21st Century Orc Page 9

  “Heh. I’m a little tougher than most,” gasped Gore just before Debbie rushed into her arms. “Damn, not so tight. I’m not that tough…”

  “Sorry. Just a little overjoyed,” chirped Debbie, letting go.

  “I am too, trust me,” muttered Gore, almost reaching out to bring Debbie back in. The dwarf’s touch was warm and her body supple.

  But Debbie just bounced over to the halfling and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Ugh… that she-orc actually managed to survive?” asked the halfling, jerking awake with a start. He blinked at Gore, readjusted his thick-rimmed glasses and then jumped into the air with a hiss. “Shit! She survived! Ohgodsohgodsohgodsohgods! Don’t eat me!”

  “Not with so little meat, I’m not. I prefer my halflings nice and plump. And preferably with a little bit of sapphire dust,” laughed Gore as she smiled, showing off her tusks.

  “I think we got some of that in the kitchen,” cackled Debbie before gesturing for everyone to fall silent. Everyone followed her instructions as Debbie reached out, and grabbed Gore and Fin’s hands. “Fin, meet my friend Gore. Gore, meet my cousin Fin. Though you’ve already been a little bit acquainted already.”

  “Ja. Thanks for patching me up, Fin,” said Gore, trying not to crush the little halfling’s hand. Cartilage still popped under Fin’s skin.

  Veins bulging out of his forehead, a crude impersonation of a smile straining his muscles, the halfling wheezed, “Nice to meet you, Gore. I’ve heard so much about you from Debbie. She used to talk about you all the time, whenever she came over to my place. Usually eating all my food.”

  “Speaking of food,” muttered Debbie, rubbing her stomach.

  “No…” began Fin. “No. No. No…”

  Then Gore’s stomach rumbled. Gore grinned, exchanging a glance with Debbie. The two women turned towards Fin.

  “Ah. Screw it. Might as well be a good host and make y’all something,” sighed Fin, beckoning the two to follow him out of the immaculate living room into a similarly immaculate kitchen. One curiously clean of any ingredients. Until Fin began rummaging through the frost box, pulling out a bundle of vegetables. “How do you guys like stir-fry?”

  “Honestly, I could eat just about anything right now,” murmured Gore, rubbing her hands as she searched for a place to sit. Or more precisely, something that could withstand her weight.

  A hard task in a halfling sized kitchen. So Gore just leaned on the central table.

  “We treated you here,” chirped Debbie as she jumped onto a stool nearby. Her hands ran across the table. “You can’t even tell you bled here. Must have been gallons. Or more.”

  “That’s cause I worked damn hard to scrub it all away. You know how much bacteria is in your blood, Debbie?” asked Fin as he lit the stove. “Millions of microbes. And they all got on my table! And my floor! And half the chairs! Once you’re all gone, I’m going to have to disinfect the entire house!”

  “Hehehe! Knew I could count on you, cousin!” laughed Debbie, slapping the table and knocking over a pile of folded napkins.

  As Fin’s eye bulged out of its socket, the halfling breathing in deep, Gore said, “How are you guys related?”

  “It’s a long story. Sometime somewhere a dwarf of my clan married a halfling and linked our families together as one, for all of eternity. You’d be surprised how many people I’m related to. The Lau clan has major communities all across the Gold Coast,” explained Debbie before her grin turned predatory. Gore raised an eyebrow and backed away. She knew that look. “Speaking of family…”

  “Oh no… nope. Let’s not go down that shithole. The most you need to know about me and my brother is that there is some bad blood,” said Gore, shaking her head. The fire curled with her veins, curling her claws into fists. What else can you expect from orcs?

  “Come on, Gore!” pleaded Debbie as Fin turned away, covering his ears as he continued to cook. “After all that happened? The least you can do is to give us some backstory on how you became a badass underground racer. Please?”

  Gore chuckled, “Hehehe… first time someone applied that term to me. But no. It’s called personal problems for a Blight-damned reason.”

  “What about the famous orc life-debt? Fin and I saved your life. Doesn’t that count for something?” asked Debbie, stepping off of her chair.

  “Good for you,” Gore said. She backed away a little more. “I’ll bake you a jagding cake!”

  “You know I’m not gonna give up. So why don’t you just spill the beans?” asked Debbie, pushing Gore up against the wall. Debbie’s big, brown eyes quivered.

  Anymore and Gore didn’t know what she would do.

  “Din-er… Dinner slash breakfast ready!” barked Fin, louder than necessary. Two loud crashes echoed through the silent kitchen.

  Debbie pushed her bowl away while Gore dug into hers. She blinked in surprise.

  “Huh, spicy… damn. This is pretty good,” muttered Gore through a mouthful of food. “What’d you put in it?”

  Fin scoffed and waved away her question, coughing, “Oh, just a simple recipe. Started with some Garnet garlic and Jireen oil. Fried that for precisely three minutes. Then started with the meat, marinated in my family’s secret sauce for ten years… anyone could have done it!”

  “Haha! I wish! You see, Fin wanted to be a chef when he was little so he kept on practicing and practicing into the whee hours of night,” laughed Debbie, rubbing her stomach. Then she frowned and squeezed a little bit. “Ah, I got pretty chubby back then. Still am a tiny bit though.”

  “Doesn’t detract a bit from your hourglass figure, though,” rumbled Gore before she swallowed the rest of her stir-fry. She pushed the empty bowl forward. “More, please and thank you.”

  “Huh, manners, that’s a rare sight… oh! Of course!” gasped Fin, snatching the bowl away. He muttered under his breath something about Gore eating him or his home. Or both.

  “So why didn’t you become a chef?” asked Gore as Fin handed her a new bowl.

  “Cause you can’t make a decent living out of being a chef unless you’re in that point zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent of celebrities. And who’s gonna put a halfling chef in front of the camera?” asked Debbie, before she turned once more to Gore and said, “That’s why my family’s freaking out about me being a psych major. What about you? How’d your family respond to you choosing mechanical engineering?”

  “You are not subtle. At. All,” scoffed Gore as she looked at her hands. She smiled. But then again, Debbie’s honesty was one thing Gore appreciated about the dwarf. No tiptoeing around Gore as if afraid to wake a dragon.

  “I am not. And I’m not gonna stop until you tell me what’s bugging you.”

  “How do you know something’s bugging me?” asked Gore, raising an eyebrow. “You some kinda mind mage?”

  “Better. Female intuition,” answered Debbie with a audacious grin. Gore blushed. Then Debbie’s grin faltered and she touched Gore on the shoulder. “But come on… we’ve known each other for two years. I like to think we bonded somewhat in that time.”

  “Somewhat.”

  Debbie rolled her eyes and hissed, “Yeah, somewhat. But either way, I can sense how much being around your brother has put you out of groove. The whole room shifts whenever he’s around. As if you’re on edge, not really afraid, but just watching him, waiting for him to attack or something.”

  “Wow. Looks like those psych classes really worked,” said Gore, her eyebrows shooting up into the ceiling as she nodded. “That was… spot on.”

  “Oh, wow. Really? Damn, cause I was just pulling most of that from my considerable derriere,” laughed Debbie, slapping her knee.

  Gore leered behind Debbie. “It is truly considerable.”

  “Ah… you’re making me blush. But back to the our topic on hand… you wanna talk about it or not? Come on… it might clear the air. Come on. Come on. Come on.” The dwarf bounced up and down like a child, tugging on Gore’s arm.


  “You make a very compelling argument,” deadpanned Gore as she rubbed her hand through her dreadlocks. “Ugh, fine. I’ll talk. Just don’t force me through anymore torture.”

  “Mwahaha! All your secrets will soon be mine,” cackled Debbie as she rubbed her hands together and arched her head back in a roar, “Mwahaha!”

  “That’s not a good sign,” said Gore, clenching her fists together, staring at the door behind Debbie. If she could just smack the dwarf aside and make a run for it… She took a deep breath.

  “So… you ready?” asked Debbie while Fin busied himself with washing the dishes.

  “Where should I start?” Gore asked back.

  “Probably at the beginning. That’s how most stories go.”

  “Actually, a lot of stories start at the middle then flash back to the beginning at sporadic intervals,” interjected Fin, looking up for a moment from washing. “It’s called in media res. Many great stories—”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, nerd. But this is Gore’s time to talk. Not yours,” hissed Debbie.

  Scowling, turning back to the dishes, Fin muttered to himself with increasing fervor.

  “Is he all right?” asked Gore, noting that Fin had scrubbed the same dish at least fifteen times.

  Waving Gore’s question away, though her smile dropped a fraction of an inch for the briefest moment, Debbie scoffed, “Of course. Just a little OCD’s all. He’ll be fine. Hasn’t killed anyone yet. So… you were saying?”

  “I’m gonna get out of this, am I?”

  “Nope!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Exposition

  Gore sighed, “Fine. I’ll start at the beginning. You already know that I’m an immigrant, right?”

  “I kind of figured that but didn’t want to assume,” said Debbie. “Go on…”

  “Hehehe. The thing is… I’m an illegal immigrant, technically.”

  “What?” exclaimed Debbie, leaping up to her feat. “You came across from the Blight?”

  Lips twisting, Gore chuckled, “If you go by some of the Leaf Church’s terms, I began life in the Blight. Then my mom carried me in her belly across the border to Valerian. I was born on Elvish soil. So technically, I’m also a citizen of Valerian, despite how many people feel.”

  “Damn… and your mom raised you all by herself?” asked Debbie.

  “Hehehe, she did more than raise us. She taught us how to survive and thrive in a world that hated our very existence.” Gore chuckled, looking out of the window at the Magnum Orcus parked in the street. Someone, probably Bones, had drawn a tarp over the car. Gore’s vision slipped around the edges, no doubt pulled away by a confusion spell woven into the fabric.

  For a moment, a spectral family of three orcs bounced around the Magnum Orcus.

  A happy family that had not yet torn itself apart.

  Then reality set back in.

  Her eyes diving into black, conflicting emotions clouding her mind, Gore paused, collecting her thoughts before saying, “My earliest memories were huddling in the back of the Magnum Orcus, hiding from cops as my mom drove us from house to house, from relative to relative. Some might have called those days nightmarish but they were the happiest days of my life… because our mother… Blight. I don’t want to talk about this. Why am I talking about this?”

  “Because I want to help you,” murmured Debbie, “This stuff has festered inside for too long. It’s time you let it out.”

  “Last time I let anyone inside, I got burned,” snarled Gore, her eyes flashing red, hands curling into fists. “If I ever see that bitch again…”

  “Hey! Hey! Hey! Look at me,” barked Debbie as she rushed forward and grabbed Gore’s face. “Look at me. Calm down. I know you’re upset but you can’t stop beating yourself up about Tawny. She fooled me too. Now… just continue your story, let out the repressed emotions, the ones buried deep. The ones that really matter.”

  Eyes turning dull grey as Debbie leant away, Gore sighed, “Fine… I’ll try.”

  “Meh. Good enough for me. Not like I’m getting paid for this.”

  “Hehehe… so where was I?” asked Gore, rubbing her hands together. “Oh right, my mother… You know the story, right? Tawny must have told the entire college by now.”

  “I know you lost her,” said Debbie, voice no more than a whisper. “I know you miss her.”

  “Yeah, I miss her. Miss her a whole lot. If she had been around, I think my life would have been —for the lack of any better words— a sight better than now. A lot of bad wouldn’t have happened. A lot of good might have happened.”

  “So how’d you lose her?” Debbie placed her hand on Gore’s, holding her tight.

  Gore trembled as she glanced outside, at the Narrows and beyond. Her scars ached. She had to fight herself to stay. Digging her claws into the chair, Gore mumbled, “What do you know about the Tao Ein Fires about ten years back? The ones in the Old Narrows, where all the immigrants were?”

  “Not as much as I should know…” muttered Debbie, looking aside. “That’s when an accidental wildfire swept through the slums and nearly burnt the entire district down.”

  Gore laughed.

  A mad cackle filled with rage.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Debbie though her face told Gore that she knew her laugh wasn’t of joy.

  “It’s Wildfire. With an uppercase W,” snarled Gore as she shook her head. “And it wasn’t by accident. The police planted about twenty bombs on the outskirts of the Old Narrows. The fires completely encircled us. In half an hour, the Wildfire had completely consumed the entire district.”

  “Wait? You mean, our government bombed our own people?” gasped Debbie, eye wide as she put a hand to her mouth. “No. That can’t be. We wouldn’t do that.”

  “Not your people. ‘Trespassers.’ Orcs from the Blight, goblins from the Southern Isles, trolls from Gorogor. The Old Narrows just a few years back was the center of an illegal network. Hundreds of thousands of trespassers passed through Tao Ein, and the old Narrows every week before fleeing to other parts of the country.”

  Gore snorted, clutching herself. She tried not to close her eyes but the past leapt up anyway. The screams of children ripped at her ears. Gunshots echoed in the distance. And fire. More fire than the sun, licking at Gore’s feet, consuming her bit by bit before her brother hauled her onto his back.

  But a piece of fire had lodged itself inside forever.

  “Blight… the fires… the screams… you couldn’t even see past your own hands because of the smoke. Buildings stacked atop one another, burning and breaking every heartbeat as we ran from rooftop to rooftop. Until we made it to the edge of the district. You know what happened then?”

  “Firefighters came to save you?” whispered Debbie, voice wavering.

  “The police came, dressed in riot gear and holding assault rifles in their hands. The first wave of orcs disintegrated before our eyes, exploding into bits of bone and blood. The rest of us had to flee into the fires. Hehehe…” Gore chuckled to stop herself from crying. “You guys have a saying. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. I think for orcs, it’s more out of the fire and into magma.”

  Gore blinked.

  Tears dripped down Debbie’s face as the dwarf squeezed Gore’s hand.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Gore. Why was Debbie crying?

  “What? Wait, why are you sorry?” asked Debbie, wiping away the tears.

  “Cause… never mind. I…” Gore sighed and closed her eyes. She turned back to that horrible day, that terrifying day. When dark and heat suffocated her. “We ran back to the car. The Magnum Orcus. Bones and I stuffed ourselves in the trunk. Then my mom drove us through the burning world, through the police barricade.”

  A crescendo of gunfire echoed above Gore. For a moment, Bones’s arms wrapped around her. She jerked back into the real world, heart pounding out of her chest.

  Then Gore shook her head and murmured, “When we woke up, Bones and I found ourselves halfway
into the desert. We found our m…mother’s corpse still clutching the wheel.”

  Her eyes still haunted Gore at night. And whenever Gore touched the wheel of the Magnum Orcus, her mother’s warmth filled the steel, her laughter intertwining with the roar of the engine.

  “After that… everything just sort of spiraled out of control. After a few years, after bouncing from relatives to relatives, one after the other… we just sort of split up,” lied Gore, not allowing her mind to even approach that forbidden time. The time she left far behind and the reason why she had cut her brother out of her life. Not the only thing cut. Gore rubbed self-inflicted scars.

  Silence fell on the room.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Gore cursed herself. What a idiot she was to reveal her past. Two total —well, not in Debbie’s case— strangers who could betray her to the police or the anyone who hated orcs. Of which there were endless in this world.

  Blight, her brother had thrown her mind off balance. Damn him. Damn them all.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Debbie, pulling Gore back with a squeeze of her hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I know nothing I can say could make up for what happened to you, but I just want you to know that you’re not alone. You can talk to me anytime you like. For any problem. You don’t have to carry everything on your shoulders.”

  “Thank you. But I don’t need your pity. I didn’t need it then and I don’t need it now,” murmured Gore as Fin approached from the kitchen.

  “What about a warm beverage?” asked Fin. Though he kept at an arms length, Fin offered Gore a cup of coffee. Then he scurried away.

  Eyes glinting gold, Gore called after him, “I’ll take coffee any day over sympathies. Thank you.”

  “No problem. I got a job so I can afford coffee. Every once in a while.”

  “Right. A job…” Gore’s lips twisted as she thought about for her plans for the coming days. She should try looking for a job somewhere in the Narrows. Or something, anything to get money and last the quarter.