Snippet #1868047

The Orogs were unusually silent as they forged their way through the delta, the princess coiled in a Regular's bulky arm. They smelled of blood, and one wouldn't have to have been a Silvian to even smell that. The Oroc hierarchy was simple, the strong ruled and those that were too weak to hold position were quickly dispatched. But the way these Orogs moved, it wasn't the same mindless, unhesitatingly boisterous clamor that the princess may have grown up hearing about. The Orogs were so reviled they had their own seat in Silvian mythology. Their storied history was wrought with bloodshed, mostly Silvian.

The historians of the Silvians taught that Orogs were extremely hardy. The hides on some were so thick, small arms just wouldn't cut it. Their redundant health systems made it nearly unpredictable to kill them. Regulars had evolved to have two hearts, and multiples of other organs that, in most other creatures, if damaged would result in shock and eventual death. For the Orogs though, they were walking weapons. Recordings showing just a few Orog regulars wiping out condensed squads of Marines and killing Silvian Rangers. Every Silvian had to witness the horrifying strength these beasts carried with them, and they weren't nearly as powerful as Beserkers and no where near the strength of Titans.

Each Regular, was grotesquely muscled. Pounding on their flesh was the same as punching solid rock with the same result of hurting your hand. Their skin was stone grey, they had large serrated rows of teeth and narrow black eyes that didn't see very well. That was okay, because what they couldn't see, they could smell. Like a shark, they can smell the tiniest prick of blood within a mile. However, something didn't need to be injured for them to know what was there. The human and Silvian physiology emits electrical signals and transfers them through the air--especially when profound emotions are felt and guess who can pick those signals up? Though admittedly, the smell of blood--especially that of Silvian roused an Orog more than anything an can create highly volatile situations in which they rampage.

But these Orog moved with haste and with purpose. In front of them, in Anez's plain view was a walking nightmare. Regulars were bad news for anyone, but if anyone saw a Beserker doing what it did best--was better of praying for a quick death at the hands of a regular rather than trying to take on a fifteen foot Goliath that could tear reinforced steel doors off their hinges. They were the living battering rams of Orog society; mutated even further than Regulars, their skin only hardened and their muscles only more broad. They were usually shackled, as this one was. Like any dog of the past life, they would run rampant all their own.

They had been traveling for days since the massacre of the Silvian king and Anez's lover. She had been carried over the wastes of the parched lands, and the decadent forests that would seem rotted and decayed. Down here on the surface it was vastly different than the cultivated life Anez was born into. The citadels were technological marvels; akin to vast floating continents with solid fortifications in the center, and hidden amongst the clouds. It would be hard to think, that anything survives on the planets surface. The air would sting at ones throat from the sulfur, the landscape still burned from being scorched in the first years of the war...