My body swayed left and right, rocking as if it waded through choppy waters. Tight restraints bound my hands and feet together. A burning sensation flared along my back. And as my consciousness slowly returned, I realized I was upside down. I hung from a wooden pole, a strange rope-like material binding me to it. No matter how much I tugged, the rope would not budge.

“Quit squirming!” one of the men carrying the poll said. I say man because his voice was very man-like, but he was no man. His green body made me mistake him for a goblin initially, but no goblin stood over eight feet tall. They didn’t have muscles the size of tree trunks and tusks that protruded from their lower lips. They weren’t so dumb looking either, which said a lot considering how dumb goblins always looked.

No. If there was a species chart, these monstrous beasts would surely be a cousin to the wiry goblin far, far down the ancestry tree. These were orcs. And there were dozens of them.

Not all of them were green-skinned and quite as dumb looking as the ones that carried me. Some were red, blue, purple, and even black. The red ones rode atop gargantuan wolves. These weren’t the sorry packs that chased me through the woods, no, these were three times their size with teeth so vicious their mouths couldn’t contain them.

Unlike the goblins, the orcs were better equipped: iron armor and hardened leather. The red orcs riding the wolves wore dented helmets with plumes of feathers rising from them, sheathed swords at their waists. The black orcs carried jagged broadswords that looked far blunter than they were sharp. The rest carried thick clubs of oak.

“Civilized monsters…” I mumbled to myself.

Did they capture me while I was trapped in the Vision’s illusion? I was lucky the orcs found me first and not a pack of wandering goblins; I'd be rotating over an open fire right about now.

Images of my family flashed in my head. That’s right…I hadn’t thought about them yet, but if the entire world was dragged into this it was obvious they’d be here too. Their tutorial quests would be over soon, and that meant the barriers wouldn’t be protecting them for much longer. Would they be safe? Sure my situation was an anomaly, but what if whatever awaits them on the other side of the barrier is something just like this, or worse?

I shook the thought from my head. No matter how much I concerned myself with it, nothing would change. I needed to sort things out on my end before I worried about others. There didn’t seem to be any chance of escaping, but perhaps I didn’t need to.

The vision had mentioned something about the three civilized races of the forest. It wasn’t a guarantee these orcs were one of them, but this was at least a potential lead and it beat wandering aimlessly through the woods.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked the orc behind me. He glared at me and drove his fist square into my face. I coughed and spat out blood, staring daggers at his ugly mug. “What the hell was that for! You have me tied up, I think I have every right to—” a second punch shut me up and had me seeing stars. “You are not permitted to speak until your trial with the Lord. Any breach of this will be treated as treason, and you will be executed before your trial,” the orc said.

He was far more literate than I would’ve ever given him credit for. I still wanted to tear his head from his shoulders, but at least I got some information out of him. A trial with the Lord could only mean I was being taken to their village. That was the most favorable possibility of the ones I thought up, the worst being some ritualistic offering site. I didn’t think any god would want a vampire as an offering, but who knew how orcs worked.

The further the entourage of orcs took me, the taller the trees became. There were so many branches full of leaves that I couldn’t see the sky anymore. Even the smells of the forest grew thick and rich. It felt as if we had entered an entirely different forest.

Distant sounds began to fill the air. The closer we got to them, the more our scenery began to change. Orcs patrolled the woods, riding on the backs of those gargantuan wolves and aiming bows from high up in treetop scouting nests.

We passed by an outpost littered with orcs. Stakes were driven into the ground and stood over double my height. They stretched between the trees to create a wall, only opening up where these large pavilions filled with armed orcs stood guard.

The orcs eyed me as I passed, some with faces full of disgust and others with fear. There was a desperate impulse inside of me to identify them, but remembering how the wolf had flinched and the Vision had stopped me, I feared they would notice and take action against me.

Past the outposts were a multitude of settlements. The orcs in these small villages were drastically different from the ones in the entourage and at the outposts. They were slimmer with much smaller tusks. The monster features were toned down in place of softer, more human-like ones. These orcs wore regular clothing and tended to menial tasks like airing out laundry and chatting with each other. I cursed them. Why did orcs get to wear t-shirts while my torso was still bare?

The settlements grew into a village, then a town, expanding and growing and ultimately forming into a massive city. Buildings were constructed up in the trees with bouncing bridges connecting them. The ground had been dug out forming craters that the orcs filled with pathways, housing, and shops. Their infrastructure was an architectural masterclass and to think it was achieved by a species so commonly written off as stupid oafs.

One of the red orcs barked an order to the rest of them and the entourage began to disband. They rode off in different directions, circling around the central street and disappearing into the crowd.

The inner city was filled with far more slim orcs than typical ones. Because of their human-like faces, they were more expressive with their mannerisms. I couldn’t help but wonder what made them so different from the ones that carried me.

“Tully, Barn, take your units to Chief Grann at the coliseum. Inform him of the situation and tell him to relay it to the Lord and his shamans,” one of the red orcs said. The two purple ones she spoke to nodded their heads and called to their group of orcs to continue forward. Their units unfortunately included me.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

We made our way far into the city, riding down slopes and trudging up hills until we came to the entrance of a gargantuan building, the coliseum. It was massive; spires jutted from the rooftop, stone pillars marked the multiple entrances, and from the open dome I could hear the clashing of metal and the roars of a crowd. Trees sprawled like skyscrapers around it, every inch of them with some attachment sticking out or building etched into their sides. We passed by a group of goblins waving tickets to a crowd of shouting orcs.

“Today’s matches will be the talk of the year! You don’t want to miss them!” one of the goblins shouted. Scalpers? Goblin scalpers?

I didn’t like where this was going.

The ensemble rode through the open gates and met with the red orc, Chief Grann, who sent a messenger to go inform the Lord. “Take him to cell thirteen with the rest of the outsiders,” the Chief said to my captors. I was marched down underground, through dim corridors and narrow stairwells lit with torches that made me hiss at the sizzling flames. My bindings were undone and before I could try to fight back, I was tossed hard against the ground of a cell, cold stone against my bare skin.

“I look forward to watching you get bludgeoned, bloodsucker,” the purple orc, Tully, said to me. He laughed triumphantly as he marched away.

“God dammit!” I shouted as I ran to the edge of the cell and shook the steel frames. They were solid and immovable; a purple glow emanated from them that stung my palms the longer I held on.

I heard the sounds of battle louder now. The cells lined the base of the coliseum in the alcoves beyond the battlefield. They would be the best seats in the house if it weren’t for the pillars and gates that obscured the view.

A gray-skinned creature scurried around the battlefield. It was no bigger than a goblin but was much thicker and dotted with fur. Its ears were long and pointed and it had no eyes. What the hell was it?

Dead. That’s what it was. A stone slab crashed down over top of it, splattering its guts across the stadium. The cheers were booming. They shook the entire building.

“I need to get the hell out of here…” I mumbled.

“Ha! A brilliant idea, mister bloodsucker,” a jester-like voice said behind me.

I turned to see a skeleton with its finger raised in the air. Its bones were a dusty ivory, scuffed and marked as if he were a pair of sneakers.

“A talking skeleton…?” I said.

“And he has a set of working eyes! Well, aren’t you a catch?”

A sarcastic, talking skeleton. Why am I not surprised?

“Those bars have a spell cast on them. If you were strong enough to break them, well, you probably wouldn’t have gotten caught in the first place,” he said. He wore no clothes. “What brings someone like you this far south anyways? Last I knew, you kind was all huddled up in the North where no demons could track you.”

“There are no vampires in these parts?” I asked.

“Not for the past few centuries, no. Not unless they had a death wish.”

Centuries? The lore for this world goes that far back?

“I have my reasons for being here. I’m looking for the Hearts of the Forest. Do you know of them?” I asked.

The skeleton's purple eyes went soft. “So you do have a death wish, just a different kind. I don’t recommend mentioning those around here. Especially not to the Lord. But! You’re going to die without a fair trial anyways, so might as well try your luck, right?”

“Wait, why? What’s so bad about them?” I asked.

The cell doors behind us clanked open. A hulking, fat, pale orc strode in. It wore an executioner's cap over its face with fur armor and a massive curved sword on its back.

“Human…” it said. A whimper came from the back of the cell. As the massive orc marched towards it the whimper escalated to a scream.

“No! No! I’ve told you everything already! Please! I don’t know anything els—“ the man’s pleas were cut off by the pale orc’s backhand.

The prisoner was dragged by his hair, tears spilling down his face. His eyes went wide as he passed by me. He spun and kicked the orc's hand, releasing its grip on him as he ran and grabbed hold of my arm.

His face was beaten to a pulp, whip marks scored his brown skin. “Please, please! What mana type are you? Fire? Balance? Please! I need a skill! I need something!”

A black-skinned orc removed a whip from its side and swung it at the man, lassoing his neck and yanking him to the ground. The fat one grabbed hold of him again and dragged him out of the cell towards the pillars of the battlefield, all the while the man screamed a shrill shriek through a crushed larynx.

“Oooh. It seems he mistook you for a human. Me personally, I’ve never met a human with red and white eyes,” the skeleton said.

“What was that about? He asked me to teach him a skill?”

“That’s how human magic works. To learn a skill you have to be taught by someone that has the same magic type as you. They have to know the skill they’re teaching you, too. Don't ask me how the teacher knew the skill. It’s quite paradoxical. Do vampires not work that way?” the skeleton asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. There isn’t much I know about vampires to begin with.”

I looked towards the battlefield where the man ran around, throwing fire from his hands and swinging a sword at the approaching stone creature. Its body was cut off by the roof of the alcove so I couldn’t see it fully. The man didn’t last very long, and soon enough he became more fuel for the roars of the spectators.

“Skeleton,” I said, making my way over to where he sat. “Tell me everything you know about the Hearts.”

“I thought I told you those were a one-way ticket to the grave?”

“And there must be a reason for that. Potentially a reason I can use?”

The skeleton looked at me with his floating, purple eyes and cracked a child-like smile.

“Now I’m intrigued,” he said.