by Alex Aguilar
She wasn’t exactly sure of what she felt.
Perhaps it was anxiety at the thought of her captors still being alive.
Perhaps it was relief at the thought that she could still be the one to kill them.
Either way, she felt uneasy and disturbed. She realized she’d spent so much time gawking that Nyx was a good distance away now, his nose twitching instinctively as he followed the scent he’d caught. He walked past a tipped carriage with dead horses still attached to it, and hanging along the sides were the banners of Halghard, torn into pieces and stained with dirt and blood.
Robyn examined the symbol on the banners, or what remained of them. There she saw it, the image of the infamous serpent wrapped around a lit torch. It was indeed a Halghardian banner, she realized, except the colors had been changed. The banner was a moss green instead of red, and the serpent was now gold rather than silver. It was no longer the late King Frederic’s banner, but an imitation of it, an homage.
“Oh dear,” she heard Nyx say from afar; his voice was so shaky that it startled her. He hardly ever sounded concerned unless it was for her life.
“What is it?” she approached him, but as she made a left turn at a thick oak tree, Nyx placed a heavy paw on her boot as if warning her not to take another step. The dirt felt suddenly softer, like mud. And when she felt her boot sink a half-inch, she took back a step.
The pit of quicksand in front of her was about six feet wide.
And right at the center of it was a head…
An orc’s head, eerily familiar to her, covered in dirt and muck, but she could still make out the olive green skin around his eyes and cheeks. The orc’s eyes were closed, his entire body was buried beneath the earth, and the only thing keeping him from sinking was his rigid arm gripping a nearby rock that appeared rather loose. Robyn recognized him immediately. This was the orc she’d come face to face with at the Rogue Brotherhood camp.
What an awful way to die, she thought. To have to choose between sinking or starving…
Nyx cleared his throat nervously. “Perhaps it’s best if we moved along…”
She nodded, the sorrow obvious in her expression.
Suddenly, however, the orc’s head began twitching…
He’s alive, she realized, startled and wide-eyed. Well, shit… He’s alive!
There was grunt, followed by a rapid blinking and a shiver. For a moment, the orc’s yellow eyes appeared solemnly woeful, like an injured animal fighting for its life.
“H-Hello,” Robyn’s lips trembled.
He released another grunt, the frustration clearer in this one. It was as if he had forgotten where he was, as if he’d drifted into a deep sleep with hopes of waking up and realizing that it had all been an unpleasant dream.
“It’s okay,” Robyn tried to calm his nerves. “We’re not here to hurt you.” She took a moment to clear her throat and think of what to say, her hand unable to loosen its grip on her bow out of precaution. “Y-You’re the orc from the Brotherhood camp, aren’t you?” she asked. “The one they call the Beast?”
The orc slowed his breathing, and bit by bit he grew that shield of hostility that he often carried. It took a great deal of stubbornness, Robyn thought, to act adversely towards a person who was only trying to help.
Talk to me, she begged him silently. You can trust me…
But the Beast’s stare became suddenly just as intimidating as it had been back at the camp. He opened his quivering lips, and his voice was as beastlike as Robyn had imagined it.
“What’re ye doing ‘ere?” he asked, specks of dirt trickling out of his lips as he spoke. “Ye shoulda gone back to yer shit-village by now.”
Robyn felt a sudden dash of disappointment. Then again, she wasn’t sure what she was expecting from the orc, considering what she’d already seen of him. At the very least, he seemed to have recognized her. “I-I can’t,” she said. “I’m not going home, I’m… W-Well, it’s not important…”
“Then go!” the Beast growled. “The fuck ye waitin’ for…?”
His words stung her like a dagger, but his utterly despondent façade spoke otherwise. The nervous twitching of his green pointy ears, his trembling fingers struggling to keep their grip on the loose stone, the forced breathing, and the desperate look on his face as he drew in dirt into his lungs with every breath… The orc was afraid. She knew too well what fear looked like.
“Lady Robyn?” Nyx called, looking up at her.
But the girl refused to leave. Something was holding her down.
“Why’d you let me go?” she asked him suddenly, her tone firm and intrepid, as if purposely trying to provoke him. “You’re a member of the Brotherhood… and yet you see your captain’s prisoner escaping and you do nothing about it. Why?”
“Not my prisoner… Not my problem,” the Beast muttered. “Plain ‘n’ simple.”
Something in the orc’s eyes absorbed her; aside from the yellow rings on them and the green of his eyelids, those eyes could have belonged to anyone back in Elbon. And the same went for the rest of his face. His nose was larger and wider, but its shape was that of any human. He had two sharp fangs rising from his bottom lip, thick like ivory, but his jaw and even the black braid on his chin could have been a man’s. And if he had anything in common with a human, Robyn refused to believe the Beast was missing a conscience.
“That can’t be all,” she said.
He scoffed at her. “Stupid littl’ scrap… Think ye know it all, do ye? If ye were my prisoner, ye’d be dead already.”
At that point, Nyx was no longer at Robyn’s feet but off somewhere in the bloody campgrounds, sifting through the rubble for supplies. Robyn wanted to follow, her mind kept telling her to walk away, but her feet simply wouldn’t move. It was as if the earth had grabbed hold of her as well, and she had to graze the moist dirt with the heel of her boot to make sure that it hadn’t. She sighed, unsure of what to do, knowing very well that time was running short, that the Brotherhood would arrive at their camp at any moment now and Malekai would realize she was gone.
“Do you, um,” she cleared her throat somewhat nervously, her eyes moving left and right, examining the pit of quicksand. “Do you need some help?”
The Beast exhaled sharply. “I don’t need help from a stupid farmgirl…”
“But you’ll die if y-”
“I said SCRAM!”
The agitation in his voice seemed to drag him another inch deeper into the soil. He shook even more as he tried desperately to keep himself above ground. The stone in his right hand began to slide inward, killing him slowly, and Robyn nearly jumped in by impulse. But the orc’s brute strength was somehow keeping him up, keeping him alive.
Robyn stepped away and began searching all around. She walked over to a fallen tree nearby and broke off a thick branch, the loosest she could find. She held it at one end and aimed the other at the orc. “Grab onto this,” she said to him.
The Beast’s glare was a blend of fury and hope, if that were even possible.
“Get that away from me,” he grunted.
Robyn was shaken for a moment but she kept herself together and insisted. And Nyx was observing her from afar, wishing he were something larger than a fox in case the orc got any funny ideas.
“Just grab the branch, will you?” she said with a sigh.
“Get it away, ye dumb scrap…”
“I’m not leaving until you grab it.”
“I don’t need yer help!”
“Just grab th-”
“LEAVE ME!!”
“Oh will you stop it already?!” Robyn shouted fearlessly at the top of your voice.
A look of surprise overcame the Beast’s face. His eyes even glowed for a moment, giving Robyn the impression that he was on the verge of tears. Still, the orc said nothing… His arm did not move from the stone, partly out of fear of sinking, but mostly out of persistence. Robyn threw the thick branch to the side and then knelt on the soil, as close as she could get to the Be
ast’s face without sinking herself into the pit. For a moment, Nyx was just as startled as the Beast was at the girl’s astounding nerve.
“You spared me!” she said with an unyielding tone, for a moment sounding almost like her mother. “Back at the camp when you saw me escaping… You could’ve stopped me at any moment, but you spared me instead! You did that for a reason… You might call yourself a crook and a killer, but no matter how tough you try to appear, nothing will ever change the fact that you spared me. That means something… It means somewhere inside, beneath that shield of rage you carry, you have a heart… And d’you know why?”
The Beast said nothing, growing more and more unsettled by the second.
Much to his surprise, however, Robyn leaned in even closer.
“Because heartless people don’t spare you,” she said, and then she grabbed the thick branch again. “Now will you stop being a stubborn thing and let me help?!”
The Beast wanted to, it was obvious. But years of hostility held him back.
“Get out of ‘ere… Now, scrap…”
“I will not… Not until y-”
The roar could have belonged to a bear, for it echoed louder than any sound Robyn had ever heard in her life. But it had come from no bear… It was the sound of an orc’s temper, so powerful that it sent a hot, sticky breeze that blew a few of Robyn’s black curls out of her face.
Angrily, she threw the branch to the side as hard as she could and yelled, “Fine!”
She then leapt to her feet and stormed off, the frustration quite clear in her rapid pace. Her face had gone red from the fury and she was mumbling under her breath, cursing through her whispers, the same way she would do after one of her mother’s lectures.
The Beast closed his eyes and sighed, well aware that the girl could have been his last opportunity to survive. It was only a matter of time before the muscles in his arm gave in and his body would merge with the soil. He had already begun to accept it, in fact.
But he greatly underestimated just how stubborn Robyn Huxley could be…
When he heard the soft footsteps coming back, his chest began to pound again. He opened one eye slowly, just enough to see the figure of the girl kneeling nearby with an old rope in her hands. She was tying it around the trunk of a sturdy oak tree that stood a few feet away, and then she threw the other end into the pit of quicksand, just at the Beast’s reach.
“There!” she said bitterly. “Now you can get yourself out!”
And with that, Robyn walked away.
Often, she would hesitate and look back. This time, she didn’t.
The Beast watched her with awe. He had been traveling with the Rogue Brotherhood for nearly a decade, and not a single one of his mercenary brothers had shown this much consideration for his life; all he’d ever been to them was a weapon.
But the girl, somehow, had looked at him as more than that.
She saw him, not what he was, and it concerned him. Frightened him, even.
His eyes moved towards the strand of rope next to his arm. It was the only thing standing between him living or dying, that rope. And yet his stubborn hand wouldn’t move.
Robyn kept walking away until she found Nyx sniffing around the pile of bodies, his nose twitching, still fixated on that unknown and peculiar scent.
“Can we leave?” she asked, her nose becoming more and more overwhelmed by the second. Suddenly, she longed for a nice warm bath.
“What happened back there?” Nyx asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it…”
They walked away. For a moment, Nyx struggled to keep up with Robyn’s angry pace.
“I did try to tell you, Lady Robyn… Orcs can be rather persistent.”
“I’ve only met the one and already I can’t stand them,” she said sourly.
“You’ll be all right. They’re not all the same, you know.”
“Are they not?” she exhaled nastily.
“That’s like saying all humans are the same. Would you place John in the same league as the Captain of the Rogue Brotherhood?”
Robyn felt a sudden guilt upon hearing his words. Nyx was right, she knew, though it wasn’t enough to ease the aggravation.
“Besides,” Nyx said. “You will find far worse out here than orcs.”
“Yeah? Like… what…?” her voice trailed off as she came to a sudden halt.
As they came across a bend in the road, Nyx realized at last what that peculiar scent had been… In front of them was an ogre, a great hulking thing about ten feet tall, sitting on the dirt with a wooden club at his side, digging into a pile of bodies as if they were served on a platter. There was blood smeared all over his jaw and chin, and chunks of dead flesh hanging between his teeth.
To Robyn and Nyx, the place was a graveyard. To the ogre, it was a feast.
“Back away… slowly,” Nyx whispered.
Robyn’s mouth had gone dry. With every step she took backwards Nyx was able to take three, his slim catlike legs made for sneaking, and she envied him for it. They hid behind a row of trees to the left of the path, but the ogre’s nostrils had flared, latching onto their smell as if they were walking steaks.
Once out of sight, Robyn began panting silently.
“What now?” she asked Nyx, her brows arched with distress. She didn’t think twice before confronting an orc, but fighting an ogre would be like a wolf trying to tame a mammoth.
“Wait for my signal,” whispered the fox. “You will head east. I’ll go west.”
“W-What?” she stammered.
“We must circle the area, one tree at a time. It’ll confuse him.”
“Confuse him?!”
“He can’t follow both our scents, can he?”
“He can try! What if he…”
“You give ogres far too much credit, Lady Robyn. They’re halfwits, believe me, I’ve encountered plenty.”
“Did you see his legs?! If he sees one of us…”
“He won’t, just trust me!”
Suddenly a large drop of drool fell between them, thick and slimy, enough to fill half a tankard. They were so preoccupied conjuring up a plan that they didn’t realize how loud they’d been whispering. There was a soft growl coming from above, and when they looked up the massive ogre was towering over them, slobber dribbling from his blood-smeared lips.
“Never mind the plan,” said Nyx. “RUN!”
Robyn’s feet had never moved so quickly, even when being chased by tree nymphs. The ogre moved slower due to his size, but every step he took was equal to five of Robyn’s steps. Nyx was faster, and so he took the lead by a few meters before he spun around and gritted his teeth furiously.
“Keep running!” he shouted as Robyn brushed past him.
But the young archer slowed her pace reluctantly; she glanced over her shoulder, watched as the ogre’s eyes became fixed on the fox, and she couldn’t help but come to a halt. She refused to flee; she’d tried that option before and it resulted in chaos. Her mother had taught her many lessons, the most important of which was that you never abandoned family. And Nyx had proven his loyalty by tracking her all the way to the Brotherhood camp. He may have been over 250 years old, but to Robyn he was family.
“Come on, you dull bastard,” Nyx was growling, keeping the ogre’s attention on him. “Follow me, that’s it.” He was taking careful backwards steps towards the trees, waiting for the opportune moment to pounce away. With a growl, the ogre lunged forward, his hand ready to bind the fox in a tight clutch. But Nyx took the leap just in time, a backwards leap that saved him from the ogre’s reach, and then he ran through the trees with intense speed and landed a bite at the ogre’s ribs while the hulking monster was busy pulling his heavy arm back.
Nyx bounced right off and scurried away to a safe distance, ready to repeat the attack. The ogre looked more aggravated this time, blood dripping from the fresh wound on his belly.
“That’s your final warning,” Nyx said, as if the ogre could somehow understand hi
m. “Your move.” But the ogre simply shook the pain away and stepped forward, his back in a hunch, ready to reach down. Nyx did it again; he pounced back into the trees at the last moment, dodging the ogre’s hand, then ran around and landed a bite, this time on the ogre’s leg. But for a moment his tooth became stuck on that thick flesh, and the ogre landed an unexpected punch.
The blow sent Nyx into the air; he landed on a puddle of mud with a yelp of pain.
The ogre was slower now, walking with a limp, but he reached Nyx with little effort.
Nyx was calm, looking up at the great beast with a fearless glare, as if prepared to die, hoping he would come back as something bigger. Get it over with, he thought.
The ogre was growling, lifting his heavy arm into the air, ready to strike. But then an arrow flew in and pierced into his lower back all of a sudden. He released an echoing shriek, arched backwards, and moved his hand towards the arrow.
Nyx was staggered for a moment, snapping back to reality after having prepared his mind for death; he moved away towards safety as he frantically searched the area. He found Robyn hiding behind a row of shrubs, drawing back another arrow and aiming it at the ogre.
“Lady Robyn! Don’t!” he shouted.
She let go… She was aiming for the ogre’s eyes but the hulking monster blocked it with his hand. And then the ogre spotted her, his gaze hardened, threatening her without the need for weapons. Robyn darted away, an arrow held prepared against the string on her bow, and the ogre followed her footsteps.
“No,” Nyx muttered. “No, no, look at me, damn you! Look at me!”
He wanted to run after them, but the muscles of his paw were now sprained, and he couldn’t move fast enough, couldn’t fight through the throbbing pain. “Run!” he shouted. “Run, Lady Robyn!”
She rolled away and squeezed through the trees, but the ogre either broke through them or found a way around them. She kept running; the fear pumping through her chest was unlike anything she had felt before, it was almost thrilling. But it didn’t last very long… She was so distracted peeking back at the incoming ogre that she didn’t notice there were more bodies lying ahead. Her boot bumped against the tattooed head of a dead raider and she lost her step, fell face-forward on the dirt, her knee bumping against a grey boulder.