Ilbur awoke with a pain still throbbing in his face, marking a long scar from the right edge of his mouth and curving up, nearly touching the side of his nose, and splitting his right brow. The eye was lost. His world was halved. The pain was a burning, living thing, writhing like a worm.

He turned to find a pair of boots resting beside him. They were cut from rich, dark leather with silver buckles, and they were so fancy, so clearly not meant for orcs, that he hesitated for a long moment before snatching them up and putting them on.

The leather was soft and well-worn on his feet.

Glancing around, Ilbur realized he was in a room of glass. The cutlass still lay at his side, a beautiful thing, curved and scribed with runes that ran along the spine of the blade down to basket-hilt grip. It shone in the pale light that seemed to ooze out of the ice-colored walls.

He lifted it, feeling the reassuring and nearly made a horrible mistake as a monstrosity on eight-legs hauled its way up from the hole in the center of the floor, its every feature clad in gleaming white armor. It looked like a pale and ghostly knight.

If his hands would have stopped trembling, he would have fought.

Instead he stood there, as the pale knight unbuckled his helm, the long vertical slits and the rising crown of spikes making it seem like a death’s head.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the mask came down, revealing the strange, alien, but familiar face of Cabochon. “I am glad you’re awake.” The spider said.

“Where- I mean, why-” He reached up and traced the scar. It was still raw, a wriggling line of raised flesh. In the mirrors of the walls he could see it. As wide as his smallest finger, wrinkled and shiny pink. “I almost died, didn’t I?”

“Yes. In the future, you will die for real if you do not learn to fight.” There was blood dripping from the enormous glaive Cabochon carried, blood on his armor. It ran down the pearled plating in threads of ruby, coated the enormous curved blade of the ceremonial spear. It clung so thickly to the tassel hanging just beneath the tang of the blade that the gold braid had turned a pure dark red.

Ilbur couldn’t turn away. The steady patter of blood dripping, the iron-stink of it, hypnotized him. Cabochon followed his eyes and ‘tch’ed in annoyance. Wiping it with a cloth, he set the glaive aside and began to peel away his white pearl armor.

“The glass man, where is he?” Ilbur stumbled out. It had seemed so easy to resolve to fight, his last firm thought before the long, pained dreams as he recovered from the wound. Now that resolution ebbed out of him at the first smell of blood. It seemed foolish, it seemed impossible, it wasn’t what he was.

But as the spider said, if he didn’t learn he would die.

“In the Everforest, hunting, and he will not return soon. You must go to him.”

Ilbur stood at the gate to the Everforest, trembling in his boots. He didn’t want to. He never asked to be a coward. It was like the fear lived in his body, not his mind, another animal occupying his skin. A feral fear. One that made him shiver and freeze when he stood on the gateway of the unknown.

But he had to move. He gripped the sword tightly, a promise that he was better than this. Better than the burning fear that told him to turn away.

As soon as he stepped through, the air felt different.

An ancient mist, saturated with the smell of leaves and loam, met his nostrils. It was the scent of old growth, a primordial fog of rain trapped underneath the forest canopy for eternity, unmoved by the wind the leaves pent back, growing each day as the forest lived and died and went to rot. Black earth squished under his new boots.

Something hooted in the brush. An owl with seven eyes arranged in a ring stared at him. It stared intensely.

The trees closed in around Ilbur as he followed the signs carved into the trunks. His hand brushed over the bark. Fresh sap stuck to his fingers. He trudged through the deep, mottled layer of wet leaves; the forest coagulated into gloom, until the lights where the leaves parted and golden sun crept through were the last guides in a subterranean dark. The wind made these veins of gold ripple and shift, swimming across the forest floor.

And he came to a place where there were two marked trees.

Both seemed equally fresh, sap oozing from the cuts in pale green beads. Insects came to lick the tree’s blood, swarming around the arrows that pointed in opposite directions.

On one path, the darkness of the forest swallowed up all but the faintest of flitting shadows. Everything was grim.

The other led up, and the trees seemed to lighten, dappled gold cracking open the gloom.

It was obvious which one he wanted to be the right way. In the back of his mind, he also knew that it was the obvious choice, the easy choice.

Maybe the glass golem had left both these marks. But just as likely, a predator had seen the first mark and decided to set a trap.

If that was the truth, then his life hung in the balance, and he couldn’t let fear steer him. How likely was it that the trap would aim itself towards the dark of the forest, where anyone would be reluctant to go? If the ambusher was looking to tempt him surely it would choose the light and easy way?

These were his thoughts as he nervously, slowly turned down the dark path, shouldering his way between close-set trunks and stumbling over roots.

Something was behind him, Ilbur knew. His ears caught the slight creak of the branches as it moved from one to the next.

Ilbur came to a place where the trees bent into a vast archway, their leaves entwining into a grim, lightless tunnel that yawned before him. Dripping veils of moss hung from overhead.

One foot in front of the other, although both tried to tremble their way out of it. Shaking so hard his teeth chattered and feeling dead already, feeling hollowed out inside by the gnawing of his fear, Ilbur stepped forth.

And a thing came rushing towards him. There was barely time to throw himself aside as the ape, its fur red and rusty like blood, crashed towards him- and past, his last minute dive to the floor saving him. Only, he’d left his blade behind, lying on the ground.

The beast turned and Ilbur flinched, trying to crawl backwards. It’s face was a tusked skull, the fur peeling back to reveal bleached bone and curling yellow sharpness. The ape was built of crude, top-heavy muscle with giant leathery hands that swung at the ends of its long arms like clubs, knuckles dragging the floor.

It lunged for him-

There was a flash of green-

The glass golem crashed into the beast’s side and sent it rolling, somehow slipping away as they tumbled together through the leaves, avoiding being caught and crushed underneath. It regained its footing and leapt back in time to avoid a sudden sweep of one of those enormous hands, and its sword came out in a dazzling arc of silver.

The hand fell to the ground, severed. The ape clutched its stump and let out a pitiful roar, coming up onto its feet and staggering back.

The glass golem was having none of it.

It lunged forward, feinted back to dodge a crude backhand, and darted in again, jabbing its blade down sideways into the joint at the back of the leg. The beast collapsed to one knee and finally caught the glass golem with a blow, driving its elbow down in a strike that brought all its huge, furred bulk to bear.

The glass golem twisted and interposed its horns, and while it was sent skidding back, feet tearing furrows in the soft mud of the forest floor, the beast was left with bleeding horns pierced through its one good arm by the faun’s antlers.

The beast was left broken, sagging, trying to drag itself back towards its nest. The glass golem stepped between it and safety, pointing its sword at the ape.

And something soft brushed across Ilbur’s arm. It was the fur of a silver fox, who carried his sword in its mouth. It laid the blade against his lap and stepped aside, waiting.

The glass golem made no move to finish the ape, only stood between it and retreat.

They both realized what was happening at once. Through the helmet of tusked bone, the ape locked eyes with Ilbur, the intense fury of its gaze making him flinch as he staggered onto his feet. Gods sight, they shook. The whole of him was shaking and his breath came out in ragged gasps.

He tried hard to think, to fight with his head first and his blade as a last resort.

The beast was bleeding horribly, so it had to come to him. If he advanced now, he’d be giving up his one advantage. Time. Time was on his side.

And the ape knew it.

It climbed ponderously to its feet, barely able to limp along on its injured leg, bent lopsided by the mismatch length of its arms. It lunged for him- a lunge that turned into a fall as its bad leg gave way entirely. He ducked back from the clumsy sweep and hacked away at the arm as it passed.

There was barely enough strength in his arms to break through the beast’s thick, clotted fur, leaving a shallow gash.

His father had taught him how to fight. He knew the movements. But his own body, steered by the animal fear, refused to fight with him and not against him.

It came at him again, crawling across the ground and smashing its open palm into the dirt. Again he retreated and swung, making another shallow addition to its wounds.

The third time, it played him. A half-strike, a feint back, and as his sword darted forward the real blow leapt forward to meet him.

Ilbur’s world was blotted out by a hot, bright blossom of pain, spreading before his eye and turning the world to white fire. He felt weightlessness seize his body as he was lifted from the ground, and the air leave him as he crashed back down, rolling. The blade was no longer in his hands.

When his vision came back it was blurry, distorted, his one eye filling up with blood. The beast was hauling itself towards him. If it had two working legs, it would already have torn him apart. The blade lay on the ground behind it.

He was going to die.

He was going to die and there would be no place for him among his ancestors.

Not if he died like this, without a weapon in hand. Gryhsis, the afterlife, was reserved for warriors.

And anger surged through him, for once in his life. Anger that he’d never had a choice to be anything but the one thing he couldn’t be. Anger that every other option had been stripped from him, that he’d been born an orc, that for generations his people had been forced to fight, until every softness had been stripped for them and they were hard, scarred things.

He lunged for its face, clawing his fingers into the sockets of the bone helm it wore. It was surprised, for a second, by this sudden surge of violence. His fingers met something soft.

And then it caught him by the leg and ripped him up from the ground. Pain swept the world away again as it lifted him, swinging him by the leg and smashed him against a tree trunk. He felt his bones creak.

He was going to die.

That thought settled over him and lasted a long, long time.

Longer than he should have had left.

Ilbur opened his eye, slowly.

The ape lay on its side, the heave of its breath making its chest rise and fall in uneven, arrhythmic gasps. Blood was staining the leaves below, filling their curled autumn bodies like little cups. Two weeping streams of red ran from the sockets of its helm. It was blind. It was dying. It could no longer even stand.

He had won.

Ilbur’s leg wouldn’t support his weight, disjointed from its socket and dragging painfully beneath him as he took one, then two steps, before collapsing to the ground. The fox stepped forward and brought him the blade again.

He used it as a crutch to close the distance, and lifted it above the ape’s throat. In his mind he recited the prayer for fallen warriors his father had taught him.

Then he cut down, again and again and again. It was no clean death. There were no clean deaths. Only the brutal, fearful, bloody business of killing.