An Orc at College: A Contemporary Sword and Sorcery Harem Fantasy

by Liam Lawson

  He reached for his magic and found it easily. So easily that he almost lost his hold on it. Up until that point, trying to cast in the stadium had been several times more difficult than it should have been. Like running with weights strapped to his arms and legs. Now it flowed freely, not only without resistance, but almost eagerly. Like a damn had been broken and all that had been withheld was suddenly bursting forth.

  And then it dawned on Trorm what had happened. Arlen had somehow been able to tap into the stadium’s magic to cast transmutation and evocation spells, augmenting his speed and allowing him to attack with gouts of flame. He must have tapped into it again for this summoning and instead of simply using a piece, he’d poured all of the considerable magic the enchanted structure had to offer into his spell.

  Trorm felt almost sick thinking of what he might have been able to accomplish if he’d had the summoning crystal on him here. Would this creature be even larger? Large enough to swallow a dragon, perhaps? Would its stay be permanent or would there have simply been more of them? Trorm could just envision a horde of this things piling over themselves like the slimians, washing over cities and slurping down the occupants.

  With a roar, he heaved his staff up and let fly a bolt of lightning into the thing’s face. He bellowed, pouring on the magic. He felt invincible with the stadium’s enchantment not only broken, but aiding him, filling him with so much energy he could barely handle it. So, he didn’t try. He did not direct the bolt or try to manipulate it, he performed the simplest of evocation techniques and transformed magic into raw electrical energy.

  Smoke and steam erupted from the thing’s face with a hiss as the slime there was burned away. Then he felt his magic hit something. A resistance not unlike what he’d felt with the slimians before, but different enough that he couldn’t navigate or manipulate it quickly. And massive enough that he wasn’t sure he could even if he had time on his side. Whatever this thing was, it could resist magic, and resist it far better than its tinier cousins.

  The spell ended. The steam and smoke cleared, revealing a circle of scorched and blistered flesh a yard in diameter upon the things head, right between where its eyes would have been. It was bad enough to have dropped an elephant.

  The creature let out a series of bellowed hisses that might have been laughter, and came at them.

  Trorm threw up his force shield and the thing crashed into it with such force that he could feel both it and himself being driven back. He planted his feet. Astroturf was pulled up as he was pushed back. The thing battered at his shield and then began to press into it and reach upward, seeking the edges like a snake in an aquarium seeking the top by feeling out the glass boundaries. The weight of it was near enough to make his knees buckle and he nearly lost the will to maintain the spell. But it held.

  Tentacles reached out like serpents the size of trees, snaking around the shield, reaching for them. Lilian fired off the remaining shots in her revolver, earning several slimy splashes, then charged forward with her sword, going for the left side of Trorm’s shield. Winnie let out a yell of her own and leapt after her, baseball bat held high aloft, a manic grin on her face as she took the right side.

  Tib’s began his music again. Trorm hadn’t even realized he’d stopped. His voice and guitar belted through the speakers, echoing throughout the stadium, filling the three of them with power and energy as they fought.

  Trorm braced himself and bolstered his shield.

  The glow about Lilian brightened and her sword parted the tentacle flesh like a blowtorch taken to paper mâché. Slime exploded from the cuts and then boiled away in the air, turning to viscous steam.

  Winnie was having far worse luck. She leapt and dodged, striking each tentacle with more momentum and force than anyone with bones could have survived, but the alien nature of the creature defied her attacks. A bludgeon was simply a poor tool to use against something with no bones. It was like trying to cut a steak by slamming it over and over again and hoping something would tear. Only her lagothrope reflexes and speed kept her alive.

  The thing let out a bellow and pushed harder against Trorm’s shield. It bellowed back and dug in his feet. It wasn’t about mass or physical strength, it was about willpower, and Trorm had that. He dug deep and pushed and held.

  Barely discernable behind the creature, Trorm spotted Arlen. He was making his way around, searching for a new escape route.

  “This isn’t working,” Trorm shouted. “We need a…” he trailed off, as a tentacle tried to strike Lilian but was repelled by her glowing aura and then severed. He glanced from her to the lights overhead. The stadium might not be done giving to them yet.

  “New plan!” he bellowed. “Lilian, can you bless the lights?”

  She pulled back, her successful offensive offering her a moment’s reprieve. “What’s that?”

  “The stadium lights,” he said pointing. “Can you bless them?”

  She stared for a moment, then smacked herself on the forehead. “I can do that!”

  She started to take off, paused, then tossed her sword at Trorm’s feet. “Think you’ll need that more than me right now!” RESPECT.

  Trorm took the sword up as she took off. He briefly considered giving it to Winnie but she seemed to have no training with the weapon, especially if the way she swung her bat was any indication. Fast she might be, and elegant in a savage way, but there was a certain finesse lacking in her fighting style that suggested that the calculation of edge alignment would not a good fit for her. She’d try to use the sword like an axe and that would not work out well for her or the weapon. And he couldn’t disrespect Lilian’s weapon. Not after she’d entrusted it to him. Besides, limited by comparison though it was, he did have some measure of proficiency with swords.

  A tentacle nearly took Winnie in the face. She batted at it and it came at her again. She wasn’t doing any good where she was and was likely to get hurt. “Winnie! Arlen’s escaping!”

  As much as he’d like to crush Arlen’s skull in himself, he was the only one who could hold back this creature until Lilian blessed the lights. And Winnie was fast enough that injured and without the stadium to grant him supernatural speed, she just might be able to not only catch up, but get the drop on Arlen.

  She glanced at him, looked past the writhing tentacles at the wide receiver who’d betrayed his football team, and a look came over her face that made Trorm very glad that she was on his side. He made a mental note to clear away any and all sharp implements from near his bed should Winnie ever spend the night with him.

  “He’s fucking dead!” she screamed.

  Winnie took off, dodging through the tentacles with ease and closing in on Arlen. Trorm had just a moment to glimpse Arlen jumping in shock as she came for him before a tentacle reached around the shield and nearly swiped him across the face. With both of the girls gone, there was nothing keeping them back from him.

  He started to try and widen the shield, only for the thing to start pulling away. Trorm started in confusion. What was it doing? It had been trying to kill him since it had been summoned. What did it…Arlen. It was still his creature and with Winnie after him he must have commanded it to come to his aid.

  Trorm could not allow that to happen. He dropped his shield and blasted the thing in the face with another bolt of lightning. This time it flinched. He held aloft his staff in one hand and his borrowed sword in the other. The creature glanced at him, hissing, then made to pull away again. He blasted it with another bolt and, feeling like the world’s dumbest wizard, charged the massive eldritch horror.

  Whatever the creature had expected it had not been this. When the smoke cleared away and it sensed his approach it gave something very much like a doubletake. Trorm let fly a third blast, charging forward as he sprayed the beast down with electricity until he was close enough to ram the paladin’s sword right into its snout where he’d been blasting.

  The charred flesh boiled and rippled, falling away from the
blessed blade. He pushed forward, trying to drive it in as deep as he could. Shadows fell upon him. The thing screamed and its tentacles thrashed, lashing out to catch him, only to freeze scant inches away.

  Slimy bubbled and the flesh lost its solidity. The stadium lights didn’t just shine, they shone with a radiance that boiled this eldritch abomination away. It fell over, thrashing, and Trorm had to throw himself to the side to avoid getting crushed. He rolled, came up, staff and sword held ready, only to watch in awe as the thing writhed about like a worm pinned in place.

  Reaching for the very last reserves of magic within himself, Trorm let fly one final bolt. This time it did not meet with the creature’s usual resistance. The spell exploded into the creature, burning and boring its way right into the thing’s center mass. When the lightning bolt faded, the holy light of the stadium shone directly into the creature’s insides. They melted.

  The thing fell in a putrid pile to the ground, steaming and bubbling as it died.

  Trorm just about fell over, completely spent. It was over. They’d won.

  “Stay the fuck away from me or the bunny gets it!”

  He turned to find Arlen with his knife at Winnie’s through. Somehow, he’d managed to get the drop on her and was pinning her in place with his bad arm, the shard of bone sticking out of him jabbing into her like her might stab her with it. From the bleeding on her side, he might have already done so once.

  Trorm looked for Lilian. She was too far away and unarmed, having dropped her gun after it had run out of ammo. Trorm still held her sword. He held his staff too though and reached for his magic…and found nothing. He had nothing left to give.

  Tib’s music cut out, leaving the stadium in eerie silence.

  “Like, roast the fucker, Trorm!” Winnie called out.

  “Shut up,” Arlen snapped. “You want to get blasted too?”

  They didn’t realize he was out of magic. If he could just—

  A sound like thunder shattered the silence and echoed through the stadium. Arlen’s head became a spray of red gelatinous mass and exploded away from him.

  Winnie screamed, falling and clutching her sensitive rabbit ears.

  Trorm looked around wildly, and found Abigail. She’d snuck around through the stadium behind Arlen and stood only a little way behind where he’d stood, holding a smoking gun in a professional, two handed grip.

  “Got ya,” she said, as in the distance police sirens sounded.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The fallout was enormous.

  Everyone was under investigation. If Abigail and Tibs hadn’t set up the recording devices that they had, everything would have been a lot worse for the group. As it was, there were talks about Abigail standing trial for murder. Quiet talks. Tibs had put the entire recording online and the jury pool was so contaminated that there was next to no way she’d be convicted if charges were brought against her. Nobody blamed her for what had happened.

  They blamed Trorm.

  Or at least the fans did. The discovery that Arlen had been cheating, possibly throughout his entire collegiate career, had thrown the team’s last three seasons out the window. The league was coming down on the university like a hammer and the fans were rising up even louder. Trorm shut down his social media accounts and added a filter to his email. The sheer amount of hateful messages being sent his way would have been overwhelming had he allowed himself to dwell on it.

  Trorm was more concerned about the team itself. None of his fellow players seemed to know what to do. They practiced with him but otherwise ignored him. It seemed to Trorm that they were waiting for him to prove himself capable as more than a whistleblower. If the team was allowed to play again, he’d show them he was. The coach had taken him aside, given him a thorough tongue lashing, then assured him that his scholarship was safe. Trorm didn’t know whether the man was more pissed that Arlen had been cheating in the first place or that Trorm had uncovered it so publicly.

  The cheerleaders had a much more positive reaction. While similarly devastated by the revelation, they hailed Trorm as a kind of hero, in no small part thanks to Winnie. They seemed to believe that if Abigail hadn’t shot Arlen that Trorm would have come up with something clever and rescued her. He didn’t dissuade them from that idea, though what he else could have done given the circumstances he had no idea.

  Trorm’s biggest support, however, also came from online, courtesy of Tibs. The bard had transformed the footage of the fight into a music video, mostly featuring visuals of Trorm performing feats of magic, fighting off the slimians and the hungry horror that had later been summoned. His half-elf friend had even composed a new song about him and it was going viral.

  In essence, everybody had an opinion on Trorm and each one was loud and different. A news report had actually been given about the Orcwatch app and site because of the suddenly burgeoning number of subscribers, all of whom seemed to be primarily focused on Trorm. For better or worse, Trorm Coldstorm had become a minor celebrity.

  The only body that was quiet on the subject of Trorm, apart from Trorm himself, was the Academy of Arcane Ascension. They had issued no statement, offering neither reward nor condemnation for Trorm’s actions. They had said that the whole affair was a tragedy, that they regretted the loss of one of their students, and that said student’s actions may have undermined the integrity of Saint Scrolwerd. Trorm was never mentioned. He was okay with that.

  A week after the event with Arlen, Trorm showed up on Professor Ismael Hunt’s doorstep and personally returned his summoning crystal. He did not wear his sunglasses. Using them to read the man’s emotions following the death of his son felt wrong. The conversation that followed was one of the most surreal experiences of Trorm’s life.

  Everything Trorm had learned about humans had led him to believe that they had a very peculiar grieving process. He had hoped for solemnity rather than rage from Professor Hunt, and he’d gotten it. He’d also gotten a thank you and a cup of coffee. The man had understood that the visit was an orcish way of showing honor and grief. Professor Hunt had apologized for not having anything stronger—the orcish tradition called for ale, or some other alcoholic beverage—but he didn’t keep any in the house.

  They had talked about Arlen. Then they’d talked about spellcraft. When Trorm left, much later than he’d anticipated, he had the distinct impression that the man had been trying to convince him to change his focus and become a conjurer. Trorm couldn’t deny the utility of the conjuration spells, Arlen had soundly proven their effectiveness, even if he’d only summoned monsters. But his goal was set and Trorm would not be dissuaded from his course.

  Professor Hunt had been aggrieved by the loss of his son, but he took it with honorable stoicism and directed his energies into being productive instead of shutting down. It raised Trorm’s esteem of him considerably. As did his electing not to press charges for the theft of his property, which it turned out he’d had no intention of allowing Arlen anywhere near. Trorm had almost asked about that. He’d decided against it. Let the son’s sins be buried with him and plague the father no longer.

  Because the conversation had taken longer than expected, however, he was very nearly late for a very important date. Trorm pulled up in front of Winnie’s dorm just in time. She on the other hand, was nearly fifteen minutes late. The dress she sauntered out in did amazing things to her figure and the glittery purple fabric contrasted nicely with her fur. She had a matching purple lace ribbon done up on one of her ears. It should have looked childish but it paired well with the dress and instead gave her an extra something sexy.

  Fortunately for Trorm she didn’t see him gawking when she made her appearance, glancing around for him. He grinned and stepped out of the car he’d been waiting in, causing her to do a double take. “You got a car?”

  “You look ravishing,” he said.

  Her ears quivered and she gave him a surprisingly shy grin, tucking back a lock of hair that hadn’t really been o
ut of place. “Thanks.” Then she jerked upright. “But you got a car!”

  It was a sleek black Lexus. High class and low profile. He stepped around and opened her door for her. “I rented it for the evening.” It still had that new car smell.

  She ducked inside, slowly taking her seat and examining the interior. “Rented?”

  He got back in the driver’s seat and pulled out into traffic. “Yes. We did not have a proper first courtship. I felt it appropriate to pick you up in something more befitting than a borrowed minivan.”

  She giggled. “I’d have been fine with the van, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” he said.

  “You don’t have to impress me,” she said. “I’m already impressed with you.”

  “It’s not about impressing you,” he said. Then reconsidered. “Maybe it’s a little about impressing you. More importantly, it is my goal to show you how much you are worth to me. I know my own value. I want to convey to you that I know yours.”

  Winnie’s ears quivered all the way to the restaurant and she bounced out of the car when the valet opened her door, practically throwing herself into Trorm’s side and attaching herself to his arm.

  “This is D. Lux,” she faux-whispered, then slammed a hand against his chest.

  “I know,” Trorm said. “I think they may have only given me a reservation because of the...my recent rise to infamy.”

  She giggled and bounced against him all the way to their table, her enthusiasm earning several odd looks from customers and servers alike. Those looks were followed by a double take when they realized on who’s arm she was on. Whether because of who he was, or what he was, Trorm could not tell. An orc and a lagothrope were not a common pairing it seemed. A few began whispering and a couple lifted their phones to snap pictures.

  The staff quickly and discreetly put a stop to that and the pair were shown to a table in the back in a candlelit corner, dark and private. Just how they each preferred.