by Sean Oswald
Again before she could answer, Daichi said, “She is known as Emily Nelson.”
The Archdruid nodded his head and again Daichi and Emily walked forward another ten feet.
“Does Emily Nelson have family within the people of the moon?” The Archdruid seemed to pronounce her name as if it was distasteful.
“She does not.” Daichi answered and then after another nod from the robed elf he and Emily walked forward another ten feet.”
“Does Emily Nelson have family in the world outside the Circle?”
“She does, she is wife to David Nelson a human noble and named ambassador of the Kingdom of Albia to the Throne and Circle. She is also the mother of three, born to her human husband.”
With that answer, there was a brief stirring amongst the nobles and the elves comprising the partial circles, just as if a light breeze blew against the reeds sticking up from a lake.
“So be it, what was before cannot be held against those who were lost.” The Archdruid intoned the clearly formalized answer, and then she found herself walking again ten more feet.
“Has the Mitsukatta obtained a class or trade to bring to the Circle?”
“She is classed as a Daughter of Shanelle and by report a talented healer.”
This time there was audible murmuring among the nobles, till the woman upon the throne clapped her hands together and silence fell again.
The Archdruid didn’t nod directly but looked back at the two upon the throne. The man gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head and only then did he turn back to face Emily and give a nod of his head.
Once again, Emily and Daichi walked forward until they were only ten feet before the throne. The Archdruid spoke again, “Master Daichi, your duty is completed. The Mitsukatta is presented.” With that, Daichi bowed deeply first to the two upon the Throne and then to the Archdruid before walking backwards. Emily was tempted to look back, but something told her to keep her focus upon the throne and not risk a glance over her shoulder.
The Archdruid now stepped down from next to the throne to stand only two feet in front of Emily. “Do you Emily Nelson, wife of David Nelson, chosen of a forgotten goddess, mother of half-breeds, submit yourself before the Throne and ask to join the Circle of our people?”
Time slowed down for Emily in much the same way as it did when fighting and the question crossed her mind, “Why wasn’t all of this explained to her before?” She had no choice but to go with her best guess. Fear and excitement warred within her but she chose to trust rather than give in to fear.
“I do.”
Both the man and woman who sat upon the throne stood up as if to pass judgment. Then, a rainbow sparkling ball of light struck the lattice of the pavilion. Guard’s weapons were drawn instantly and moved to surround the throne. The Archdruid cast some spell, and the ball of light passed through the lattice and landed in his hand. His eyes closed for a second before saying, “It is only a message spell. It appears to have been sent from the human David Nelson, concerning the fate of this one’s child.”
Chapter Eleven
“Dreams are soft, we are not. We cannot be. We survive, dreams fade.” — Orc General Asudai upon seeing the Halcon Mountains for the first time
Balayria didn’t think of herself as a kind woman. Life had not been kind to her. Born to an orc mother as the product of rape from a human warrior who had been part of a raiding party which destroyed her mother’s village, what the orcs called a khotkhon. Unlike what most human’s thought, orc’s did not automatically cast out half-bloods. Orc society is brutal but it is because they live in a hard land. There is no room for any who don’t carry their own weight. The primary paths to prominence for a male orc were as a successful warrior, priest, hunter, or blacksmith. Orc women were not frail like humans but they also did not fight as frontline fighters. They had other paths to glory, the greatest of those as a mother, preferably of males. Failing that or often after their years of birthing were over, they could also rise to prominence as shaman focused on healing or as assassins.
For Balayria, motherhood was not an option. It wasn’t that she didn’t adore children. Quite to the contrary, as a young woman she had longed for a babe of her own to hold to her bosom, but while the clan chief might accept her presence in the clan, he would never condone her marriage. It would only serve to dilute the bloodline, assuming that any self-respecting orc male would be willing to bed her let alone marry her.
She was more petite than the other females, and so it was thought for a period of time that she should be trained as an assassin. It turned out however that her motherly instinct was too strong and even in vengeance for what had been done to her mother, she couldn’t bring herself to strike in close combat. Then they tried to train her as a shaman. She excelled in the herbology and was so so at the alchemistry aspect of it, but had not aptitude at all for even a single school of magic. Soon she found herself relegated to overseeing the goblin and human slaves who attended to the laundry and other similar mundane tasks. It was learned that she had a good eye for tailoring and actually raised that skill rather rapidly as she learned to make all sorts of items on her own.
Still, that left her as amongst the lowest of the clan members and a perpetual outsider. The sort of person who could still a conversation simply by walking into a yurt. She took to spending more and more of her time alone at least when her duties with the slaves didn’t occupy her. In her loneliness, she began to express her emotion in drawings. First in dirt, then upon planks of bark and finally upon some of the clothing which she made. By happenstance, one of the orc warriors in a rush grabbed the wrong shirt that she had made and put on one of her decorated shirts. He scoffed at the designs upon it but didn’t want to miss out on the raid, so he wore it beneath his armor. In the midst of battle, the magic of Balayria’s drawing took hold and empowered him, making him stronger and faster than ever before. It saved his life and may well have been the tipping point in a hotly contested raid.
Once his accomplishments were praised by everyone in the clan, it raised a number of questions. Eventually leading to the conclusion that Balayria must possess the most coveted of all orc abilities. She had the ability to draw the holy marks of Bal Zar. Even more impressively, she had been able to draw them on simple cloth instead of having to tattoo them directly onto a warrior for them to have effect. This caused a great deal of unrest. There were some who accused her of stealing the secrets from the priests and others who wanted her natural talent to be developed. Soon her little khotkhon was practically torn apart by the varying factions and it was spreading within the entire clan.
Eventually, she made a decision to leave because of the chaos. After that, Balayria spent the next four decades scavenging a living however she had to. She would work for goblin tribes, or craft items with her magical drawings. Over time, she learned how to turn her drawings into tattoos. She didn’t know the tattoos designed by Bal Zar for his priests to use, but her creativity led to unique combinations which often had their own benefits. Then the occasional orc warrior who failed to earn their own tattoos would seek her out and pay her to give them hidden markings.
It wasn’t much of a living but over the years she became known as the witch of the lowlands. Finally, her reputation got her in trouble. She was recruited by a hobgoblin shaman and paid upfront in gold. It was all quite mysterious, but once she made the trek into goblin lands, she learned why they had been willing to entice her with gold. Simply having the patterns for the tattoos was not enough. They needed someone with a high enough talent in drawing. There were many factors to consider as it was likely she was the only crafter in the area who operated outside of the control of one of the orc clans and was capable of completing the task.
She was very tempted to perform the work once she learned that the tattoo patterns they had stolen or obtained were from the Ironclaw Clan which is one of the most prominent and powerful of the assorted clans. She had never had direct contact with them, but something about usin
g stolen designs did not sit well with her. She studied them, learned them, and committed them to memory. She even went so far as placing the tattoos on the lead goblin.
That one, Thelan the Basher, was an odd one. Realistically, all goblins are odd. Their entire society should collapse in on itself. Every goblin was hopelessly selfish. Even the more rational hobgoblins only contained it slightly better. A society based upon mutual narcissism and fear should not survive but somehow, beyond all odds, Thelan was forging a level of stability which she had never heard of in the goblins. Thelan even took to calling himself the Goblin King. A goblin with delusions of grandeur was nothing new. What was new was the way in which the goblins picked up his title and began to accept it.
Her tattoo’s worked so well for Thelan that he ordered her to put partial sets upon all of his warriors. It was a task which would take months, as if there was one thing that goblins were good at, it was breeding. Already feeling conflicted about the entire process, Balayria found herself pushed over the edge at her last meeting with King Thelan. He had an advisor, apparently human, based upon his size and manner of speech, standing next to him. The man was dressed in dark gray robes and something about him scared Balayria to her core.
That scare pushed her to come to her senses, and she decided that even if the assorted orc clans were not huge fans of hers, that she would not betray that half of her heritage. So, under cover of the noon-day first sun, she left the goblin encampment while most of them were sleeping. Gathering what little belongings she could take with her, she fled. This was six months ago, and she had been forced to move as close to human/elven lands as she dared. She had created a hut more akin to human buildings than the orcish yurts in the hills of the lowlands. Essentially, she was within a couple days of the border with the Murkwood.
Nothing had happened for those six months and Balayria had begun to believe that the goblin king had given up on her. She lost herself in finding new plants that hadn’t been available at higher elevations. Best of all, she found a type of clay which seemed to hold onto magic very well. She was able to create an assortment of paints with it, and her drawings took on even more power using those new paints.
Balayria should have learned over her many decades though that no time of peace can last for long. Though her solitude was not broken by a goblin raid or some mysterious monster sent to kill her. Instead, it was broken by a pair of beautiful brown almond shaped eyes. Finding Sara and the bizarre goblin with her had been a cathartic miracle of sorts for the half-orc woman. Sara was a half-blood just like her. Sara was also without a clan or village to call her own. In Sara’s grief, Balayria saw an echo of all that life had denied her. Her mother’s heart which she had closed off and felt would never be fulfilled, opened itself to the little half-elven girl and for once Balayria knew something beyond survival. Now she experienced joy. Even the hint of guilt she felt that Sara’s loss was what gave her the chance to be a mother was not enough to mute the instant connection she felt.
The connection between Balayria and Sara was only made stronger by the fact that Sara shared the same skill in drawing that the half-orc had. It was one of the freak coincidences or at least that is how it felt to Balayria as she had no idea in the part played in this connection by the Watcher. Since Sara had been with her, she had done everything in her power to occupy the girl; teaching her about the local plants and wildlife, showing her how to sew, and even trying to accept Krinnk.
Three days after falling into Balayria’s arms, Sara was finding little things to make her smile each day. She wasn’t happy. She cried herself to sleep every night and periodically throughout the day, but she continued to do everything that was asked of her. Her parents had always told her to do her best at everything. It was easy in this case. She had always enjoyed drawing. Each morning, Balayria would show her a different design and then would ask her to practice it until she mastered the shape. It reminded her of when she had to practice her letters, but instead of insisting that each stroke be made a specific way like her kindergarten teacher had, the half-orc allowed her creative freedom. She was taught that the drawings had to come from her and the intention was more important than the precision.
Besides her art, Sara and Krinnk were learning more about each other now that they weren’t on the run. She didn’t have to sleep as much as before. The extra Endurance she gained from her bond with Krinnk allowed her to work more and feel more energetic all day long. Enough so that when she wasn’t learning the lessons that Balayria was teaching her she and Krinnk would play games like tag or hide and seek. She began to learn the area around the hut very well.
Thus it was that Sara was hiding in the outhouse. It stunk, but the scent helped to mask her from Krinnk’s keen senses. At least that had been her eight year old reasoning. Krinnk still found her after a very short search. His goblin tracking skills, senses, and dramatically increased Intelligence made him much better at finding her. Krinnk found that thoughts came to him faster, and the world seemed so much less scary. Prior to first seeing the Nelson’s, Krinnk had mostly lived to survive but now there was something more. There was a person who meant more to him than his own needs. This was a first for a goblin, and Krinnk didn’t know what to make of it.
His Intelligence after the bonus the bond gave him had soared to ten or that of an average human on earth. Simple IQ wasn’t enough to make him wise, nor was the twenty percent increase to his Wisdom. He would need life experience to do that. So far, his life experience had been filtered through a fog of perpetual fight or flight. Those neural pathways couldn’t be reformed overnight. So when Balayria gave him plentiful helpings of food, he always saved some and hid it. Logically, he knew that wasn’t necessary, but he couldn’t help himself. It was a compulsion which he felt. The longer he had to think with his new Intelligence the more shame he felt at his prior self. It was almost as if a dog suddenly understood just how disgusting sniffing butts was and now felt embarrassed by it. So while Sara was dealing with her grief, Krinnk was dealing with vacillating feelings of relief at his new clarity of thought and shame at his former manner of life. Both of their feelings were complicated by the bond and the way in which each of them could feel a sort of reflection of the other’s feelings in themselves.
With that tangled morass of feelings and only the capabilities of an awakened goblin and an eight year old girl to deal with those feelings, it is little wonder that they both threw themselves wholeheartedly into not only Balayria tasks but also into the games they played with one another. There would be time for thinking later. Now was a time to get accustomed to the changes.
Balayria kept Krinnk fairly busy fishing in a small stream, and had taught him how to set traps for small game. He also would feed the chickens that she kept in a coop outside her hut. Now though, Krinnk was busy playing hide and seek with Sara. He had realized a while ago that she would pick hiding spots for the purpose of throwing off his tracking senses. So he ran through most of the places where she could hide and ruled them out. Sara didn’t like to hide in the same spot twice. She had only done so once, so it was better to assume that she would be in a new spot. The awareness of his new reasoning process threatened to overwhelm him, but Krinnk just focused on the fun of the game. He also reasoned out that there must be a way for him to track her through the bond, but that felt like cheating, something which wouldn’t have bothered him before but which now seemed abhorrent to him.
After eliminating all the other spots, Krinnk settled on the same spot which Sara had thought of, and so he crept up to the outhouse. Even close by, he couldn’t smell her distinctive scent, but he was certain this was the most likely hiding spot. Pulling the door open, it was dark inside, but there wasn’t much room. The outhouse had been built for a much larger person by Balayria but still… Ah there she was hidden in the corner, trying hard to stay very still. Now he could hear her heart beating. Krinnk pounced, his jagged nails had been smoothed out by Balayria, and instead of scratching his prey as he might have
in the past, his fingers quickly slid under her arms before she could squirm away. A grin came to Krinnk’s face as Sara burst out in laughter at his tickling. He loved her laugh. Loved to be the reason that she laughed. It was an infectious laugh and so oblivious to where they were. Both were soon shaking with laughter.
Then he heard it. A crashing sound outside. Something large had just moved into the area around the hut. There was the sound of breaking wood as one of Balayria’s little fences must have been stepped on or trampled over by a large body. Instantly, Krinnk’s lifetime of self-preservation instincts came back to the forefront. He gently placed one hand over Sara’s mouth stifling her peals of laughter even as his other hand made a universal ‘shushing’ expression with a single finger perpendicular to his mouth.
“Come out little witch. Gorgor hear your laughing. No can hide from Gorgor. Gorgor will smash if witch not come out.” Krinnk recognized the manner of speech and the sound of the voice, or rather voices. There was only one creature that he knew of who spoke with two different mouths. It must be an ettin. This was bad. Balayria was up in the mountains gathering various herbs and had left the two of them to have some play time. They were on their own against a veritable mountain of muscle. Krinnk’s first instinct was the hide, but his higher reasoning ruled that out. This little wooden building would not be a good place to be caught when the ettin smashed it down around them. Then he thought of running. He most likely could get away from the beast, unless it was one of their trackers. Ettin, just like goblins, had some who were stronger for fighting and some who were faster for scouting and tracking. Even still, he could probably hide, but then his awakened conscience put a kink in that plan. He cared about Sara. No that wasn’t enough. He loved Sara. He who had never been loved by another being in all of his life, not by his sire or female who pushed him out, not by his brood mates or the scouts he trained with. Never had he known love, but Sara had changed all that. It was still a new thing, but he would put her wellbeing above his own.
