She lay on her side with her cheek on her arm. All around her the ground was dark and wet and she wondered that her body had held so much blood. She wondered what would happen when she stoned up. Perhaps all of it would turn to stone also. Perhaps the pavers on which she laid were made from the blood of long dead dwarves. Perhaps all stones had once been dwarves.

Everything seemed to happen so slowly. The tall orc kicked out at the [armiger]. He missed. The [armiger] stood at his full height. A wild smile on his face. That feeling. She knew that feeling. She tried to reach for da's [alpenstock]. She looked at it where it lay. She looked at her hand. Her finger twitched.

What would she do with it? Help the orc? He was a tool of the [armiger]'s. She wouldn't help him. She couldn't lift her arm. She could barely lift her eyes.

Now they wrestled. How she had loved to. The tall orc had the [armiger]'s forearm barred against his torso and the man's back folded sickeningly over the anvil's side. Slowly as if pantomiming choreography for some later performance the tall orc spun the arm back and around and used it to maneuver the man where he willed. She found herself feeling admiration for his strength and courage. But then she had also admired the strength of the elk. The courage of the owl. She reached again for the [alpenstock]. Not even her finger moved.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

She realized she too was a tool of the [armiger]'s. How many scores of orcs had she shot on the span that night? Her da had slain so many he had no place left to stand. Each had been someone's cub. Some had been fathers and mothers too. Was she so different than them? From the tall orc, the goblin, the otaur?

She smelled the singed wool of Daraway's cloak, now laying in a heap on the pavers. She heard her weeping. She turned her chin and saw the top of her head. Her black and clublike hands held stiff as if already rigored. Blood leaked freely from her neck.

She saw the dead man pull his broken and burned body across Daraway's and toward where the tall orc struggled. The way his ruined skin folded where it dragged across the stone. He moved too slowly. He would never make it in time. He was unarmed besides.

She heard another gunshot. It seemed so quiet. She noted how the tall orc started to fall. His claw was mangled and it dropped an orb of black blood from a hole bored straight through it. She watched the [armiger] catch the tall orc by the wrist and pull him close and wrap a free hand around his waist and hold the [shortarm] under his nose as if presenting a rose stem to his lover.

Everything brightened and darkened together. The heat off the magma could not replace that which had drained out of her chest and back and leg. She reached one last time for the [alpenstock] and as her hand closed around it she swung it with all the might left in her arm and it fell with the speed and force of a blown dandelion's seed.