by Sam Ferguson
No, you fool. Not yet!
A bolt whistled through the air and slammed into the demon’s shoulder. It turned, hissing and spitting acid from its mouth as it realized the ruse.
Torgath knew the beast would take flight again if it could, so he leapt up from his spot on the ground and charged the monster. The thing was nearly twelve feet tall, with a bulbous belly no doubt bloated more than normal after feasting earlier that day on human flesh. Two greater wings sat above a pair of small wings, and ridges of bone glistened in the firelight along the creature’s spine.
Torgath sprinted softly, hoping to strike while the demon was still distracted.
“Here, beast!” Gadrick shouted.
Another crossbow bolt whistled through the air and struck the demon, this time in the chest.
The creature grunted and reached up to knock the bolt from its thick skin. A bit of white blood oozed from the small wound, but the flesh closed up as Torgath had expected.
The demon roared. It looked to the sky with its spiked head and crouched low as if to jump while its wings started flapping. Torgath was too slow to reach it before the creature launched into the air, but he was able to slice the demon’s left foot as it ascended. White blood dropped to the ground, smoking and bubbling as it made contact with the grass. This time the wound did not close, and the demon hissed as it recoiled to the side and circled higher with its wings.
“Run!” Gadrick shouted.
Torgath knew there was nowhere to run to. The demon was airborne now, and could certainly outpace the orc. The demon flew over Torgath and opened its fang-filled mouth to spit. The orc reached down and yanked a corpse from the ground to use as a shield. The sound of acid slopping against the corpse was the only indication that the attack had come, but it was followed quickly by the sizzling sound of melting flesh.
The orc tossed the body aside after the demon flew by and reached for a log from the fire. He picked up a sizable piece and threw it hard. The fire hissed and flittered as the log spun through the air, but it hit its mark, knocking the demon squarely in the back. Embers broke off from the wood in a shower of sparks.
The demon circled back around, but this time Torgath readied his crossbow. He had just the trick for this demon. The head of this bolt was a thin, brittle tip of graphite, but inside was a mixture of base chemicals sure to react with the demon’s acid. He aimed the crossbow and fired for the open maw. The bolt went in, and the demon jerked his head to the side as it struggled to swallow the missile.
The demon flew away and then circled back once more, making a wide arc as if waiting to see what other missiles Torgath might fire at it. Instead, the orc waited, knowing that his plan would only need about a minute to take effect.
The demon roared and flew directly for Torgath once it realized no one was firing anymore. It opened its mouth as if to prepare an acid shower, but this time the beast gave off a dry, foul-smelling belch. It veered off to the side and landed about twenty yards away. The twelve foot tall behemoth bent over as if sick, and then began heaving and vomiting. Torgath waited, his gifted eyes watching in the dark as the demon’s chest began to swell. The demon grunted and groaned, but didn’t take to the air again.
A low, dull popping sound came from the demon’s body as the heaving chest sank back inward. The demon howled in agony.
Torgath knew it was his moment to strike. He rushed in while the demon was consumed with pain. His dragon blade sliced the demon open horizontally along the back, just above the waist. The spine rebuffed the blade’s assault, but the flesh on either side gaped open. White blood spilled out from the wound, along with greenish bubbles that had leaked into the demon’s body from the acid sack inside its now exploded lungs.
The beast dropped to its knees, unable to put up any sort of defense as Torgath targeted the demon’s neck and shoulders. He dared not stab the chest area from the front or back for fear that another acid sack might have built up pressure from the acid bomb he had created.
When the demon fell forward, Torgath chopped the head free and kicked it away. A single tooth lay on the ground, so the orc picked it up and reached for his necklace. His silver necklace glowed at one end, and bored its way through the tooth, stringing the bone onto the silver chain.
Another dull pop, like a bladder filled with too much water, sounded from the demon’s corpse. Torgath looked and saw the right side of the chest cavity collapse. It was now safe to pierce the demon’s heart. The dragon sword bit through the demon’s flesh and a green fire rose from the hole, consuming the body until all that was left was a wisp of green smoke, which flew upward and into the hole in the tooth on the necklace. The necklace then regained its normal shape and Torgath clasped it around his neck.
Torgath looked around until he saw a small charm that hadn’t been consumed by the fire. I was some sort of silver chain with a pendant. The gem inside was green, and swirled as if mist churned within the stone. Torgath set the pendant on a nearby piece of broken wood and then chopped into it with his sword.
An explosion of yellow and green tore through the darkness around him as the screams of trapped souls erupted from the shattered gem. Wisps of smoke and vapor took human forms and flew away, many of them soldiers that gave final salutes to Torgath before flying off. Some of them were women and children too overcome with joy to even take note of him.
The orc wondered whether the soldiers would have saluted had they known who he really was.
A few of the soldiers remained nearby, moving toward corpses on the ground around the battlefield. It was then that Torgath realized they were some of Sir Hawking’s men, but he soon lost interest in them when he heard the knight call out.
“Margaret!”
Torgath turned to see the bluish glow of a shapely spirit. If she had been half as beautiful in life as she appeared now, then she must have been the talk of whatever town she lived in. But her beauty paled compared to the way she carried herself. Her head was tall and proud, and her eyes seemed to hold an intelligence far beyond most humans that Torgath had ever encountered. She turned and offered a slight, proper nod and curtsied to Torgath before turning to approach her husband, who tried to stand, but fell to his good knee and steadied himself with a nearby sword.
The orc dared not interfere with the reunion, but couldn’t help the tears from coming to his eyes as he watched Sir Hawking try to reach out and take her in his arms as she knelt before him. The look of defeat on the knight’s face lasted only a moment, however, for despite being unable to touch they were able to speak with each other. Torgath couldn’t hear them, but he could see the wide smile on the man’s face, and noticed when the woman threw her ghostly head back in a fit of laughter.
They must have been quite happy together. Torgath thought to himself.
In that moment, a silvery light stretched from the clouds above and touched the battlefield. Torgath looked up to see winged forms descending from the sky. The sight was both marvelous and unnerving. He paused to take in the scene for only a moment, but was quickly able to shake himself loose from the sense of shock at seeing the heavens part. He hurried to the cover of the trees at the edge of the battle field. Though human worshippers of the old gods may be overcome with joy and amazement at the sight, Torgath could only imagine the fate of an orc – a member of a race cursed by Icadion – should he be found gawking at one of them.
Having reached the edge of the forest, and hoping that the distance would be sufficient for him to escape notice, he turned to watch what was taking place back at the hill. He noticed the winged beings followed behind a woman with dark hair and glowing, white armor. The form used her spear to point out several warrior-spirits. Other winged forms obeyed their orders and went down to collect the souls of the good.
“Torgath, Torgath come here!” Sir Hawking’s voice called to him first with excitement, and then with confusion.
The woman with the glowing armor, Nagé - Torgath knew her name from the stories told of the human’s gods -
approached Sir Hawking and the spirit of his wife. A few words were exchanged before Gadrick bowed his head to the goddess and then blew a kiss to his wife, who was beginning to float upward with Nagé. When the winged Valkyries had collected all of the honorable souls, they turned southward and flew into the night, leaving Gadrick standing amidst those souls that had been left behind.
A chill gripped the orc as the air turned cold. Frost collected upon the grass and a harsh wind encircled about the battlefield as a rift tore through the air a few yards away. Instead of light, there was a darkness blacker than the night itself. It widened and the wind blew harder, circling around the rift. The damned souls began to scream and protest. First a hand devoid of flesh appeared through the rift, followed by another bony hand and a tattered robe. The face of Khefir, the collector of the souls of those rejected by heaven shone with an eerie glow in the faint light of morning. His flesh having been torn from him by the god Icadion for treachery, Khefir’s skeletal features somehow conveyed emotion all the same, and Torgath was surprised to notice that he did not seem to relish the task before him. His call beckoned the lingering souls down to Hammenfein to be judged and suffer an eternity in hell, and they were powerless to resist.
One by one the souls circled the rift as if caught by a whirlwind, and then they disappeared through the hole. When the last of them was taken, Khefir raised his eyes to the heavens and called once more with a voice that was both plaintive and piercing. His eyes swept the field one last time, and fell upon Torgath momentarily. Though it seemed impossible that the god could notice him, he was certain that the god’s eyes had seen directly into him. The connection was broken almost as soon as it was made and the great being dissolved into the darkness as the rift closed and the frigid air thawed.
All Torgath could think was, terrifying though the experience may have been, his greatest fear lay in the possibility that even the hand of the dreadful Khefir may never reach for him at life’s end.
Chapter 2
It seemed only a few minutes had passed as Torgath sat lost in his thoughts at the edge of the forest, but when his mind was called back to him by the sound of voices and horses’ hooves, he realized the sun had already climbed into the sky, showing the light of mid-morning. He hurried to his feet, and saw a search party of men wearing the same yellow and black tunics Gadrick displayed circling around his friend, who lay prostrate and unconscious. He watched them help the man onto a horse before turning back from whence they came. One of them took some of the demon’s ashes while others remained behind the group to bury the dead left behind.
Not wishing to be discovered by the search party, Torgath turned and began moving toward the heart of the forest. He started at a light jog, thinking only of putting distance between himself and the unprecedented scene of divine manifestation. Lost in thoughts of what conversation may have passed between Sir Hawking and his wife, he pushed on without much thought as to his heading.
Torgath marveled at what he had seen. Not only had he caught a glimpse into the very mouth of hell, but he had seen a goddess. No, she wasn’t quite of the same rank as Icadion. Was that even the right word? Does one god rank above another, or were there classes of gods? Torgath couldn’t say, but he knew that she looked hardly different from most humans he had seen in his life, wings notwithstanding of course. How could it be just that those gods could decide his fate? Was it simply the fact the Khefir’s father Khullan had made the orcs, or was it that the orcs looked so different?
Torgath paused and looked to the sky.
He didn’t know much about the ways of human gods, but he knew they didn’t show themselves often. Had he stayed, would he have found some sort of grudging favor in the eyes of a goddess whose professed mission was to find the souls of the good and honorable? Could Nagé disagree with Icadion’s ruling that orcs were forever cursed and forever to be cast out? Or should he perhaps have seized the opportunity to encounter one of his own gods? Would it have been possible to approach Khefir for the boon that he so desperately sought?
The orc grunted, deciding that the most likely truth was that both would have ignored him, counting him as purely insignificant. The gods were likely not much different than anyone else he had ever met. They had ambitions, emotions, and desires just like any human, orc, or elf. The only real difference was the gods had enough power to take what they wanted.
Moving past a seemingly endless display of aspen and pine trees, he tried to empty his mind as he breathed deeply of the forest scents while the light spring air caressed his bare face. His makeshift mask swung loosely from the edge of his cowl, which hung about his shoulders as he ran. The sun was just starting to go down and the air was beginning to cool slightly when he suddenly felt a strange sense of vertigo and had to halt for a moment to lean against a nearby aspen. The sensation left almost as quickly as it came. Torgath shrugged it off, annoyed at the uncharacteristic moment of weakness, as he put it to himself, and moved on again.
After only a few minutes he began to notice a sluggish response in his feet and lower legs. He wasn’t fatigued, and yet his limbs were not behaving as they should. He paused momentarily to stretch and shake them out, leaning against another aspen as he did so. He inspected his boots for anything that may have accumulated on the soles to account for the heavy, clumsy way they were responding to commands from his brain, but found nothing at all. When he stood straight again, the weight seemed to lift from him, and he was able to move freely once more.
He looked to the sky to get his bearings, and noted that the setting sun was located slightly to his right. He knew that according to the maps he had studied before undertaking his hunt for Beomuth, his next destination should be directly north of the field where the battle had taken place.
Cautiously this time, he turned himself about, and began jogging North, paying careful attention to his breathing, and where he let his feet fall. As the late afternoon sun finally turned to the pale blue of evening, a gust of frigid air hit him full force, nearly stealing his breath away. He was so surprised, he turned to the side for a moment to draw his cowl up and his mask across his face. Another healthy gust of wind blew the fabric from his head, and forced him to lean into the blast to keep from being pushed back a step.
He put out his hand to the aspen tree next to him for momentary support, and stared up into the branches where the leaves shook and shuddered against each other violently, as though yelling angrily back at the wind just as he himself was inclined to do. Bringing his eyes back to level again, an unsettling thought occurred to him. This aspen was very like the others he had utilized for support thus far this afternoon. No, not just very like, it was exactly like the others. His eyes shot wide, and his heart began to pump more meaningfully as he looked around him in the woods.
Identical – not merely similar – aspen trees were standing twenty feet away in every direction. In fact, as he looked carefully, every detail of the forest within twenty feet of his position was repeated in the next section of forest away from him, as though a painting had been reproduced over and over again by some crazed artist. Snatching his hand away from the aspen angrily, as though the tree itself were to blame, Torgath snarled.
“Magic!” he whispered to himself, turning about slowly as he considered what his next move should be. The wind abruptly died down and a sound drifted to him over the still air. A rumble? No, rushing water. No, not that either. Laughter.
“No, Dear, not magic, just a forest with a mind of its own.”
Torgath turned quickly one way and then the other, trying to locate the source of the voice. The hairs on his body each prickled with anticipation. His warrior’s sense warned him that someone was nearby, nearly upon him, and yet he could not see anything but the wretched copies of aspens and pines that extended endlessly in every direction. Moving as discretely as possible, he retrieved his sword from his belt and fingered the handle in anticipation, barely daring to breathe as he strained his senses for a clue as to the whereabouts of wha
tever creature was nearby.
“What a lovely sword!” the voice exclaimed suddenly, causing Torgath to startle involuntarily. Before he realized what was happening, an old woman’s hand had taken hold of his own, and her other slipped under his elbow where it latched on as though to support him from stumbling. Her wrinkled face was leaning out of the aspen tree he had been standing near, and her cloak was stretching away from the bark as though the oil from an oil painting had been smeared carelessly by a small child who had wandered into the artist’s studio.
Torgath was so stunned, he stood as though frozen in time, watching without a sound as the old woman examined his sword with open interest, turning his hand to rotate it at the wrist first left and right, then up and down so her blue eyes could better inspect certain details. He obliged without a struggle, still too stunned to resist, mentally scrambling to collect his wits enough to pull away and demand an explanation. Before he could eek out a syllable, she laughed approvingly and patted his arm in a familiar way as she pushed him to the side sufficient to allow her to step fully out from the tree.
“Well, well, a little dragon energy pulsing along there, I’d say,” she said in a tone that seemed to him to be more appropriate when praising a young child for work well done, wagging her finger at the sword. “Aren’t you a lucky boy? Come on, let’s get you in, out of the dark.” She began moving forward with a little wave of her hand and not another look behind her to verify whether he was going moving to follow or not.
He felt slightly unsettled, as though he had stepped through to a previous stage of his life when the matron orc at the training ground had called the younglings in from morning play. Just as in that situation, he seemed sure that though the tone was friendly, the only options were compliance or annihilation. Keeping his sword in hand, he followed along behind, keeping his eyes and ears open to his surroundings.