I ended up waking up at 9AM the next morning after falling asleep at 10PM, so I got a lot of sleep. I ate some cereal after waking up and then hopped into the new pod.

I immediately spawned back into the world, on the ground, in the position I logged out in. It was slightly chilly as it seemed to be early morning, 3/4ths of the sun cracked over the horizon. As I got up I looked around for Antivitz, who was nowhere to be found at the current moment around me.

“Antivitz?!” I bellowed out.

“Hey!” I heard someone else bellow at me, and it sure wasn’t Antivitz. It was a super gruff, huge bellow of a word and I only had one thought: Orcs. I turned around in a circle trying to find the Orc that yelled at me. I heard brush being pulled away from the treeline as an Orc came out of it. Big, green, and mean-as-hell looking, geared out in spiked shoulder pads and tribal-looking armor, mostly leather and fur. He had a bow slung across his chest and a big haft coming from behind him, most likely to a two-handed axe. His face was chiseled in that general Orc look, with some underbite and large-ish fangs coming from his lower jaw.

“Look man, I don’t want any trouble, I was here with my Archaeologist trainer and left, and I came back and now he’s gone.”

“I don’t care what you were doing here, you’re desecrating ancient Orcish burial grounds! Get out of here!” The Orc continued forward this whole time, moving toward me at a rate that I was extremely uncomfortable with, but stood my ground.

“Dude, you wanna take it up with my trainer, not me! I’ll leave right now, I just have to find my trainer! I have no way to get back to town! I don’t even know barely where the hell I am!” Technically I could have followed The Orc stepped up to me. My four foot nine to his seven foot whatever made him particularly imposing to me, but I had to find Antivitz. Eunuch needed their archaeologist! He bent down and shoved his face inches from mine. I could smell his rancid breath and desperately tried to not make a face, keeping a stony glare as I held his eyes, locked with mine. He exhaled through his nose quickly, his large nostrils flaring like a bull about to charge.

“It’s not my problem if you have no way to get back to where you came from, tiny Dwarf. Who is your trainer?”

“Antivitz.” I saw the Orc’s eyes change into a slight spark of recognizing the name, but he didn’t look away or change his posture. I immediately stepped forward and pushed him back. “Where is he?”

“I don’t need to tell you anything.”

“You know where he is. Where is he?”

“I’ve never heard that name in my life.” I literally knocked my head against his in a mini-headbutt.

“Where is he you green piece of fucking bird crap,” I snarled at him. “I swear to god if you killed him-”

“Unwog, what in Gor’s name are you doing?! Get over here and hang these damned furs before I knock your teeth in, you giant oaf!” a slightly gruff female voice cut me off. The Orc immediately straightened up, a slightly frightened look coloring his facial expressions, a far cry from what he looked like a split second ago. He yelled out, turning his head in that general direction, saying:

“I’m busy, I’ll be there in a second!” I cracked a slight smile under my beard, but to the Orc, he wouldn’t have seen it.

“Your name is Unwog?” I asked him, failing to hold back a snort of laughter.

“Yes, it is.” He turned to face me, looking down at me with a disdainful look.“You’re coming with me. I’m turning you in to the chieftain.” I shrugged.

“Alright.” I had my Hammer on my back the whole time in case it got ugly, but I immediately had it dissipate off my back, and then the Orc picked me up off the ground by the scruff of my shirt like a child. I waggled in the air. “Hey! Let me go! I can walk perfectly fine, thanks!”

“No. You want to act like a child and not leave when you’re told, I’ll carry you like a child,” he grunted. We went into the forest a little ways and we came upon a small, maybe one room hut built from various stones and mortared together with a mix of mud and possibly actual concrete mortar? I couldn’t really tell. An Orc woman strode out of the hut.

“Gor’s fangs Unwog, how lazy can you-” She saw me and looked at Unwog. “Unwog, put the Dwarf down,” at which he lowered me to the ground, and the Orc woman continued, “what the hell pulled you away from your damned chores? This Dwarf, who was literally hurting nobody being out there in the Wastes?”

“You know as well as I do that that’s where Gor’s encampment was in the war, and nobody has a right to sniff around an Orcish burial ground!”

“Right, besides you, because you’re literally out there every day looking for old armor and all that other crap, that I keep telling you to throw away.” She glared at him. I stood there in silence, enjoying watching a seemingly married Orc getting chewed out by his wife. Singledom was sweet. I was trying not to laugh.

“They’re not old junk Bula, they’re artifacts!” He seemed to be very sad at the uncovering of the fact that he literally does the same thing I was there for.

“They’re not even Common level rarity! They’re all gray junk! You have an entire room full of these things that are literally worth nothing! You keep bothering that one Dwarf who visits the chieftain-”

“-Antivitz,” I interjected.

“Yes, that one, to buy this shill from you, and he never does! What do you have to say to that?!”

“One day they’ll be worth something! And then you’ll regret yelling at me about this!” He grabbed me by the scruff of the shirt again and lifted me up again.

“Hey!” I fought, trying to get down, waggling around in the air again like an idiot. “Lemme down! Let me down!”

“I am taking this interloper to the chieftain to see what his punishment is!” Unwog stormed off, away from his seemingly-a-wife and back into the forest, assumingly toward the tribe’s center of the village or whatever. I eventually stopped fighting after a minute and just sat there in the air.

“Dude, she’s a bitch.” I said to Unwog. He said nothing. “In my opinion, if you like collecting that stuff, don’t let her throw it away.. I mean, can’t you just clear out an area close by and build another hut to store that stuff in or something? You obviously are interested in Archaeology as well, that’s what I was with Antivitz for in that area you found me in.” He still said nothing, just walked through the forest, stomping on underbrush and small trees and saplings, moving branches out of the way with his right hand and holding onto me with his left. I kept running into branches and leaves while he was holding me in the air with a locked, straight arm, spitting and wiping my face every five seconds, trying not to eat leaves.

It’s a tough life, being short n’ stumpy.