After the World

by Maire Brophy

  I needn’t have worried; the mountain was leading me somewhere. The trail ended. There were no more footholds to climb. Was I there? I asked the mountain, but it just gave me a significant look. I could see a way down but there was no further way up. I touched the steep mountainside with my fingers, and then it fell in to view. A door. Better than a door. An orc door. A door meant something inside. It meant tunnels, and caverns and mines, and darkness even during the day. It meant other orcs.

  The thought filled me with excitement and dread. I pressed against the door. The rock seemed to bounce as I pressed it, and it took me by surprise when it sprung open against me. I stumbled back, lost my footing, and nearly fell off the ledge. At the apex of my stumble, I felt a breeze push me back. You see, it’s good to make friends with the mountain.

  The door revealed a tunnel filled with velvety darkness. I took some steps inside, and the door swung shut behind me. The darkness enveloped me. For a moment, I was lost. I had been exposed to the day for too long to see easily in such complete darkness. I bathed in the black and waited for my sight to adjust.

  I stood there breathing in the heavy air of the tunnel. The opening of the door had changed the air currents, and they fought to settle back into their old pattern. A clamor of scents reached my nostrils. Amid the noise of rocks and dust were other, more unexpected scents. Signs of metallurgy, fire, and water flew up through the tunnel and danced around my head. But I was looking for more. I was looking for my people. No one had been in this tunnel for a long time, but perhaps the tunnel would lead me to them. After all, the mountain had sent me this way. I thought for a moment about the motivations of mountains and wondered if I had made the right choice. I thought about being stuck here forever with only the mountain to talk to…that didn’t seem so bad.

  While I was concentrating on my nose, my eyes started to come back to me. I could dimly see the walls and a bit down the tunnel. I hoped my underground sight would return to me with time, but this was still better than outside. At least I no longer needed to worry about the day. I patted the walls of the tunnel ― the mountain had done well ― and started forward, down the tunnel, to whatever I would find there.

  Those first days inside the tunnel were uneventful in a way. But they were also fascinating to me. My first love, before power, was in the rocks ― the way they dapple and flow. It was never any surprise to me that jewels live in rocks. Day creatures like the glitter they bring and pull them out of the rocks. Well, orcs and other night creatures do that too, but jewels are always more beautiful in their rightful place ― in the veins of the mountain. I hugged my mountain again. This time, its thoughts were warmer and muzzier to me, but I could hear its pulse more clearly: seams of rocks, strata, running through the mountain, cross-connected in different ways. Mountains are both one thing and many things. They dig deep into the earth and thrust high into the sky. They provide us with everything we need to survive, and sometimes, we forget to love them.

  The mountain took a breath and suddenly more scents were swirling around me. It was hard to catch them, but one of them was unmistakable: orc. It was old and stale, but it was there. I wondered how old it was. Dread didn’t leap from the pit of my stomach, so it must be old enough. I walked on. The tunnels split and forked, but each time I followed the one where the orc scent was strongest. I knew I wouldn’t actually meet another orc…the scent was somehow clean.

  There were shapes in the tunnel ahead. My nose told me there was no one there, but for a moment I forgot to believe it. I stood stock-still waiting for them to make the first move, my heart pounding in my ears. You’d think I’d have learned by now not to have a standoff with a rock. I got my breath back under control and took some steps forward. Yes, it was a rock, but there was something next to it. An orc.

  He was long dead. The clean smell was due to the lack of flesh. This was from before the breaking, or more probably, part of the breaking itself. I pulled at the skeleton until I could see his armor. This one had good steel. He bore the proud mark of our army, but he was very dead. The insignia of fire brought me back. We will cleanse the world with the flames. How naïve. As if anyone owned fire.

  I sat down beside him for a talk. It’s been so long since I chatted with one of my kind. It did not matter that he was dead. I’m sure I would not have listened to him when he was alive, so the experience would have been much the same. I told him about all that had happened to me since the breaking: about how I had run and hid and survived. I told him about the cave, and about her and the trees. He didn’t seem all that interested. I guess it’s not very eventful compared to what happened before the breaking. But then I told him about the river. I could see I had piqued his interest. Probably wondering if it would bring him back to life as well. So selfish!

  I rose again, wondering what more I’d find here. Not far down the tunnel, I came across a few more. At least they weren’t alone. All of them bore the fire sign. For a moment, I wondered if I could work out where I was. This was an orc home in my territory ― there had been maps and plans. I don’t know if it was my mind refusing to find the information, or if it’s because the world was so utterly changed, but either way, I had not been able to understand where I was since the breaking. This mountain was certainly not where I came from, but the fire signs mean I must have been aware of it. It probably even had a name. I had to accept this information was lost to me, at least for now.

  I continued on down the tunnel, and it opened up into a great hall. It was mostly empty with a few notable exceptions. The most obvious was the pile of orc corpses in the middle. That’s how complete our defeat was. They killed my people, ransacked the halls, and removed their dead. I assumed they had dead too…orcs are nasty fighters. They probably burned them too; all I could see were the bones. The chatterbox up the tunnel probably got away from them, but not too far.

  I walked around the hall and saw tunnels leading off in all directions. Was it possible that in this labyrinth they would have found every orc? If this were an orc home, there would be other rooms, living spaces, smithies in the deeper parts of the mountain. Could they all be empty? I took one of the tunnels that led downward. The deeper I went, the more chance I had of finding a living orc.

  I walked on. There was more destruction ― like the place had been scoured with fire. Bones and bits of armor littered the tunnel. I had to be careful where I stepped. The tunnel sloped steeply downward and twisted to follow the seams in the mountain. Here and there, it changed to steps and eventually, I came to a small room with five tunnels off it. The markings on the wall designated the living spaces, and I explored the first tunnel. It brought me to a series of rooms and a locked door. The door was barred from this side. I stood very still and listened for a moment. There was no sound behind the door. This place was more still than any part of the mountain I had yet encountered. I didn’t want to look behind the door. I knew what I would find, and I could not have borne it.

  I went back to choose another tunnel. Here the markings were clearer ― not scorched away by fire. I chose the middle tunnel and kept walking downward. A great sadness weighed on me. All the while I had been in the cave, I thought of myself as apart. Losing everything had shattered me, but somewhere deep down, I had thought that orcs would go back to their holes and continue on as before, scraping and surviving. But here I was in the orciest of mountains, and no orcs. After the breaking, they were hunted all the way to their caves. I could see the evidence here. Every orc or goblin I scared away from the cave had probably died soon after. They were all gone, right down to the last cub. It was a fitting punishment for me that I would remain here alone.

  More tunnels, more markings. They were all old. In my bones, I felt that nothing alive had been here for years. There was no one left, no one I could talk to. So I told the mountain. The mountain understood. The mountain was cut off from other mountains. It was lonely too. For a while, I stood there with my head pressed against the tunnel wall. Nothing mattered anymore. Everything was
gone. Even when I was a wretch living on grubs, I believed there were still orcs out there. It seemed like the truth was there in the pit of my stomach, a hollow, gnawing emptiness drilling through my guts. Now it was just me and the mountain.

  It stayed like that for quite some time. I stood there in the deep dark with my eyes shut. Still, like every other orc in the mountain. Perhaps I would stay like this until the end took me, then I would join my kin, wherever they were. I wasn’t sure I’d even be welcome after death. A day creature once told me that you reap what you sow. I cut him down. I thought it was appropriate at the time, but I finally understood that this broken world was of my making and that my punishment was to live in it.

  Something nagged at my mind. It nagged for a long time before I paid attention. I assumed it was some bodily need demanding to be fulfilled. When I finally listened, I found it was a thought, a question. The mountain told me it was cut off from other mountains, but I saw the other mountains. This wasn’t a single mountain, it was a range. Outside, the thick, silent forest separated them, but that did not stop mountains from talking to each other ― they were ranges, connected deep into the earth.

  After mulling it over for a while, I decided to ask the mountain. There was no answer. I pressed my hands and forehead against the rock and listened, deeply. I heard the breath of the mountain, the surges and waves of its strata, but it articulated nothing to me. I asked again ― why was it so lonely when there were mountains so near? Nothing. No response. The mountain was not speaking to me. It wasn’t just not talking. Mountains ramble away with their own business all the time, but this one was silent. The only sounds were things it could not suppress. It watched me intently but said nothing.

  This was a puzzle. I felt it must mean something, but I wasn’t sure what that could be. After everything I had seen that day, my mind was happy to have a distraction, and it turned the problem of the isolated mountain around and around. The trees meant something too; they surrounded this mountain. And they had started to do so after the world was destroyed. Day creatures were everywhere, but they no longer used the mountain pass, even though there were no orcs to harry them. I was being hunted, but they did not follow me to the mountain. It must mean something.

  I walked back to the last junction of tunnels and read the markings again. They were the usual directions, talking about people and their living quarters, the great hall, the chief’s rooms. The chief’s rooms might be a place to start. If there was anything of value, it would be there.

  The chief lived deeper in the mountain, usually beneath the great hall. It was said because it was the heart of the mountain, but I knew it was because it was both defensible and connected. The mountain chief had to know everything that was going on but had to keep himself clear of threats, both internal and external. If there were slayings in the great hall, there would surely be slayings here. I wondered how much day creatures knew about how orcs lived. They had found the cubs; they would surely have found everyone else.

  I found the chief’s rooms quickly enough. The outer door was splintered and broken. Obviously, they had tried to barricade themselves in, and it was eventually pointless. There were no orcs here now; my guess was that they were in the pile in the great hall. I pulled opened the remains of the doors and stepped inside. There was just rubble on the floor. Everything that was once a thing was now destroyed.

  The second room had more in it. More rubble, but some if it looked like it might once have been furniture. In the corner was a chest lying on its side with its contents spilling out on to the floor. I could see sheaves of paper and scrolls. I righted the chest and picked up a piece of paper. It disintegrated in my hand. Some of the scrolls looked more robust, so I examined them. These were familiar. We had used many of these. The seals had been broken, but I could still see the fire emblem that was pressed into the wax. These were commands ― commands from me ― or at least my generals.

  I would need light to read the scrolls, and time. But time was something I had in abundance. I moved into the third and final room ― the chief’s bedding quarters. Here, there were more scrolls. There were torches all over the tunnels, but they were all unlit. I searched for a tinderbox to make light. As I thought, the chief had ready means of making light, and soon I had two glowing torches. The shadows danced around the walls. I found them particularly grotesque, as if they were mocking all that had happened here.

  I started reading. Most of it was exactly what you’d expect ― orders and more orders. I tried to put them in time order, but it wasn’t always possible. It started out with orders to defend the mountain adequately and to train for war. The first orders for troops were to be expected, but then orders were given to send more, younger, untrained orcs. The needs of war were great, the needs of the mountain less so. The needs of the orcs themselves were not considered at all. This orc home was slowly bled dry of all its fighting orcs, and in the end, it could not defend itself.

  There is something here written by the chief. Instead of sending orcs, he asks for orcs. He says the mountain is important and must not be breached. He says they cannot defend themselves if they try to take the mountain from both sides. It’s preposterous to think an orc mountain could not defend itself. Even with what I’d seen, it seemed crazy that they were listened to. Were they listened to? I had assumed the orcs in the fire armor were sent here, but maybe they fled here. Maybe this was their home, and they thought they would be safe if they returned here.

  I returned to the same problem, where was I? None of the references made any sense to me. There seemed to be something about the mountain that was important to the war, or at least important to protect from the war. I tried to think. I tried to remember before the breaking, when all I seemed to do was give orders. Did I give these orders?

  Mostly, I can’t remember before clearly at all. Some of it comes back to me in pinprick detail, but only the personal things. Only those that I loved or hated, or loved and hated. Sometimes, I dream and everything is vivid and visceral ― it was a marked contrast to my memory, which was glossed over with pain, making it hard to reach. And mostly I don’t want to, but right now I had a puzzle to unravel, and if I could think back to my actions without feeling everything all at once, I might be able to glean something and make sense of this.

  I peeled a wax seal off a scroll and rolled it between my fingers. The imprint was made with a ring. A ring I once wore on my finger. This, along with the vellum, gave weight to words held within. They would do what they were asked, or they would answer to me. The correspondence had got increasingly threatening. I wonder if it worked on the chief, or if he resisted at all. Orcs were always committed to their clans, unless they thought there was an opportunity for something better. That was the lever that I mostly used. Sometimes it was fear, but mostly I told them it was an opportunity. I painted a picture for them. I told the story of our glory, of our dominion, and they lapped it right up. Even as I beat them down, I told them that they could be great. I told them that they would be great. That I would beat them until they were great, and even then, I wouldn’t stop. I would always be there pushing them further.

  I didn’t lie. I was still here. It’s unfortunate that they were not.

  I spent some time in the chief’s rooms. I guess I can be chief of the mountain now, as well as the lowest foot soldier. I read all the scrolls and the scraps of paper that survived. I saw my own sign at the bottom of some of them. Part of my huge plans ― small cogs in a big machine. These weren’t outlier mountains, they were orc strongholds. I began to understand where I was. Though there were day creatures everywhere, these were not their lands. I was well within our borders, lands that were not troubled by day creatures for many thousands of years. No wonder the mountain wouldn’t talk to me; maybe it had figured out that it was all my doing.

  I sat there with my puzzle for quite some time. The sadness distracted me from my task and dragged me down uncomfortable roads. I would stay there for long periods staring at the ruins of w
hat I had done. Everything was raw and wild. I saw the deaths of orcs ― young and old ― over and over again. I saw the burning of the mountains, of all the caves, all the holes and hiding places that kept us from the bright sun and made us safe. I saw orcs run out of tunnels, away from fire and smoke, to be slaughtered in the sun by elves and men and wizards and all the biting, viciousness that they could bring. But it wasn’t enough.

  I went down those roads for far too long. I stayed and felt everything until I could feel nothing. I had put off feeling anything for so long. But I couldn’t stop them anymore; they tumbled through me without reason or restraint. I was there in the battles again and again, hearing myself push on without mercy, watching orcs and goblins tumble into the ground, stamped and scoured out of existence. Over and over again until I could feel nothing more.

  Worn out, I lay on the cool ground with my eyes open. The flickering light from the torches lit the markings on the papers that lay all around me. Words swam in front of my eyes until I could see nothing at all. I stayed there until the torches burned out, and I was left in the blessed darkness once more.

  Sometime later, I came to my senses. I doubted it would be the last time I was taken over by those memories. Everything seemed so unfinished. But I had my puzzle. Why was this mountain cut off? Knowing where I was would go some way to answering that. The scroll spoke of the Iret Mountains, one of the many orc homes. I couldn’t recall anything special about these mountains, even though there were several Iret orcs under my command. They weren’t the fiercest of fighters, but they possessed something else ― a particular type of intelligence. Some of them could work magic, a skill that is very rare in orcs. Maybe that was it. Could this be a magical place?