this enormous Demon Clan legion had discovered