The rain had stopped hours ago, but the droplets that remained on the large branches and flora still fell, creating an irregular but melodic beat to which the inhabitants of the Elderwood were more than happy to sing along. The many colorful birds chirped, the pixies hummed, and the dryads allowed their trees to swing gently in the wind. The forest was peaceful, save for the crackling of a new campfire and the crunch of wet grass and fallen leaves under heavy steps. It was when the many creatures forest stopped their chorus that it finally seemed to go to sleep, and the light that shone on our clearing through the verdant canopy vanished entirely. The only sounds left to echo through the drowsy Elderwood was the pitter-patter of the few remaining droplets, the popping of the wood in our campfire, and Klog jeering through drunken speech about his time in the Silverhearth Brothel.
“That human bitch,” he told us with a toothy smile, “she said Klog was her biggest ever!” He laughed aloud before slamming his meaty green hand against Ste’eves back, causing him to choke on the ale he was nursing.
“That’s quite enough,” Ste’eve glared after regaining his composure. “Of course you were her ‘biggest’, it was probably her first time seeing an orc.”
“Ha!” Klog shouted in revelry, but then thought more on his words. “Hmm. Are you saying Klog small for orc? What would stupid half-orc know?”
“Indefinite articles, apparently.” Ste’eve grumbled, too used to Klog’s attitude to rise to his insult.
“What that?”
“They’re the words you use before a noun, like ‘a’ or ‘an’.” I answered with some authority. I didn’t often interject into Klog’s rambles, but since I was an expert on grammar, I felt compelled to.
“Ohhh,” Klog slurred. “The fancy mage speaks! You gonna blow me away with your scary magic, fancy mage? Or are you gonna kill me with ‘ayyys’ and ‘ahnnns’?” He laughed out loud at his own joke, spilling some of the ale from his cup on Eva’s boot. The elf made a disgusted face and moved to sit further away from him.
“I do not mind if you drink,” she said, “but please do not spill any of the vile stuff on me!”
Klog’s face turned red, and he looked ready to hit the poor elf, but Ste’eve quickly cut in and changed the conversation.
“So, Meisillia! Are you going to write about us in your book?” He was looking at me with a forced smile, hoping I’d help diffuse the situation. Eva and Klog were both turned my way expectantly, their argument forgotten. All adventurers were drawn to fame, it was only natural.
“Probably,” I admitted with a small smile, “but I can substitute any of your names with an alias if you prefer to keep your privacy.”
Klog looked confused. “What that mean?”
“It means if you’re scared of books she can replace you with a-”
“Klog is not afraid of books!” he shouted, not letting Eva finish her explanation. Ste’eve was grinning, so Klog turned on him. “You think Klog is afraid? Brave words from healer!” he spat. “How does proud half-orc MAN become puny healer!?”
Ste’eve leaned back, the shadow cast by the crackling campfire not hiding his frown. Klog was right that it was unusual for a half-orc to be accepted into the Church of The Goddess to become a healer, but then again, it was unusual for Half-orc to become anything at all. More often than not, they were the result of a village being raided by orc savages, leaving behind women with pregnancies they didn’t want and children they saw as half monster. It was only recently that orcs were accepted as a “Civilized Race” alongside Humans and Elves, and the world was still catching up. The truth was, I was also interested in Ste’eves story.
“That’s none of your concern,” he responded harshly. “Our job is only to save the village girl and return her to Silverhearth. We don’t need to become friends.”
“Finally something I can agree with.” Eva chimed in. “Let us stop talking now and sleep. We can reach the cave by noon tomorrow if we wake at sunrise.”
And so we slept, with Ste’eve agreeing to keep watch while the rest of us gathered our strength for the coming day. We rose the next day along with the sun, and heard the forest wake up just as we had heard it fall asleep: with the singing birds and the trees swaying with the breeze. We reached our destination by noon, just as Eva had predicted, and we prepared ourselves outside the cave for what lay ahead.
“Since this is our first adventure as a party,” I spoke up, “I think it fitting we have a leader to guide us in case something goes awry.”
“Klog is leader!” Klog spoke, looking up from sharpening his axe.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ste’eve was sitting, inspecting his staff and carving away any flaws he could find, much like I was doing to my own. Healers and Mages had their differences, but both channeled magic through enchanted staves, and to function properly they needed to be flawless.
“Klog can’t trust Halvesies or Elves,” he stated and turned to me with a scrutinizing glare. “And definitely no mages.”
An uncomfortable silence settled on the party. The hatred between orcs and Elves was founded in years of fighting, and in the Elves being the last to agree to consider the orcs a “Civilized Race,” but even more powerful than their hatred for each other was their combined distrust of Magic. It was a closely-guarded secret among humanity, and as a result the other races knew little to nothing about it. Fear was the obvious conclusion, and it was a one calculated by humanity. Even healers, who got their power from the Goddess, were seen in good faith among the same Adventurers that spoke of mages with hushed voices and suspicious glares. Even Eva preferred to pretend to be preoccupied with counting the number of arrows in her quiver. And just like that, Klog was decided to be our temporary leader.
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The cave was wet and smelled of piss, as many caves did, but Eva claimed she could smell burning wax and candles. We trusted her and her enhanced elven senses, so we continued on into the dark abyss that was the cave, and what we suspected to be the den of the bandits that had kidnapped the Silverhearth girl. Klogs first test as leader came when our careful descent led us to an opening from the cramped shafts to a wide cavern. Another shaft could be seen on the other side of the room, from which we could see the soft yellow light of a candle.
“THE GIRL IS THIS WAY!” Klog whisper-screamed, and started to run across the room. At my side, I could see Eva frown, but then her eyes lit up in alarm. She had seen something, but she hadn’t said anything. She bit her lip and furrowed her brow, contemplating something, before finally yelling out “Klog!” But it was too late. Something dropped from the ceiling of the cavern right on top of the clueless warrior. The warning gave him enough time to swing his battleaxe, but it was in vain, as the Rocksquid had already landed on Klog’s bald head and swallowed Klog’s head whole inside its gaping mouth.
“Oh Goddess, grant me your blessing!” Ste’eve chanted. “Grant us the power to endure!” I felt goosebumps form all over my body, which quickly gave way to a feeling of sluggishness. My skin felt thick and hard like a rock. It dawned on me that Ste’eve had cast a blessing to harden our skin so that the Rocksquid couldn’t bite through Klog’s neck and kill him. I looked up in time to see Eva, who had already started running to Klog when she saw the Rocksquid fall on him, grabbing at it with her hands. But Klog wasn’t making it easy. He was thrashing and screaming and cursing as loud as he knew how, which was loud for an orc, trying desperately to pull the Rocksquid away from his head, and when that didn’t work, resorted to rubbing his head against the floor.
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“Dammit Klog, stop moving!” Eva screamed, trying to pull the squid away by grabbing its head and pulling.
“KILL IT! SHOOT IT! NO, BURN IT! TELL THE WITCH TO BURN IT!”
“If I did that, you would burn too,” I reminded him, walking closer to observe the Rocksquid. I knew they lived in caves naturally, unlike their water-breathing brethren, but they usually died of starvation long before they could reach a size large enough to engulf an orcs massive head. While I puzzled about this, Ste’eve had caught up to us after recovering from the effort of casting his spell.
“Will you stop that god-awful screaming!? Half the world must know we’re here!”
“COWARD! SISSY! HALFY! DAMMIT, SAVE ME!” Klog kept shouting until Ste’eve had had enough, grabbed an arrow from Eva’s quiver, and impaled the Rocksquid above Klog’s head. For a moment, Eva and Klog stood there in shock, before she pulled at the Rocksquid again. This time it came off, revealing Klogs tired face covered in cuts and blood. Immediately, he grabbed Ste’eves collar.
“Why didn’t you do that sooner!?”
“Hey, stop!” Eva cried, moving between them and pushing them apart. “Ste’eve saved your life! You should thank him!”
Klog grunted and wiped his face, sending slime from the inside of the squid onto the floor. He picked his fallen battleaxe up off the floor with a frown, and moved to inspect the dead Rocksquid.
“Could’ve killed me,” he muttered while eyeing the arrow.
“And it would’ve been a service to the world,” Ste’eve replied. “Now can we please find the girl before every bandit in the Elderwood comes for us?”
“Ha!” Klog grinned and slapped Ste’eves back. “Maybe you’re more orc than human after all!” In high spirits, he started toward the lit cave shaft.
I was the only one who saw Eva’s face, covered in regret and shame, when Klog mentioned dying. If she had warned him sooner, when she first noticed the Rocksquid, he might not have been in danger in the first place. I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and called after Klog.
“Klog, I have an idea. Why don’t we take the Rocksquid back with us and turn it into a hat? Eva said you looked pretty good with it on.”
Klog turned and looked at Eva. “Truly?”
Eva looked at Klog, then at me, then back to Klog. “Um…yes?”
Klog laughed. “You elves have funny taste in hats!” He walked over and picked up the Rocksquid, putting it on his head so the mouth covered his hairline but he could still see. He looked like he was wearing a wig made of flesh. Eva cracked up, and even Ste’eve calmed down and smiled. Indeed, Klog passed the first test as our leader brilliantly.
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We continued on through the cave shaft, our morale high not only from the light that lit our path but from our first success as a party. We talked in friendly voices as we walked, still running off the adrenaline from the Rocksquid and no longer concerned with being quiet.
“So why is an elf in the human territories?” I asked Eva. Elves were a solitary race, due mostly to the superiority they felt over other races by being the longest-lived among them all. They were considered young adults even at the age of one-hundred. Seeing one outside of their home territories was rare, and seeing one in an adventurer party was even rarer still. Seeing one willingly party with an orc was unheard of.
“It is true, I am a long way from home.” Eva admitted. “Not that I have much of one to go back to anymore. I foolishly fell for a passing human adventurer, and became drunk on their honeyed words and promises of love and excitement. She told me she would bring me elfhappiness, but that I had to leave my family and home because they would not accept me. She was right. I told them I was leaving the next day, and they told me not to come back.”
“And the human?”
“A slave driver. As soon as I was out of the forest, she tried to kidnap me. I killed her with her own knife and escaped.” She didn’t smile or frown, and her voice didn’t quake. She spoke just like she normally would: with strength and pride.
“Why not go home?” Klog chimed in unexpectedly from the front, his fleshy hat swishing around as he turned his head, making a squelching sound.
“They are stubborn. They would not accept me still,” she muttered sadly, but eyed the hat with amusement.
“I know what that’s like,” Ste’eve sighed. “I was born a bastard to a human noble and her fetish prostitute. They denied my existence as soon as they saw the color of my skin. I’m lucky to have been allowed to live, I suppose.”
“It was your mother who was a noble?”
He glared at me, but then his gaze softened. “Yes, though she isn’t my mother any more than the prostitute she hired was my father.”
Eva smiled with interest. “Does that not make you a noble yourself?”
Ste’eve eyed Eva and gripped his staff closer to his chest. “I suppose,” he muttered.
The conversation died down, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. We soon came to another opening similar to the first, except this one was well furnished. There were sets of beds and random knick-knacks strewn haphazardly around the room, with no common theme or material used. Obviously stolen from many different settlements. We readied our weapons and continued on, with Klog taking the lead. Eva spotted her first.
“There! In the corner!”
We turned and saw a girl half-hidden in her bed sheets, covering her mouth and staring at us with wide eyes. When she saw us approaching, she shot out and tried to run for the way we came in.
Ste’eve stepped forward. “Stop! We’re here to rescue you!”
The girl stopped and turned to stare at us from the entrance, and we got a better look at her. She looked much like the village had described her, 20-something with long brown hair, but not quite as skinny as they had said. It had been a few weeks since they’d posted the quest, and it seemed like the bandits had been feeding her well in that time. She didn’t have any visible bruises either. Eva noticed this as well, and looked surprised.
“Are you Ms. Elden?”
“Yeas,” she replied in the thick accent of the Silverhearth villagers. She was inspecting each of us in turn, but froze when she saw Klog. She pointed at him in fear. “Yew killed Rocky.” She was pointing at his head, where the Rocksquid was still being used as an impromptu hat. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“L-look, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Ste’eve tried and stepped closer. “He’s a good orc, he’s on our side!”
The fear didn’t disappear from her eyes as she backed away farther. Eva frowned.
“But she is not” she concluded sadly, and readied her bow. The village girl froze.
“What you doing!?” Klog demanded, pushing her bow down. Immediately, the girl took a dagger from her back and sliced at Ste’eve. He dodged in time, but hit the wall with a thud. Shaking, the girl dropped her knife and ran down the lit shaft away from us, shouting all the way.
“Dammit, Klog!” Eva yelled and pushed him away. “She is with the bandits! She was never kidnapped, she ran away with them!” She hurried to the entrance of the shaft with her bow drawn, but the girl had already gone past a turn and was no longer in sight. With a sigh, she moved to check on Ste’eve.
Klog was speechless, or so we thought. “What now?” he said in an uncharacteristically small voice. The girl had apparently alerted the returning bandits, and we didn’t need Eva to warn us to hear the thundering footsteps they made as dozens of them made their way back through the cave toward us. We were stuck at a dead end.
Ste’eve turned to me. “Can’t you do something?”
I nodded. “I can, but I don’t know if I should.”
Klog grabbed my collar. “What you mean!? No time!”
I gently moved his hand away. “I can stop them, but I will kill them all.” I looked away. “It won’t be pretty.”
“What is wrong with that?” Eva practically screamed at me, helping Ste’eve up and moving him away from the entrance.
“If I do it,” I started, “If I do it you will be disgusted with me.”
“If you do not do it we will die!”
“KILL THEM!”
“We won’t be disgusted, so please!”
I sighed, pointing my staff to the lit entrance. I enjoyed this party, I thought. It was fun. I would write about it after they abandoned me, like all the others after they saw how terrifying magic truly was. I would write about Klog and his leadership and his funny monster hat, about Ste’eve and his defiance of his cursed birth, and about Eva’s unimaginable strength and pride. I stood, shaking, imagining the look on their faces. The fear that they would not be able to hide. A gentle breeze brushed past me, and the light coming from the passageway extinguished in an instant.
“What you do!?”
“She did not do anything! Extinguishing a candle is just a parlor trick!”
Ste’eve, who was more attuned to magic than either Klog or Eva, stepped forward to stand next to me. “Is that… it?” He whispered. “Is that all it takes?”
I turned toward them and nodded.
Klog’s green face paled. Eva asked, “How many?”
Twenty-Three, including the village girl.