***Greenville***

**Day 6**

*Trey*

Empty, the whole town was empty of any signs of life. Thankfully, what’s left of it was not heaps of corpses and ruined buildings; it was just empty of any people or ogres. Here and there, inside the houses, you could see signs of people having prepared to leave in a hurry – clothes on the floor, half eaten food on the table and some upturned chairs, which nobody had bothered to lift up.

“At least, it seems they got away in time.” – I breathed in relief.

The only thing I found strange was the lack of any serious damage and looting. It looked like ogres only came through the village without even touching anything, as if something made them hurry to leave, or maybe they tried catching up to escaped villagers. Judging by the state the city of Bristol was in, you would think they leave the village in a similar rubble.

Well, I suppose it was pointless to try to understand ogre thought process. It’s not as if I knew them better, they would suddenly stop trying to murder me. I’m pretty sure that chance had long passed, and it’s not like I was responsible for cleaning up this whole mess. The ones that will do that will be the army or the church. They probably are already on the move to deal with ogres.

Anyway, as far as I could tell, there were no clues lying about to where the people had gone and how long until they return. Besides that, there was no assurance that no ogres were still nearby, therefore, I took the leftover money from my house, some clothes from my neighbours, which seemed to fit me, and food for the journey ahead.

In the east lay another small village called Burnsville. Contrary to popular belief, Burnsville isn’t full of arsonists, the name actually came from famous adventurer Josef Burns, who apparently grew up there, but still, with a name like that, I held no hopes of it still being in one piece and not, you know, burned down. The only places, which could have survived ogre attacks, were cities. Cities had their own small armies protecting them, and not to mention that each city held a branch of church’s paladin order. With that in mind, I headed for the next best thing on my list of places that were not immediately life-threatening - the city of Salem. If my luck gets better, maybe I will even find the rest of villagers there.

“This is going to suck, big time” – I sighed.

It was already bad enough to walk by foot from the forest to my village, but going to Salem was another thing entirely. It was probably 4 times further than Bristol from here. You know, you always take things for granted before losing them. Now that I had lost, my main means of transportation, as Donny was presumably either dead and in ogres belly or on an adventure of his life. Either way, I was not going back to check if he was still there, not going to risk another unfortunate encounter, that’s for sure.

Speaking of unfortunate encounters, I should get myself a proper weapon. The small dagger could serve its purpose in defending me against small animals, but versus something bigger and meaner, I would need something bigger, a role which sword might cover nicely. Even though I cannot use swords proficiently, I still have a huge handicap in being, you know, immortal and all that crap. Therefore, even if I have to give up an arm to get rid of my attacker, I should be fine. Thus, my next stop was a local smithy.

Compared to town like Bristol, which had smithies full of all kinds of weapons, our little smithy had barely anything. I attribute this to the blacksmith not being particularly fond of leaving his life savings and products of hard work behind, he, probably, took all he could with him in a wagon, when everyone escaped from the village. Besides that, I dared to presume that the villagers didn’t want to be empty-handed in case someone decided they were easy pickings.

(I should have thought of that before) – I mused, but alas let’s see if I can find anything useful that’s left behind. After searching a while, I found one half-finished sword. The metal part was in order, but it lacked wooden part of the hilt. Well, nothing a little improvisation can’t fix.

I went to blacksmiths bedroom, opened the bedside drawer and picked the first piece of clothing that was inside. Realising it was old smith’s underwear; I discarded it and reached inside again. This time, thankfully, I got an old shirt, which I then proceeded to shred in pieces with my dagger. After wrapping the hilt part with strips of the shirt, I finally got something that I could freely hold in my hand. It didn’t need to last long; it just needed to last until I was safe inside city walls. With any luck, I won’t even need to use it.

With everything in order, I started my journey to the closest city.

Interlude – Not what it seems

***Somewhere in forests of Kundun Empire***

**Day 6**

“So much for asking help to those weak mongrels,” – growled Thaton.

“Go gobble shit, know was not me idea” – Stuttered back Cramak – “Was me, kill them all, be done with it.”

“You mean, go eat shit, you know it was not my idea. Was it up to me, I would have just killed them all and be done with it. How long will it take for you to learn to speak properly?” – Said Thaton.

“U lose teeth, speak me like that. Warchief orders, me speak already human” – Growled back Cramak.

“Shut your traps, dipshits. We no have time to fight now. Need hurry to Warchief” – Said Urmaram.

Just as Thaton was about to try correcting Urmaram, I reached out and slapped Thaton across the face. Unprepared he almost lost footing for a moment, something that could cost him his seat at Warchiefs table, if it would have happened. Using hand to clean his face from blood, Thaton spat out a teeth and menacingly growled at me, baring his remaining sharp teeth in the process.

*“You’re going to regret this Saruk; your father won’t be Warchief forever and when the time comes, well… just watch your back then.”* – He growled at me, this time using our own tongue.

*“Shut your trap, or I will close it permanently. I don’t need anyone’s protection.”* – I responded.

“Both you, stop. No time, need heed summons. Need speak human, train.” – Urmaram stood between both of us, hands reaching around our throats. I didn’t even see him move, in a split second, he had made both of us incapable of resisting and according to rules, this meant we needed to listen to his orders for the rest of day or get treated as outcasts by rest of tribe.

I guess this wasn’t that bad of an outcome, if I had fought that piece of shit Thaton here, it would bring trouble from his family. I wasn’t worried about me, I would take them all on, but this may bring ruin to my fathers’ plans. Besides that, Urmaram was on fathers’ side, no reason to disobey him.

“Understood, us stop, Right Thaton?” – I answered, while barely being able to get the sentence out, what with having my throat gripped and all.

“Yes, we are fine now.” – He responded.

With that out of the way, Urmaram quickly let us go and proceeded to move towards Warchiefs tent, with us quickly following him.

Reaching the huge tent, we could already hear shouts coming from inside of it. Ogres were never good talkers. What was the point, when you could just use brute force to get what you want? It was a common belief that strong ogres make great leaders and great leaders make good decisions, thus you should follow good decisions made by great and strong leaders. The system was simple in its entirety, but it did work after all. So why change?

How to prove you are strong? Well quite easy, you punch the opposing party until they cannot raise any objections anymore. Much easier than human politics, where weak constantly oppose strong and make foolish decisions that ruin their whole tribe. The only exceptions, with the strongest person being the unopposed leader in ogre tribes, was when the survival of the whole tribe was at stake. It was the Elders’ decision when that time would be. Unfortunately, it seemed that not everybody had agreed to Elders granting father this responsibility. Not everyone agreed that this situation counted as a threat to our survival. Well, they were fools not to listen, not after what we had seen there.

Anyway, best to prepare for anything before going in, ogre politics can become bloody, to say the least.

*“I still think, we should move and look for southern tribes. These foolish humans don’t deserve our warnings and we do not need their help!”* – Just as I entered the tent, echoed loud voice.

I knew whose voice that was. There was only one group in the whole tribe, led by one ogre, currently actively opposing my father – Thaton’s father Thumal. I snarled to myself. As much as I would like to ignore him, the fact was that he was second strongest warrior in out tribe, right after my father and before the third strongest – Urmaram.

*“Enough!”* – Roared my father – *“You will do as I have decided; it’s my decision as the Warchief, who the Elders have selected.”*

*“This is not over Shakh; you will lead us to ruin if nobody stops you!”* – roared Thumal, as he stormed out of the tent.

Now with only five people inside the tent: I, Thaton, Cramak, Urmaram and our Warchief Shakh, the tension in the air was slowly fading, and Shakh’s face slowly relaxed. Urmaram in the meantime went to the corner of the tent and assumed guard pose. The rest of us, all stood still in front of Shakh, waiting for the Warchief to address us first, as the Elder’s rules stated.

Finally, he sighed and said – “Good you’ve come, we need to discuss our next steps from now on.”

While he did say discuss, it was more of him asking us to do things, with that in itself being the opportunity to learn from a leader. Something, Elders agreed to be necessary for anyone strong enough, to be a potential tribe leader. As such, this was a lesson in leading ogres, mixed with lesion of obeying you - the leader.

“Come, gather around.” - He then stood and went towards the round table in the leftmost corner of the tent, covered with maps of the terrain.

Humans and daemons think us stupid beasts, but there is so much more when it comes to wars. You cannot always win a battle by simply charging in, you need a good strategy to win. Would they even believe if someone told them that? No, not with how our tries of making contact with them, had gone. Five scouting parties killed with a rain of arrows and magic before they even had the chance to talk with them. This was the main reason Thumal and Thaton were advocating force over diplomacy, that and because it clashed with what my father had decided. The thing they didn’t understand is that we could never win against human/daemon combined armies that were larger than our northern tribe's warriors combined, in a full-blown battle. You can only do so much, even when being better at fighting than humans or daemons. When magic is raining upon your army, and you cannot get close enough, pure strength and stamina become obsolete. This was our greatest weakness, we might be best warriors out there, but we could not produce even the smallest spark of magic.

“I’ve made my decision, we are going south across the mountains to the Great Beast lands” – said Shakh.

“Why?” – Suddenly interjected Thaton, – “why not listen to my father and go to southern ogre tribes for help?”

“Not question Warchief,” – immediately growled Cramak.

“It’s okay, this time I will give you an explanation, seeing as how both you and your father cannot see, why I’m doing this.” – said Shakh.

“While it’s true we might find help in southern tribes, and together we might even stop the scourge coming from the north, that's a whole lot of "ifs”. Besides that, southern tribes would see us as weak, this means our own tribe would be dissolved and absorbed by them. We would gain slave status and lose our freedom. Do you understand now?” – He asked.

At this Thaton just nodded. I’m sure he still doesn’t agree, but Cramak was right, further questioning a Warchief would only lead to him being removed from war council training.

“Thus we will be going to the Great Beast lands, and joining in alliance with them. They are great warriors too; it will not be beneath us to do so. Still, there is something to we need to do about informing southern tribes of the oncoming crisis. While I don’t want to lead all of us there, we should at least send scouting party to warn them. Whether they believe what we have to say, is up to them, but we are of one people, we should still do it.”

At this, he took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

“This is why we are sending you, young ones; it’s time to do your part for our tribe. Your adulthood ritual is coming in three days, and after that, you will be sent to southern tribes.”

“But, I…” - I started to protest, only to get cut off midway my protest.

“No buts! You will all go Saruk. Being the son of chief doesn’t excuse you from following orders, besides that, you three will not go alone. I will be sending Urmaram with you. He will help and teach you along the way. After warning them, you will meet us in the Great Beast lands. Urmaram will have a way of finding us. Listen to him and return as battle proven warriors.”

“Yes, Warchief!” – We said as one.

“Leave now and prepare for your adulthood ritual.”

As everybody turned and left, Urmaram and I stayed behind.

“Father, why are you sending Urmaram? He should stay here, so Thaton’s father doesn’t oppose you.” - I asked.

He sighed and rubbed my head in response. – “You should understand that I cannot send three younglings alone, barely out of adulthood ceremony, for a mission like this. It was Thumal’s idea in the first place to send you all alone, but I don’t trust him. That’s why Urmaram is going with you all to keep an eye out. Besides that, I don’t trust Thaton enough, not to say the wrong things to the southern tribes.”

“It seems your mainland language training is coming along just fine. It will help you on this journey. This is why I’ve ordered you all to practice it in your day-to-day speech. I will cancel the order when you head out, as out there, it’s too dangerous to speak in a tongue you’re not used to, and there may be wrong ears listening if you do. Now go and prepare for the ritual. I know you are more than ready, but this is important and failure is not an option.”

Then he turned to Urmaram and said, “Come, we still need to discuss things.”

At that, I left the tent and went to find something to eat. To be honest, after all this training, thought of fulfilling an important mission for the tribe, and finally proving myself, was quite pleasant.

End of interlude

***Deep in fuck-knows-where forest***

**Day 6-8**

*Trey*

I think, therefore I am… lost. Not much of a life-changing philosophical saying, when you add the last part. For what seemed like hundredth time, I climbed another tree to check my surroundings.

“Yup, trees. A whole shitload of trees.”

One might wonder how someone can get lost on one the best-travelled roads towards one of the biggest trade cities in the empire. Well, funny story that, I had to run for my life because a bunch of ogres decided to play tag with me. Didn’t even let me chose if I wanted to participate in physical activities. Oh sorry, I lied, they did ask and it wasn’t funny. They asked if I would be so kind to stop and have a nice long chat with them. Well, the words they used were more of – “Stop you, filthy spy. When we catch you, you're going to tell us what you are doing snooping around our camp.” - Kind. What horrible lies! I WAS NOT snooping around, it’s called moving while being careful to not run into someone or something, that would want to murder me. Well, I never said I was any good at it. However, to automatically presume I was a spy? How rude of them! Besides, who in their right mind would stop and wait for them to capture you, so they could ask you some nice questions. What will happen if my answers don’t satisfy them? What then? Nope, not taking that chance. So I ran, ran through the woods as if my life depended on it. It somewhat did, in some convoluted way, well not going to discuss that philosophical theme right now. I even managed to get away, well falling off a cliff might have helped in that regard, but still, I did.

On that note, it seems that if I’m not blown to bits and my head is not separated from my body, the regeneration effect is almost instant. Therefore, after falling down and healing my broken legs, I managed to lose them. I would celebrate this, but as it seems I’m lost and don’t really know where the road is, I’m still fucked.

If I knew this would happen to me, I would have paid closer attention to old Mart’s teachings. Old Mart was the best hunter our village had. In his free time, he tried to educate village children on how to find edible plants in forest, how to correctly place hunting traps, how to orient in forest among other things I deemed too boring to learn, and he deemed as things - “everyone that isn’t a moron, needed to know.” As previous carrier choice was never going to be a hunter before all this happened, I mostly spent my time skipping his lectures for more pleasurable pastime, namely wooing the opposite sex. Let’s just say that I failed in both of the activities and leave it at that. So, what I can remember about orientating in the forest is limited, to say the least.

“Hmm, let’s see, if I remember correctly, you could tell where north is by looking at how moss grows on trees.”

Problem was that I have no fucking clue if the moss growing on one side meant it was North or South. One can see how well I paid attention to old Mart’s lectures, and now it came back to bite me in the ass. Let’s just pretend that moss likes warmth, and so it grows on the south side. That means I need to go opposite that. I think. Yes. Probably. Aww fuck it, not like I have a better idea.

You know, mountains make great orienteering objects, to someone that is lost. You would think I’m happy now that I’m no longer lost. Let me spell it out for you – “I’m not happy.” Maybe they do make great orienteering objects, but it was not something I wanted to see, after walking 2 days to a town that lies down the river, around it big grasslands (well except the forest in the southern part), and more importantly – “No bloody mountains in sight.”

“Fuck my life.”

Seriously, fuck it. I’m somewhere south, and most likely, these were “The Silver Tops”. Mountains that divide the Kundun Empire from the Great Beast lands, best known for empire’s silver mines and a large amount of beasts nesting in them.

(So what now?) – I thought to myself. I could try to go opposite direction of mountains and hope to reach the town. Problem is that I might reach ogres before reaching the town. Then again, it’s not like I have somewhere else to go. On the west lay, one of the largest deserts on this continent – The Sandy Desert. While it was not really imposing name (you can blame, our empires scholars great naming senses for that one), the fact was, that if I tried to cross it, it wouldn’t even take 2 days for me to die from thirst, or at least in my case, wish for quick death. Being living husk, probably not a pleasant experience. North was unknown, possibly safety, possibly not. South was just straight out. I’m not mad enough to try crossing, without even being near the pathway that merchants tend to cross. That left me with what? Going back east? That’s where I already came from. So I should just go back to the village and wait for people to come back or army to get there? That wait might take weeks or months, but it was probably the safest route for me to take.

“Fucking hell, if I knew I had to go back in the end, I wouldn’t have left in the first place” – I screamed and kicked the nearby tree so hard; I think I broke my leg in the process. Fortunately, the pain faded almost immediately, thanks to me being awesome.

“Now if I only had clear indicating how far…”

I was cut off by something large dropping on me and pressing me down.

“What the fuck!”

I tried to resist, but all I got in response was a sharp pain in my back. That didn’t really stop someone like me, but what did slow me down was the numbness that spread from the wound on my back to the rest of my body. It became harder and harder to move until finally, I couldn’t. Next, I was unceremoniously tossed around, and that let me see my assailant.

I never had Arachnophobia before. Well, this fixed that, real quick, as big hairy spider was currently using most of its legs to tie me up in a white silky thread. Honestly, I would love to say, I knew what kind of beast this was and what weaknesses it had, but the fact was that all I could think was – (Shit, what a fucking huge spider, fuck I’m screwed.) While left with my unmoving body and my horrified thoughts, spider unceremoniously proceeded to use the silk to drag me behind it to God-knows-where.

Just as I thought things couldn’t get worse, I saw more of the fuckers around. They were creeping along the same way that my captor was currently going. I counted at least six of them, possible more hiding around. It’s not easy to count things when your head bumps on tree roots every few seconds. As I was about to count myself among the spider food, I felt my body sense returning.

(Ha, you morons, seems like even your shitty poison can’t keep me down for long.)

Thankfully, they were instinct driven beast and thus disarming me wasn’t on their priority list. Besides that, with how long it took me to cleanse this poison out of my body, approximately 10 minutes, I can understand why they didn’t even need to do that. A normal person wouldn’t be able to move for a long time. Ha, finally another bonus to being me! The thread the spider used was mostly there to help it pull me along, not to restrain me; the latter was left for poison. So I slowly used my right hand to pull out the iron dagger I got from well-cooked ogres and tried to position it closer for better reach. I could have tried cutting myself free right here and now, but being surrounded by at least seven spiders (including the one pulling me). My chances of winning were probably close to zero. Need to keep blade ready and wait for a good moment to strike.

After 10 more minutes of horrible transportation, I found myself hanging in the air (Oh, I didn’t think I would ever admit this, but I miss you, Donny, you might have been horrible mount, but you never pulled me around the dirt, trying to peel my skin off my back by pulling me around like a block. If I ever get to next life, I’ll buy you another serving of fresh potatoes.) The spider was currently scaling a tall cliff as if it was a smooth road for it, and I was being pulled along for the ride. What greeted me was a huge cave. When I say huge, I mean actually huge. The entrance was barely noticeable from outside, but the inside could easily fit my whole village and then some. There were hundreds of those fuckers here. I saw webs everywhere, and in some corners, I could see what I presumed to be giant spider eggs.

Okay, things are not going well. If my chances before were close to zero then my current ones were going in the negatives, if I get left here for the meal, I will never get out. I almost cheered aloud, when I realised I was being pulled in one of the smallest tunnels, away from the towering spider beast army.

After what seemed like an hour, I was pretty sure our journey had taken us to the centre of the planet. Okay, I’m being pessimistically sarcastic here, but the fact was, it was quite hot in here, and we’ve been travelling on a downward slope all this time. Finally, we reached a root that seemed like endpoint of our journey. I could tell by the white cocoons around me, what will happen if I don’t act now, besides that my spider friend was the only one here currently with me. So, when the bastard started to make me into a cocoon, I used the chance to stab my dagger with all my strength in one of its many eyes. Well, that made him mad, as I was immediately tossed aside by his long legs. Landing face first into a wall, I felt my teeth break and nose flatted, but I didn’t really have time for complains, as I got up and pulled out my sword. The giant spider was thrashing about in an early silence, green blood flowing down its face. I really hoped it was silence, if it could communicate somehow, with the other spiders, my freedom will be short lived. I still didn’t have time to worry about these things, so I carefully circled the trashing beast, looking for an opening (not that I knew how to look for one, or how to exploit it when I found it).

“Well here goes nothing, you piece of hairy shit” – I said, as I just stopped looking for something I knew I won’t find and just ran up to it and stabbed as many times possible, before being kicked again by its trashing legs. Not that it could stop me from just doing that, so I quickly got up and repeated the process, on now clearly weaker spider. Finally, covered in more of my own blood than in spider’s green one, I sat down.

“I did it; I’m a fucking monster slayer now. A really bloody adventurer. I hope you are proud of me, mom, after all this time I became what I didn’t even want to be in the first place and followed your footsteps.”

I sighed. I didn’t want adventures. That was the reason I became a delivery boy in the first place. It was just the right amount of adventure for me. Not too boring and not too life-threatening. People tend to become more grounded in reality when one of your parents wasn’t there when you were born because he had already died from monsters, and the other one just didn’t come back one day from her usual forest patrol. I might have joked with my friends about becoming an adventurer, general, knight, etc. but doing it was something else entirely. Well not like it matters now, my choice was made for me, by everyone else I met. Starting with the big ball of doom, then ogres, and finally bunch of hairy spiders.

Well, I didn’t really have time to decide my future carrier choice right now. So, I got up and looked around, trying to listen for any spider movement. To my relief, it didn’t seem anyone was currently on their way to put me six feet underground. Clear that nothing was getting ready to eat me, I took a closer look at the cocoons around me. Some were clearly beasts, by the many strange grown legs, arms and horns showing outside, but I see that some had humanoid forms. Well, if I had to face an army of giant spiders, it would be nice to have someone else on my side, so I proceeded to try cutting open some of the cocoons.

“Eww… Fuck…” – Most of them were not even recognisable as humans, daemons or ogres, while others were a bit more “fresh” and didn't sit well with my stomach. Just looking at them, made me remember what I saw at Bristol.

After working for what seemed a few hours, I was left with two daemons and three humans in passable condition. When I say passable, I mean they might wake up one day. Honestly, I held no hope for at least two of them, but one of the daemons and two humans seemed in okay condition. I just had no idea how long until any of them wakes up, if at all. For me, the poison was 10 minutes of body paralyse. For them? I don’t know. Maybe they will wake up in next 10 minutes, maybe never. I should at least wait a few hours, as one of the healthier looking ones seemed like a mage, judging by his clothing. I even seem to recall seeing his face somewhere before, but honestly, with all the goo covering him, it was hard to tell, besides, that could have been me passing by him in the town. Having a mage in my adventure party when breaking out of here will be invaluable. Even if he turns out to just be a novice.

Well, now all that’s left is waiting and praying that I am not discovered.