The air above Halma tasted like iron and fear. From the palace windows and the narrow alleys people watched in stunned silence as a long line of Ross soldiers pushed forward, their boots stamping like thunder. Trucks and tanks rumbled down the main avenue, and soldiers in steel helmets moved with the cold order of a machine. Then, from the south gate, more than a dozen royal orc warriors charged — huge figures, three meters tall, packed in thick armor, each carrying terrible weapons: a four-meter poleaxe in one hand, a spear the height of a doorway in the other. They ran like wild beasts, roaring as if the city itself might be torn from the earth. They were the Empire's pride — the royal guard, the kind of fighters who had once ruled the streets by terror alone. They charged the human line with terrible speed and rage.
The Ross men were ready. Seven MG42 machine guns opened up in a single heartbeat. The guns barked a storm of bullets — up to fifteen hundred rounds a minute each — and a hundred iron pellets tore through the noon air. The orc armor, forged for a different age and different weapons, could stop blades and blunt force, but it was not made for modern high-velocity rounds. The royal armor shattered under that hail of lead. Plates bent, rivets ripped, and green blood sprayed the ground. In seconds, the dozen royal guards lay broken and smoking. A few of the orcs tried to crawl back, but the Ross soldiers kept advancing, moving like a living wall between the wreckage and the palace steps.
Inside the palace great hall, the contrast could not have been greater. Where the street below shook with the sounds of battle, the hall was cool and measured, lit by high windows and a row of banners that still flapped in a wind of defeat. At the head of the long table sat Gavin Ward, calm and controlled, flanked by his officers — Waupi and Captain Rogers among them. Earth orc hoplites stood at attention behind them, and a line of soldiers gripped P40 submachine guns like a steady promise. Opposite the human delegation, seven princes of the Orc Empire sat in carved chairs. They were a strange mix of ages: six of them bore the heavy patience of long lives — scarred faces, furrowed brows, the kind of slow anger made by years of rule — while one boy-prince still looked like youth in a man's court, his chest hot with undeveloped pride. The fate of the city and the balance of an empire hung in that room.
"Let us talk," Gavin said simply. His voice cut through the low rumble outside and the princes' nervous murmurs. The oldest prince — a man of a hundred and fifty years, who carried every wrinkle like a map of old battles — looked at Gavin with steady eyes. The youngest prince spat out insults. "Traitors," he hissed. "You human dogs, and your earth orc turncoats! When my father returns he will burn you all. Not one earth orc will be left standing!" His words tried to fill the room with the old certainty of power, but they came out thin. He had been spoiled by favor; everyone could see his blind confidence. The older brothers sat tighter, not answering, but their faces were drawn.
Gavin's gaze moved slowly across them like a blade. Then, without ceremony, he snapped his fingers. A Ross soldier rolled a heavy wooden crate into the middle of the table and set it down with a thud that made the princes start. The youngest prince glanced away, thinking this was some token to flatter their honor. He did not expect the shock to come.
When the lid opened, silence fell hard as winter. Inside the crate lay the head of the Orc Emperor — Lord Langdon Gair — wrapped in a stained cloth. The prince who had been so loud froze, his color draining. The sight stole all pride from him like a thief. For a moment the young man's chest rose and fell quickly, and he looked as if someone had poured cold water over his heart. The emperor's head in that box changed everything.
Gavin pushed forward a document across the table. The paper slid toward the princes, and when the oldest prince pressed a hand down to steady it, they all read. There, stamped and smeared across the parchment, was a bloody handprint and a signature that could no longer be argued with. The agreement the emperor had signed before his death laid out terms that no prince wanted but all now had to accept. As the words sank in, the princes' faces shifted from anger to a kind of stunned calculation. The youngest prince tried to bluster again, shouting that his empire held millions of loyal troops in outlying provinces — elite formations that could never be toppled by a mere army like Gavin's. He refused to consider giving up any land or authority. He thought numbers alone would save them.
Gavin's voice was quiet but hard. "You saw what happened to your royal guard," he said. "A dozen of them, dead in seconds. We have twenty thousand men with weapons like those on the street. The Kingdom of Ross has another two hundred thousand. You have to understand the truth: weaponry and tactic matter more than numbers now. What good are a million soldiers if they are slaughtered by a few thousand with modern guns?" His calm words forced every prince to glance toward the palace windows, then to the open door where the bodies still smoldered in the dust. Fear moved through their ranks like a cold wind. The idea of resisting suddenly seemed less like boldness and more like madness.
The youngest prince's bravado broke. His voice grew smaller and cracked. "Separate the country? No… I cannot—" He sank back as if the weight of the dead could push him into his chair. For a moment he mumbled words that hardly made sense, words of loyalty and honor that had no shield against the reality on the floor.
Gavin looked at him and then to the room. "Prince Theron," he said, not cruelly but with clear intent, "it seems you have a decision to make." The use of the name landed like a judge's gavel. The young prince straightened as if a new force had struck him; something in him clicked. He rose in a fierce, sudden motion and snapped, "If you want to kill me, kill me! I will not betray my father." The old conviction — the one that made soldiers march and nations shout — filled his voice again. He declared that to die would still be pride.
But the room had changed. The other six princes — not as hot as the boy, not as favored, but older and wiser — looked away from the toast of dying with fury and at the same time with an ugly, growing fear. The sight of the emperor's head, the machine-gun massacre, the Ross tanks rolling in — none of it fit the old order in which their father had ruled. Each prince had to weigh the unthinkable: hold to the old honor and die with your people, or bend to a new order and live.
Outside, Halma's streets were different now. Earth orc soldiers who had been harassed for years now walked freely among the townsfolk. They stopped looters, kept order, and in some places even worked with local merchants to bring food and medical aid. Some beast-orc thugs tried to take advantage of the chaos; the earth orc defenders shot them down without mercy, determined that law — however new and foreign — would be enforced. The city's five million people watched, amazed and afraid. The victory was not clean or kind; it was the harsh kind that remakes a place in one day.
Back at the table, the oldest prince folded his hands and read the agreement again and again, looking for a mistake, a loophole, anything. The bloody handprint seemed impossible to refute. The princes' silence grew heavy, and their plans — once full of secret troops and revenge — began to crumble into bargaining and fear. Gavin let them squirm. He had no love for the Orc Empire, but he had a goal: a stable peace that would keep Ross safe and stop endless raids and wars that had bled everyone dry. The terms were ugly and sharp, but they were real. Divide the empire, demobilize the royal guard, accept new boundaries — or fight a war that could wipe you out.
As negotiations dragged on, the youngest prince's initial roar dissolved into pleading. The other princes calculated, traded looks, and tested words. Somewhere between stubborn honor and the cold facts, the shape of the future began to form: a broken empire, new rulers with begrudging powers, and human cities that would no longer bow when orc banners passed. Halma would never be the same. The sun moved on the city's roofs and the tanks rolled past the palace gates, and inside, with the emperor's head watching from a crate, the seven princes of the Orc Empire faced a choice that would mark their names in history — for better or worse.
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