by Simon Archer
“Of course, William,” she sent back, her entire shaft and head exploding into a golden blaze as I began to spin the rope in my hand. Strangely, I didn’t feel the heat as I kept spinning, and in a moment, Lib was spinning like a glowing disk at my side.
Above me, the wyrm moved forward, its softer, paler belly flesh passing overhead, and then I saw it. No, not a lizard dick. Reptiles don’t work that way, they have cloaca… which was maybe better for my purposes. It was a literal hole right into the inside of the beast. Before I missed my shot, I let out a yell of effort as I let the rope go as I swung upward, flinging Libritas like a golden comet. I didn’t bother trying to keep a hold of the rope, I simply let it fall to my feet and only bothered to grab the opposite end of it as I dove away.
The last place I wanted to end up was under a dead, multi-ton drake, after all, and the last thing I wanted to have happen was to lose Libritas inside the guts of a giant reptile.
As I got clear, Libritas slammed right between the wyrm’s rear legs, dead on target, and the searing brand burnt and melted through soft scales, tender flesh, and right into the wyrm’s internal organs. The wyrm let out a terrible, painful screech as its entire body spasmed, and as I picked myself up, my eyes widened as Lib burst out the top of the drake, searing gore dripping off every inch before she finally ran out of momentum and fell to the earth around the same time the drake collapsed.
“Petra!” I shouted as I turned towards her. She was just as awe-struck as I was because what we just witnessed seemed almost impossible. “Go through the eye now!”
See, while most things would die if you literally shoved a glowing hot piece of steel through its pelvis, this rock wyrm was tougher than that shit. Though it was spilling blood and gore in an expanding circle under its hips and tail, the wyrm was still trying to drag itself forward, hissing and ready to bite.
My shout snapped her out of her astonishment, and her jaw squared as she reared back her thorny whips. “Indeed, I will put it out of its misery,” she said firmly as she thrust them back out again.
The wyrm was too injured, in too much agony to dodge, which was good for it, honestly. The massive thorns that Petra drove through its good eye to kill it was a mercy instead of letting the thing bleed to death in utter agony. As the wyrm let out one last death throe, the orc we had saved limped past the edge of the protective trees, his small black eyes as wide as they could possibly be as a gasp escaped his snout.
“By my ancestor’s tusks,” he whispered hoarsely. “Never have I seen two hunters slay a rock wyrm alone before.” He blinked over at me. “Truly, you are sent from the spirit world!”
I simply shook my head. “Nope, just a guy from New Jersey.”
16
As the astonished orc fell to his knees before the dead drake, I rushed over to Petra. The spewed acid had mostly run its course, so there was only a light sizzle from the soles of my boots, but I pulled up a bit short as I got right up to the dryad. Not that I didn’t want to hug her and make sure that she hadn’t been burned through her bark armor, but there were still globs of the corrosive spit still bubbling in the sap and sending out puffs of sulfurous gas.
“Uh, Petra, you’re, well, dripping?” I said as I gestured at her sizzling armor. “Are you okay? I saw the drake breathe on you and--”
“I-I think so,” she said softly as she seemed to deflate a little. With the immediate danger over, the wrath of nature drained out of the dryad as she let out a long breath. As she did, the armor fell away like so many fall leaves.
Though there were spots where her brown skin or the leafy green dress beneath it were marred by acid burns, she looked to be in relatively good shape. I could only hope I looked so good.
“And yes,” Libritas chirped in my ear, her tone playfully teasing, “I am perfectly fine as well, thank you for asking.”
I glanced over my shoulder to where the brand had fallen to the earth, covered in charred wyrm flesh and gore, the end of my rope still tied around her handle. “Of course, you are,” I sent back. “You’re the Brand of Freedom, after all. I never had any doubts you’d take that thing out.”
“Thanks to your swift thinking, William,” she replied, but before I could say anything else, Petra was all over me, gentle vines and probing fingers searching out every one of my own burns. In the heat of the moment, I’d completely forgotten about them myself, and even now, they were still only stinging annoyances.
“I should salve these wounds right away,” the dryad remarked, her face scrunched up in worry. “Fortunately, the greengum tree’s sap is very effective when dealing with acids, as you saw.”
Before she could fret over me too much, I put my hands gently on her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m okay too, and while I’m all for taking care of my boo-boos, I’m a lot more worried about our friend over there.”
I pointed past her at the pig-man, who seemed to be totally ignorant of the blood leaking out of his thigh as he quite literally prostrated himself before the dead wyrm’s carcass. He was clearly muttering to himself, some kind of chant that I couldn’t quite discern but it certainly sounded religious. His hands were planted flat in the dirt, and I couldn’t help but notice his thick fingers were stained with some kind of black substance.
Petra followed my point, and she let out a little gasp. “Yes! Let us help him.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me forward, even though it wasn’t necessary in the least. “But I’ll still dote over your wounds later, William.”
“Fair enough.” I let out a chuckle, despite my own pain. While I had only taken indirect drops of the wyrm’s acid, it was still burning away in my skin. It had the distinct feeling of single burning fires being poked through my skin, but I bit back on that bit of agony for the moment. No need to distract Petra, after all.
At our approach, the orc finally looked up from his prayers, and I finally got a good look at a part of him that wasn’t his back. Like the rest of his kind, he had a pig-like snout instead of a nose, with the same ruddy pink skin as Wodag and Una. Bristly brown hair came up like a mohawk in between his ears, and his face was scarred in several places, though those scars were blended into elaborate tattoos that reminded me of Celtic designs from Earth. His black eyes were surprisingly focused as he nodded his head to us, still on his knees.
“Great hunters, I thank you again for my life,” he said, his voice deep and heavily accented, almost Slavic to my ears. I had no idea how I could hear an accent when my brain was auto-translating things, but that’s how it was. “Few outsiders would risk their lives for one of my tribe.”
“Well, to start with, we’re not assholes,” I began. “As for the rest, let’s make sure you don’t bleed to death first, all right?” As I slung my pack off my back, Petra knelt beside the orc.
“Please, relax and let us assist you,” she soothed as she put her hands on his shoulders. “What is your name, friend?”
The orc’s small eyes widened further at the very question. As I pulled out the Etrian equivalent to a first aid kit, little more than a bottle of stout grain alcohol, some clean bandages, a roll of thin thread, and a bone needle, his gaze shifted between us before finally settling on me.
“Ogrith, son of Dolar, hunter of the Wyrmtooth,” he announced as he thumped his chest, and I think that was when his wounds finally caught up with him. His skin went a pale pink as he began to pitch forward, but Petra held him fast. “Yes, help. I thought I could get an egg and get clear, but then he awoke and--”
I motioned for Petra to lay Ogrith on his back. “You can explain it all later, Ogrith, but for now, just try to stay calm.” As she did so gently, I set the alcohol and bandages to one side so that I could cut away some of the leather around the orc’s wound. “I’m William, by the way, and this is Petra.”
The dryad waved the fingers of her free hand as she smiled down at Ogrith, and that alone seemed to calm him all the more. That was good because it let me actually get a good look at his wound. It was a deep,
long gash along the hip, to be sure, but if we could pack it and stitch it up properly, I hoped that we could save his leg.
“Good news,” I said with a smile as I pulled the cork out of the alcohol bottle, “I don’t think you’re going to lose your leg, but, well, bad news?” I took a deep breath as I prepared to clean the slash. “This is going to hurt like a bitch.”
Petra nodded and simply sprouted a stick of wood from her palm. Ogrith didn’t need to be told what to do, he simply opened his snout and allowed her to place the wood between his teeth and tusks. The moment she did, I dumped the grain alcohol over the cut abruptly to clean it. Tears welled up in Ogrith’s eyes, but he managed to bite off his screams of pain.
The stick, though, was a goner, torn to pieces in his tusks.
“Sorry, Lib,” I sent to Libritas, still languishing in baked-on gore. “I--”
“Worry not, dear William,” she pulsed. “I’ve been in far worse straits for far longer. Do what is needed there.”
With that, I looked up to Petra, about to ask for some moss, an excellent natural form of wound packing, but I didn’t have to say a word. Her open hand was right there, filled with a mound of a reddish-brown moss unfamiliar to me. I didn’t question, I simply smiled at her, grabbed the moss, and stuffed it into the slash in Ogrith’s hip as gently as I could. Whereas a good packing of Earth moss would merely staunch a wound, this Etrian moss seemed to suck up the blood around it and accelerate the process of clotting. I realized I could take my time a little bit in the stitching and bandaging of the wound.
It only took ten minutes of careful work to get the orc’s wounds properly dressed. And I wasn’t the only one who was busy. As I had Ogrith well in hand, Petra slipped away to recover Libritas, cut my rope free from her, and clean the Brand of Freedom off with water from her waterskin. By the time the dryad had returned with Libritas cradled reverently in her arms, I was giving Ogrith a pat on the shoulder.
“Thank you, William,” the orc grunted out as he struggled to sit up. I steadied him as I helped him sit up. “And you as well…” Ogrith’s eyes widened as he seemed to take in not only Petra but Libritas as well. “A dryad… if you’re here… Uruk?”
“Dead,” I said firmly as Petra presented the Brand of Freedom to me hilt-first. “And I was a bit remiss in my introductions. This is--”
“The Brand of Freedom.” Ogrith was awe-struck, his deep voice almost hollow as realization lit up his eyes. For a long moment, I wasn’t sure what way this would go. Was Ogrith one of the orcs who aligned with Uruk? Was he about to make a move after finding out Uruk’s fate?
But that isn’t what happened. Instead, a look of pure relief washed over Ogrith’s pained face right before he spat to his left, the side opposite of me.
“Good riddance to the Unclean,” he growled before looking back up at us. “Truly, our ancestors sent you to save us from our mistakes. Please, can you help me stand?”
I nodded as I stood and held an open hand down to him. “Petra, can you make him a crutch?”
“Of course,” Petra replied brightly. “Anything to be of assistance.”
The pig-man clasped my forearm, and as I began to help him up, I heard the now-familiar sound of a sapling sprouting through the rocky earth. By the time I had our new friend steady on his good leg with me to support him, Petra had stepped forward, a shaft of bronzewood shaped with a crook on one end in her hands.
“Here, Ogrith.” She handed the polished wood crutch to him as I shifted to supporting him by the armpits. “If you need it adjusted in any way, let me know. It will only take a moment!”
Ogrith took the crutch with a grateful nod and tucked it under his arm. With a little help from me, it only took a few moments for the orc to get used to the crutch. What was amazing to me was his resilience. Despite the blood loss and injury, Ogrith was surprisingly sprightly as he shuffled forward a few tentative steps.
“Your judgment was perfect,” he grunted as he nodded to Petra. “Thank you.”
“Our pleasure.” Petra sketched a curtsy and smiled… but only for a moment before she swept past Ogrith to fret over me again. “Now, William, you’re going to let me attend to those burns now, aren’t you?”
I laughed and nodded. “Okay, okay.” I glanced over at Ogrith. “Maybe you can tell us what’s going on while she takes care of me.” As Petra softly pushed me back down to a sitting position in the dirt, the pig-man let out a snorting chuckle and leaned against the high-sloping valley walls.
“As you wish, savior, though there is little to tell.” Ogrith waved towards the cave past the still-bleeding drake carcass, and I resisted the urge to ask why he used that particular word to describe me. “I am a hunter of the Wyrmtooth tribe, but what I hunted today was not meat, but eggs. When Uruk the Unclean,” he spit again as soon as he uttered the name, “broke our people and left to join the Black Runes, he cursed our tribe’s wyrms, turning them impotent.”
Petra looked up from where she soothed my acid burns with greengum sap, her eyes narrowing in anger. “I shouldn’t be surprised at such a vile thing, and yet I am always astounded to hear the depths to which Uruk sunk. I am glad I ripped him to shreds.”
“We all are,” I added before looking to Uruk. The sticky sap was doing a miraculous job taking the pain away from my burns. “So, because your tribe relies on wyrm-fire, you were trying to get unhatched eggs to bring up and tame a new generation of rock wyrms?”
Ogrith simply grunted and nodded. “Unlike the soft plainsfolk, we orcs must survive in this harsh land. You saw what wyrm-fire can do when you arrived. If my tribesmen had been with me, we could have felled that beast with it. You can see why we need it.”
From what I had seen, I was pretty sure he wasn’t exaggerating. If that had been the effect of one vial of wyrm-fire, a concentrated attack from multiple sides likely would have felled the rock wyrm. Ogrith snorted as he pushed himself off the wall and oriented toward the cave.
“I do not wish to burden you more with our tribe’s troubles, but…” He let out a long sigh. “I do not know if there are more dangers in the wyrm’s cave. Could you assist me in recovering what eggs we can find for my people?”
Part of me wanted to grill him about why he was here alone, but my gut told me that this was a desperate act. As I let Lib’s magic into me to lay bare the chains that bound him, the golden chains that bound him to this land and sketched off deeper, towards what I guessed what the rest of his tribe was, were chipped and fraying. Though I was still learning how this all worked, the state of those chains only reinforced how tenuous things were for Ogrith and the Wyrmtooth orcs.
“Sure, we’d be honored to,” I began, then cast a glance up to Petra who was still fussing over me. “Uh, assuming Petra has cleared me for more adventures?”
A greenish blush tinged the dryad’s brown cheeks, and she let out a little giggle. “I’m sorry. I think I got a little carried away.” She stood up and brushed some dust off her skirts. “You’re all taken care of, William.”
“Thanks, Petra.” I laughed, pushed myself up to my feet, and tightened my grip on Libritas. “Let’s go, Ogrith, and get your people those eggs.”
The hunter grunted and began to hobble his way to the cave’s mouth. He was brave for sure, but I wasn’t going to let him go first in his condition. I passed by Ogrith with a nod and took the lead, with Petra guarding our rear, just in case. We moved carefully around the immense carcass and across the box canyon. As we approached the cave mouth, I raised Libritas high.
“Can you give us some light, Lib?” I sent to her.
“My pleasure, William,” she replied, and as she whispered in my ear, her entire length flared up with even gold light, driving back the darkness before us.
With a deep breath, I centered myself and plunged into the cavernous depths beyond. I wholeheartedly expected a very angry mate of the drake we killed waiting to tear us to shreds or melt us into goopy flesh piles with acid the moment we stepped into the cave.
>
But none of that happened.
Instead, the spacious, craggy cavern was almost dead silent and still. It was easy to tell that the main space was naturally formed, while several hollows had been gouged out with drake talons. Several of those niches were lined with the remnants of Sola crystals, some of which seemed to be half-grown while others were chewed down to their nubs.
“The wyrms have a strong nose for Sola,” Ogrith grunted as he nodded to a chamber. “They can scent it even in hidden pockets, such as this.”
“Do you think they grow like this even under the plains?” I asked as we turned to go deeper in. I figured they must, but I wanted to be sure before I integrated that factoid into my plans against the Weaver.
“I suppose it must.” The hunter let out a derisive snort as he turned to go deeper into the cave. “Not that the plainsmen realize what a treasure they have under their feet.”
The disdain was plain, but it wasn’t tinged with vindictiveness. If anything, I got a feeling of envy from Ogrith. I was already starting to suss out the source of the tension between the orcs and the people of Kaulda. Sullah had thought of the orcs as savages, while the Wyrmtooth saw the Kauldans as having an easy life and prosperity they didn’t appreciate.
“Why don’t your tribe and the plainsmen join together? Trade?” Petra asked softly as we walked towards a large hollow at the back of the cavern.
This one was distinctly different from the other niches. Not only was there a distinct lack of crystals, but all the sharp edges and fractured rock was smoothed out by acid. The only remaining feature was a broken-off pillar of rock in the far corner.
Ogrith stopped short for a moment and lowered his snout. “Our peoples have never dealt well with each other, even before the Runes came. When Kaulda was praised by the barons of Solanna, we were shunned, thought of as savages who only had rock and blood to trade in.” A deep sigh echoed from his lips. “It was unfair, but still, we did nothing to change their minds. And when Uruk came,” he spat again, “showing off the power the Runes had given him, many of us joined him, because our hearts were hardened by the past.”