The Crimson Labyrinth

A Tale of Dong-zhu...

The scent hit Dong-zhu like a physical blow — that distinctive musk of the Bone-Gnawer tribe that no amount of washing could ever cleanse from his memory.

His hands trembled on Ironhorn's reins as bile rose in his throat, nine years of careful healing unraveling in a single breath. The great triceratops felt his rider's distress and rumbled low, a sound like distant thunder that somehow made the morning shadows dance.

Not here. Not now. But denial was a luxury he'd surrendered long ago.

Nine years earlier...

Young Dong-zhu pressed deeper into the grain barrel's shadows as crimson-tusked raiders moved through his burning village like reapers through wheat.

The screams still echoed — would always echo — but one voice rose above the carnage: his mother Grutha the Bold, roaring defiance even as three Bone-Gnawers dragged her toward the chains.

"My son!" she cried, her eyes finding his hiding place across the flame-lit square.

"Remember — honour is a choice, not blood! Choose better than they do!"

Then a bone club fell, and silence claimed the strongest voice he'd ever known.

A wounded triceratops calf limped past his hiding place, its scales singed black, eyes wide with the same terror that clawed at Dong-zhu's throat. For one impossible moment, boy and beast locked gazes, sharing the weight of witnessing everything they'd ever known turn to ash and screaming.

The raiders loaded their captives like cargo and vanished into smoke, leaving only the dead and the hiding...

Now...

Dong-zhu forced his breathing to steady as he guided Ironhorn through the slave markets of Kheth-Morai. The morning sun hung like a weeping eye over the cobblestones, casting shadows that writhed with remembered agony.

The marketplace pressed around them like a living wound. Vendors hawked their human wares with the casual enthusiasm of farmers selling livestock, while buyers examined teeth and muscles with practiced eyes. Children wept behind wooden bars, their faces blurring into the memory of that terrible night when he'd learned that survival sometimes meant watching others die.

Ironhorn's massive frame — three tons of armoured muscle and ancient wisdom — parted the crowd without effort. The great beast's eyes tracked every movement. Buyers and sellers pressed back against stall walls as they passed, some making warding signs, others simply recognising predators when they saw them.

The familiar ache of never-quite-belonging twisted in Dong-zhu's chest. Dame Elara's voice echoed in his memory, warm with the affection that had saved him: Your reactions define you, my child, not their provocations. You are more than their expectations.

Elara — who had found him half-dead in those ruins, who had fed him soup with her own hands when fever nearly claimed him, who had taught him to read by candlelight and never once made him feel like anything less than her chosen son.

They found the Bone-Gnawer section in the market's heart, where corpse-fat candles burned with sickly light and bloodblossom incense made the air thick as syrup. Crude crimson handprints marked tent poles like bloody signatures, bone talismans clattered in windless air, and shadows gathered despite the noon sun.

There, squatting on a throne of polished human ribs, was the slaver captain who had haunted every one of his nightmare for nine years.

Captain Garrosh One-Eye wore Dame Elara's stolen signet ring hanging from a cord around his neck — the silver knight's seal catching light like a captured star. His remaining eye fixed on Dong-zhu with predatory intensity while his missing socket wept perpetually, a curse-wound that would never heal.

Recognition blazed between them like lightning finding metal.

"Well, well," Garrosh rumbled, voice like grinding millstones.

"A half-breed playing knight. Tell me, mongrel, do you bleed red like your human grandmother, or green like your whore mother?"

The rage rose like molten iron in Dong-zhu's throat. His right hand found Skullsplitter's haft where it hung at his side, the massive war-axe's familiar weight both comfort and temptation.

For one terrible moment, he saw not the slaver's face but his own reflected in polished steel — tusks bared, eyes wild with ancestral hunger.

Behind Garrosh, a dozen Bone-Gnawer warriors lounged in shadow, their crimson-painted tusks gleaming like fresh wounds. They wore trophies of their raids — necklaces of children's teeth, cloaks sewn from human scalps, armour decorated with finger bones. Each one was a walking atrocity.

Strike them down, whispered the spirits of his slaughtered kin.

Honor above vengeance, Dame Elara's voice answered, soft but insistent.

Dong-zhu breathed deeply, tasting fear-sweat and bloodblossom, feeling his armour's weight like borrowed nobility.

"I am Dong-zhu, son of Grutha the Bold, ward of Dame Elara the Just. I have come to purchase the freedom of your captives. Name your price, and let us conduct ourselves as civilised beings."

Garrosh's laughter was the sound of bones breaking.

"Civilised? Look around you, pretty knight. This is civilisation — the strong taking from the weak. Your grandmother's pretty words won't save these meat-puppets."

He gestured toward the slave pens with casual cruelty.

"Three hundred gold for the lot. Non-negotiable. Unless you'd prefer to earn them the traditional way?"

In the pens, twenty-seven souls waited in cages barely large enough for dogs. But one child caught his attention — a human girl no older than seven, with wheat-colored hair and eyes that had seen too much.

She pressed her face against the wooden bars and whispered with impossible faith.

"Please, sir knight. My name is Mira, and I believe in you."

Mira. His dead sister's name hit him like a blow to the heart. Almost as hard as the proposed cost - three hundred gold — more money than he had ever seen.

"Three hundred gold exceeds my current means," Dong-zhu said carefully.

"Perhaps we might negotiate more reasonable terms?"

"Negotiate?" Garrosh rose from his throne, his massive frame casting writhing shadows.

"You insult my prices and think to bargain? Perhaps you need a lesson in respect, half-breed."

The captain's war-hammer materialised in his hands — six feet of steel-bound ironwood topped with a skull carved from primordial bone. Ancient runes crawled along its surface, pulsing with the sickly light of bound souls.

"The children go free." Dong-zhu dismounted with deliberate grace, his boots striking the cobblestones like destiny. His hand moved to Skullsplitter's grip.

"You may name the method — gold or steel. Choose wisely, for I offer mercy by oath, but the spirits that ride with me remember older laws."

As if summoned by his words, the air around Ironhorn shimmered.

Phantom shapes materialised — massive forms with armoured hides and cathedral-spire horns, the ancestral herd that had roamed these lands when red justice was the only justice known.

The ghostly triceratops surrounded Garrosh's warriors in a circle of ancient judgment, their spectral eyes blazing with righteous fury. The temperature dropped ten degrees, and somewhere distant, a baby began crying.

Garrosh's eye widened, but his grin never faltered.

"Interesting pets, half-breed. But can they bleed?"

He lunged with shocking speed, war-hammer whistling where Dong-zhu's head had been. The weapon struck a nearby wall, sending stone shrapnel flying like arrows. The impact cratered solid rock three feet across.

Dong-zhu rolled aside, muscle memory from years of training under Dame Elara's weapons-master flowing like water finding its course.

Skullsplitter sang from its sheath — not a crude club-axe, but a knight's weapon with folded steel and blessed edges. The oversized two-handed war-axe felt alive in his grip, its spike-backed head gleaming with inner light.

"Is that all you got?" Garrosh taunted, bringing his hammer around in a sweep that would have crushed a horse's skull.

"Dance for me, mongrel! Show me the fury your whore mother bred into you!"

The words ripped open wounds Dong-zhu thought fully healed. His mother had been warrior, leader, protector — never what this monster implied. Raw fury exploded through his careful control.

He met Garrosh's next strike head-on, Skullsplitter's blade biting deep into the hammer's ironwood haft. Both warriors strained against each other, muscle against muscle, rage against rage, the air crackling with unleashed violence.

Then Dong-zhu's orcish heritage fully erupted.

He roared — not with human vocal cords, but with his ancestors' primal bellow, the sound that had echoed across primordial battlefields when mercy was just a poet's word. Windows shattered three streets away. Lesser beings fled in terror.

Garrosh stumbled backward, eye wide with something that might have been fear. But Dong-zhu was already moving, Skullsplitter describing a silver arc that caught the slaver captain across the chest. Chain mail parted like spider silk before enchanted steel.

Garrosh's green blood painted the cobblestones in arterial sprays that hissed and steamed. The scent of iron and death filled the air.

Around them, chaos erupted as Bone-Gnawer warriors charged phantom ancestors who fought with terrible conviction. Spectral triceratops gored and trampled while ancient war-cries harmonised in justified vengeance.

The living Ironhorn waded in like a force of nature, his horns punching through mail and bone, his presence giving courage to the innocent caged in the pens.

But Garrosh wasn't finished. The captain pressed his hand to the gaping wound and spoke words in the old tongue — syllables that made reality hiccup and the air taste of copper and regret.

Dark power flowed into him from unspeakable sources. His wound sealed with sickly green light, his muscles swelled to inhuman proportions, and his remaining eye blazed with damned fury. When he spoke again, his voice held harmonics from no mortal throat.

"You want to see a monster, half-breed? Let me show you real power!"

His next strike came with supernatural speed. The war-hammer passed through Dong-zhu's parry like morning mist, and only desperate instinct saved him from skull-crushing death. Instead, the weapon caught him, breaking his ribs, and lifting him twenty feet through the air into a slave pen.

Wooden bars exploded around him as he crashed through the cage wall. The captives screamed and scattered, and suddenly he sprawled among the very people he'd come to save — broken, bleeding, facing an enemy whose power dwarfed his own.

"See how your knight protects you?" Garrosh laughed, advancing with leisurely confidence, each step leaving smoking footprints.

"See how his pretty armour crumples? This is the price of trusting half-breed honour!"

But little Mira crept closer instead of fleeing. Her small hand touched his cheek with infinite gentleness.

"Please don't give up, sir knight," she whispered with mountain-moving faith.

"We believe in you."

Those words hit like lightning striking a bell tower. These people didn't see a half-breed monster struggling with savage nature. They saw a cavalier knight who had come to save them, a protector standing between them and darkness.

Dame Elara's voice echoed in his memory with pure understanding: You are not defined by the darkness you carry, but by the light you choose to kindle despite it.

Dong-zhu rose slowly, blood streaming from his wounds. But his grip on Skullsplitter never wavered, and when he looked at Garrosh again, his eyes held controlled fury — not wild ancestral rage, not a knight's determination defending innocence, but something else - something containing both.

"You're right," he said, voice carrying across the quiet marketplace with absolute conviction.

"I am half-breed. Half-orc savage, half-human idealist. And that means I understand both the darkness you embrace and the light you've forgotten."

He advanced, and the phantom ancestors moved with him — not as instruments of mindless vengeance, but as guardians of justice older than tribal hatred. Their forms blazed brighter, ancient eyes reflecting wisdom alongside fury.

"I know the blood-hunger that drives you," Dong-zhu continued, Skullsplitter beginning to glow with silver radiance — not stolen power's sickly green, but light born from choices made in love rather than hate.

"I feel it clawing at my throat daily. But strength without mercy is just another weakness."

The ancestors began to sing — wordless harmonies speaking of balance, justice tempered with compassion, the terrible responsibility of choosing creation over destruction. Their song filled the marketplace, driving away shadows, washing over captives like desert water.

Garrosh's confidence wavered. The dark power was vast but hollow — all fury, no purpose. All hunger, no satisfaction.

"You talk too much, mongrel!" he snarled, launching another devastating attack.

But Dong-zhu was ready. He stepped into the blow, accepting the hammer's crushing impact against his shoulder in exchange for driving Skullsplitter's armour-piercing spike point-first into Garrosh's corrupted heart.

The pain was indescribable — molten lightning — but worth it for the absolute shock crossing the slaver's face as enchanted steel punched through supernatural defenses like rotten wood.

Skullsplitter's spike pierced Garrosh's ribs with reality-tearing sound, and dark green blood fountained from the wound. More importantly, the unnatural power began hemorrhaging away like water from a broken dam.

"Impossible," Garrosh gasped, massive hands closing around the spike buried in his chest.

"The darkness promised... victory... power without limits..."

"Darkness always lies," Dong-zhu replied, leaning close enough to smell approaching death.

"Dame Elara taught me that mercy isn't weakness — it's a choice only the strong can make. Forgiveness isn't about what the other person deserves. It's about who you choose to become."

With his last breath, Garrosh tried to laugh, but only rattled like dying wind.

"Mercy... for me... after everything?"

Dong-zhu met the fading eye with steady compassion.

"I forgive you, Garrosh One-Eye. I forgive the villages burned, families destroyed, innocence stolen. Not because you deserve it, but because carrying that hatred would make me into you. And these people deserve better from their protector."

The captain's expression shifted through surprise, rage, confusion, and finally something approaching gratitude before light faded forever from his remaining eye. In death, he looked almost peaceful — just an old orc who had chosen badly.

The surviving Bone-Gnawer warriors fled in terror as their leader's death released the phantom ancestors to pursue them. Ancient triceratops spirits thundered after fleeing raiders like divine retribution, and Dong-zhu suspected the Bone-Gnawer tribe would trouble no more villages.

In the sudden silence, he turned to the freed captives — twenty-seven souls blinking in afternoon sun like flowers emerging from shadow. Little Mira approached first, her small hand slipping trustingly into his blood-stained gauntlet.

"Thank you, sir knight," she said simply, voice carrying the weight of twenty-seven saved lives.

"We knew you would save us."

Looking into her innocent eyes — so like his sister's — Dong-zhu felt something shift in his chest. Not wild battle triumph, but quiet satisfaction of choices well made.

The rage that had driven him here was gone, replaced by something precious: knowledge that he had faced his own darkness and chosen light instead.

Dame Elara would have been proud.

But as the immediate danger passed, as captives began exploring their freedom, new watchers observed from marketplace shadows. Hooded figures who had witnessed this dangerous precedent — a half-orc knight showing mercy to enemies and inspiring hope in the desperate — exchanged meaningful glances.

A raven landed on a nearby rooftop, black eyes reflecting intelligence that had nothing to do with birds. It studied the scene with infinite patience, then spoke in a voice like winter wind through dead leaves.

"The half-blood has chosen his path. The Obsidian Conclave must know. The Tournament of Broken Crowns approaches, and this symbol cannot be allowed to compete. Too many would rally to such hope. Too many would believe that blood need not determine destiny."

The raven launched skyward with wings that swallowed light, bearing news that would reshape seven kingdoms and ensure Dong-zhu's greatest trials were yet to come.

But the knight didn't see the messenger disappearing into storm clouds gathering on the horizon — clouds that had been clear sky moments before.

For now, in this moment of hard-won peace, he allowed himself one heartbeat of satisfaction. He remounted Ironhorn with careful movements that sent lightning through his broken ribs, feeling the great beast's warmth steady him as his left arm hung limply at his side.

As they guided the freed captives toward safety — toward lives they could now choose for themselves — Dong-zhu sheathed Skullsplitter and felt destiny settling on his shoulders.

Not as burden, but as wings.

The crimson labyrinth had claimed another victim, but for once, it was hatred that had died instead of hope. And in a world that had forgotten what heroes looked like, that might be the most dangerous victory of all.

In the distance, thunder rolled from those impossible storm clouds, and somewhere in the depths of shadow, the Obsidian Conclave began to plan the destruction of a half-orc knight who dared to believe that honour could triumph over blood.

The real war was just beginning…