“You made it,” August said when I encroached. His voice was the dullest I’d ever heard, his eyes the greyest, his face pale and bloodless. It’s like his body was there but his mind wasn’t. There was a spectre of vengeance about him, yet his face was as taciturn as one could possibly get. “Thanks, Eric,” he showed his gratitude for my presence, not even breaking his eyes off his still fiancé for a second. I placed an arm over him, but he never broke down, he never cried, he didn’t show a hint of regret or morose.

Even at the funeral a week later his features bore a reticent aura whilst he made his speech. He told us indirectly that he was unaffected. Yet, I knew better, I knew he loved her and Shyla’s death would shake the very earth from beneath him. So why was I surprised to find him in the pouring rain standing as still as a statue in front of her grave?

I’d already offered him and Shyla’s family my condolences at the funeral. I already gave the best advice I could think of to him a few days back. There was nothing more to say to him. As his friend, all I could afford him was an Earth Wall of protection from the torrential showers and stand by his side.

“Can you?” he suddenly asked, a question void of context, yet I knew exactly what he meant.

“I can, but–”

“You won’t…” he finished my sentence, or at least what he figured I’d say. To be fair, after Donna scolded me about shying away from using Light Resurrection, I wasn’t as disinclined to perform the spell as before, especially knowing I’d need the person-in-question’s permission anyway.

“I made an oath to myself not to revive the dead after I brought Donna back, but,” I sighed and closed my eyes for a second, almost as if inviting the ambience and calm that rain showers could instil, “well, let’s just say that oath wasn’t well founded. Aug, I can bring her back, but know that she will be magically bound to me and that should I die, she will also die.”

A chuckle escaped from him and he threw an arm around me, “You really are a good friend. But, that decision is not mine to make.”

“If you’re worried about forcing her back to life, then don’t. The spell will not work if she doesn’t want to come back. In the end, Shyla has the final say.”

Quietness whistled between us for a moment before he squatted down and placed some drenched flowers in front of her gravestone. “How’s the orc situation?” he inquired.

What was he thinking, I wonder? Well, I knew exactly what to be honest, he was my best friend after all. His clenched fist didn’t prove to make his resentment towards them clear, that was already obvious; it served another purpose, a purpose that told me he would be extremely insistent on fulfilling. He was telling me I could not deny him through that fist alone, and because he said it that way, I knew the means of fulfilling that purpose would be downright reckless, but who was I to judge? “We’re prioritising the fortification of villages and towns in the west. They’re sending a scouting party deeper west into Virai territory to gather information. Because orc leadership changes constantly, they don’t know who’s in charge, so they’re sending some stealth mages, Flynn included.”

“That’s not all…” he sniffed out my apparent withholding of information, “They already killed thousands of people, Eric. What are you not saying?”

I sighed and pushed my hands in my pockets, “You know me too damn good, buddy. Aquan and some other big cities are holding recruitments and training regimen for battlemages, soldiers in other words. They’re already gathering a force to go on the offense against the Virai. Looks like we’re officially at war.”

He began walking past me and I kept up with his sluggish pace, “I’ll join then.”

“Revenge, huh?” I said. “I guess this is the part where I be a friend and deter you, so I might as well let you know that you’ll never be able to join. You’re underage. It’s the same with me. I won’t tell you something as presumptuous as revenge won’t bring Shyla back. But I want to tell you, if you do go about seeking vengeance and you encounter someone like that Moken orc, or he himself, Aug, buddy, you will die.”

“Then so be–”, before he could finish that sentence, I slugged him in the face, as hard as I could.

“If you throw your fucking life away, I will beat the shit out of you when we meet in the afterlife.”

He suddenly cachinnated, “That’s the worst threat I’ve ever heard.” Despite his laughter, I knew that it wasn’t enough to deter him, but maybe enough to be smart about what he was going to do.

A few days later, he woke me up from my usually long sleep, telling me about some note he found at his home, and about his missing mother. The words rattled me out of sleep, but I really doubted that he said what he said. “Your mom’s missing?” I asked again to clarify, because with a martial presence so thick, I found it hard to encapsulate my mind around it.

He nodded, “We reported it already. Dad’s startin’ to lose his shit. First Shyla, now this,” he held his head and looked down in clear stress, “unreal.”

“How long was she missing?”

“A couple days now. I knew I should’ve just come to you first, but we hadn’t found the note until recently.”

“Yeah, you should’ve you little shit,” I scolded him for not telling me earlier and grabbed the piece of paper. It was a torn part of a map and on the back of it had something written, not a ransom but a summoning of me. That’s right, me. Who kidnaps someone else’s mother and asks someone from another family to meet up with them? Hell, he even put his name. It was Moken, that absurdly strong grey-skinned orc. I read it over and over, trying to make sense of it. He gave us a place, a description of the place, the name of the person he wants to meet him there and his name at the bottom. Even putting myself in his shoes, I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t just kidnap Mary instead. Logically, it would make more sense, but at the same time, it wasn’t something I’d admit to if it actually happened to me.

“The authorities are not going to pursue this,” I told him, “did you show them the note yet?”

“Nah, I brought it to you first ‘cause your name was there, man. Who the hell is Moken?”

“That strong orc I told you about.”

“Oh, right. Forgot. What do you think?” he asked about the note and the whole situation in general.

“What do I think? What do you think?”

“I’m going,” he said, almost dismissively.

“Yeah, figured, so am I. Where is your quint usage at?”

“Twenty-one percent.”

I’d seen his fifteen percent, so I knew twenty-one wouldn’t be near enough. So of course, I let him know that and he wasn’t exactly happy to hear that he wouldn’t even be of help if a fight went down with Moken, but he accepted whatever situation would maximise his chances of securing his mom.

We got hold of a bigger map and Gale flew us to the west into Virai borders. It was at a northern mountain range, peaceful and calm. A huge wooden cottage, at least to us, was built up there. It was far away from any orc civilisation, its very location seeming to denoting a sage-like lifestyle.

“You motherfucker!” August busted down the door in a fervent rage, veins popping and sword unsheathed. His pre-emptive hatred towards orcs fuelled a disgust that viewed them as nothing more than mindless barbarians only capable of fighting, barbarians that needed to be slaughtered in his eyes. Not only was his fiancé killed indiscriminately by the tough-skinned Virai, his mother was kidnapped as well. There were no redeeming features about them. But this one, this Moken, showed intelligence unlike the usual. Still, I couldn’t imagine August’s pain nor how he even held his wrath in at this point.

“First of all, that door was made by a special woodworker that’s now deceased and you destroyed the only one like it,” Moken calmly explained. “You owe me three hundred coins. And I’m not a ‘motherfucker’, she’s married and I respect that. Now, if you’d calm down, you’ll know why she’s not beaten and near-death.”

The wooden house in the mountainous west went deathly quiet for some seconds until August’s mom simply walked over with a smile and hugged him. Everything was just fine. In fact, she sat back reclined onto a comfy-looking chair reading a book when we first stepped in, though she was like a child in it because of the size.

My mind’s sharpness was fizzling with every passing second. Aug’s mom had some damn insurmountable levels of composure. Not only was she kidnapped by a big grey goon with an unnatural sword that was the size of her, but she just lost Shyla, who she regarded as her very daughter. Yet, this amazing woman was pouring us tea whilst we sat down around a creaking unpolished table. Did she know she was the victim?

“Let me clear some things up before I address why I called you here,” the dreadlocked orc glared me right in my eyes, screaming anger at me with his focus but displaying reticence in order to keep this meeting one of dialogue and not of action. “The reason I took his mother and not yours was because I didn’t want you to enter the way he entered. We’d would only end up exchanging fists and the reason I called you would never even be mentioned. Now, I want to make our relationship especially clear, because I want you to know what I want in the end.” He paused and allowed silence to conquer for a few seconds. “You are Eric Archibald of the Order of Mages, banisher of Ashfur and defiler of death, citizen of Methelia, am I correct?”

“Don’t know about the ‘defiler’ part, but yes, correct.”

“I am Moken the Wanderer, but most know me as Moken the Savage. When you extracted the Ingen chieftain, you massacred thousands of people, including my entire family. For that, I will kill you. However, there is an issue even bigger than my hatred, an issue I have to postpone my vengeance for. It will save both the Methelians and people of Virai a lot of death. If we work well enough together, we can immediately stop the war before it becomes irreversible.”

I hung onto his words, the first half of what he said to be specific. It was like I just realised orcs weren’t just mindless animals and had actual feelings and intelligence. I was indifferent of their lives because I had no connection to them, no relationship. About a minute passed with nothing but silence; I had to digest those words. I, killed people, huh? When I thought about his anger, I wondered just how important this problem was that it could stop the war that already put its feet past the doorstep and through the door. “So, why are we here, then?” I asked, choosing to skip the part of my nonchalant murders.

“Have you ever heard about the Grove of the Ancient? It’s an underground cavern that has impenetrable roots blocking something away. I think it’s the ‘Ancient’, the druid Liana. According to the old scripts, she has a high degree of control over nature and mind magic.”

“Are you saying…”

“Yes. I believe my people, especially the leaders, are under her influence. No one can place that many beings under simultaneous mind control. The strange behaviour began happening a few years ago, but as a wanderer I was hardly ever home, so I couldn’t be sure.”

“And what makes you think I’m not being controlled by her?”

“Mages, generally speaking are intelligent. Highly sentient. Capable of self-reflection and understanding others may hold knowledge that they don’t. Mind control gets more difficult to do if your target is conscientious. Also, I’m inclined to believe Ashfur, out of everything or everyone under the druid’s spell, was affected the most. That means you have experience in dealing with beings under her command.”

By Hydra’s sweet ass, this guy knows some big words.

“What makes you think I’d help you with this? Methelia wasn’t prepared before, but now that we are, we can win this ‘war’ easy enough. Why would I help the losing side especially when I know you want to kill me?”

“Because you haven’t acknowledged how many humans are going to die. Did you assume Ashfur grew to that size by himself? Have you not considered that his ability to use magic was due to his suddenly aggressive behaviour? Imagine what a bunch of magic-wielding, bloodthirsty orcs would do to your people. You don’t have to help me, but I believe it in your best interest to at least find someone with weight in the Order of Mages who can. I also want you alive.”

I took a sip of my tea and pictured this venture in my head. “How do you get into these situations? It’s amazing, honestly.”

Don’t complain, bitch. You know you love this.

“I do, O’ great defiler of death. But the witch has spoken of that druid before. If you aren’t careful…”

I stood up and stretched then took up my huge mug, “If we find the druid, what do you intend to do?”

“Slay her.”

“Why did she start controlling others?”

“You ask the wrong person. But I reckon whatever we surface-dwellers did was a crime against nature in her eyes. In a way, she is the representation of beings of low sentience; trees, animals and such.”

“I can’t remember any mistake we made that was that huge. Did we cut down a forest or something?” I kind of spoke to myself.

“My, no!” Aug’s mom inputted after silently sitting for so long, “Orcs and humans have done that for ages, so it can’t be that. Have you ever heard of the ‘Dryad’s Cry’? It’s the story of a dryad that was enslaved and killed. For a while, human mages could use nature magic to heal disease and sickness. They harvested the energy of the trapped dryad until she passed away.”

All three of us just kind of ogled at her, not exactly knowing what to say or expecting such information would come from her. It was stupid of me to think so, but she appeared like a naïve little housewife who just doted over her son. For her to link that story with this one at the drop of a hat; maybe she should’ve become a detective.

“Plausible,” Moken commented.

“So, Moken the Wanderer, how come you’re not under her control?” I asked the once calm orc and his muscles twitched in annoyance.

“I have a resistance to magic but I can’t tell you about it.”

“It’s quintessential energy, we know.” I revealed and an eyebrow shot up from him. Even if he wasn’t using quint, the druid would probably have a lot of trouble getting into his mind. He showed intelligence past that of the Virai, and more reminiscent of the Ingen.

“How do I know I won’t get stabbed in the back when I’m casting a fireball at the druid?”

“Because I want you to feel pain and suffering. I won’t ambush you because I want your full attention when I kill you.”

“Fair enough. When do we leave?”

With the answer to that question, we departed back to Aquan on Gale and pulled the missing person report down.

“Thanks dude,” August placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t mention it, my guy. We chillin’ tonight?”

“Bet your magical ass we are! I need some spirits. Ay, dude, thanks for real. I’ll pay you back somehow.”

An idea dinged in my head and I sought to make good on his feelings of appreciation, “Your pops still making and selling weapons, right?”

“Yeah, way more now because of the orc problem.”

“Good. Then let him handle it. Focus entirely on quint. You tried enchanting yet?”

He looked me up and down, a brow raising in suspicion of my intentions. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing important,” I smirked, “just try the enchanting using quint. Something basic. Get a bunch of failed weapons into a cart and come to Dawn’s tomorrow so you can practise.”

“No, really, what’s going through that pate, little man?”

I pulled my non-existent beard, “Well, Moken said he’ll be in those mountains for a month. We gon’ get your quint usage to fifty percent in that month.”