Page 51 of Orc's Little Human
SELENE
We keep traveling, soon finding ourselves among short mountains and cliffs. Still, we head south, hoping it will be enough to hide us.
The narrow valley presses in around us like the walls of a tomb, jagged stone rising on both sides until only a sliver of gray sky remains visible overhead. Every shadow could hide a predator. Every sound echoes strangely off the rock faces, making it impossible to tell if that scraping noise came from loose stones under our feet or something stalking us from the caves that pock the mountainside like dead eyes.
My shoulders stay hunched, tension coiled between my shoulder blades as I scan the rocky terrain. Thali walks between Korrath and me, her usual chatter subdued by the oppressive atmosphere. Even she can sense the wrongness here, the way the very air seems to whisper of danger.
"I don't like this place," she says quietly, her small hand finding mine. "It feels... hungry."
I squeeze her fingers, understanding exactly what she means. The caves yawn open at irregular intervals, black mouths thatcould swallow us whole. Anything could be watching from those depths. Waiting.
Korrath moves with predatory grace ahead of us, his massive frame somehow managing stealth despite his size. But I can see the tension in his shoulders too, the way his hand never strays far from his weapon. He's as uneasy as I am.
"How much farther through this pass?" I ask, keeping my voice low.
"Should open up within the hour," he replies without turning. "But there's something else."
He stops, tilting his head like he's listening to something I can't hear. Or feeling something. When he looks back at me, his golden eyes hold a strange intensity.
"Neptherium," he says. "Close. Very close."
The word sends ice through my veins. Neptherium means mines. And mines mean...
"Humans," I breathe.
He nods grimly. "We need to?—"
The whistle of arrows cuts through the air. Korrath throws himself sideways, dragging Thali with him as projectiles clatter off the stone where we'd been standing. I dive in the opposite direction, heart hammering as more arrows rain down from the cave mouths above.
"Surrender the marked one!"
The voice booms off the valley walls, magnified and distorted until it seems to come from everywhere at once. But I know that voice. Know it in my nightmares, in the burning memory of chains and screaming and the smell of charred flesh.
Captain Deymar Rusk.
He emerges from the largest cave opening, flanked by two dozen human soldiers in blackened mail. The same uniform I remember from that hellish place, the same cruel faces beneath identical helms. My mouth goes dry as desert sand.
Rusk himself hasn't changed. Still tall and lean like a blade, with pale eyes that hold no warmth and a mouth that curves in permanent disdain. Still wearing that damned crimson cloak that used to sweep past my cell, always a harbinger of fresh torment.
"Hello, little marked one," he calls down, his voice carrying easily in the enclosed space. "Did you think you could run forever?"
I press myself against the stone wall, Thali trembling beside me. Korrath has positioned himself between us and the soldiers, but I can see the calculation in his stance. We're outnumbered. Surrounded. Trapped in this narrow valley like animals in a pen.
"I've been tracking you for months," Rusk continues conversationally, as if we're old friends catching up. "Following the reports of an orc with unusual magical strength. Of course, that led me straight to you."
More soldiers emerge from caves on both sides of the valley. Crossbows trained on us. Swords gleaming in the weak sunlight. My count reaches thirty before I stop trying to track them all.
"You see," Rusk says, beginning a careful descent down the rocky slope, "you never understood what you were, did you? What we made you?"
The words hit like physical blows. Made me? My hand automatically goes to the brand on my collarbone, the raised flesh that burns whenever Korrath uses his magic.
"That mark isn't just decoration, little weapon. You were bred for it. Shaped for it. Do you think it was a coincidence that you survived the branding when thousands of others died screaming? That your body accepted what would have killed any normal human?"
My legs threaten to give out. Bred. Shaped. Like livestock. Like a tool manufactured for a specific purpose.
"Your parents weren't refugees fleeing orc raids," he continues, each word a nail hammered into my coffin. "They were breeding stock. Carefully selected for magical sensitivity. For compatibility with neptherium infusion."
The world tilts around me. Everything I thought I knew about myself, about where I came from, crumbles like sand castles in a tide. I wasn't just captured. I was created. Designed from birth to be exactly what they made me.
