Gula POV

“Move,” I whispered to the battered and hungry orcs moving away from the ragged slave tents a good stone’s throw away.

The filthy, hole-riddled clothes they wore matched the tents we were leaving behind in the nightlight. We were surrounded by patches of grass as the chorus of mayhem in the camp on the left played out over the verdant swamp. Cell had scouted the place out and gave us enough of an idea about the patrols and position of the tents that we were able to set up a low-risk attack to distract them.

The camp was messy and haphazardly thrown together, owing to the short amount of time they had to get it together. That the Phoenix empire had to use rope instead of proper metal chains for the slaves also spoke to their haste. As the last orc left the camp and spread out into the dark swamplands, giving me an appreciative nod as so many others had, I heard the sound of a bird call from high above though it was unlike any I had ever heard before.

Off to the right, the sound felt like a physical blow. The soft hum of mating bush birds and crows I had come to associate with the sound was nothing compared to the deep-throated warbles that were assaulting me. My teeth and bones rattled from the sheer volume as I looked up in the sky to see one of the stars moving.

“Phoenix! Run!” One of the orcs further ahead shouted, prompting a stampede as my fellow orcs ran away from the now expanding star in the black sky, with me following behind.

I was running past grass and cattails as the heat began washing over my back and a red glow started pushing back the night. My panicked run was stopped by the sound of a flood followed by another, now more aggrieved cry from the monster. Looking back for the briefest of moments, I saw a long spear of water rising out of the swamp and thrusting into the side of the phoenix. It was now just above us and I could now make out the ruby feathers and orange beak in between the blasts of fire it was randomly spewing everywhere as the lance of water buried into its chest.

I thought it was one of the frojan but in the mass of water, I could see the body of Cell spread out in long black lines. When the phoenix gave another shriek and blasted a wave of fire in the sky in a panic, the heat seemed to dim. As a large cloud of steam started forming in the sky, the monster decided it didn’t want to tangle with this weird water weapon anymore and scrambled away with a hard flap of its two wings before taking off into the sky and back to where it had come from.

I eventually stopped in a wide stretch of land with the escaped slaves sprawled about. A few days with little food and hard work had taken the energy out of them, but I was confident we could make our way back before the Phoenix empire could rally its troops. Eventually we got the air we needed and started our trek back home. Along the way back, Baloo came out of the water on the right side of the road with a few of our associates and, surprisingly, a frojan from another patrol.

Light green with an open white shirt, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Baloo. Which meant he was a good head taller than me. His big brown eyes surveyed me and the other escaped slaves. Even so, there was an odd feeling of intimidation coming from Baloo that I could quite make out. The newcomer was muscular with his near-white belly, but not exaggeratedly so nor was the staff in his right hand laden with jewels or gold.

“Evening. It seems you lot have taken the initiative again.” He said with a deep rumble.

“Just doing what we can.” I said with a slight bow, only then realizing that he said ‘again’.

I must have had a question on my face because he coughed before sticking out his left hand.

“Pantoon. Special forces.” He said casually.

Baloo’s intimidation suddenly making sense, I put out my hand and shook his. Special forces were the best of the best, elite of the elite, and were the ones you would think never existed if not for the trail of bodies they left behind. As intimidating as that was, there was something about Eli’s ability to crush fortresses and mobs of mages with just his magical ability that made all others dim through his sheer power.

“Gula, nobody,” I said, meeting his eyes.

He got a wide smile before he pulled his hand back.

“I wouldn’t say nobody, miss. Farewell. We’ll help pick up any stragglers, but I dare say you’ve done enough tonight.”

With that, he turned around and jumped into the black water.

Baloo looked at me and I just nodded.

“You heard the powerful magic frojan, time to head home,” I said impishly.

Baloo huffed before he turned, his blue robe barely visible in the nighttime as we started walking back home.

“What magical power can a frojan have when that man up north exists?” Baloo said with a bitter tone.

“Enough to crush us both, Baloo. More than enough.” I mused with a small huff. He nodded, saying nothing else as we walked until the clear land had given way to the various patches of islands and streams.

“Special forces have taken over. We’re heading home and I volunteered to take you back.” Baloo said with a turn towards the water. I nodded and turned on the heated vambrace before plunging into the black depths. The trek back was a dull affair as was the next two days. We went about our life in the same way we always had and when I arrived at Lokan’s house to eat a good breakfast of sausage and biscuits, our conversation kept at its usual pace.

“Yes, using stitches on old clothes could be a pain, but I’ve had a few dresses that were-“

Salamede, who was sitting to my left with Cell on her shoulder, was interrupted by a knock at the door. Lokan, the blue snake woman opposite of me, turned her slitted red eyes to the door while Salamede’s mother on my right got up to get into her room in the basement. Cell leaped off the shoulder of Salamede’s green dress and up through the top of the roof.

Salamede was content to slowly get up as Lokan casually walked past Salamede’s mother to the door. When a hard thwack sounded out after Cell left the home, we all stopped dead. The two Keltons started rushing towards their holes in the floor but I noticed that the left side of the wall had a patchwork of water seeping through it. Before anyone could think about what to do, the wall fell with a loud crash.

The small avalanche of red stone quickly gave way as several frojan leaped through the hole. Wearing wooden shoulder pads with tight robes of blue, red, green, and teal, they stormed through the hole and started blasting water balls at all of us. I shifted my eyes to the sword that had seen me through everything as my training kicked in. It was leaning against the stove in its sheath, but I only took a single step towards it when I felt a hard pain on the right side of my head and the sound of a hard thump. I tried to look to the right, but my vision faded to black as the frojan started picking Salamede up.

My nose filled with the smell of grass and the cold bite of snow.

Shaking awake, I looked up to see a grey sky as the cold gripped my body. Moving my hands, I found them bound behind me. My arms had the sting of blood loss as I tried to move them before I felt a large hand pull me up to my knees. Looking around, the landscape was almost flat snow with scars of bark and patches of grass sticking out of a near inch of white dust. Looking to my right, it was one of the large blue frojan with wood shoulder pads wearing a green robe. Salamede and her mother were on my right, while a quick look told me Lokan was on my left and my mother behind her.

All tied up and on their knees like I was. On both sides of us was a line of leather-clad orcs and frojan.

The sound of hammers on the left made me turn a bit past my mother. A stone's throw away was a group of orcs setting up some tents and tables. Some were also carrying sacks of vegetables and grain towards a kitchen further behind.

“Chairs!” The Frojan yelled.

Several laborers brought up some rickety chairs and we were all promptly sat down in them. For what felt like hours, we were put stuck there with not a word said between any of us. Eventually, Cell started a spirit connection with me through the ground. He showed me mental images of a water blade cutting into his body and evading several frojan to slip into the water. After that, there wasn’t anything to do but sit back and wait for whatever was coming.

For the next two days, we were fed oatmeal and water. With never a word spoken as to our crime, we were moved from the camp to another cave heading further south twice. Though the guards seemed irritated at something, they kept to their silence whenever we bathed, ate, or slept. In the early morning of the third day, I and my mother were separated from the others at a cave and brought back to the campsite. Moving through the camp, we were brought up to a long oak table. Sitting on the left of the table was the large green frojan with a silverback, black robe, and deep bronze eyes. He had his arms crossed and looked distinctly uncomfortable. On the right was the orc general, Mor. The late thirties orc had a jaw as strong as her nose that emphasized her thick lips and short-cropped black hair. Behind her was her ever-present war hammer and two guards, leather armored orcs with the one with a black ponytail and sharp cheekbones and chin on the left, and on the right stood the redhead with a squashed face and long pointed ears.

In the center of the table sat the two far more interesting figures.

Borba, the exemplar to orcs everywhere with sharp cheekbones and a fine red dress and white underdress sat with a plain look of indifference to everything. My heart started thumping as I took in the immaculate vision of orc beauty with servile love. Alas, my zeal for her was ill-served at this moment.

On the center-right was an older orc woman with a grey robe that covered everything but her hands and head. Her slight chin only emphasized her wide cheekbones, which when paired with her grey hair gave her an almost grandmotherly appearance. Something that was undone from the murderous expression her red eyes held as she looked at Borba with barely restrained fury before turning to me.

“Greetings, Gula. I must say, you’ve certainly led an interesting life. Morn, representative of high command for our great peoples.” She said with an impatient smile as the guard took off my rope binds.

I just huffed as I wiped my now free hands on my white shirt and brown pants.

“How did you find out?” I asked noncommittally.

The blond orc just smirked before giving a small laugh.

“Your insistence on using the pandego creature to save the slaves was admirable, but your hunger for glory led one of the slaves to see-”

“Borba!” The older goblin screamed. Not just a light scolding but a proper deep-throated yell. “Have you not plunged our heads far enough into this fire? Last I checked your magical abilities don’t make you fireproof.” The older orc shot a murderous glance towards Mor and her two guards, who shirked back with proper fear.

Ah, well at least I know how they found out.

Borba sucked in her lips as she scrunched her blond eyebrows.

“I did what we have to do to catch the quad mage. The pandego’s are the only ones who could match his power and get him southward.”

The orcs in the camp all nodded, but the frojan all looked a little bit sick. The most evident of them being the Frojan general, who uncrossed his arms and leaned forward on the table before the deep base of his voice rang out.

“You made a lot of decisions, decisions you were not authorized to make. This is going to call into question letting frojan forces fall under orc command. A sore subject you have now aggravated.”

I felt the tension in the air as I noticed that the orcs and frojan had unconsciously formed into smaller, seperate groups.

“Indeed, Kran.” Morn said with a clenched jaw, drawing all eyes back to her. “I know you’re the progeny of a fire caster and, as such, you can shit gold and piss sunshine. But we have been far too indulgent in letting you do whatever takes your fancy, whether it be military access or items of interest. Something I will correct when this mess is sorted.”

Borba slapped a hand to the table, her face dark green with outrage.

“Am I the only one thinking about our race?!” She demanded with a yell to match Morn’s. “The destiny of our kind is near our very lands and yet all you do is question, scheme, and plot. We needed to take action and I took it.”

“You!” Morn stood up and pointed a finger in her face before pointing it southward. “You have done nothing but think with your vagina the moment the report on the quad mage came in. May we all be branded fools for the day we allowed you access to the reports station.

There was a mountain of more information we needed to get on the dwarven spying before we made an official move. But your brain fobbed its thinking off to your ovaries and put us all through this barely thought out scheme. Even if the Kelton’s helped make the pandego’s, there’s no guarantee the dwarves see them as indispensable. There were so many ways to go about this and you chose the one that would get you what you wanted as quickly as you wanted it, consequences and risks be damned.”

Borba still looked defiant but then turned to me with a stony face, which made me shrink in towards myself. The rest quickly followed suit as Morn sat back in her chair. The older orc coughed before speaking in a much calmer and even tone.

“Let’s get to the point of why we are all here. Gula, how long have you been in contact with the dwarves, and for what purpose?”

I took a deep breath and decided lying about everything wasn’t going to work and merely… adjusted the truth.

“I first met them on the night of the attack on the Crypt base. The pandego’s helped my group overwhelm the mages there. It was all hidden in smoke and fire and we both decided that we had a mutual interest in pushing back the Coalition. The show we put on was performed and the actors left the stage for other productions.

Sadly, the associates who helped shape the pandego’s were in the Coalition and the dwarves were loath to see them killed when… other items of business would have seen them swing. An arrangement was reached where they were hidden here in exchange for food and money.” I said in a dead monotone, same as any other report I gave.

“And where are the other two?” Mor demanded with a huff.

“I didn’t need to know. They just left the one you saw as a guard.”

The frojan leader huffed.

“He certainly wasn’t small when he was ripping mages apart with his hands.”

I just gave a light smile before nodding.

“They are a very flexible bunch when it comes to size.”

They all looked between each other, obviously conducting spirit communications before they all turned back to me. Morn stood up to announce my verdict.

“We will meet the dwarves at the crypt base. Terms for the release of their crafter will be negotiated. Gula and her mother will be made present as bargaining chips, though their worth will be little. Let’s get moving people.”

With nods all around, the camp was broken up by the laborers. I was quickly rebound and put off to the left of the festivities as our trek north was prepared. Among the workers, I now noticed a distinct separation of the orcs and frojan. For the first time, I had to consider the frojan as a separate entity to the orcs. That same thought was seemingly flying through everyone else’s heads as well as the two groups now maneuvered around each other.

When it was all packed up, we were all lead down a dirt road through slowly rolling hills. My mother and I were left to ourselves near the back with only two frojan guards to keep us company as we walked northward. Mother, thankfully, had her full leather armor on and was braced against the cold while my clothes provided some meager respite against the bitter winter’s kiss. The surrounding snowscape was layered with a rough inch of snow that helped hid some of the lesser hills as we trudged forward.

Following behind the laborer’s carrying chairs and the table with no sound falling over the empty fields but the crushing of snow. After a while, I was surprised to see Morn and Kran fall back to accompany us. The elder orc walked directly on my left while Kran walked beside mother, who was on my direct right.

“We need to know just what the pandego’s are capable of.” Morn said politely.

I was surprised at the civility but only nodded and gave them all the rough estimates I could give of Eli’s vine suit. When the final estimate, the jump length, came out, there was a moment of silence before Kran groaned and put a light green webbed hand to his snout.

“Shit. They might just be able to do it.”

Morn also looked worried but said nothing, so I decided to interject myself.

“I’m guessing I’m not the only one who thinks getting the quad mage is a bad idea.”

Morn tried to look put off by me speaking in their presence, but the slight smile on her lips and the nod from Kran said otherwise.

“Indeed, though I’m surprised one of your kind has enough room in your head to consider such a thing when the prospect of his seed clouds all other orcs judgment.”

“Bastard,” Morn playfully scolded. “There are plenty of orcs who are clear-headed right now.”

“Not nearly enough,” Kran grumbled, the deep bass of his voice coming clear through.

“But my kids one of ‘em” Mother said proudly.

A few more minutes of silence passed before Kran coughed and spoke in a lower tone so that only our group could hear.

“We can’t do this, Morn. If we succeed, the humans will travel from every nation of the world to grind us all to paste. We don’t have the troops, supplies, or means to make this work.”

Morn just sighed and nodded.

“We’ll discuss it when the time comes. There is a long road we have yet to travel. Maybe he will die before we even get the pandego’s.”

With nothing left to say, the two moved ahead back to their original spots in the long line of orcs and frojan. Left to our thoughts, we marched on to where this whole adventure began.

Eventually, we made our way down the road and arrived at our destination. The snow couldn’t cover the large chunks of stone, both in the road and on the hill to the right. With the wooden remains of the bunkers and houses near the back still sticking out of the earth, it looked more like a graveyard than the remains of a once-proud fort as the ring of stone around the edges showed where the wall once stood.

My mother and I were put in a separate tent near the western side of the camp for two days and continued our usual pattern of gruel meals and cold showers, a cruelty I only now knew the true depravity of with my routine use of hot showers. In the early morning of the third day, I was sitting in a chair across from my mother talking as the far-off frojan guards dutifully ignored us for some light breakfast.

“Yeah, but the way I see it-“

“Gula.” A voice called to me. Closing my eyes for a second to mourn my lost sanity, I looked back to my mother. Her two brown braids were swinging as she looked around and her thick lips were puckered.

“Act natural,” The voice said again, sounding vaguely familiar but the tone was horribly mangled with high and low pitches. “It’s Eli. Where are the others?”

Looking around, I noticed that there was an odd dust-up of wind over the snow on our left as flakes of snow whirled around.

‘Wind magic,’ I said to mother in a spirit connection. Her red eyes went wide as she struggled to not show a reaction.

I explained the route south and the various hills and rivers that would lead him to the cave where we were being held.

“All right,” Eli said through the expanse of nothingness. “I… I’ll have to get them first since there are three there. I doubt I can be stealthy about it, but I promise, I will be back for you.”

“I know. Good hunting.” I said casually.

The odd twirling wind stopped and we were left to our idleness again.

“He actually cares for you.” Mother said with a raise of her right eyebrow as her red eyes looked me up and down.

“Apparently,” I said idly. Inside my chest was beating like a drum but it was going to be a long and dangerous day so I couldn’t afford to be distracted.

It was after a few hours that a frojan messenger ran up to the now completed camp of tents. Harried looking and exhausted, his screams carried clear across the field.

“Quad mage! The quad mage and the pandego attacked the cave,”

There was a rush all around the camp as frojan and orcs clustered together to see what the commotion was. Afterward, there was the sound of screams and arguing until Morn called out over the cacophony of noise.

“Silence!” She screamed as she started walking out of the wide tent near the center of the camp on a slight rise in the earth, Borba flapping her arms hysterically on her right and Kran on the left, clenching his fists. Borba was barely audible at this distance while the large frojan just looked like he wanted to kill someone as his dark brown eyes bore into the older orc. Looking out over the line of tents, her red eyes fell on us. I couldn’t quite make out her expression as she started moving away from the main camp with Kran, Borba, and a few frojan and orc guards in tow while Mor stayed back to keep order in the camp.

Walking closer to us, I decided that playing Kran against the others was the best time delaying tactic I could manage. It then occurred to me that Borba would be displeased with me withholding such information. My stomach twisted but the time where I could have prevented her displeasure had passed. When they were just a stone’s throw away, Morn stopped and looked me up and down with a blank face. After a few seconds, she coughed into her hand and spoke with an impatient tone.

“We’ve gotten word from our holding cave. The quad mage… THE quad mage attacked it with the pandego. Pulled the upper layer of the cave right off and used metal magic to blast away the weapons of the orcs. Then he used water balls to knock out the frojan before anyone could react. But a passing patrol saw it from the river and scampered back here.”

I raised an eyebrow and puckered my lips as I felt genuine surprise.

“How many did he kill then?” I asked with a fake interest and energy.

Morn’s eyebrows furrowed as she took me in, as did Kran and Borba, the latter of which looked at me with a suspicion that felt like a dagger to my heart.

“None,” Kran intoned with an equally blank face.

“Dear child,” Morn asked in a sweet low tone accompanied by a loving smile, “Would you happen to know what he could possibly be doing here? How does he know the pandego?”

Even the guards were staring at me now as some light shouting from the far camp was all that could be heard. Strumming my right hand on the arm of the chair, I took a deep breath before the plunge.

“It’s no so much an issue of him knowing them, as much as it is an issue of him being them.”

The color drained from everyone’s faces, except mine and my mother's. Kran’s face almost matched his silver back while Borba and Morn just soundlessly worked their jaws. Deciding to waste as much of their time as possible, I spilled everything. I went over how Eli helped me at this base and kept his identity hidden, lying only to keep my frojan fellows out of the loop. I told them about how Eli approached me again as a ‘pandego’ to help him get to the viper base. Every pointless, meaningless detail was gone over in exhaustive precision to give Eli as much time as possible.

The audience was too bound by my tale to consider what I was actually doing. As I came near the end, even the frojan guards just stood still and stared as they took in the deluge of impossibilities. Somewhere along the way, that streak of personal grievance came right back up. I went back in my tale, talking about how I almost reported him, how he helped me deal with being a member of the shamed, and how he had put his wife and her mother with us to keep them safe.

“The humans haven’t been able to get him to mate?” Kran said as some of the color in his face came back and he looked relieved near the end of my story.

“Do you have any idea what you have done?” Morn said with a look of pure disgust, “You kept one of the greatest prizes our entire species could ever know from us because we stiffed you on a few silvers and some words on your file. You selfish cunt.”

I leaned back and puckered my lips as I did my best not to look at Borba, who I was certain had to be fuming.

“When a silver is the difference between a full belly or starvation, when a few words on your report could be what gets that loathsome piece of black leather off your neck, it counts for more than you could ever conceive. Though I suppose you lot have never worried for food or praise so I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Deciding to get it over with, I looked at Borba. Dreading to see what the epitome of orc sexuality thought of me, I was surprised to see her looking off in the distance drooling. Though she quickly snapped out of it and turned to Morn.

“Scion,” She growled, sending spit flying everywhere. “We are heading south. He may still be there looking-“

“No!” Kran shouted, stomping his right foot into the snow as he did so. “We cannot catch him. It would be a disaster for us if we did.”

“What?!” Borba shrieked with a furious scowl and bared teeth. Pulling up a ball of fire in her hand, she looked more like a beast than the soft beauty she had been a minute ago.

“We need to talk about this.” Morn said as she interjected herself between Kran and the orc fire mage.

“What is there to talk about?!” Kran screamed as his bellow almost deafened my eardrums. “We are not getting fucked into the dirt just so you can live out some poorly thought out fantasy. There is no possible outcome where we get the quad mage and we don’t all die.”

“Coward! We are so close to-“

Borba was interrupted by a deep rumbling in the soil as a wide brown wall was put up between us and the camp. I couldn’t tell how thick it was, but the height was more than three men. Before anyone could react, a cloud of mist rolled in from behind me. I couldn’t quite tell what was happening when I got knocked to the ground and I felt a burst of heat near my neck.

My world was a gray swirl of mist as I was dragged to my feet before it was all blown away. Morn, Kran, the guards, and my mother were huddled in a small group to my left, a stone throw away while behind them Cell was floating a few menacing earth spears at them as he took position near the wall. That was when I noticed the hand on my shoulder and a thin line of fire directed at my neck. Borba had her red robe all over my shoulders and was heavily breathing on my right as we both stood there.

Then a huge wail of wind blotted out all sound as cracks of lightning whirled around us.

“Hello! My old friends.”

It was coming from behind and I knew it was Eli’s voice. We both turned and, sure enough, a few feet away was a mass of steel armor with a smiling metal mask below those purple eyes sticking out of the square helmet. Those eyes, so filled with tenderness and joy this past week, still had a bit of merry in them but with a hint of dangerous anger beneath. He took two steps forward, hefting the war hammer in his right hand and holding a spear of lightning in the other as he stalked forward like a predator.

“Oh, shit,” Kran moaned while everyone else stood still.

“Ah, the quad mage himself,” Borba said, the wet smack of her lips coming clear through in my right ear. Eli did a dramatic wave with his left hand like he was waving hello, though the rod of lightning made the softness of the gesture crumble.

“Indeed, what a pleasure to be among such warm company. While I would love to have some tea and catch up on old times, I’m afraid time is one of those commodities no amount of magic will get you. Now if you would unhand Gula and her mother.” He finished with a slight nod.

The orcs looked to Morn while the frojan looked to Kran, but neither leader had anything to say. Borba just swallowed some spit before putting the line of fire closer to my throat. That knocked the false sense of friendliness out of Eli’s eyes as they went cold.

“Let them go,” Eli said in a dangerous tone. This time a blast of heat accompanied the wind, melting the snow from him and towards us as the rising wall of earth slowly encircled behind him.

“I don’t think so,” Borba said with wild passion coming clear through.

There was an increase in pressure as it felt like the air was squeezing my body. Turning around, everyone else was falling under the spell as it looked like the guards and Morn were struggling to stand up.

“Excuse me?!” Eli’s voice thundered. It sounded like it was coming from all around and had the deep base of a mountain roaring.

“You need or want Gula,” Borba shot back, clearly struggling to speak over the din of wind and the occasional crack of lightning that started slowly moving around us. “You wouldn’t have risked coming here otherwise.”

The wind continued for a moment longer but finally died down as the lines of lightning fizzled into nothingness. If not for the fact that it still felt as warm as a summer's day, it would look like we were all idly standing around for a nice group chat. Eli placed his hammer’s head down and rested his right hand on the pommel before huffing.

“Indeed,” Eli said like this was a casual conversation between lost acquaintances.

That drew the eyes of everyone to me. Morn, in particular, seemed to be re-appraising me.

“Well then, orc fire mage, are we to reach an exchange on this matter?”

Borba licked her lips before sucking in a deep breath.

“You know what I want. What any orc could want from you.”

Her voice had an almost hysterical cadence to it as I felt her body shaking in anticipation against mine.

Damn, did I really make Eli put up with this when we first kissed?

Aside from my internal bickering, there was no sound except for the beating on the stone wall. As the seconds ticked by and Eli’s eyes remained blank, the first sound from him came in the form of a sigh followed by his decision.

“What would the parameters of the exchange be?” He asked in a defeated tone.

The frojan all looked… impressed as they stole a look at me. Morn and the orc guards, on the other hand, stared with sullen envy. Looking me up and down, they were trying to see what would prompt the quad mage to take such risks for my sake. It was the first time I had anyone be jealous of me, and if it wasn’t for a giant ball of agonizing worry in my gut, I would have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Borba just sucked in air through her teeth as she held the line of fire directed at my throat.

“I’ll come over with Gula. Once we’re finished, the mother will be handed over. I assume your mother-in-law holds enough value to Gula that you’ll hold off blasting me until she is safe. Say a good ten or fifteen minutes after I leave.”

Mother-in-Law?

That was a mighty leap, but one I wasn’t going to interfere with if it kept my mother's head firmly attached to her neck. Eli seemed to struggle for a moment before he finally nodded and waved us over. Borba was so eager, the line of fire touched my skin a few times as we awkwardly sprinted over. When we were in arm's reach, Eli seemed to mentally check out as his eyes went blank.

Borba wasted no time pushing me to the side and moving to get Eli’s groin guard off. Her golden eyes were wide with lust as Eli just grunted and started working the straps himself. I quickly turned around and tried to focus on the shouting around the wall. Cell had stopped pointing stone spears and focused on making sure the wall was maintained. After a minute of hearing straps and cloth moving, the slapping of flesh behind me took over. My ears burning, I just listened to the grunts and slapping for a few minutes until Eli finally spoke up.

“Gula”

I bit my lip for a moment, trying to not look behind me.

“Gula,” Eli said again. The tone of hurt and struggle in his voice finally made me give in.

Turning around, Borba had her long blonde hair and red robe sprawled in the grass as Eli was mounting her like a dog. I couldn’t see… the point of contact from here but the lower armor section being brought down to around his thighs combined with Borba’s bare ass against his hips left no doubt as to where it was.

“Gula, if you would help me expedite this process, I would greatly appreciate it.”

I looked up to him with a bit lip, preparing some quip about men finishing too quickly on their own but stopped when I saw some tears in his eyes. Swallowing any residual remarks, I found myself moving towards him without thinking about what I was doing. Taking the mask in both hands, I removed its straps and put it to my right in the grass. There was a wave of hmm’s and oohs from the orcs as his strong jaw and handsome face were now revealed, but I was too distracted by the pain he was going through. Without a moment's thought, I kissed him, letting that smoky goodness roll over my tongue.

The poor man was still struggling, though. Putting my hand down his neck, I ran my palm around his chest. That bit of comfort prompted him to put his right hand around my waist while he settled his left one on Borba’s bum to steady her. A second later he started thrusting again, accompanied by a surprised squeal from the orc mage. As I felt up his body, his muscles were contracted to near steel hardness as he struggled to keep going. It was when I had a hand on his chest and he gave a low cry as he did a particularly hard thrust into her that I was struck with the realization of what was happening.

Borba was raping him.

Their positions for the act being so different from the awful tales I had heard in the market, and Eli’s overwhelming power, had obscured that truth. But she had stripped him of his right to say no and he clearly wasn’t willing. Looking down at Borba, her face lost in her own passions with not a care in the world for the hurt she was putting the man through as she lustily licked her own lips, I thought back to all the times I fawned over her being the best example of everything orcs could be or would ever be. All that sycophantic devotion I gave away was spent on…this awful person. Then another thought occurred to me.

She was the epitome of everything orcs could be and, being an orc, she was also a rapist.

As every other orc would be.

My stomach clenched as I felt bile rise in my throat. For a moment my kissing with Eli faltered, but I redoubled my efforts for a second before pulling back with a light pop. I stuck out my right hand and squeezed her right ass cheek, nails first. I drew blood and she gave an outraged huff before I cut her off.

“Move your hips for him! You fucking slut!” I spat at her before I went back to kissing Eli. His tears now mingled with mine as we both just tried to get this over with. It was so emotionally draining as the few minutes rolled by until I finally felt the contraction in his body. He thrust his hips upward with a final grunt before quickly pulling back. There was a part of me that struggled not to look down, but I kept my eyes on his as I continued rubbing his chest affectionately.

Borba, her prize received, quickly took off towards the main group of orcs. Eli was already up and had his armor in order as she arrived back to her people. When she was surrounded by her kind and two of the frojan guards, she turned around and shouted to both of us.

“Thank you, daddy.” She said with a haughty smile, prompting some chuckles from the other orcs. “But we agreed that I would get to leave before Gula’s mother was handed over.”

Eli nodded to Cell on his right. The familiar had done surprisingly well through the whole ordeal as he only set off the occasional rock or water spell. The black mass was as big as my fist but when he brought down part of the wall, his size only made him seem more terrifying. For my part, I focused on comforting Eli. Plastering myself to his side, I just watched as Borba moved off in the mass of guards even as orcs outside the wall struggled to get in. When she disappeared behind the wall, Eli took a deep breath as he rested his left hand on my shoulder. We stood there for what felt like twenty minutes, but my mind was running itself ragged with what just happened. Even after the other orcs surrounded us, we stood still, waiting for the moment to leave until It finally arrived.

“Now. Hand her over.” Eli’s voice boomed, making the newly arriving orcs and frojan stumble as they tried to get a bearing on the situation. Morn nodded and the guard holding mother let her dash forward.

When mother was beside us, Eli motioned her to come closer.

“Stick close,” He said in a quiet voice.

My mother and I raised an eyebrow at that, but she did as she was bid. Cell came up behind us while Eli summoned a giant tentacle of water from his backside.

“Well, I do hope our future meetings are… more pleasant. Farewell and goodbye.” He boomed.

I struggled to see what he was trying to do but then I looked up to see him staring into the grey clouds. A moment longer and I saw one of the clouds extend a watery tentacle as it moved down towards us. Before anyone could react, Eli’s water limb extended to catch the cloud's outstretched hand. The two pillars of water collided and jerked us off the ground as Eli used a big air spell to guide us upward.

“UAAHHH!”

It took me a moment to realize that sound was coming out of my mouth as the ground gave way and we sped up to the cloud as the two water limbs contracted. I was too busy locking onto Eli’s side with a death grip to think about anything else. There was a moment where I saw a flash of wood then fell back down to the earth as we both collapsed from Eli’s side.

No. More wood, not dirt. Looking around, I saw that I was on the flat deck of a ship with an odd metal tube in the middle and a whirl of nothing but grey mist beyond what was now the whole of the world. My mind was relieved for a moment as I realized we were on a ship, but then I thought about how there weren’t any rivers so close by. And rivers didn’t flow through the sky.

“Find her! Salamede, take us to the river.” Eli yelled to Cell, who promptly shot off the side of the ship. He was working a long piece of wood on the left side of the ship that I assume was what he attached his long water tentacle to.

There was a lisp forward as I turned leftward and saw Salamede in her green dress behind a wheel and several leavers pull a big one on her left. Wind blasted across the deck as the mist was blown away and revealed the sprawling landscape below. The now obviously very, very far below us landscape. I threw myself to the deck of the ship and tried to find something to grip as the wind blew over me, but it was all one smooth piece of wood and my hands could find no purchase as I was too far away from the rails.

“Gula,” Eli called from somewhere above me. I continued to lay there as I tried to comprehend what was happening. The ship moved slightly with the wind and every moment I was just waiting for the ground to come rushing up.

“Gula, we’re on an airship. Have you heard of those?” He asked with a bit of tenderness.

“N-no,” I said with a parched throat as sweat started coming down my neck.

“It’s like a regular ship only it uses a balloon above the ship to float.”

A brief look up and I saw the wide expanse of cloth and plant fibers. He spent a few minutes going over heat exchanges and masses with lift. He may as well have been a sputtering drunk from all I could make of it, but his presence and concern soothed me enough that after a minute I was prepared to stand up. The thick railing on the sides helped allay some of my fear, but I was far too busy trying to process what had happened in the last hour.

Then it hit me all at once.

My life was over. Whatever I had in the swamps or my mud hut was gone. That life I thought I’d live and die like every other woman in my line had before me was now so much dust in the wind and in its place was a vast gaping void of uncertainty. Taking a deep breath, I shook my head and moved forward to rub Eli’s steel shoulder.

From there, we spent a good hour scouring the bare landscape. Sadly, the river was close enough that she could have taken it in the time allotted and gone on any number of paths to safety. My heart broke for Eli when I saw the moment his eyes took in the river opening up into the vast waterways and realizing that finding her was a lost cause. Using magic, he sent a long, high whistle over the swamplands. A second later, Cell came back up the side of the ship in a blast of wind and landed on the shoulder of Salamede.

“Full blast, Salamede!” Eli roared. “Get us the hell out of here!”

The tilt forward was worse this time, but I was prepared for it now and didn’t suffer from unsteady feet. He patted my hand as Salamede’s mother came out of a stairway near the middle left of the deck and took the wheel from her, with Cell moving to her left shoulder. The minute Salamede’s hands left that wheel, the Kelton woman dashed forward and took her husband in a deep hug, complete with kisses. After they were done, Salamede just buried her head in his left shoulder to look at me. Putting out her left hand, I took it and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

“We need to warn Baloo and his people,” Eli said with a wobble in his voice.

“I told them everything but kept to the story that I was the only one who knew.”

“Hmm,” Eli said idly as he stroked Salamede’s back, who was still doing a light sob as her chest rose and fell. “Better safe than sorry. Cell knows enough about the area that he can drop off and warn him ahead of time since he knows where the frojan village is. After that, we’ll head to dwarves rumble.”

“Yes, yes.” Salamede said with her rough voice still showing her strained emotions, “But first things first. Let’s get that whores scent off you.”

Salamede pulled back but kept her hand on mine as she directed us both to the stairway below deck while mother went to the wheel and levers. Cell leaped off Eli and towards the controls while we left the open air. It was a wide-open area with a room in the back with a door. With the glow of mana lamps placed along the wall, the fine woodwork had a soft glow as we moved to the door. Opening it, the room was a simple affair with a window opposite the door showing the sky outside with thick iron beams and a bed on the right with thick, fluffy blankets of blue and white and a chest at its foot. On the left was another door with a mana lamp above it.

Eli walked forward and started taking off his armor while Salamede just stood to my right. When he was down to the wide legging, he finally spoke.

“Sorry you had to see that, love. Both of you. But now that-“

“Don’t you dare!” Salamede scolded, though her lips still trembled, “Don’t you dare try and make this about how we feel. You’re the one who got raped.”

That last word stopped Eli dead as he closed his eyes for a long moment before he finished taking off his chest piece. Now in his brown pants and white shirt, he bit his lip as he looked between us.

“Well I was on top of her and I was certainly more capable magic wise to-“

He stopped when he looked between us. I realized that my jaw was quivering as tears blurred my vision. My feet decided to move things along as we both sped towards him and took him in a hug. He never cried, but Salamede and I soaked his shoulders in enough tears to more than make up for it as we clung to him. I don’t know how long it was, but we eventually stopped to look up at him.

He took one thumb for each of us and wiped our eyes to remove the tears.

“Look now,” He said with what seemed to be a genuine smile. “We’re safe. We have a lot to figure out in the meantime to keep it that way, but for now, the people I care about are safe and that is what matters. I… I need to take a shower by myself for a bit and once I’m done we can talk. Alright?” He said with an expectant look to both of us.

We pulled back as he rubbed our cheeks one more time before turning towards the door and going inside. Left on our own, Salamede took my right arm and directed me to the bed. As I sat down on the right side of the bed, I just felt numb as I had spilled all of my emotions onto Eli’s shoulder.

“I’m a horrible woman,” I said to no one in particular while the sound of running water started from the door ahead of us.

“Oh?” Salamede asked with a raised eyebrow as she swung her ivory horns to face me.

“This is all my fault,” I said as I took a deep breath. “I didn’t listen. Eli told me we needed to keep a low profile but I just… never in a thousand years would I have thought they would pay the slightest bit of attention to me. And now…”

“Hey,” Salamede said gently, taking my shoulder with a warm squeeze. “You made a mistake. What’s important is that you learn from it and try your best to correct it.”

I turned to her, seeing her bite her lower lip as her grey fur moved for her right hand as she scratched her neck.

“But how can I? I have nothing but my past, as shit as that was. I’d make a horrible wife and-“

Salamede got a painful smile as her white eyes focused on me.

“Pff. Horrible wife? You? Making an honest mistake does not make you a horrible wife.” Her snout gave a light sniff as she looked straight ahead to the door, taking in the sound of running water. “You know what makes a horrible wife? A woman who pushes you into bending to the will of others. The wife who listens to your most personal, deep-seated issues, and when the pressure turns up, they nag some concession out of you so they can bludgeon you with it when you’re down. When the whole world is against you and the one person who should unreservedly be on your side is the one to push you over the edge. That’s a horrible wife.”

I sat there as I bit my lip with no idea what to say for a long moment until I coughed.

“Well, maybe two horrible wives can equal a good wife if they try hard enough.”

Salamede got a bitter smile but only nodded. After a few minutes, the sound of water stopped, and Eli came back in with a towel around his waist and retrieved a grey shirt and pants from the chest before changing in the shower room. Coming back in fully clothed and maskless, we both bid him lay between us. After he was laying down and had a pillow beneath his head, we snuggled against his sides with us using his shoulders as our pillows.

“So, what now?” I asked. Salamede was opposite of me and kissing his neck. Eli turned down and took her lips for a moment before turning down to me and giving me my kiss, which I made sure to savor. The tender moment passed as Eli pulled back and stared at the ceiling.

“I think it’s all going to come out,” Eli said. “The higher-ups know I am a scion and have been well before the censure. Someone somewhere knows something about my true past. No matter what they know, the bit about me being a scion is enough to make them start asking questions about what I was actually doing before and after the censure. The ‘pandego’s’ showing up so quickly after I, the crafter, left would not draw much attention but a scion going missing around that time? A scion with an unknown familiar who could retrieve mana for him to make vine suits?

Me being a scion for so long before the censure means I was a caster even longer before that. A quad caster shows up right around the time a strange beast starts killing bandits and Coalition mages? That is to say nothing of the fact that I have the goodwill of the dwarves who could assist me in such endeavors.

No. The pieces are all there and if I had money on the outcome, they’re going to start asking the right questions. Depending on how it all plays out, I may just blow the cover myself and see if I can get them to kill that fucking…”

His chest started rising and falling with quick breaths but we both squeezed him tighter, calming him. After another moment of calm, he started talking again.

“But I would only do that if I thought mending our relationship with the Coalition was a lost cause. Once we get a little set up in the rumble, I’ll contact the dwarves and see how the situation with the Kelton’s is going.”

“The Keltons?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. Eli nodded and turned down to me.

“Aye, if the Coalition gets the idea I’m leaving for a better pen, they’ll brutalize the Keltons to keep me here. Something they’ve already shown a taste for.”

For the rest of the trip, we just soaked in each other’s company as the sky in the window zipped by. After a few hours, Cell came down briefly and apparently sent Eli a spirit message because he started getting up.

“All right. Time to disembark.” He said lightly as he moved over my legs and stood up while I and Salamede stretched.

“I got to say, this moves kind of slow if we’re only just now getting to Baloo’s village,” I noted as I stretched out both arms above my head. As I did so, the ship suddenly shook, making me grip the blankets.

“Huh?” Eli asked with a raised eyebrow, “Oh, yeah. You’re new to this. We already stopped at the village but had to fly in a circle. We’re at the dwarves rumble and just set down.”

I raised my eyebrows to him and puckered my lips, but he just put out his hand to help me up as I let go of the blankets. After he extended that same favor to Salamede, we left the room after he fixed his mask on. The main lower deck was still pretty warm with the furnace on the left heating the place with its eternal hum, but when we went up the stairs, I was hit with a blast of freezing air laced with snowflakes.

Looking over the side of the bridge, I saw vast waves of earth on both sides. The occasional boulder and tree were sticking out of it as the snow-covered landscape rolled on for as far as I could see. Amazingly, we were indeed at the rumble.

I went over the times involved. We were at the crypt base and even with our detour, I wanted to say it couldn’t have been more than an hour and a half or two hours since we left.

“Damn, these things move fast,” I said as mother was fidgeting with the controls to my right while Cell rested on her right shoulder.

“Yeah,” Eli said as he surveyed the land before turning back to us. “Cell will go get the dwarves, see if we can barter for some food, and pay a squatters tax.”

With that, Cell took off from mothers shoulder in a blast of air over the right side of the ship. The small black mass quickly became an invisible speck even across the white landscape beyond.

Eli nodded before turning back to us.

“In the meantime, I’ll set up some stone defenses and work out some crafts for you to defend yourselves with.”

As much as I hated it, I was a bystander in this and could only get a shower and watch as our only mage did the work needed. He set up a small palisade of stone along the sides of the ship while the rest of us foraged for any good pieces of wood. Once that was done, we moved to the mid-section of the ship to watch him work. What I found fascinating was he didn’t directly make the crafts, instead using other crafts to mold the rotting wood into solid pieces and then into vambraces and shoulder pads.

I didn’t see much point since anyone coming here would more than likely be coming with mages, but if anyone had been let down in our relationship so far, it certainly wasn’t me.

Eli had gone over the right side of the ship and used two heating bark crafts to melt the snow in a little area for us to practice in. Which is what I was doing with mother while Eli helped fit some custom pieces for the older Kelton woman named Kalla and Salamede dueled with Lokan off to his left. The vambraces acted as small water shields and water blade launchers while the shoulder pads protected the head and sides with walls of water mixed with a mesh of stone. Something mother and I were testing out as we stood across from each other in the patch of now visible grass.

“It's good.” Mother said, sending out a blade of water to slam into my shoulder pads wall of water crisscrossed with stone. “Though we’ll be knee-deep in shit if there are any mages.”

“Nah,” Eli called as he fitted a wooden chest piece on the small Kelton woman with a brown dress and grey flecked fur. “These are immune to spells. Though, as a warning, the first time they are hit with a spell they will falter as the mana is spread throughout the craft but will quickly resume their intended functions.”

“Pah!” Mother laughed, “I know you want in my daughter's pants, but shameless lying is never attractive. A lesson I would have thought a married man would know.”

“Mother!” I scolded her with pursed lips, even as I struggled with the ridiculous statement.

Eli turned around and stuck out his hand. I obviously couldn’t see any of the mana or spell constructs, but the blast of wind that shot out from his hand and rolled over both of us told me all I needed to know. Mother just huffed and stuck out her right arm again. The water blade shot out and jerked upwards as her unprepared arm couldn’t deal with the recoil. We both stared at her arm for a minute as I felt my face twisting with disbelief. Mother just stared at it blankly before turning around.

“Do that again!” She commanded with a wild swing of her two braids.

“Fine, but only once more. I still need to work on some other necessities,” Eli called as he turned again. This time we were both firing water blades into the dirt on the left while having the water shields up. There was another blast of wind as we tensely stood there waiting for what our eyes told us was impossible.

We were then treated to a firsthand miracle as the shields not only didn’t fail, but the water around them grew thicker and the water blades didn’t just keep going but proceeded to come out like a spout for a few seconds until the mana from the wind spell dissipated and they returned to normal. We both just stood there, staring at the ruts we made in the snow and soil. Mother pursed her thick green lips below her bone nose piercing and stomped over to Eli, who was now standing up and giving Kalla the thumbs up while Salamede practiced dodging water blades off to the left with Lokan. The snake woman had been on the lower floor for the whole trip and was content to spend it blissfully asleep in the heated floor below the furnace that kept the airship afloat.

“This thing… craft.” Mother demanded as she pointed to her right arms vambrace. “I’ve worked with a few frojan but nothing they’ve told me about crafts says anything about the elements affecting how the mana moves. What does your quad element do that allows this?”

I quickly abandoned my post and came over to hear for myself as I stood behind mother.

Eli puckered his lips and took a deep breath.

“Not all of my abilities are due to my elements…”

“Durka,”

“Durka. The technique that allows the craft to do that can be used by anyone of crafter status or above.”

I raised an eyebrow, impressed despite my previous disbelief. Mother, on the other hand, was dumbfounded as her jaw hung open before she irritably scratched her three cornrows on the right side of her head.

“Do…Do you have any idea what this means, Quad mage?” She demanded.

“Yes,” He said patiently, “I am well aware of the tactical implications.”

“Tacti-“ Mother sputtered as she tried to find the words and flailed her arms, “This changes every fucking thing. Who the hell needs mages anymore? Just four or five of them would be enough for an entire army. You’ve just made yourself almost entirely obsolete.” She ran her hands over her leather armor before turning to me and shaking my shoulders. “We don’t have to run away anymore, sweety. With these, we can fight on equal ground with mages.”

Her lips were quivering as she fought back tears. Yeah, that was another insecurity about being an orc. No matter how good you were, going one-on-one against a mage was a death sentence and since we only have as much magical potential as we were born with, there was never any hope of remedying that. Mother turned around and did a light bow to him.

“Thank you for these invaluable gifts, quad mage. If Gula ever gives you crap about making too many babies, know I’ll be on your side.”

“Mother!” I said with a swat on her back. Kalla just huffed while Salamede looked on with amusement from the side as her mother stepped forward.

“I have the same offer on standby, but despite their fun, the pups still haven’t happened.”

“Really?” Mother said with a raised eyebrow as they both turned to the only man present. “Who could be the cause of that?”

Oh god, they’re working together.

“Mom let's get back to practicing,” I said urgently with a tug on her shoulder. Salamede was likewise moving to rescue Eli, but mother was eager enough to get back to using the crafts that she let it go.

“What an endless-s amount of wonders you have, quad mage,” Lokan commented before getting back into it with Salamede after Kalla huffed and turned away.

The rest of the day passed as the sun started to fall and we ate a few odd crackers that Cell had gotten from Baloo as Eli made a wooden plate to act as a stove with a few bowls and forks. With the sun descending over the sky, a line of heavily armored dwarves came trundling down the trough of the earth wave. They were carrying a few sacks of food and stopped dead as they looked at the odd wonder squatting in their lands.

Most were content to stay back and mind their own business, but when others approached and Eli didn’t scold them, some circled around this oddity with wide eyes filled with fascination. Amidst the gibbering and mumbling, one dwarf with long red hair and ruby eyes stepped forward, his red armor embellished with gold and wine-red cape flapping with his movements.

“Ho! We were told that the quad mage is here!” He said with cupped hands over his wild beard. Eli dropped down over the side of the ship and approached with some mana crystals in hand. I couldn’t hear the exchange, but after Eli waved them goodbye, he turned, and I could see red hot murder in his eyes. Cell was off to the right of the leaving patrol and he was setting off a show of magic as fire, lightning, rocks, and blasts of water were sent flying all over the incline. Salamede and I moved forward as Eli came up the ladder while Lokan, Mother, and Kalla hung back.

“What happened?” Salamede asked.

“We have an agreement to let us squat here for a few days but there's bad news. Our people. Harold and some of the association members have taken to ‘interrogating’ some of the Kelton officials and passersby. They are… not being gentle. Unless we want bodies to really start piling up, I will have to go make them see the foolishness of their errors.”

I bit my lip and held my tongue as Salamede moved forward with her blue dress flapping in the wind.

“By making them see… what exactly do you mean?”

Eli took a deep breath before his eyes seemed to empty.

“Do you remember that time I had you leave the house so I could talk with that gang member?”

Salamede gulped as she bit her lip. It was a long moment still before she spoke up.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme? Maybe we could use some-“

“They’ve killed a kid. A nine-year-old boy who used to watch us when we went out to eat. They just tossed his corpse onto the burning pyres before the parents even knew they had them.”

Salamede pulled back slightly, a hand to her mouth as she stood still for a moment. When she put her hand down to her side, she had raised her chin and straightened her spine as I saw the fur along the back of her neck stand up.

“Do what you need to, Eli.” She said with a hard tone.

With that, Eli pulled down his mask and kissed her. They were spending a good minute on what had to be a spirit conversation before he turned to me. Letting Salamede go, he took me by the waist and pulled me close.

“Be safe, love,” He said with a soft tone before we closed the distance. After a few seconds of savoring our contact, we pulled apart.

“Stay safe,” was all I could think to say. There was so much more I wanted to say, that I needed to say, but my mind was too busy trying to comprehend what was going on. Eli moved past me and went below deck and came back up a few minutes later, decked out in his full set of armor. With one last nod, he moved towards the ladder and climbed down it, sending us one last regretful look along the way.

When the thud of dirt was heard, we both rushed over the railing to look at the shining mass of steel zip over a rolling hill westward. While we could all see the cloud of snow he left behind, the aching hearts here were not as visible.