We haven’t always known as much as we know now. The runes form the bones of this world, yet we still know but a fraction of them.
”I knew it was going to be a lecture,” Finna says.
It is not! I merely wanted to set the stage first.
Ahem, this happened before the time Tenorsbridge was founded and the lands here were still mostly wilderness. I had decided to leave our forests to wander the continent. Leaving was not quite frowned upon, but not common either. I was one of the first to leave. Our people tend to stay home or only make short visits to the outside world. Time doesn’t flow the same everywhere and many elves are too curious to settle for seeing the world change for merely a single lifetime, long as it may be from your viewpoint.
I wanted to experience it all, so I left. I’ve gone back, but I have also always left again. My father is centuries younger than me, by this point. Elves are not generally any more suited to using magic than you humans, but we do have a lot of time to practice. Many learn, sooner or later.
I saw that look! Fine, I’ll skip straight to the action.
The cave system was teeming with goblins. They are a small, subterranean race. Very rare nowadays, for obvious reasons. They group together and band under anyone strong enough to intimidate or cajole them into following. Goblin groups always have a leader. They seem unable to function without one. The quality of the leader is irrelevant. I’ve seen them follow functionally non-verbal brutes, if they only looked big and managed to point their finger in a direction at random.
The village had already been raided twice. Cattle killed, granary emptied. I was young and brash, so I decided to handle it alone. I sauntered in, sword held loose, head held high. Ten minutes in, the goblins ambushed me. At a place where the cave split, a group of them distracted me from one direction, while someone flung a rock at my head from the other. I sensed it coming, but managed to turn only so it hit me directly on the temple. I can still remember the crack. I fell on my knees, blind with pain and blood dribbling into my eyes.
People don’t really go unconscious if they get hit on the head like it happens in the stories. There’s not much of a difference if you’re hurt badly enough not to think or fight or stand. The goblins grabbed me from under the arms and dragged me, heels of my boots scraping the stone. I tried to kick at them, but one hit me in the stomach and I was weak enough to begin with, so there was nothing I could do.
”This is honestly not how I imagined your story to go,” I say.
”It takes courage to tell the story of getting bested by idiots the size of children,” Rworg says.
We all start somewhere. I’m not vain, I’m confident. And you don’t get confident without falling down and getting up enough times to know you can do it the next time as well.
Goblins don’t usually kill their captives outright. If the leader was clever, they might try to ransom them back from someone. If dumb, maybe eat them. Sure enough, they dragged me into a cell of sorts. Their dwelling was more sophisticated than I had seen goblins usually manage, so I have to admit I was getting a bit apprehensive. On the other hand, I was also curious. Someone was holding the leash tightly.
They came to meet me soon. A black orc. Scarred, look of a former slave on her face. I didn’t recognize it then, but I’ve seen enough since then to know what being owned does to a person’s eyes. They lose luster, the driving force behind them spite or fear or anger.
“What do you want from me?” I asked as she stared at me, arms crossed before her chest.
Black orcs are larger than normal orcs. More prone to violence and hungry for power. The green orcs use them like mules, not letting them reproduce, so they don’t overrun their whole society. That’s why it’s very rare to see any black orcs out in the wild.
”I’ve never seen even a normal orc,” Finna whispers to me.
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That’s because the orc society is quite insular. They are reaching out more and more as of late. Their system of gathering information and bringing it back to their cities is quite—
”The story was just getting good,” Finna interrupts him. ”Get on with it.”
…
Anyway, the black orc stared at me. She pouted her mouth behind the tusks and squinted her eyes as she considered what to do with me. Two immensely thick braids of black hair fell down from both sides of her head, reaching her waist. The hair wasn’t like mine, not fine and light, but strong and black, almost like rope. “You’re an elf,” she finally said.
“I am. I would prefer saying I mean you no harm, but that is not completely true. Your group has been attacking the human settlement above. It needs to stop.”
“You’re in no position to make threats or demands here.” Her voice was a low growl, words slurred because of the unsightly tusks, yet it spoke well, with intelligence.
The few black orcs I had met had been simple creatures driven by their urges. Well suited to leading goblins, surely, but lacking the sophistication to do much else.
A goblin camp led by a black orc would have fit the raiding, but all I knew made it confusing how the goblins were acting now. They were building structures, almost like trying to form an actual settlement. There was even a plot of land, dirt pulled into the cave with a wagon ransacked from the village. What they were planning to grow in the dark escaped me, though.
“You are my prisoner and will do as I say,” the orc said.
“That is the way things seem to lie at the moment. As I already asked, what do you want with me? What are your plans?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
She turned away and walked off. I shouted after her, confused, offended even. Indecision would have been considered a weakness by what I assumed I was facing. A bully, brute, bandit. I didn’t much appreciate being ignored and left in a cell, either.
The cell itself was a small alcove at the edge of the cave. The whole cave must have been the work of some subterranean beasts, geological originally, but bored round and tubular, edges smoothed by something. The front wall of my cell was made of thick planks, nailed together and wedged between the wall of the cave and a collection of barrels and other random flotsam there was no use for in the camp. Simple, crude, but effective. The only way out would be for enough of the stuff to be removed so the whole wall would fall away. The ends of the nails poked out on my side, making it akin to a spike mat some of the mystics of your people use.
”They are actually quite comfy,” Rworg says.
This one wasn’t. I needed to be careful when even approaching the wall to talk so as not to nick or pierce my hands on the rusty nails. The planks were sparse, so it was easy to watch the bustle of the camp. The orc moved from one group of goblins to another, helping them build a door or to tie a knot. One goblin started talking back to her, challenging her about something.
I heard the orc snarling all the way to my cell before she backhanded the goblin. The small thing was lifted clean off the ground and flew right into the group of goblins standing behind it. The goblin was stunned, probably half of the bones in its face smashed and fractured. The orc marched over its body, the other goblins scattering in all directions. To my surprise, she lifted the thing into her arms. Her gaze flicked around the camp and as it touched my cell, I could swear she looked embarrassed. The goblins all stared at her, and after some hesitation, some started to cheer.
“Grym! Grym!” they shouted, pumping their fists in the air.
“QUIET!” the orc bellowed.
The sound was like an explosion, echoing back from the tunnels in the silence that otherwise followed. The goblins rippled away from her and turned slowly back to what they had been doing. The muttered gossiping started almost immediately. I remember thinking that goblins might share more with people than I had thought previously.
The orc carried the whining goblin to one of the ramshackle buildings and appeared some time later, alone.
She continued her rounds around the camp. Only after a long time did she come to my cell again. “I’m at a loss, elf.”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. The gesture made my head ache, but the cell had a bowl of water that I had used to wash the blood off my face. The cold water had eased the pain, and I wasn’t light-headed anymore.
“You are a wanderer, obviously. The locals are too poor to ransom you back, yet I can’t contact the elves, either. If you’re a nobody, nobody will care. If not, they will kill us all for the insult of capturing you.” She growled, working her jaws. The tusks looked like they itched. She scraped them against her upper lip.
“Let me go, then.”
“We both know it won’t be that simple.”
She was right, obviously. Even if they let me go, I couldn’t leave. The goblins would continue their raids. I would be back. With more people most likely and at the very least prepared much better. “What do you suggest then, orc?”
She twitched as I said the word, mouth drawing into a grimace. Something to avoid in the future, it seemed. “We work together. You help me, I won’t let them eat you.”
I was a prisoner, currently at their mercy, so I held back both my doubt and annoyance. “Sounds relatively fair. What do you need help with?”
”I just know there’s going to be some annoying lesson to this story,” Finna says.