Page 6 of Bound to the Orc Renegade

I fish it out from underneath my shirt and hold it upright. Silvery white light shines from it, and little zips of electricity shoot through me, vibrating with a feeling of… potential.

More zips shoot through the palm I use to steady myself on the ground—no wait, not ground. Stone.

Lights wink on around me as crystals set into the rock I’m on start to glow. The hollow place inside me feels different. I rub my fingers up and down my sternum. A fullness stirs like an animal ready to pounce, a feeling ofpotential. I don’t know what it is, but I like it. I feel powerful for the first time in my life.

The crystals only surround me for a few feet in each direction, so I scoot right, reach out, and my hand pats at empty air. I move along the edge, figuring out I’m on some kinda raised platform. In games, I’m used to running around, fallingoff things, and doing whatever it takes to learn my way around as quickly as possible. Patience isn’t exactly my middle name—I like action.

But games give you the chance to die over and over again, resetting each time to an earlier save point.

I’m gonna have to play this like a granny player, one who inches their way through every bit of the game.

Because you don’t get do-overs in real life, and dying here means actual, for-real, not-playing-around dying.

My crystal and all the ones embedded in the rock stop glowing, and the hum of power fades from my body. I spend the next few hours trying to get what sleep I can. It’s not super cold or anything, but I always chill easily, so I pull my arms inside my T-shirt and hug them to my stomach to stay warm, glad my jeans and Chuck Taylor high-tops keep the rest of me covered.

I must doze off, because the next thing I know, I’m yawning. The sky’s light overhead, and the sound of birdsong sweetens the air.

Rolling upright, I poke my arms back through the sleeves and spin in place. A forest surrounds me filled with big pines like Christmas trees on steroids, and some strange trees with blue oval leaves.

“Yep, Dorothy,” I whisper. “You sure aren’t in Kansas anymore.” A grin splits my face. If you’re gonna have an adventure, might as well do it somewhere fabulous!

I’m also on top of a twenty-foot column of rock, so yay me for not walking off the edge in the dark. But how am I gonna get down? Checking my pockets again turns up nothing more than lip balm and a tissue. I can’t MacGyver anything out of those.Looks like I didn’t acquire any “tools” in the portal. I run my hands over the top of the rock column, digging my fingertips in, searching for cracks. It takes a few minutes, but there’s nothing.

Sitting back on my heels, I stop and think. If this was a game, I’d hide rope somewhere only a little tricky to find—you want the opening levels to be challenging enough to be fun without making it so hard people give up.

Then I snort. “It’s not a game, Taylor. There don’t have to be rules.”

But the portal put me here, on top of this stone pillar. Why? Whatever it had been, it felt friendly, so there must be a reason.

I lay down on my stomach at the edge and reach over, feeling down the side. Maybe there’s a hidden ladder of handholds or something? The rock slides sandpaper rough across my palm, broken only by the smooth surface of the occasional inset crystal.

A growl lashes from the trees, and I freeze.

A monster stalks from between two pines, a real-as-hell effing monster! He’s eight-feet tall, with coarse gray skin only covered by the crude loincloth made by tying an animal pelt around his hips. Completely bald, he’s got a rough-hewn face of irregular features topped by a blob of a nose. He looks like that time I was seven and put one of my action figures in the oven to keep “warm,” melting Thor’s face into something face-adjacent.

A huge mace rises over one shoulder, the spiked head looking wicked. This guy would be one hell of a character to fight!

The monster snarls in an unknown language. Oh, goody! Another challenge. I really, really wish I were playing this as a game. I start doing a thing I always do—make a mental “wiki” entry about this monster and shove all the details I’ve noticed into it, because you never know what’s gonna end up being useful.

He stalks over to the base of the stone, and I watch carefully. Maybe he’ll show me where the hidden ladder is? But nope. He just wraps his long arms around the stone and uses brute strength to cling to the sheer surface.

The huge gray monster climbs the side of the pillar as if twenty feet is nothing.

I scooch to the far side, teetering right on the brink.

But the top of the stone’s not that big. He swarms up over the edge, leering at me, and one long arm reaches out.

“No!” I throw up my hand. The crystal on my chest heats, and a bolt of electricity zips through my body.

The monster flies backward!

What did I just do? I jerk in surprise and take half a step back. Onto empty air.

“Eeeeeee!” My arms pinwheel as I fall, my heart thundering. I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna hit the ground!

I snap to a stop, laying onnothing.

“What the hell?”

---