by Ramy Vance
She scanned the room and spotted Ma, who stood frozen on the threshold of the front door, staring out at the portal. “Ma! We have to go,” she whispered as loudly as she thought was safe without drawing the attention of the orcs to her.
The woman turned to stare at Abby. Her eyes were empty. Her gaze was focused someplace else, her jaw slack. She looked almost like an old painting, worn and tired. “Rick…” she whispered.
“He’s dead,” Abby hissed, giving Ma a desperate, pleading look. “He’s dead. Come on!”
Ma snapped back to reality as though hearing those words had breathed life back into her, the life Pa no longer had. She raced through the living room and picked Margie up without breaking her stride. They ran out the back door together.
When they reached the cellar, Abby whirled around, checking if any orcs had followed them or were trying to cut them off. She didn’t see anything. Ma opened the door and ushered Margie down the stairs. Then she took the twins from Abby’s arms.
Then Abby heard the sounds of leaves crunching and heavy plodding. She didn’t pause to think. She met her mother’s haunted eyes peering out from the darkness, pressed her finger to her lips, and shut the cellar door.
One of the orcs turned around the corner of the house. He smiled at Abby. “Found her,” the monster shouted.
Abby spun and sprinted toward the stable, her heart racing as she tried to think of what to do. The only option that seemed reasonable was running. She had to keep the orcs away from the cellar. As long as Ma and the kids were safe, she’d be okay.
The stable was unlocked, and Abby threw the doors open. She ran to the back where the Crookins family kept Sergeant, an old mare who rarely wanted anything to do with people. Abby sprinted to the horse and dove into the hay. She was glad she had cleaned the stables earlier that day.
From beneath the hay, Abby watched the open doors, waiting for the orcs to find her. Only one came. He strolled through the stable, taking his time. Was he trying to draw this out? Either that, or he had no idea where she was.
A pitchfork lay beside her, and Abby grabbed it, holding it close as she tried to disappear. This had to be a nightmare. None of this was really happening. She was going to wake up any minute and come downstairs to have breakfast with her family. Pa would…
She fought back her tears. This was real. She knew it was. And Pa was gone.
The orc was close to Sergeant’s stall—about an arm’s length away from the horse, who was already neighing irritably about having to share a stable with Abby.
Abby slapped Sergeant’s hindquarters, and the horse neighed loudly before rearing. The mare kicked her front legs out, catching the orc in the chest. The creature went flying and hit the ground with a heavy thud. He struggled to sit up, holding his ribs as he attempted to catch his breath.
She sprang from the hay, holding the pitchfork high above her head, and brought it down on the orc’s throat, driving it deep into the ground. He sputtered blood and reached up, trying to grab the pitchfork from Abby, who gritted her teeth and pushed down harder, pinning him to the floor.
He wheezed and thrashed as he choked on his own blood. Then he was still.
Abby approached the stable doors as quietly as she could, checking over her shoulder every couple of seconds in case the dead orc had moved. She peeked out from behind the door, searching for the other orcs.
A pitchfork wasn’t going to cut it if she wanted to get out of this alive. She needed more firepower.
Once Abby was satisfied that the coast was clear, she made a beeline for the back door to the big house. She slipped inside as fast as she could and locked the door before going upstairs to her parents’ room.
A box sat on her father’s nightstand. Beside it lay a card which said, “Happy Anniversary.” Abby opened the box. This had been the last part of her gift—a timepiece that could control the drones from afar.
She had only tested it a handful of times, but if the drones worked, the watch should as well. But it still needed to be calibrated to the drones.
As Abby turned to leave, she spotted the shotgun hanging above the mantel. Neither Ma nor Pa was huge on locking guns up. Instead, they had been adamant about the kids receiving extensive gun and safety training.
Abby seized the shotgun from the mantel and searched under her parents’ bed for the ammo. She loaded and racked the shotgun before looking down the sights, refreshing herself on handling the gun. It was something to focus on because if her thoughts wandered…
A vision flashed in her mind’s eye; Abby saw Ma and the kids lying in a pool of blood, their heads bashed in.
Focus. Stay focused!
Abby shook away the thoughts and double-checked that the shotgun was fully loaded. She would have to make her way to her barn and link the watch to the drones. That was the only way to ensure that Ma and the kids didn’t end up dead.
She tried to control her breathing as she descended the stairs to the living room. It felt like the world was peeling away around her. She couldn’t tell if the walls were real or not. Her chest hurt from the pounding of her heart.
She gripped the shotgun tightly and crossed the living room.
The front door rattled. Shadows moved behind the stained glass in the door. The handle jiggled.
Abby froze. Then she raised the shotgun and pointed it at the door just as it opened. An orc entered the room, his eyes searching the place for her.
She didn’t wait to be seen. She fired.
The round hit the orc and tore his stomach open. The creature slumped against the wall, blood staining the wallpaper.
Abby ran up to the orc, pressed the shotgun against its head, and pulled the trigger. Blood splashed on her face. It was warm, almost comforting, but she had to focus.
That shot was going to give away her position—first rule of hunting.
Abby sprinted to the back door. She would run through the cornfield, swing along the back of the barn, stay out of sight. She raced across the backyard and into the cornfield. She kept to the outskirts of the field, careful not to go so far that she would get lost. The barn came up fast enough, and she slipped in through the back, keeping the lights off and working from her spatial memory.
Finally, Abby made it to her drone table. The drones had finished their tasks and returned to their stations. Abby switched her watch on, hit the sync button, and raised it to get a better signal.
A soft green light glowed on Gertrude. Abby’s watch emitted the same hue. It would only take a few moments for the watch and drones to link up.
A high-pitched scream pierced the night—a scream Abby recognized. Margie.
Abby sprinted toward the cellar.
Chapter Seven
The orcs continued to exit the portal as Anabelle watched. Some of the creatures were now exploring the area around them. That was the only chance she would have to grab some weapons—separating a few orcs from the pack.
Stealth had been part of Anabelle’s training. Stealth: one of the Three Roads of Halal-Elforaim, or the Path of Least Resistance. The path had been passed down from elf generation to generation for thousands of years. Each practitioner was kept secret from the rest of elvish society, the teachers of the path choosing one student from the most ancient bloodlines to carry on the tradition.
Anabelle had been that Wanderer, as they were called. It was an honor beyond honor. But her training had been squandered for the last hundred years, wining and dining corrupt politicians and vapid millionaires. And there was still so much Anabelle had learned that she simply couldn’t remember.
The fight at the hotel bar a few days ago almost felt like a fluke now. Muscle memory of her fighting positions had come back, but that was a different Road of her path. The three Roads were Force, Silence, and Lost. Anabelle had reawakened the Road of Force, which wasn’t going to help her now.
The Road she needed to travel was that of Silence. And, at the moment, Anabelle’s mind was too loud. She was under too much pressure. This w
asn’t the place, or the time, to focus on Silence. Yet Silence was where all of her memories resided. Somewhere in the quiet places of her mind.
To live as long as elves did, it was necessary to forget. It was not a conscious decision. Nor was it one which brought them pain or sorrow. It was a natural aspect of their existence, much like the dreams of humans or gnomes. As they grew older, memories that held no purpose slipped away.
The elves had learned to distill themselves down to the core of their existence. It was this distilling within Anabelle that now made it hard to remember. Her mind was filled with designers and dates, and a thousand other things she wished would have more quickly disappeared.
But there was one thing she did remember concerning the Road of Silence. All roads must be traveled if they are to be understood. How you traveled did not matter. Walk, run, skip, it didn’t matter.
Only the traveling itself mattered.
Anabelle peeked from behind the boulder again, trying to ignore the anxious whispering of the soldiers still struggling with their armor. The orcs were multiplying—which was bad news. But they were also separating into groups, moving away from the Dark Gate, which remained open.
Different groups meant they would put space between each other. The most silent place in all the realms was space, the blackness where screams never echoed, where cries went unheard.
Perfect, she thought.
She slipped out from cover, quickly ducking behind another boulder, following the route she anticipated the orcs were taking. She moved in a roundabout fashion, making sure to avoid detection.
She did not make a sound.
Silence does not flow like water. Silence is constant. Unbroken. Untethered. There is fear in Silence. It must be used.
The memory came screeching back, nearly knocking Anabelle off of her feet.
She was a child. The ancient forests without names surrounded her, and she sat atop a stone. Her eyes were closed, and she was filthy from having not bathed in three months.
Anabelle’s teacher—a wood elf far into his last years, a gnarled, sylvan creature not much different than the trees he dwelled among—came up to her. He snapped his fingers. The sound boomed in Anabelle’s skull.
It was like thunder.
This was the last day of Anabelle’s three-month journey on the Road of Silence. After the celebration feast, she would be allowed to speak again. Yet, she had no idea what to say. Such was the Road of Silence.
The Road stretched out in front of Anabelle now, memory after memory, shards of distant places and time, presenting themselves to her. There was a wealth of knowledge in her skull—separating and making sense of it would be the difficult task. Thousands of years of wisdom waited for her.
You’d think I would have figured out how to stop modeling sooner, Anabelle chastised herself, trying to rise above the odd sense of guilt her memories had illuminated. But there was a reason she needed the Silence: the group of five orcs moving East.
She peered around a boulder, memorizing the orcs’ positions. They appeared to be doing reconnaissance, scoping out the area for some reason. Not that it mattered to Anabelle. There were only four of them. The Silence could handle four.
She needed a distraction, and the smooth stone beside her feet would be perfect. She grabbed it and felt the weight in her hand. Heavy enough. She leaned over the boulder and tossed it at the back of the closest orc’s head.
The creature whirled, drawing his rifle, searching the direction the stone came from. He whispered something to the orc next to him, and three of the group strode toward Anabelle. Perfect.
She ducked down and pressed her spine against the boulder, felt the coolness of the rock as her body became weightless and thin as a shadow. She simply became part of the rock’s shadow, silently watching as the orcs arrived at her hiding place.
They stomped around, searching for the source of the rock. They took their time. Anabelle watched them from inside her hiding space. Then she sprang forward, her torso leaning out of the rock, and snatched the two orcs closest to her. Annabelle pulled them back into the silent darkness she hid within.
The other orc drew its gun as quickly as it could, but it was too late. Anabelle slipped from the darkness again, this time flipping the orc over, sliding back into the Road of Force. She dropped to her feet and kicked its legs, manna traveling up to her hands, her fists bursting into flames as she incinerated the creature.
The three orcs lay dead, bodies smoking, and Anabelle scooped up their rifles. She checked to see if any other groups were heading her way. No one seemed to have noticed. She looked over her shoulder again to appraise her work. It was messy.
Huh, she thought. Haven’t cared about that in a long time. Then she made her way back to the human soldiers.
Abby suddenly stopped in her tracks. Her dad’s body lay crumpled on the ground, his cane next to him in a pool of blood. Margie screamed again, and Abby snapped back to reality, her grip tightening on the shotgun. Abby grabbed her father’s cane and ran to the cellar.
Two orcs were waiting for her at the door. One of them held Margie in the air by her hair. The other stood behind Ma, who was on her knees, a strangely-made pistol pressed to the back of her head.
Abby aimed her shotgun at the orcs. “Let them go!”
The creature holding Margie tossed the girl to the ground and stepped on her throat. “Or what?” he asked. “I’ll be damned if I let a human child deter me from my mission. This place is slated to be the Dark One’s first conquest of the human realm. You should be honored to shed your blood here.”
Abby racked the shotgun. “Let them go now!”
“Human, your weapon is woefully ineffective from that distance, and if you take a step forward, we will kill everyone. Or if you stay there. Either way, this place will be purged for the Dark One.”
Abby’s watch beeped, and she checked the screen. The sync was complete. She bent and whispered into her watch. “Drones…home defense mode.”
A loud whirring emanated from the barn, though only one of the orcs bothered to pay attention. The drones burst out of the barn doors, rocketing toward the two orcs. Gertrude swooped over the one holding Ma and snatched up the creature as easily as she’d lifted the hay bale.
As the drone flew higher, the orc, in shock and panic, let go of Ma. Mistake, because he’d just lost his leverage, and the drone kept going up higher and higher, rising past the roof of the big house. Then her claws opened.
The orc splattered on the ground.
Bobby and Robby went for the other orc, who ran, attempting to escape into the cornfields.
The creature wasn’t fast enough. Abby had already closed the gap. She took aim and fired.
Buckshot ripped through his leg, and he toppled over. As he tried to crawl into the cornfield, Abby came up behind him, her face and clothes smeared with orc blood. She raised her father’s cane and brought it down on the back of the creature’s head.
Abby lost track of time. There was only the rise and fall of the cane. The soft squish of the wood hitting the pulp of what remained of the orc. Ma and Margie had to pull her off the corpse.
Once she moved away from the body, Abby stumbled, lost in a haze until she dropped to her knees and vomited. Then the tears came.
They continued long into the night.
Chapter Eight
The Dark Gate was still open, but orcs had stopped passing through. Only the fifteen from the initial squad remained. They seemed to be interested in something on the ridge they had teleported to.
Distracted was how Anabelle liked her orcs. She moved back to her original position with the rest of her squad, and they hadn’t noticed, even though she was carrying five jangling plasma rifles over her shoulders.
Most of Anabelle’s squad were still fighting with their exoskeletons when she returned. The private had managed to get his exoskeleton off. Two other soldiers had succeeded as well and were now helping the others.
Anabelle handed the
m four plasma rifles, keeping one for herself. The private looked over his gun, probably trying to pinpoint any differences between the orc model and the ones the human military had developed. “So, what’s the game plan?”
Anabelle slumped against the closest rock and scratched the back of her head. “Well, there would have been a plan if I had more than four combat-ready humans,” she grumbled. “But you’re all I got, so I guess we’re going to have to find a way to make it work.”
“I’ve been watching the orcs since you left. That, and trying to help the rest of the guys get their suits off. That shit is unbelievably heavy.”
“What about the orcs?”
“While the rest of the squad were taking off their suits, I did some recon. Best I can tell, the orcs have been going back and forth between the Dark Gate and another point about a half a klick south. They’re now coming toward us over fairly easy terrain. They’re getting closer. If we can’t get anyone moving, the orcs are going to be on us eventually. That doesn’t leave us many options.”
The private was right. There were only two options with the current state of things. First was wait for the orcs to arrive and try to defend the position. If Anabelle decided on this one, the humans would have some decent cover, but the orcs still outnumbered the combat-ready soldiers by a noticeable margin.
Option number two would be attacking the orcs head-on. Anabelle leaned more toward this plan, but she also could see the obvious flaw. Only four of her soldiers were armed. But dealing with fifteen orcs seemed within the realm of her abilities. There had been more at the bar.
But the human soldiers were a major concern. If Anabelle took them with her, she had no idea how they would do in battle. They could end up dead. Without their exosuits, they were defenseless. All it would take was one stray plasma shot.
The private cleared his throat to get Anabelle’s attention. “Whatever you decide to do, Commander, we’re with you,” he said. “Gotta show you that humans can hang too.”
