Chio and Terry sat side by side as the sun came up. The boy titled his head forward and he was drooling, asleep while sitting, his bnket wrapped around him. Chio gently y him down, whispering: “your night shift is over”. She then stood up, and took a few steps away from their camp. It was quiet, and the sun's first rays felt pleasantly warm on her skin after the chilly night.

  She stared at the oasis with the wooden houses. She walked forward, then gnced back at her sleeping group of friends slightly swaying in their hammocks, even Friska in her little one in the middle, and Terry lying on the ground besides them, next to the remnants of their firepce. Should she say something to them? But she decided she will just let them sleep.

  First, she went to the water, and drank some from her hands. The clean, cool fluid was refreshing, it woke her up a bit. She then walked to the house she thought the orc woman was inside. Quietly peered through the gssless window... and almost got punched in the face, pulling back just in time so that the woman's fist barely touched her nose.

  “Fuck... off!” the orc said.

  “I'm sorry,” Chio said, but she stayed in pce.

  “What?!”

  “You said you have no chance against us, did you not?”

  “So? Will you kill me already?”

  “No. I...”

  “Maybe you can't,” a forced smile appeared on the orc woman's face, it was creepy. “Did you come here alone, dick-girl? You don't seem too horny to me. Isn't that what you need for your power?”

  “Maybe I have much better control over myself now.” Chio still took a step back from the window. “Months passed since the chaos at Cornertown, I had time to grow.”

  “Let me try you then, bitch!” the orc dashed out the window.

  She only wore a tight-fitting, dirty grey nightgown over her bulky body, but she had her greatsword with her. Not for long: it got torn out of her hands with an invisible force, and flew on the top of her house.

  “I would step back if I were you,” said Chio, stepping back.

  “Hah, I see you are not just all talk.”

  “But I do want to talk with you. That's all I want.”

  “Fuck you!”

  The orc turned back, and walked around the house. Chio heard the door opening, then closing. She waited for a few moments, then stepped to the window again, looking in. The orc woman sat on an old mattress in a mostly empty room. She grinded her teeth as she stared at Chio, and a vein pulsed on her forehead.

  “What do you not understand, bitch? I want to kill you, be killed by you, or left the fuck alone! I ain't chit-chatting with you!”

  “Sometimes, we can't get what we want.”

  “Oh, you can't be fucking serious.”

  “I'll just ask you a couple of questions, that's all. First, tell me your name!”

  “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  “Why wouldn't you?”

  “You massacred my friends. Your succubus lover slit my sister's throat.”

  “We fought for our survival, we had to. I'm really sorry, but you were hired against us.”

  “So what now?” the orc stood up again and walked back to the window. “You want to become my fucking friend or something?”

  “That's not something one can force, but I wouldn't mind.”

  “Why, bitch?”

  “You seem like you lost everything. I wish I could help you. If only a little bit.”

  The woman shook her head, then she let out a wheezy ugh. She jumped out the window once again, Chio stepped back once again, but the orc just extended a hand towards her. The angel grabbed it... then she was pulled in, turned around, and held by her throat. With her other hand, the orc pulled out a knife and dangled it in front of the girl's face.

  “You want to help me, huh? Well I'm sure your succubus friend will end my misery after I gave her your guts and...” but both of her arms suddenly yanked back, and she dropped her knife too.

  Chio turned around and watched the orc woman kind of angrily. She lifted her up, turned her upside down, and swung her around, from right to left. “You... will... be... listened to! You have... no choice! You understand?!”

  “Uohhh...”

  The angel took a deep breath and put the orc down gently, on her back. The woman seemed quite confused, and maybe scared too. She was quick to kneel up, but did not stand just yet, she stared at Chio from below. Then grimaced.

  “So this is how my mates felt before you broke all their bones, bitch,” she finally stood up.

  “Don't call me bitch!”

  “I do what I...”

  And she was once again in the air. Not upside down this time, and Chio wasn't shaking her either, just kept her up there.

  “What?!” the orc yelled.

  “You tell me!”

  The orc stubbornly kept her mouth shut for a couple of minutes, her legs swaying in the air like she was hanging on some rope. Chio just kept her there, watching her face unfalteringly.

  “Okay, fuck! My name's Taytum. Just Taytum. Happy now, bitch... girl?”

  “My name is Chio. Nice to meet you,” said the angel, and she let the orc down once again, this time on her feet.

  They just stood there for some long moments, staring at each other. Taytum did not seem particurly amused, but at least she wasn't hurling insults at Chio anymore. Eventually, she just turned her back to the girl.

  “We can take our time, Taytum. I will come back this afternoon,” Chio announced.

  The woman did not reply, just walked back inside. The angel let her be for now.

  On her way to their camp, Friska and Porco hurried down the gentle slope towards her. “Everything okay? We heard yelling,” the young man said.

  “I'm fine,” Chio replied with a half-smile.

  “You really shouldn't have went there alone,” Friska argued.

  “She is alone too, I can easily defend myself against just one person. Besides, I think it's better if she doesn't feel outnumbered. Just leave her to me. I can bring you guys water too, from the pond. I will go to her again this afternoon.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Back at their camp, Terry was fast asleep, but Arabel was finally waking up, stretching in her hammock, staring bnkly at the rest of them who just got back. “What's up?” she yawned.

  “Chio visited the orc woman,” said Porco.

  “And? How did it go?”

  “I think she finally understands that trying to kill me is futile,” the girl replied. “It's a start.”

  “Heh,” said Friska.

  “You are really determined to make peace with her, aren't you?” Porco asked.

  “I want to see what I can do.”

  “That's our Chio!” Arabel jumped out of her hammock half-naked, and pulled the girl in for a warm hug, Porco had to conceal his erection. “Don't get yourself killed though,” she whispered.

  “Don't worry,” the girl replied.

  As promised, Chio returned to the oasis that afternoon, this time carrying two fsks to refill them to the brim. After she was done with that, she walked to that one house, knocking on the door this time. There was no answer, even after she knocked again. She was about to walk around the building to the window when the door suddenly opened after all.

  “Be done with it for fuck's sake, what do you want?” Taytum asked grumpily.

  “Say, what do you live for?”

  “Huh? Nothing, really.”

  “You mean, not anymore? Did you lose hope, or...”

  “Hope?” Taytum spit on the ground. “That's for hope, bitch. I mean, girl.”

  “Why were you a sellsword?”

  “You're not a futanari anymore, are you?” the orc asked.

  “That's... besides the point.”

  “I saw you back then. In the mansion. You feel different now.”

  “I am different.”

  “How come?”

  “Don't worry about it!”

  “Heh. You are keeping secrets, but you want me to talk about myself?”

  “I have good reasons to be secretive. Do you?”

  The orc woman shrugged. “Why would I talk to someone I hate?”

  Chio sat down on the sandy ground with crossed legs, csped her hands, and looked up at the orc. “Why do you hate me?”

  “I told you already. Are you slow?”

  “But you don't really know me. I was just fighting for my life. You wouldn't hate a cornered animal for trying to defend itself, would you?”

  “You are a freak, girl. At least you used to be.”

  “Is that it, then? You dislike freaks like futanari? Do you believe them to be spawns of the devil?”

  “Are they not?”

  Chio shook her head.

  “But succubi are, for sure. Your girlfriend is a bloody demon.”

  “Yet, you didn't have a problem with serving besides Mia and Lo. The succubus sisters.”

  “I did have a problem with it! I advised my group to abandon that fucking job as soon as I learned about them. That elf bitch did not tell us in advance, of course she didn't. Hunting succubi, we were more than down with that. But working along them? Side by side with fucking demons... Still, my mates thought we should see the job through anyway, since we were already there. Got paid some money in advance too. They should have listened to me. That whole deal was a mess.”

  Chio sighed. “It certainly was. I still have nightmares about those days sometimes.”

  They fell silent. Taytum scratched her nose.

  “So, how did you become a sellsword?” the girl asked again.

  The orc woman let out one of her brief, ironic wheezy ughs. “You think I had a choice? Like most Maidens of Death, I was born down here. Despite our names, we do fuck. Our own kind, of course. Like, there still used to be some small orc tribes living here, this pce belonged to one of them. This oasis, these houses. My folk, us Maidens, we fucked those tribes up. Killed them, raped their men, took their homes for ourselves. We had several bases like this. There's one to the east, one to the west.”

  “You killed and raped these tribes?”

  “Not me, not even my mother, this happened a century ago. Since then, we often went to Midridge and such. We found our males to rape in other pces. And our male newborns, we gave them to orphanages in Midridge. Or just threw them into the sea.”

  “So you were born into such an environment. That's sad.”

  “Sad, huh? You know why?”

  “Why?”

  Taytum pointed towards the mountain range to the south, where their camp was. “Beyond those mountains, there's the haunted city, Drazdul. Used to be home to fifty thousand orcs, the centre of our now fallen kingdom. Legions of mad ghosts patrol it's empty streets to this day. They say no one who tried to enter it since has gotten out.”

  “Friska told me about it. Our fairy friend,” Chio said. Friska wanted to look at it from a safe distance, examine it thoroughly with her spygss. She said it's said to be still quite impressive, even in its ruinous state.

  “Our kingdom thousands of years ago was the strongest in the world,” Taytum started walking back and forth as she continued. “Then we got fucked by the demons the hardest. All our glory was gone after that. Our survivors became outcasts. Immigrants in other countries kept in camps, ensved, even by freakin dwarves, or perhaps hiding on some remote isnds. Or staying here, trying to survive in these damned nds. For thousands of years, what remained of us was nobodies. Some of us tried to forget. Bowing down to our oppressors or living on scraps. But us Maidens made sure we all remembered. Our group existed for a century, and it was not hope that kept us together. It was the fucked up shadow of our past glory. And disdain for the world. We took what we could and fucked up what we could, we killed and raped, and when we made a name for ourselves, some people started to even pay us for it. Our ancestors were simir. The orc kingdom was great, but it was built upon blood and violence too, from the get go. We kept its legacy alive on our own way. Like a stubborn bunch of prideful scum, that's what we were.”

  “Hmm. I see,” Chio said softly, with sadness in her eyes.

  Taytum stopped walking and stared straight at the girl. “You know what orcs who still remember their long past legacy hate? Fucking demons. We mostly knew of them from stories, of course. They are mostly gone, of course. But succubi are the kind of demons who are still around. A succubus would have been the most meaningful kill in our damned lives.”

  “Succubi are sves to their nature too. Arabel was born long after the demonic invasion, and she has no memories of hell. She has nothing to do with...”

  “Yea, yea. Sorry that the truth you asked for upsets you, demon's pything. At least now you know why I'll never, ever be your friend,” Taytum turned her back to Chio, about to walk back inside.

  “I know how it feels to be an outcast too! Trust me on that,” said Chio. “To feel like you have no pce in this world.”

  “Of course you do, weirdo.”

  “You said you had no choice though. What if you did? You didn't really want to live like this, did you?”

  Taytum paused, clenching her fists. “I had no choice, end of story!”

  “How come you are back here alone? What happened to the rest of your friends?”

  “Why don't you get it already? What would it take to get through your thick skull? You and me, we have nothing else to say to each other. NOTHING!”

  As the orc smmed her house's door shut behind herself, Chio stood up, getting tearful. She started walking back to their camp, but she still turned around and yelled: “I will be back tomorrow morning!” She got no answer.

  “I wish I could reveal to her that I'm an angel,” she said an hour ter, lying next to Arabel in a cave. The succubus found it earlier on the mountainside, as she was looking for a more of an out of sight pce to fuck with Porco. This time, she used it with her frustrated angelic lover. Chio definitely felt a bit relieved after being succubus-handled, but as they calmed down, she couldn't help but think about Taytum again.

  “No way, Chio. You can't risk those angel freaks going after you for something so stupid.”

  “It's not stupid! But you are right, of course I can't afford to reveal myself.”

  “Why do you care about this orc so much?” the red demon kissed the girl on the cheek.

  “Her name is Taytum. And... it's hard to put into words.”

  “You just can't take how much she hates us, is that it?”

  “It's hard to just ignore something like that, is it not? But also... she was caught up in our chaotic life. Even if she was there on her own volition, as a ruthless warrior. I just feel like we came across her for a reason. It's like a ghost of our past who is here to haunt us. Everything that happened back then, all it's brutality, it had its mark on the world. Isn't that sad?”

  “It is. But what can you do?”

  “I just genuinely think I could help her resolve this... sourness in her soul. It must be possible. She already opened up a bit more this afternoon.”

  “But you said she told you that you two have nothing more to talk about.”

  “If I could show her that I'm an angel, and that I love a succubus as such, maybe, just maybe that could change her mind about things. And she would know what I was secretive about too. If only I was free to do that...”

  “You can't do that, Chio, seriously. Please don't!”

  “I know, I know!” the girl rolled to her side and kissed the demon. “I wouldn't risk throwing away our thing just like that, my love. I will have to try and see where I can get with her as a human.”

  Knock knock knock.

  “God... fucking... fuck!” the answer came from inside the house.

  “Good morning, Taytum!” Chio said.

  “Fucking leave! Leave!”

  “Please, just give me this one more day! I still want to ask you some things.”

  The door opened and Taytum arrived, in her rugged, tight little nightgown.

  “Go on, then!”

  Chio again sat down cross-legged. “I don't ask you to like us... or me. I don't ask you to change, or to make peace. All I want for you is to be understood. After what you told me yesterday, I understand you a little better, thank you for that. But please, tell me a bit more about yourself!”

  Wheezy ugh, head-shaking. But then to Chio's surprise, Taytum too sat down in front of her with crossed legs. “What the fuck else do you wish to hear, girl?”

  “Did you ever know your father?”

  The orc shook her head.

  “And your mother... how was she?”

  Taytum stared at her palm, seeming quite annoyed. “A ruthless cunt,” she said at st.

  “How did she treat you?”

  “She beat the crap out of me whenever she thought I was acting weak. That about sums it up. She shaped me into what I had to be.”

  “What was that?”

  “A ruthless cunt.”

  “That's why you had no choice...”

  “She just wanted me to survive, the way her mom taught her to, and hers before that. Fuck them all. They made a good job.”

  Can I hug you? Chio wanted to ask, but she held back.

  “Part of me wishes I could have killed her,” the orc said. “She was a strong piece of work, you know. A big one. I used to fantasize about beating her as a grown up, strangling her to death, saying 'I'm not weak anymore, mother.' But she died when I was just ten. Her skull might still be there, impaled on a Cesanitian castle. She was hired by one of those fancy lords against another.”

  Am I supposed to say I'm sorry about that? But Chio kept quiet still.

  “Yesterday you asked me why I'm here alone. Well, the mission at Cornertown was our biggest failure in a while, so many of us died. Thanks to you. And I... I ran away. After your girlfriend slit the throat of my sister, my younger sister. If there was one person in this world I cared about, it was her, our mother couldn't kick that out of me. I was upset, and I said fuck it all, I'm gone. I still met up with the rest of my mates weeks ter, as I had nowhere else to go. They called me a coward. I fought them. Killed two. The rest said, that's it. Don't know what they do now, they stayed on Midridge. And so the Maidens of Death is over now, we no longer are.”

  “My condolences.”

  Taytum smirked. “Truth be told, we were much less in numbers these days to begin with. Our group got smaller and smaller over it's course. This was just the final blow.”

  “So... what are you gonna do now?”

  “Nothing. All I had is gone. My ruthless twisted purpose. And that tiny bit of shit, you would call it love I guess, it was taken from me too. With my sister, I would have tried to survive. Now I'm just eating up our secret supplies here all alone. Sometimes I take a hike up that hill to stare at the haunted city. Maybe one day, I'll go in there. Maybe.”

  “You could do other things!”

  “Other things, huh? All I ever did was going with the flow. With the fucked up bloody flow that was a given to me. I can't do shit. I'm too much of a coward to even kill myself.”

  “Why don't you turn your life around, start something new? Find your own path, create your own flow!”

  “How?”

  “Like... how about becoming a pirate? There is a pirate town nearby, Murky Bay, I'm sure many crews would appreciate such a strong warrior as yourself. You could still use your skills there, you could...”

  Taytum shook her head and jumped to her feet. “That's it for me, dick girl, or used-to-be dick girl. I don't feel like doing shit.”

  Chio too stood up. “You never know how it would be until you try! You don't have to be a pirate, you could also...”

  “Yea yea, but you understand me better now, right?” Taytum asked.

  Chio slowly nodded.

  “Will you leave me be, then?”

  “I will. I just have one final question.”

  “Fuck me... Go on, then!”

  “Why do you think I did this? Why did I want to learn about you?”

  The orc just stared at the girl bnkly for a few moments, then smirked, then turned her back to her. “I'll think about it. Come back tomorrow.”

  “I will!”

  Chio was hopping and skipping on her way back to their camp, feeling pretty positive about their test interaction. Taytum wasn't nearly so hostile this time. Even if she didn't seem too keen on turning her life around, it felt like they had progress. And now she herself invited Chio back.

  “You are quite the character, Chio,” she heard a female voice from above. She got a little startled and looked around – Friska was flying towards her from one of the trees of the oasis.

  “Were you spying on us this whole time?” Chio asked.

  “Just today. I wanted to see how you're doing with her. May I sit on your shoulder?”

  “Sure!”

  Friska did so. “You know, the whole reason I joined you guys out here is really you. Well, mostly.”

  “Oh.”

  “You're cool, Chio. Thanks for... Hick! everything.”

  “Oh. You are drunk.”

  “Just a little bit.”

  Night came, they sang again, this time all of them except Porco, who really was bad at singing. But even Arabel joined in. Chio's good mood affected all of them – their camp near the oasis with the hostile orc was more carefree than the previous days. There was a sense of relief in the air.

  Friska kept watch this night, but by dawn, when Chio lunged out of her hammock with excitement, the little woman was fast asleep. The angel smiled and put a little bnket on her, then she hurried down the slope towards the oasis.

  Knocking on the door, there was no answer from the house once again. She walked to the window and peeked in, calling out for Taytum, who she saw lying on her mattress motionlessly. Chio had a bad feeling and she jumped in, shaking the woman up. She was dead, her wrists cut with her knife that y besides her on the floor.

  Frozen solid, Chio eventually noticed a piece of paper. If not for her shock, she would have been surprised that Taytum could write, but in the moment, she just read it without a second thought. It said: who would hate a cornered animal?

  Chio chuckled, broke into tears, and hugged the lifeless body tightly.