No two armies in Integration can be led the same way. Despite fighting as a collective whole, every army is made up of individual Pathbearers with a variety of skills, evolutions, experiences, and more. Beyond that, there are also the races, and I have fought in a very, very mixed company.

Elves, humans, goblins, we’re not so different. Goblins are usually a little smaller. Quite a bit faster though, if we’re talking averages of course. They also strangely can get quite a few skill evolutions that dramatically increase their regeneration. Skills that humans usually can’t get. Best part about goblins, don’t need to feed them that much. Even Initiates can survive a month off of some grubs, and once they get up into the Master-Tier, hells, goblins don’t need to eat for years.

Elves aren’t nearly as robust, but they do think a hell of a lot faster. There’s a reason why they make good mages or scholars. There’s something about their minds that lets them focus perfectly, control their own thoughts better, and also have multiple streams of thought at the same time. Furthermore, their biology is already extremely stable at a baseline. Not much decay or mutation. Problem with that, though, elves don’t really do very good with Toughness evolutions. Not without a proper Path anyway.

Automata could be anything. Their variability is incredible. Their progress, however, is slow. That’s why you usually have a massive cohort of automata Adepts. They stay there for longer than humans do.

Hell, we even had some fae join in. Weird thing about the fae, they can be Masters here in the morning, then little more than Initiates at night because they’re afraid of the turning of the world. And they briefly touch Hero during an eclipse or right at the moment of sunrise. The fae are still part of the Integration, but they run on different rules. Or maybe they just understand the world to be different altogether.

We even had an orc with us. His name was Whisper, and he lived up to that name. He wasn’t loud or brash. He was always polite, and he was always watching. For a while, I thought all the stories about the orcs were bullshit. Or maybe this one showed that they weren’t all evil, that they could be taught, or they could live with us. He was the perfect soldier, just… perfect. Never a mistake, never a complaint.

While he was with us, every morning we found all the weapons sharpened before we got up. We found our equipment maintained, our rations prepared, our supplies packed, and in the field, we couldn’t see Whisper. But Whisper was always there, watching over us. For a time, we even thought he was our friend. We got along with him pretty well. Whisper could be pretty funny.

And then, one day, as we were setting up camp near a village, Whisper ran into a farmer and, seemingly for no reason at all, butchered all of her children.

We discovered shortly after that he knew the farmer; she’d sent him back to the Tutorial once in a prior life of his. And he was eager to continue the fight. But she wasn’t. She just wanted to live her life. She had been done with being a warrior for decades.

Thing about the orcs. They don’t give a shit if you’re done. They don’t give a shit about anything unless you can make them give a shit. And that was the day we learned that orcs make fine soldiers, but they will never make fine people. Know who the hell you are leading. Know who you’re marching with.

Never, ever trust an orc. They’re not people. Even if they act like it.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

121 (I)

Minions [I]

A second later, Shiv reappeared in the gate, blinking into existence right where he’d been, beside Uva. She stumbled back in surprise, her eyes wide and glowing bright. “Shiv, what happened? You vanished for a second.”

“A second?” Shiv stared at her. “I was just gone for a second?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “It was like you flickered in and out of existence.”

“It was a lot longer than a second for me,” Shiv replied. “Had a long-ass conversation with—”

And before he could say more, five towering figures blinked into existence behind Uva.

“Shit,” Shiv growled under his breath. “I can’t believe this.”

As Uva turned and took a step back, her jaw dropped.

Before her strands could pierce and render the new arrivals little more than mind-hollowed vegetables, Shiv intervened by gripping her shoulder. “Yeah, no, I didn’t agree to the Challenger’s offer, but he still decided to give me a sampling. By sampling, I guess he meant a team of five orcs.”

“We aren’t a team. A team consists of four people. We are a bloat: slightly larger than a team, but not quite large enough to be a squad, ” the orc at the front of the group explained as he walked over to greet Shiv. He was dressed in robes of billowing midnight. Stars glistened on the soft black folds that danced across his massive body, and a hood was draped deep over the orc’s face. Shiv could still see his eyes, however. They gleamed a bright yellow, rather than that muted piss color that characterized 811’s irises. The orc held out his hands, letting his sleeves fall back to reveal he wasn’t concealing any weapons.

That didn’t mean much to a Pathbearer. He could have bound equipment that was covered by a mirage or something. More importantly, this orc could be anything from a masterful unarmed combatant to a mage.

And I’m not a whole lot less dangerous unarmed than I am armed, Shiv thought to himself. He felt Uva slip her strands into his mind just as his drunkenness started to return. It was then that Shiv realized he didn’t feel the intoxication at all while he was speaking to the Challenger. “The Bastard suppressed it without even saying anything,” Shiv grumbled to himself.

“Uva,” Shiv said to her through their connection. “Stay ready, but don’t do anything. Not yet. And let the other Umbrals and Weaveresses know as well. I don’t want any unfortunate incidents happening.”

“What about Adam?” she asked.

He hesitated then. Adam was still probably talking to his mother. Shiv didn’t want to interrupt that with unpleasant news about arriving orcs. “Just keep an eye on him. If he comes out, or if—”

But then Shiv felt the body of the Gate Lord blast down the hall of the infirmary, passing through the periphery of Shiv’s Biomancy mana field as he suddenly came to a halt midair with multiple Veilpiercers already drawn.

“Shiv,” Adam hissed as he prepared to loose an arrow at the orcs, “I thought we were going to discuss this.”

“We were,” Shiv cried, stepping between Adam and the orcs. “And I was a felling fool to think you wouldn’t hear or notice this with your Heroic-Tier Awareness, but please don’t shoot them. Yet.”

The orcs didn’t seem intimidated at all. If anything, they looked amused, like they were attending a theater play rather than standing in the middle of enemy territory.

Umbrals and Weaveresses were closing in. Can Hu held up a fist, and a wall of stone rose from the earth and quarantined the area, sealing away the surrounding structures from easy access as well.

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“I just had a conversation with the Challenger,” Shiv explained to Adam. “He told me his terms, and when we were done, he sent these guys with me. And no, he didn’t ask if I wanted them. He just kind of chucked them at me.”

“If we are not welcome, you can simply kill us,” the midnight-robed orc said. It was such a casual statement that it made Shiv do a double-take.

“Yeah, we might just get there,” Shiv muttered. He studied each of the orcs in detail before he said anything further. Aside from the robed orc, there were four others.

The first, and most noticeable, was a particularly huge orc that wore a set of armor composed of broken automata parts. Several head components were lodged in a ring around his chest and ribs. Their optics were still on. From his shoulders and back flowed various robotic arms. Some were broken, while some still seemed to be functional, grasping at the open air. More interestingly, the orc’s lower jaw seemed to be an automaton transplant as well—a piece of steel replacing flesh and bone. Everything below his hips, meanwhile, was entirely mechanical. Steam vents hissed hyperheated air along the orc’s four multi-jointed legs.

This orc had modified himself severely. Shiv didn’t even realize there was a skill that allowed one to do that. On the orc’s back was also a large tube that pointed high into the sky, and he realized it looked like an old artillery platform, something he’d seen on a book cover or a poster at some point back on Blackedge.

Aside from the artillerist orc, there was another giant among giants. This one was wide-eyed, and his gaze jumped around the room. His bulky armor was metallic. Judging from its texture and color, Shiv guessed it was likely titanium in make. He had a massive club of black metal in his right hand, and a wyvern’s skull, shaped to serve as a shield, strapped to his left. Slowly, as he finished scanning the gate, his eyes fell on Uva, and he licked his lips. Not in a lustful way, but in a disturbing, I’m-going-to-eat-this-person sort of way. Shiv could recognize that look anywhere, mainly due to all the years he spent in the kitchen, and he really didn’t appreciate that look being directed at Uva. Not one bit.

Beside the large, wyvern-shielded orc was another greyskin brute, but this one was only half his size. He had two wands hanging from his hip, and he wore no bulky armor. Rather, he wore a canvas longcoat with a mithril vest over his chest. More importantly, his eyes were unique. Instead of having normal yellow-hued eyes, he had two Divination gems lodged in his sockets. They glowed a brilliant violet as he scanned Shiv, and slowly, a smile pulled at his features. His fingers twitched, and Shiv had a feeling that this Orc had a pretty impressive Reflexes Skill.

A pulse also radiated from the orc. A golden pulse. Chronomancer, Shiv understood. He briefly flared his shell, and the orc’s Chronomantic pulse broke against it without inflicting any true damage.

“Yeah, think again,” Shiv said, staring straight at the orc.

The orc blinked twice, and his smile only grew wider. Shiv spiked his Dread Aura as much as he could, but the way an orc responded to fear wasn’t like that of a person, either. It got them excited. Their morale didn’t break. They weren’t so easily cowed.

Oh, this is going to be an exercise in psychology, Shiv thought to himself.

The final orc was the oddest of all. He was average in height and size among all the orcs, but his expression was utterly blank. And rather than wearing anything like conventional armor, even dramatically decorated armor, he instead had something with a chainmail suit jacket on the outside, and what looked like wool on the inside. Under it, he wore a vest with a very formal tie, slacks, black polished shoes, and even white leather gloves, to complete the strange ensemble. Most fascinating of all was the violin he carried. It was made from polished wood, and each of its strings glistened with power. A faint trail of darkness and static glided off the strings, and Shiv could recognize the Dimensionality anywhere.

“What kind of freak show did the Challenger send me home with?” Shiv muttered to himself.

“So,” the midnight-robed orc said as he looked Shiv up and down, brushing his words aside, “you are the bruiser, the Deathless.” He stared Shiv straight in the eye, and thanks to Plaguefueled, they were around the same size. The orc let out a slight chuckle. “Well, you’re certainly larger than most humans I’ve met.”

“For now,” Shiv said, his voice dry. “Piss me off, and I think I can get a little bit bigger.”

“Now that

would be entertaining,” the orc replied, his voice filled with implication.

Shiv clenched his Skysplitter tighter and glared at the orc. “Go for it then. Show me what you can do. Let’s not waste time.”

“Hmm,” the orc hummed. “Maybe not. Not yet. Right now, I’m interested in what you can do, and what we can do for you. Before that, an introduction. I am 991. But I have lived among your kind before, and they called me Whisper. I specialize in—”

And then the wyvern-shielded orc stomped up, knocking Whisper aside. He was a head taller than Shiv, even as he was now. And as the orc looked down, he sneered. “Big for an ape, but you don’t look like much. Soft eyes. Soft skin.” The orc sniffed at him. “Don’t even smell right. Where’s the blood? Where’s the death?”

“We humans do a thing called taking showers,” Shiv replied, deadpan. “Maybe it’s a part of my culture that I can share with you.”

“Oh, I know all about baths,” the orc said. “I like certain kinds of baths.” And once again, the orc looked at Uva, and he ran his tongue over his lips. “I like bathing and eating at the same time. In the same substances, specifically. That one there, whose skin looks even softer than yours? What is that? Is that an Umbral? I haven’t tasted Umbral before.”

“This Umbral is not going to be good for your longevity, orc,” Uva said, her voice low. Her strands closed in on the orc. “I suggest that you turn away from me before something bad happens to you.”

“Too late.” Shiv let out an annoyed grunt. He froze time. Shiv was going to teach a lesson right now. Because the Challenger wanted it to be that way, because Shiv also wanted it to be that way, and because this orc made a stupid mistake. He thought he was going to dictate terms. He thought he was the biggest monster here, just because of his size. Well, he didn’t have any Chronomancy, and this wasn’t going to be a brawl.

Shiv understood what an orc was, and this idiot was stupid enough to make himself seem a threat. Shiv was going to make sure he wasn’t going to be anything at all by the end of this.

A pulse of gold came out from the wand-using orc. It crashed against Shiv’s temporal shell and inflicted chipping damage. It wasn’t enough. The wand-using orc himself remained frozen. Shiv reached out and picked the wyvern-shielded orc off his feet, lifting the orc over his head. Despite the gray-skinned brute’s size, he weighed almost nothing to Shiv, especially after Shiv’s battles with the Court Leviathan, the Recollector, and the Jealousy. With a casual act of brutality, Shiv brought the orc’s back down upon his knee, and a satisfying crack sounded through the world. Then Shiv repeated the act again three more times, until he was sure that the orc was utterly crippled. And because he felt like being a prick to the orc, he finally placed the orc back down the same way he’d been standing and let time resume.

The orc suddenly let out a cry as he bit the tip of his tongue off, and blood sprayed across Shiv’s chest. He just sneered at the orc as the beast crashed down against the ground. Rather than reacting in violence, the other orcs all looked at each other and shared a collective snort.

The wand-using orc simply shook his head as well. “Boy’s gotta learn at some point, right?”

“Indeed,” Whisper said. He gestured to the orc Shiv had just broken. “This one here is Wall. That’s what the humans called him during his last campaign in Forbidden Africa.”

“What?” Can Hu said, marching over to join the conversation. “He was there? Why?”

“New Albion,” Wall wheezed. He looked at Shiv and laughed. “You got me good, human. You really got me pretty good. Right vicious, you were. The only proper way to be.”

Shiv just shook his head as the paralyzed orc looked upon him with pride and appreciation. What a weird fucking species, Shiv thought to himself.

“We are everywhere,” Whisper said, talking to Can Hu, “and we are recruited by everyone who wants a Pathbearer of unique expertise that does not balk at suicidal missions. Should it be that surprising that New Albion inquires after our services?”

“Not really,” Shiv replied, “but it does make me more than a little paranoid about you. If you know anything about me, you know that New Albion is near the bottom of my shit list, next to the First Blood, Vicar Sullain, the Outsiders, Compact…”

“You enjoy defecating on a great many people, don’t you, Deathless?” Whisper said.

“Wouldn’t say enjoy,” Shiv replied. “It’s just gotta be done.”

“No,” Whisper replied, shaking his head. “Don’t lie to me. It is not good to lie. Not to me or yourself. You enjoy it. You enjoy killing. It’s in your blood. It’s of your nature.”

Shiv leaned in, rather unimpressed by the psychoanalysis. “You want to know what else is my nature?”

Whisper grinned. “Do tell.”

“Telling you to shut the fuck up,” Shiv growled. “If we’re going to work together, if you don’t want to end up like him,” Shiv pointed down at the broken Wall, “then you’re going to do what I say. You’re going to follow orders.”

“If that is what makes sense to me at any given point,” Whisper replied.

“Really? You’re going to just go with insubordination immediately?”

“We are not a military outfit,” Whisper said. “Me, Wall,” and then he started pointing to the other orcs, starting with the one wearing the automata, “Mortar,” the Chronomancer, “Tequila,” and finally, the suit-wearing orc, “and Band, have all joined your cause willingly as an advance from the Challenger.”

“An advance,” Shiv repeated, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice.

“Yes, indeed. We encountered 812 after his return. Some of your people call him Stone, if you didn’t know.”

“And you don’t call each other anything? Just numbers? What about if you die the same number of times? Do you two play scissors, paper, asshole to see who gets to keep the number?”

“We have a general measure of another,” the orc said. “We do not need to know each other’s names. We just need to understand what the other does, and what we can do to kill him. You need names, you cling to this notion of society, and so we will accommodate you, for now.”

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