Orc laughter was not a pleasant sound. The guttural roaring of the Orsurs and the strident cackle of the Urkaen, the piercing howl of Urkulps and the snorting Orusk, all these contained no mirth, no expression of joy or surprise. Within their laughter was only that most primal element, the delight in another’s suffering that was really twisted relief that this time, it was not them.

What worried Anda the most was his own tribe, the Urglah. The orcs of the cat tribe did not laugh at all. They stared at him with cold lidded eyes, scarred faces expressionless, tattered ears laid back.

“Want to be returned, you? No death stones, no ash scars.” Another round of laughter followed as the towering Orsur grabbed Anda’s face. He didn’t have much say in the matter; his arms and legs were bound, and he was only upright because another Orsur held him aloft by the back of his neck.

His introduction to orc society was not going particularly well.

He had been dragged for miles, across abrasive crusty rock and through boiling mud that nearly sent him to respawn. Now he was surrounded by many orcs of all types and sizes, their faces and bodies covered in white scars that slashed through fur and skin alike. Each of them had thumbnail-sized lumps under their skin arrayed in varying patterns, spirals, crosses and lines.

He and Weaver had made their way across the Boiling Plains for only a few hours before their capture. He was still processing how they had been taken so quickly. He was a seasoned warrior, after all, with plenty of experience detecting ambush and decent Stealth skills for his level. When Nandi had arranged for his return as a half-Urglah, his natural skills were left intact, and he hadn’t lost nearly as much of the magi traits and skills he had gained over the years as he had feared. He had lost fourteen levels, but somehow, it never felt like a loss.

He lost points in Flash, but now he could think faster, use what he had better than before. He lost points in Power, but he was able to apply his strength more effectively. He actually gained in his Kinesthetic Awareness, since that directly reflected his Outside body. When it came to traits, the only place he really missed those fourteen levels and the points that came with them was in Vitality and Invulnerability.

Rebuilding his Magi Skills was still a work in progress though. Those had been cropped quite thoroughly. Fortunately, it only took a couple new levels to get his core combat skills back up to snuff, but some peripheral skills like Stealth were still below where they had been. He decided to blame that for their humiliating capture.

That and the fact that he had never encountered actual bolas before, his special bullets notwithstanding, and certainly not the super-sized version the orcs had used. They had some wicked Magi Skills attached to them too, which caused the vines binding the rough volcanic rocks to stick and coil, and apparently made them travel through the air in total silence. It had been a rude shock to go from surveying the increasingly barren and alien landscape past the edge of the grasslands, to surveying coarse earth an inch from his face, with his head ringing and no real comprehension of how the change in perspective had come to pass.

He didn’t know what had become of Weaver, hadn’t gotten a reply back to his attempts to contact him, and feared that the older man had been sent to respawn. Given the man’s unfortunately high death counter, north of fifty by this point, Anda thought it might be several days before he would be able to return. He felt pretty bad about that, for he knew that Weaver used the Inside to escape from the discomforts of his elderly body.

“Enough, Tark,” said one of the Urglah. A quick Scan revealed he was named Vish, but no other information. “Let Volunteer loose. Urglah will sort.”

There was muttering from the assembled group as the large bear totem orc released Anda’s face with an extra twist, and Anda cast his Scan further. Despite what Lilijoy had told him, he couldn’t help feeling a pang of unease, some residue from his time as a loyal Maasai clan member. Every single orc around him, dozens that he could see, had a name. Many had titles displayed proudly, Vanquisher, Conqueror, Devastator and similar. He was only using a shallow Scan, enough for a quick glimpse of a name and deliberately displayed title, to avoid offending them. Still, his surveillance was noted.

“You see, Volunteer? Show respect. Already you have offended against us.”

Anda knew better than to show weakness. Oh well, when in Rome… he thought.

“Release me. Prove you deserve respect!” he snarled, trying to capture the orc’s way of speaking, then trying to avoid the urge to cough that followed. He really wanted to ask why they kept calling him ‘Volunteer’, but hesitated to show any ignorance just yet.

“You brought Outsider here, fool!” the Orsur known as Tark broke in. “Ten long deaths for you!”

Oh boy. That doesn’t sound good. Anda thought as fast as he could, which was pretty fast, these days. “Brought prize,” he spat back. “Master crafter. Hates other Outsiders.” He began composing an apology to use the next time he spoke to Mr. Sennit.

An odd cackling came from the assembled Urkaen, and he heard the word ‘prize’ repeated several times. Guess the hyenas liked that, he noted. Indeed, a new orc, an Urkaen approached. He had two white scars across his throat, and his forehead was dotted with round lumps.

“Speak more of this,” he said, peering closely into Anda’s face. His breath was… not good, and Anda could see drool pooling among the teeth of his projecting lower jaw.

“He made my shield out of only grass. Find it and see what good more like it could do against the spears and arrows of the Hated.” He did his best to speak the orc’s name for his former tribe with the same vitriol Tark had applied to ‘Outsider’.

He was cast heavily to the ground and the orcs conferred above his head, if conferring meant an explosion of snarling, snapping gutturals that Anda couldn’t parse. Finally, after suffering a minor shower of saliva droplets from above, he was hauled back to his feet. The Urglah, Vish, addressed him, which Anda hoped was a good sign.

“Matrons speak for you. Urkaen speak for you. You will be sorted.” He had a broad white scar running across his face from shredded, high-set ear to the lower corner of his mouth. Anda couldn’t tell if the corner of his lip was raised in an expression of amused disdain, or if it was just scar tissue, but he could see sharp yellow teeth, before he was spun around and his bonds were severed. “Now, run.”

There was more orcish laughter as he was pushed and kicked to the edge of the gathering space in the center of buildings of piled stone.

“Run!” Vish roared.

***

We finally found it! Lilijoy thought with satisfaction. She looked at the small pile of valuables she and Attaboy had extracted from hundreds of crates over the past day and a half. Among the augsight emitters disguised as ceramic vases and control consoles masquerading as picture frames was a rectangular object the size of a toaster oven. At a first glance, it was a toaster oven, though its actually operation differed significantly.

I guess that’s why they called it an Easy Bake Oven.

The only real feature of the EBO was a single drawer, more a basket really, that one could pull out. At the moment, it was utterly inert, requiring some kind of field-based power source that Marcus had assured her was nearly ubiquitous in clan buildings, though evidently not in this particular storage chamber.

“Thank god that’s done,” said Attaboy, throwing himself down onto a pile of bedding they had pulled out over fifty crates ago. “I sure hope this thing is worth all that effort.”

“Even if we’re limited to standard operation, I think it’ll be great to have,” Lilijoy replied. “Now we just have to figure out how much we can take, and tidy up here. With a little luck, we can come back for the rest in the future.”

Attaboy groaned. “I’m going to go crazy if I have to spend one more minute in this room. I need to get back Inside, or my trainer is going to kill me. Like, she will literally kill me, no joke. Last time I was late with an assignment, she sent me a thousand feet straight up and let me fall, told me to consider my responsibilities on the way down.”

“And did you?”

“Nah. Just turned off my fear and enjoyed the ride. But still.”

Lilijoy shook her head, not sure whether Inside education or Attaboy’s attitude was more disturbing. She could sympathize with his desire to get back Inside though. The satellites didn’t reach this part of the building, and there were no signal repeaters within range, so she had been cut off almost as long.

At least I got settled with the orcs first, she thought.

She had been fortunate that the winds had carried the kites, with her dangling underneath, in approximately the right direction. She had floated along until dawn, tuning out the various discomforts of her crude rope harness and enjoying the relative peace. The Regional Lord hadn’t noticed her departure, nor shown any signs of chasing her, so the only problem became one of getting back down before the giant flying predators started their day.

Luckily, it wasn’t hard for Lilijoy to arrange a more or less gentle landing, though she did burn through a fair amount of diamond energy grabbing this and that from her Trial Space to increase her weight and bring the kites lower and lower to the steaming earth. When she finally touched down, it was in a pile of sticks and rusted metal, surrounded by a patrol of very confused wolf-looking orcs, Urkulps, she came to learn.

After the patrol ascertained that she was female, and not a threat, as far as they could tell anyway, they grabbed up all the metal and wood with great howling whoops of jubilation over their literal windfall and guided her directly back to the Matrons’ camp. There she was met by a relieved and somewhat frantic Skria among dozens and dozens of orc children.

“Where have you been?”

Lilijoy had opened her mouth to explain, but Skria was already talking again.

“Naduk brought us here, and they’ve been very nice to me, even if they don’t quite know what to do with me, because they seem to be very busy, thought the matrons are nice enough, to me anyway. They said I can leave anytime I want but the problem is that Jess is here somewhere, and they weren’t nearly so nice to her, and then they took her away to be Judged, which seems like a big deal, but no one will tell me what it actually means. So I’ve pretty much just been gliding in circles for a day. Where have you been?”

She held Skria’s hand and told her. It took a while. All around them the young orcs, ranging from those who could barely walk to some larger than Naduk, played and ran in joyful chaos. Lilijoy was fascinated to see the way the features of each totem group seemed to emerge with age, and it was hard not to be distracted as she related her tale.

Before she had finished, they were approached by a heavily cloaked orc, who… well, grovelled probably wasn’t too strong a word. He, because it was a he, as it turned out, had grovelled so aggressively that Lilijoy had little choice but to do as he asked, which was to follow him into building that seemed little more than a huge pile of rubble from the outside.

“Good luck!” Skria had declined to join them, for reasons that soon became clear.

Once past the rough opening, she followed the orc into the darkness, trying not to stumble over the irregular stone floor and doing her best not to think about how many tons of loose rock were overhead. The walls, and what passed for ceiling were jagged, irregular stacks, as if any rock that could be removed had been, leaving behind only those that bore weight.

Maybe you think of architecture a bit differently if everyone can respawn, she had mused at the time. She had since come to understand that many denizens of the boiling plains did not take kindly to structures, especially if earth magic was involved, and the orcs had given up long ago on building by that method. Since they didn’t have much in the way of architecture or large-scale construction skills, this was what they had managed over several generations.

There, in the palace of stones, she met her first, and only to this point, orc matron.

The Matron floated in a hot spring, a pool filled with as much abundant flesh as water. It was not a small pool. Articles related to sexual dimorphism across various species filled Lilijoy’s mind, for the female was easily five times the mass of any orc male she had seen so far.

“Please approach, young… human is it? Are you particularly young, or just unusually small for your kind?” The Matron’s voice was deep and round.

She stepped to the edge of the pool. “Maybe both? How should I address one in your esteemed position?”

The Matron laughed, a low rumbling wheeze. “I’m ass deep in a pool, hardly an esteemed position. Leave the pandering to the males. My name is Melloby. I would emerge to greet you, but the young I am carrying weigh heavily upon me at this stage. I have been informed that you brought great gifts to my people, and I wanted to express my gratitude.”

It took Lilijoy a moment to realize that Melloby must be referring to the wood and rusty metal she had used as ballast. “I can get more easily enough,” she said. “Do you happen to know what has become of my friend Jessila?”

Melloby’s broad face fell. “That is a subject I cannot discuss with you, not were you to bring us a forest of spears or a field of swords. I am the least of the Matrons, serving as their voice at this time, and such matters are the province of the Grand Matrons. I am sorry.”

There was a finality, and a compassion, within her voice that told Lilijoy not to pursue the subject. If Jess needed to be rescued from the Matrons at some point, it wouldn’t make sense to forecast her willingness to intervene by being overly insistent. She decided to raise a different subject.

“There is a half-orc, an Urglah and a friend of mine, who is traveling to your lands. Is there anything that can be done to ease his acceptance by the males?”

Melloby chortled, “A Volunteer makes his way home, eh? Oh, the males always have such fun getting those sorted. He has a soul yes?” When Lilijoy nodded, she continued. “Then he will be accepted, eventually. It is … not my place to interfere with the affairs of the males. If he proves worthy, he might be chosen by a Matron to become a sire, but that may be years away.”

Anda’s going to love that, Lilijoy thought with amusement. Then she had another thought.

“He will have another friend of mine with him, an older human. An Outsider. Will that cause problems?”

A fountain of water exploded as the enormous Matron leapt to her feet, dispelling any sense of sloth. It was immediately clear that her body was not soft, for Lilijoy could clearly see her immense musculature through a surface layer of body fat, along with way, way more breasts than she had ever wanted to see. She towered over Lilijoy, even though her feet were still in the sunken pool, looking down at her past her enormous, swollen belly.

“If that fool brings an Outsider onto our lands, there’s no telling what the males will do to him! Matrons are able to put aside our prejudices, for we better understand the complexities of the world, though I must admit I am tempted to squash you where you stand for acknowledging friendship to that ilk, gifts or no gifts.”

Oh boy. Guess now wouldn’t be a good time to share the complexities of my situation then, she thought, followed by, I really need to get her together with Rosemallow. That would be something!

Thanks to her experience being yelled at and threatened by enormous women, Lilijoy didn’t bat an eye.

“You could try,” she said, looking up with a serious expression. “But it might not be as easy as you think.”

The huge orc woman stared at her for several seconds before her face cracked into a smile. “You have the heart of a Matron,” she said. “Forgive my outburst. Carrying young makes me quick to anger.” Melloby supported her belly with one arm and began the more cumbersome process of lowering herself back into the water. “Now,” she said, “tell me why the Matrons should intervene on your friends’ behalf.”

That had been over eighteen hours ago now. Lilijoy had warned Anda that he might be in for a wild ride, but he had waved away her concerns. “Mr. Sennit and I know it’ll be a challenge. As long as they don’t kill us immediately, I’ll make it work somehow.”

Lilijoy was immensely curious to find out what was happening, but after the first few times she contacted Anda, he had told her, politely, to bug off for a while. She had kept herself busy helping Attaboy and cultivating bone bugs for herself. She spent several hours integrating the bone bugs with her system, which allowed her to speed up the process of replacing her original biology, and then set to work on her skull. Since she was still growing, she didn’t want to fuse everything together just yet, but she had made significant inroads toward toughening the bones of her face and forehead, and was looking forward to beginning work on her teeth and lower jaw.

She even made some extra for Attaboy, though she hadn’t decided if giving them to him was the right thing to do just yet. Somehow, the notion of Attaboy with unbreakable bones made her more nervous for his safety, not less.

If I can get the EBO to do what I want, then most of these bottlenecks will disappear, she thought. At least until there are more than just a few of us. Maybe I can get it to churn out more horseflies, or something even better too.

She set a part of her thoughts to designing next generation insect-drones, and then turned her attention to tidying up the storage room.

.