Interlude XV – The Oldest Orc

Ósma

Ósma was old, even for an orc. Seventy-four years and counting meant he could claim to be a peer to a dwarf and not get laughed out of the room, if only barely. It made him sentimental, sometimes, but more often than not it merely made him curse his aching joints.

His youth had been rather typical for an orc. Full of violence and death and bloody steel. He’d been born in a small village at the fringes of the Second Empire. It had been a small place, barely a dozen families nestled together in a forgotten valley. The air had been cold, and the soil alternated between tough and muddy. His family had farmed mandrakes and raskovnik and traded with the local pygmy mammoth herders for milk and meat. The summers were humid, and the winters were freezing, and life had been monotonous and dreary.

This would normally be the part where he’d say he loved it despite all that, that the village held some special place in his heart, but that couldn’t be further than the truth. He’d hated the weather, he’d hated the backbreaking labor for such little gains, he’d hated the smalltown gossip and the bigger kids who’d bullied him for being short. He’d hated that tiny village at the edge of civilization. He’d hated it so much he’d left, never to return.

His brother had agreed with him, proving that both of them were stupid little bachor with their heads so far up their own asses they should’ve choked on them.

They’d hated that little village, but at least if they’d stayed they might both still be alive.

But they hadn’t. He and his brother—dumb kids that they were—had believed that with enough grit and determination they could become famous and wealthy adventurers and fix all the problems in the world. So with heads filled with dreams and his father’s axe in hand they left their sickly mother and younger sister to go west and join the Adventurer’s Guild. They made big promises about how they’d return champions like the orcs of old, with mountains of treasures and an elf on each arm.

He… supposed they had succeeded in at least one of those things.

Back during the Second Empire there had only been one Adventurer’s Guild, backed by the royal family and operating out of the capital. They’d arrived in the city to little fanfare beyond the discovery that racism was a thing, and joined the Guild as Porcelain Ranks, the lowest ranked adventurers.

They’d spent a decade combing sewers for giant rats and clearing pests from nearby farms, their careers stalled by petty elven bureaucracy and bigotry. But they’d learned to read and write, how to count and how to haggle, and had relationships with equally low-ranked adventurers. It had not been the glory they’d expected, but looking back on it, it hadn’t been a bad life, not really. Better than the mud and the cold of the village, at least.

But they had been young and angry, chafing under restrictions of their rank that they had proved they’d long surpassed. His brother had been worse and, eventually, it had proven too much for him. His anger had gotten the better of him in a bar one evening, and the next thing they’d known there was a body bleeding out on the floor.

Anger was the Sin of Orcs, as the Goddess Decreed. And so by giving into his anger his brother had not only committed murder but had given into sin while doing so.

That night he had been imprisoned, doomed to be executed by people who had been just waiting for an excuse.

Then the Demons attacked.

Ósma hated the bastards, for their violence and cruelty and generally being awful, but in that moment he had felt nothing but relief that his brother wasn’t going to die.

When the Demons poured down the streets of the capital he’d gone to the prison where his brother was being held and freed him. Ósma had planned for them to flee in the chaos, but his brother—to noble by half and stupider than an ox—had other plans. He had given into anger and committed murder, he’d reasoned, and so he had to atone.

His brother grabbed their father’s axe, stepped out onto middle of the battle, and felled three Demons with a single blow.

And when the dust settled, and the dead were being counted, the Hero himself approached his brother and offered him a spot in his party. A chance to be a true hero, to be the champion he’d always imagined he could be.

His brother had taken it, and in doing so became a legend. He’d been given the nickname the ‘Hero of Louve’ after saving the city and slaying the old Demon Lord Artoparaskevastís in single combat. His brother had had protected the innocent and slew so many Demons that the monsters fled him on sight. By any metric he had atoned ten times over.

His reward was death, along with the rest of the Hero’s party.

As far as Ósma was aware only one of the Hero’s original party still lived, and the Arch-Traitor now ruled as Demon Lord in the ruined Capital.

Ósma had not been there to see his brother die. He’d been on the other side of the continent, along with Dante’s granduncle and a baby-faced Sinbad, staving off an incursion by the Woman-Serpent. It had nearly broken him when the soldiers returned, his brother’s face covered by a shroud.

If he had had the choice, he would have buried him in the Capital, the place they both once called home. But the Capital was lost, so instead his brother was buried in the City of Firozzi—the city which he would eventually carve out his new life in.

He never told the rest of his family, not that he had much choice. He hadn’t gotten a letter from his sister in nearly twenty years, and he’d never known his nephew beyond the ink on a piece of parchment. He didn’t even know if the boy was still alive, and he found he couldn’t bring himself to check.

But that was the price of adventure, he’d long since learned. To leave everything behind and pray it survives your absence. It was a price he swore he’d never pay again.

And then another stupid bachor named Dante had decided he’d try and drag him back into it.

Ósma was no longer an adventurer. The Rosa Dominae Adventurer’s Guild was never meant to be some grand ambitious project. When Dante’s Granduncle asked him to join as the Guild’s secretary, it had meant to be his retirement. After decades of blood and violence it was a place where an old orc with creaky joints could rest while still supporting the war effort, as little as that seemed to be needed these days.

Then the man died, and Dante Cadorna took his place. Hotheaded and ambitious and far too full of himself, deciding that their dysfunctional little guild was going to somehow supplant the Goddess-forsaken Ambrosi.

It was the height of foolishness, but Ósma supposed somebody needed to keep the boy from blindly running into his enemy’s swords.

That brought him to here, a mountain of paperwork on his desk and an old lady to his right, the two of them meeting with the guild’s remaining adventurers to whip them into shape or—more likely—fail miserably and fall into bankruptcy.

A part of him—that same part that had run away from home with nothing but an axe and a dream—found the process almost exhilarating.

“Are we done yet…?”

A small, vindictive smile grew across Ósma’s face. “Oh, not in the slightest!” the old orc chuckled cheerfully. “We still have a dozen more meetings to get through today, and you have yet to finish your training!”

Johanna sat next to him, her dead, snowy eyes watching with dread as he handed her another pile of papers. This one was on the proper procedures for dealing with an Imperial Audit. They were not actually a part of an Empire anymore, but that didn’t mean the woman shouldn’t have to learn! Why, there were only seven hundred pages worth of procedures, practically light reading for an elf!

Ósma’s smile grew just a teensy bit wider.

“What did I do to deserve this…?” The elf whimpered, her whole body cringing in horror at the sight.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Well, what didn’t you do? You spelled it all out on your application! Thirty years in the Imperial Army, fifteen years in total crusading, dozens of victories during the Demon Wars, you name it! You even led a mercenary band for… how long was it again…? Ah, yes, twenty-six years! Why, that alone is more experience than some of our member have been alive!” Ósma’s smile was no longer even pretending to be friendly. “And then you followed that up with twelve years in this guild, making you a senior member! If anything, this promotion was long overdue! You deserve this Johanna, and I am honored to have you as a peer in these trying times.”

Johanna, who now resembled more an ice sculpture than a living person, simply sat there as she came to terms with the fact that her actions did indeed have consequences.

Chuckling to himself, Ósma left her to her suffering. And it wasn’t like her suffering was entirely spite-driven—after a month of overwork, he finally had an hour of free time most days! At this rate, he might even be able to enjoy a bit of the festivities.

Ah, an orc could dream…

His ears twitched, the sounds of stomping feet approaching his office. Huh, was it that late already?

“Ósma!” Matthias the dwarf stormed into his office, three glasses in hand and a keg of beer over one shoulder. His stormy grey beard was braided into three knots—signifying his thirty years of life—and his golden eyes crackled with amusement. “How’s the weather up there?”

The three-meter-tall orc craned his neck exaggeratedly, until he was looking directly down on the one-meter-tall dwarf. “What’s it matter to you, shortstack? Not like you’ll ever get to know.”

“A shame!” his booming laughter echoed throughout his office as he leapt up onto the tall chair he’d had custom made for dwarves. “But I suppose not all of us can be so freakishly tall. So, we’re joining the little tourney this coming holiday?”

“It appears so,” Ósma nodded, watching as the dwarf in front of him dropped the keg on his desk with a thunderous crash. Johanna—showing her priorities—immediately dropped her paperwork to eagerly accept a mug of beer. Ósma took his own with much more grace, downing it all in a single gulp. “And that means we’re checking in on everyone. Making sure you all are consistently improving and innovating, or at least doing something other than drinking us out of house and home.”

“Please, we all know these pints don’t cost you a cent!” he scoffed, which was more accurate than most realized. About half their income was overcharging their own adventurers on alcohol. “If it did, you’d have kicked old Charles out on his ass years ago!”

“What guild members do in their spare time is their prerogative,” the response was second nature by now. “But enough about that, we have more important things to get through. First, do you have any plans for how to train for the tournament?”

“Same old, same old, I’d imagine,” the dwarf shrugged. “I’ll take a month off to go climb a mountain and kick up some winds. Maybe find another Sky Spirit to learn from again, that tends to work well for me. I’ve even picked one out with this great scenic view—”

“The tournament is next week.”

“What? No, it’s All Saint’s Day, yeah?”

“We celebrate All Saint’s Day next week,” Ósma informed him dryly. “As you can tell by all the preparations going on outside. …Wait, your own people celebrate it the week after, not in a month. Where were you getting a month from?”

Matthias blinked, pouring himself another pint. Then he shrugged, downing it without a care.

Ósma sighed. “We’ll workshop something. That’s the point of these meetings in the first place.”

Matthias snapped his fingers, a crackle of static bursting between them. “’Course! That’s the great thing about having you here—you can do all my thinking for me!”

Good Lady in Heaven he had his work cut out for him.

--

“So you’ve been keeping up your practice with Asu Rana recently?” Ósma hummed, flipping through another sheet. Ah, wonderful, more taxes, because Goddess forbid the first line of defense against Demons be able to just buy shoes without being extorted. “Have you been having any issues?”

“No, Signor Ósma,” Palmira, his least problematic subordinate shook her head. Least problematic for him personally, at least. The nobility of Iscrimo had other opinions on that front. “It’s mostly been conditioning my body, but we did manage a bit of a breakthrough! It turns out light moves!”

“Really,” he hummed, not at all understanding the significance but very aware that magic could be weird sometimes. Still, encouragement was good, even if he didn’t understand what was going on. “That’s great! Do you think you’ll be able to do anything with it for the tournament?”

At that she slumped, and he almost smiled. The girl may have barely known how to read, but she reminded him more of the academic types with how she acted. More interested in the act of discovering new things than actually putting them to practical use.

“Maybe,” she compromised. “Morte says if I were a light mage instead of a fire mage I might be able to make illusions. But he also told me that it would require an understanding of light that would take me years to figure out. Signora Rana got it instantly though, and made a bunch of illusory moths attack me until I figured out how to disrupt them.”

Ósma nodded thoughtfully, not bringing up the fact that Asu Rana had been able to use that party trick for thirty-odd years now. But it was nice to know how she did it. Light, huh? Could Moonlight count…?

A thought for later.

“Well, it sounds like you’ve figured out a way to dispel illusions. I’d call that progress.”

“Yeah, but only light-based illusions,” she grumbled, huffing out a puff of smoke. “Morte says that any other types of illusions will work just fine against me.”

“You’re at least protected against one avenue of attack,” he encouraged her. “That’s more than nothing.”

“I guess…”

Ósma hid a smile at her grumbling. The girl was annoyed now, but she truly was making incredible headway. She was just young—give her a few more years and she’d be a terror on any battlefield.

“Oh, but it has helped with my flashbangs! Now I don’t even need to be nearby to set them off!”

His smile became somewhat more fixed.

Maybe she was already a bit too much of a terror already.

Ah, well. That wasn’t his problem.

--

“If this is about my tab I’ve already paid it off.”

Ósma sighed. Of all the things…

“Lamezia, this isn’t about your tab,” he told the shifty woman across from him. “This is your performance review.”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, as she tensed up even more. She instinctively tried to look away from him by looking up only to remember he was taller and frantically look down instead, a mortified scowl stretching across her face. He sympathized—it was far too easy to get used to being the tallest person in the room, up until you weren’t anymore.

And he was the only person taller than her in the whole guild, as Lamezia was a half-orc, an increasingly prevalent sub-race these days. She was only a foot or so shorter than Ósma, with pale blue skin and paler blue eyes, and pitch-black hair braided to her knees. She, like many half-orcs, had the unfortunate downside of having mouths too small for their fangs, which gave her a bit of an underbite. Combined with the bulging biceps that all orcs were naturally blessed with, most who looked at her saw a powerful warrior, the kind who laughed in the face of fear and charged onto dangerous battlefields with a warchant on her lips.

Ósma, who was a true orc, instead saw her for what she was. A delicate noble lady in way over her head. And he was confident he knew where she came from as well.

The Kingdom of Illioucilia to the south was once ruled by humans. Was. It had been the largest duchy in Alovola during the Empire, and a part of the old Volan Heartlands. It rested at the bottom of the peninsula, protected by the sea on three sides. Being located in the heart of old human territory you’d think it wouldn’t be at risk of invasion by other races, but apparently not.

The Blue Orcs—raiders and scourges of the far north—took it as a personal affront that any place could be so protected. So they spent nearly a century raiding up and down the coast, avoiding naval patrols and porting across the sea in Albawaaba.

Then the Demons attacked, and the Woman-Serpent destroyed many of the raiders’ ships while they were out pillaging, leaving them stranded. But they were Blue Orcs, stubborn and glory hungry to a fault. Instead of fleeing the country or simply surrendering to be executed like decent folk, they instead attacked the capital city. Somehow—because the Goddess seemed to only favor the foolish—they’d managed to capture the city, slaughtering most of the royal family. The only exception was the daughter of the old King, who the new Blue Orc King took as his wife.

That old viking was now long dead, but with the influx of blue orcs into the nobility he’d conquered it was only natural that half-orcs would start cropping up more and more often.

All that is to say, Lamezia di Cambria was very obviously a runaway noble’s daughter from the kingdom to their south.

He didn’t know anything more, as he didn’t ask questions. A person’s past was their own.

Besides, it was unlikely anyone could top Palmira ‘I murdered a Duke and didn’t think that was important enough to tell anyone until the middle of a trial for murdering another Duke’ di Firozzi in the criminal past department. It was far more likely the girl was just running away from an arranged marriage.

He hoped, at least. He really didn’t want to test that assumption.

As the silence grew awkward Ósma sighed, looking down at the papers before him. “You’ve done well for the few months you’ve been here,” he told her, nodding at the paper like it told him all he needed to know. It was actually requisitions for fresh olives, but he found the girl across from him was more comfortable when he avoided eye-contact. “Though you seem to have hit a wall recently. You’ve succeeded in all your quests, but Charles has let me know your skill with a sword doesn’t seem to be improving much.”

“I…” she worked her jaw for a few moments. Ósma watched her out of the corner of his eye, taking note of the embarrassment. It wasn’t his intention, but the girl had thin skin. Something else she needed to work on. “…I’m working on it.”

Ósma nodded. “Of course, that’s all we can ask for. Though, he did recommend that with your build, a great axe might be—”

“NO!” she suddenly snapped, leaping to her feet. “I DON’T—!” she froze, her mind catching up with her actions. “Ah, um, I’m sorry!”

Mortified, the eight foot tall half-orcess bolted from his office, hands covering her face like a maiden half her age.

Ósma watched her flee with a sigh. He’d have to grab her eventually to finish this meeting, for all that would be like pulling teeth. And to think, she was one of their less problematic kids.

…Actually, Lorenzo’s mellowed out considerably recently, hasn’t he?

Ósma made a quick prayer to the Goddess that Chiara would follow his example. Maybe then he’d be able to spend less time worrying about the kids and more time worrying about the adults.

One could only hope.