“Stay strong, Warriors of the Moon!”

Hundreds of voices released a battle cry. Horns roared: a hearty, deafening call to arms. Blades struck against shields; boots tapped in place. It was a cacophony. They were Elves of the Moon, and they were ready to face their enemy. 

“Selma?”

She opened her eyes and found herself standing in the front ranks of a spear cohort. Men and women stood to both sides of her, all clad in the same bright armor and conical helmets. There was a spear in her right arm and a shield in her left. 

Both her palms hurt. She dropped the spear; it tumbled to the ground. Shaking, she pulled off her gauntlet, expecting to see blood streaming down her elbow. There wasn’t any. Not a trace. 

“It’s a bad dream”, she thought, and then the ground under her feet trembled slightly. She gulped; in half a second, there was another tremor. Distant thuds. 

She lifted her eyes. It was foggy, so foggy she could barely see twenty meters ahead. The impenetrable wall of fog rose high into the sky, and the sun was nothing but a very pale, washed out spot of white. 

Another tremor. They were rhythmic, and they were getting stronger. 

“Selma!”

She looked to left again and found a young woman with bright green eyes and a scar on her cheek. 

“Don’t fear,” the woman said. “Pick up your weapon.” 
Another tremor. Someone else’s words echoed in Selma’s tortured mind. A low, roaring voice promising nothing but ruin. Terror filled her. The green-eyed woman frowned. 

“Come on, soldier”, she said. “We’ll meet them with the spears. Pick it up.”

“We have to run,” Selma said quietly, as she felt another thud pass through the earth under her feet. 

“You will see,” the woman said. “They will walk right into our spears. They can’t see, too. Pick up that spear.”

Nodding weakly, Selma bent forward to pick up her spear. The next tremor, though, was harder than all the previous ones, and she suddenly lost balance and fell onto her knees. Her fingers found the weapon. She looked ahead and saw a disturbance in the fog: a dark mountain rising over them, stretching far, far into the sky. The pale light of the sun suddenly disappeared, replaced by a… 

…silhouette. 

She screamed, and her scream cut through the loud music played by the army’s musicians. Selma stared into the fog, and it was out of the fog that the Orc suddenly appeared. 

He must have been a mile tall. She recognized him instantly. Kadara, the shaman, in his thick robe, with his twinkling jewelry and wild eyes staring from under a deep hood. 

He didn’t slow for a second. His sandaled foot rose into the air above them with dirt and sand raining from the sole like some kind of a hellish hail. She caught a glimpse of crushed structures embedded into the hard leather, perhaps former buildings, walls, something else that he probably didn’t even notice — something that never had any chance of stopping him… 

All around her, the music and the battle cries died down, replaced by an eerie silence. Some of the warriors lifted their spears up high, pointing them into the sky. Others, she could hear, exchanged panicked whispers. For a moment, the elvish army was frozen, staring at their monumental adversary and the sole of his shoe. 

Then, it started descending. 

Like a meteor, it crashed into the tightly-packed formation right behind Selma. Metal tore like paper, bodies squelched, any voices abruptly cut off as the orc’s foot settled. Hypnotised, Selma watched the foot spread out within the sandal, watched it relax. Just the thick leather sole was thicker than the elves were tall. They were ants. 

Blood seeped out from under the sole, forming pools and tiny rivers. There were limbs sticking out. Heads. 

Hot tears welled in her eyes; her throat ache and she suddenly realized she’s been screaming. The sandal suddenly started moving again, side to side, rubbing in and deepening the crater that it rested in, and more blood came, and she thought it could not get worse — but it could.

“Arrogant insects,” his voice boomed from above. “Drop to your knees and beg for mercy. Renounce your gods!” 

What followed was chaos. Madness! The warriors from the cohort that had just been destroyed, that is, Selma’s cohort, were no longer a unit; some of them tried to run away, some tried to pull their friends out from under Kadara’s sole, and some fought — feebly stabbing his sandal. Others yet just stared with empty eyes, and many, many dropped to their knees, their lips whispering something they could never take back… Selma covered her mouth with her hand, watching in abject horror at this insanity; she forbade herself from looking up at Kadara, unwilling to remind herself how massive he actually was, it was enough for her to see the mighty foot resting regally in the middle of her regiment… 

But hers wasn’t the only regiment, there were more, at least five more, she thought, and what were they doing? She couldn’t see any of them, but, straining her ears, she caught distant sounds of war horns and briskly barked orders. “Please,” she mouthed, “run, run away!”

And many did. Many sprinted away from the battlefield. Others remained. Yet others tried to convince their friends to just listen to him. His demand destroyed the cohesion of the force, leaving it powerless, in complete disarray. 

When Kadara spoke again, his voice seeped with fake regret. 

“I am not satisfied.” 

Looking down on the elvish army, he saw a neat formation of six shimmering blocks of silver insects. Well, five. Not much was left of the one that, he knew, Selma was in. It was his world, his version of history, and he intended to drive the point. So he pulled up his second leg, with a satisfied smirk planting his other foot right on top of another one of those shimmering squares, and, with delightful crackling of metal and bones, it, too, settled in place. Elegant, long-haired men and tall, slender women, hundreds of them, smashed flat under Kadara’s weight.

He was godlike and they were pathetic. Weak. Worthless. Like it has always been. Puny little elves crushed, flattened in droves, until they learned. 

He idly finished the job on the two unlucky regiments; the others started to lose shape by then, as people started to desert, fleeing the danger that he posed. The terror he elicited, the pain he brought, the suffering he’s caused — their emotions coalesced into a source of energy that the shaman was well-attuned to. He used it right there and then, focusing in on the people beneath him, forcing them to stop and look at him. Casually, with a hearty “harr”, he raised one of his feet again, the sole dripping with blood and gore, and moved it over before slamming it on top of another elvish cohort at its right corner; then, he dragged it across the ground, wiping the rest of the cohort out like his human servant would wipe the floor in his home. 

Then, he stopped, letting them witness him for a moment — letting them scream and cry their hearts out as he reached into his bag and produced a cask of water. He pulled the cork out and took a good sip. Refreshing! 

Kadara looked at the first footprint he left, a deep impression field with tiny shiny bodies, some of them moving — ever so slightly! Then, he turned the cask upside down right over that footprint, and watched with cold curiosity as a waterfall streamed into the impression. It could hold some of the water, but not all of it, and it quickly started overflowing; the water spread in multiple directions, entire rivers of it rushing towards the remaining elven regiments. It wasn’t deep enough to drown them, but that wasn’t what he wanted. 

Watching this unfold, Kadara carelessly kicked off his sandals, sending them, one by one, to the side. His now bare feet sunk deep into the fresh mud. The remnants of the elven army, he could see, were struggling; the mud that he’d barely felt was reaching up to their waists in some places. 

“Filth”, he told them.

Then, he allowed himself to go at it. With a cruel glint in his eye, he began to methodically pace along the muddy patch, his tough soles — invincible to the spears and swords that the elves had brought — mashing bodies into dirt. Countless perished beneath his feet, crushed, contorted and broken by those unforgiving soles; yet others suffocated, buried deep into the dirt, drowned in the remaining water, thrown onto discarded weapons of their own comrades. The elves screamed and cried and begged and prayed, and all of it was useless, unheard, ignored as the merciless giant Orcish shaman pounded the army, forever stomping his victory into history. Mud squelched as it slowly turned a reddish brown. Not a single soul had a hope of actually being spared. Anyone whom Kadara noticed only had a moment’s notice before an obliterating stomp. They weren’t just defeated; they were decimated, stomped into an unrecognizable mess. 

And yet… many of them survived, resurfacing from the wet dirt, dragging themselves out, perfectly aware there was no escape yet still defiant in their desire to live. Kadara knew they were down there: bugs in the dirt, mites around him, scrappers still hoping for mercy. Some of them, he knew, would be resurfacing right beneath him, their faces firmly pressed into the air bubbles under his soles. Some of them were stuck between his toes, mixed with the grime. 

“All of you”, he thundered, “come”. 

He still channeled their own emotions into a pure, unrelenting force of will that compelled each elf to rush towards him. It acted differently on men and women; the former retained more of themselves, still capable of experiencing horror, still fighting — but the latter, the women who’d traded their silks for armor, they could not get Kadara’s voice out of their minds; he wanted them to come, ordered them, and their arms and legs carried them towards him while their minds grew strangely calm. As the remaining elves gathered in the dirt around the orc shaman, he crouched. Those who happened to be behind him, would see the underside of his left foot now exposed, covered in dirt and littered with bloodied, battered bodies. A few were moving, trying to get themselves off the orc’s rough skin, but it was futile, as the dirt stuck them to it all too well. 

Kadara reached into his bag and pulled a piece of cloth out from it. It was a very well-made soft purse with a little tie at the mouth; he untied it. Then, grinning, he extended a hand over the gathering crowd of survivors and said a word none of them knew. It chilled them to the bone. In a moment’s time, something pulled them all up. 

It was as if an invisible string attached to each one of them and was now being wound with a lever. Screaming, the miniature elves were lifted out of the mud, all of them flying directly to Kadara’s palm prostrated over them. The magic carried them right into his grasp, where they packed together into a loose ball of thrashing little figures. Many of them were injured or maimed by his careless stomping, and now they were in pain as they collided with their compatriots, trapped in the same vortex of magical force. Kadara flipped his palm, and the elfball followed, now hovering over it. Then, they descended and spilled over across his palm, many of them falling into the deep grooves and ridges. 

Not all were lifted from the dirt. Some still remained, stuck or weighed down. Those below saw Kadara rise to full height again. The left sole was firmly planted to the ground again, any stragglers trying to free themselves from it wailing in desperation as their fates were sealed.

His eyes focused on the elf pile in his palm as he started walking again. His bare feet gave the ground another series of heavy stomps, mercilessly mashing anyone unfortunate enough to still be there and in his path. To countless elves, his grey-green, dirty, meaty soles became the last sight ever. Many more were destined to die much later. Kadara slid his feet back into his sandals, and those elves who were stuck to his soles ended up squished and sandwiched between them and the hard leather. Their bones would be ground into dust. 

He used his magic again, using the power of his mind to search for Selma. She was, of course, among the survivors, and he pulled her out of the pile by ordering her body to fly upwards. He saw the shiny speck and cackled, then sent her towards his chest. She collided with his robe somewhere above his heart. Her arms and legs were suddenly pulled fourways, and she found herself spread-eagle against the fabric, with a perfect vantage point to see what would happen next. 

She didn’t want to, of course, but Kadara said: 

“Watch”. 

And she couldn’t close her reddened eyes, couldn’t avert her gaze at all. Crying, whispering useless prayers with her swollen lips, going mad with desperation, Selma observed as the pile of still-alive bodies in his hand received their final judgement.