The drums fell silent across the jungle.

Kin'weelay looked up. The sky twisted. He could taste the muisek in the air. Kin'weelay knelt, and bowed his head.

Grunt Gharne Sharpaxe looked down from the watchtower and scratched his stubbled chin. A bead of sweat stung his eye. He turned his face from the jungle. Down there, within the camp, something odd was going on. Why had all the trolls turned towards the bonfire? All eyes had turned to watch - even that tainted elf had taken a step back. Trolls, kneeling? What had

The sky twisted.

The serpent uncoiled, and loomed above the kneeling trolls. It was... huge. The air rippled, like the ocean's surfance. No, like a pond into which a stone has been thrown.

"He knows you are coming. And he is ready." The voice echoed between the palissades. A gutteral roar rose up from two dozen kneeling trolls. In the jungle beyond, a dreadful sound crashed against the night-blue sky. Bird and beast alike screamed. Gharne shuddered.

The trolls, barbarous and cruel, screamed to the night a hatred that burned the ears. "That," thought Gharne, "is probably the first sound that this stinking jungle ever heard, when this world was young." They stood, a long spiral of trolls circling out from the serpent. They stood, and began, one by one, to dance. A whispering began, and gathered and grew. A chant that Gharne could hear, 'though he did not know the meaning.

"Ulla teck. Ulla teck." The chanting beat like the pulse of some monstrous thing hidden deep beneath the rotted soil of the jungle. The serpent moved as the world moved: slowly. It drifted its powerful bulk along the spiral arc of dancing trolls. Gharne's head pounded. He winced, and rubbed his eyes.

Across the ancient jungle, the drums once again took up their eternal rhythm.

When Gharne opened his eyes, the serpent was gone. But the trolls remained. "To Zul'Gurub! To victory! To WAR!"