Page 29 of Orc’s Little Human

SELENE

W e keep traveling, soon finding ourselves among short mountains and cliffs. Still, we head south, hoping it will be enough to hide us.

The narrow valley presses in around us like the walls of a tomb, jagged stone rising on both sides until only a sliver of gray sky remains visible overhead.

Every shadow could hide a predator. Every sound echoes strangely off the rock faces, making it impossible to tell if that scraping noise came from loose stones under our feet or something stalking us from the caves that pock the mountainside like dead eyes.

My shoulders stay hunched, tension coiled between my shoulder blades as I scan the rocky terrain. Thali walks between Korrath and me, her usual chatter subdued by the oppressive atmosphere. Even she can sense the wrongness here, the way the very air seems to whisper of danger.

"I don't like this place," she says quietly, her small hand finding mine. "It feels... hungry."

I squeeze her fingers, understanding exactly what she means. The caves yawn open at irregular intervals, black mouths that could swallow us whole. Anything could be watching from those depths. Waiting.

Korrath moves with predatory grace ahead of us, his massive frame somehow managing stealth despite his size. But I can see the tension in his shoulders too, the way his hand never strays far from his weapon. He's as uneasy as I am.

"How much farther through this pass?" I ask, keeping my voice low.

"Should open up within the hour," he replies without turning. "But there's something else."

He stops, tilting his head like he's listening to something I can't hear. Or feeling something. When he looks back at me, his golden eyes hold a strange intensity.

"Neptherium," he says. "Close. Very close."

The word sends ice through my veins. Neptherium means mines. And mines mean...

"Humans," I breathe.

He nods grimly. "We need to?—"

The whistle of arrows cuts through the air. Korrath throws himself sideways, dragging Thali with him as projectiles clatter off the stone where we'd been standing. I dive in the opposite direction, heart hammering as more arrows rain down from the cave mouths above.

"Surrender the marked one!"

The voice booms off the valley walls, magnified and distorted until it seems to come from everywhere at once. But I know that voice. Know it in my nightmares, in the burning memory of chains and screaming and the smell of charred flesh.

Captain Deymar Rusk.

He emerges from the largest cave opening, flanked by two dozen human soldiers in blackened mail. The same uniform I remember from that hellish place, the same cruel faces beneath identical helms. My mouth goes dry as desert sand.

Rusk himself hasn't changed. Still tall and lean like a blade, with pale eyes that hold no warmth and a mouth that curves in permanent disdain. Still wearing that damned crimson cloak that used to sweep past my cell, always a harbinger of fresh torment.

"Hello, little marked one," he calls down, his voice carrying easily in the enclosed space. "Did you think you could run forever?"

I press myself against the stone wall, Thali trembling beside me. Korrath has positioned himself between us and the soldiers, but I can see the calculation in his stance. We're outnumbered. Surrounded. Trapped in this narrow valley like animals in a pen.

"I've been tracking you for months," Rusk continues conversationally, as if we're old friends catching up. "Following the reports of an orc with unusual magical strength. Of course, that led me straight to you."

More soldiers emerge from caves on both sides of the valley. Crossbows trained on us. Swords gleaming in the weak sunlight. My count reaches thirty before I stop trying to track them all.

"You see," Rusk says, beginning a careful descent down the rocky slope, "you never understood what you were, did you? What we made you?"

The words hit like physical blows. Made me? My hand automatically goes to the brand on my collarbone, the raised flesh that burns whenever Korrath uses his magic.

"That mark isn't just decoration, little weapon. You were bred for it. Shaped for it. Do you think it was a coincidence that you survived the branding when thousands of others died screaming? That your body accepted what would have killed any normal human?"

My legs threaten to give out. Bred. Shaped. Like livestock. Like a tool manufactured for a specific purpose.

"Your parents weren't refugees fleeing orc raids," he continues, each word a nail hammered into my coffin. "They were breeding stock. Carefully selected for magical sensitivity. For compatibility with neptherium infusion."

The world tilts around me. Everything I thought I knew about myself, about where I came from, crumbles like sand castles in a tide. I wasn't just captured. I was created. Designed from birth to be exactly what they made me.

"Twenty years of careful breeding programs," Rusk says, now close enough that I can see the satisfied gleam in his pale eyes. "Hundreds of failed attempts. But you... you were perfect. The ideal amplifier. A weapon that could turn any hedge wizard into a conqueror."

Thali makes a small, frightened sound. I pull her closer, trying to shield her from Rusk's words even as they tear through me like claws.

"I had such plans for you," he continues.

"First, I would have used your power to sweep across Tlouz.

Every orc clan, every human settlement, every resource-rich territory would have fallen before us.

And then..." His smile turns predatory. "Then I would have sold you to the highest bidder.

The dark elf kings pay quite well for unique weapons. "

"You're not taking her anywhere."

Korrath's voice cuts through the valley like a blade, low and dangerous and absolutely final. He steps forward, placing himself squarely between Rusk and us.

Rusk laughs, the sound echoing off stone. "One orc against thirty trained soldiers? I admire your courage, beast, but this ends only one way."

"Then it ends with your blood on my hands."

I can see Korrath calculating, weighing options. But there aren't any good ones. Too many enemies. Too little cover. No escape route.

He's going to die protecting us. Thali and I are going to watch him fall, and then...

My hand finds Korrath's knife at his belt. The blade slides free with a whisper of steel.

"Selene, no." His voice holds a warning, but I'm beyond listening to warnings.

I've spent my entire life being shaped by other people's choices. Bred to be a weapon. Trained to be a victim. Marked to be a tool. Always reacting, never choosing.

Not anymore.

The knife bites into my palm, blood welling bright and red. Before Korrath can stop me, I grab his already-wounded hand, pressing our cuts together.

The effect is immediate. The brand on my collarbone erupts in fire, but not the burning agony I'm used to.

This time, it feels like a door thrown wide, like chains falling away.

Power floods through me—Korrath's magic amplified and transformed, fed by whatever twisted gift those bastards carved into my flesh.

"Selene—" he starts, but I cut him off.

"Together," I say, feeling the magic building between us like a storm about to break. "All of it. Everything."

I don't try to control the flow this time. Don't try to moderate or contain it. Instead, I tear down every barrier between us, letting his blood magic pour through me like molten gold. Our joined power reaches out, seeking the neptherium veins that run through these mountains like a spider's web.

The response is immediate and devastating.

The ground beneath our feet begins to tremble. Dust rains down from the cave mouths above as the stone itself starts to sing with power. Through our joined hands, I can feel Korrath's magic expanding, reaching deeper into the mountain's bones than it ever could alone.

"What—" Rusk's confident demeanor cracks as the first boulders begin to shift.

Korrath's eyes blaze molten gold, power radiating from him in waves that make the air itself shimmer. But he's not struggling to control it anymore. The magic flows through him like it was meant to, natural as breathing.

The neptherium responds to our call. Veins of the precious ore heat and expand, cracking the stone around them. What starts as hairline fractures spreads rapidly, spider-webbing through the mountain face with sounds like thunder.

"Kill them!" Rusk shouts, but his soldiers are already backing away as rocks begin to rain down around them.

Too late.

The magic builds to a crescendo, Korrath's will shaping it into something precise and terrible.

The mountain face above the soldiers doesn't just collapse—it flows like water, stone reshaping itself according to his design.

Tons of rock cascade down in a controlled avalanche that blocks every exit from the valley except the one behind us.

Screams echo off the stone walls as the avalanche swallows Rusk's soldiers. Some try to run. None make it far enough.

When the rumbling finally stops, silence settles over the valley like a shroud. Where thirty armed soldiers had stood moments before, only broken stone remains. Not even enough space between the rocks for bodies to be visible.

Rusk himself managed to reach higher ground, but he's trapped now on a narrow ledge with nowhere to go. His face has gone pale as chalk, all his earlier confidence evaporated.

"Impossible," he whispers, staring at the devastation below. "You can't... the power required to move that much stone..."

I release Korrath's hand, the flow of magic tapering off but not disappearing entirely. It still hums between us, ready to answer if we call. The brand on my collarbone has stopped burning. Instead, it feels warm, settled, like something that finally fits properly.

"I'm not your weapon," I call up to him, my voice carrying clearly in the sudden quiet. "I never was."

For the first time in my life, the words feel true. Because this time, I chose. The power that flows through me isn't something inflicted on me by cruel hands and burning brands. It's something I claimed. Something I shaped to my own will.

Rusk opens his mouth, probably to threaten or bargain or plead. But more stone shifts above his perch, responding to Korrath's will. The captain's words die in his throat as he scrambles for purchase on the crumbling ledge.

"Please," he finally manages. "I can offer you?—"

The ledge gives way.

His scream cuts off with a sickening crunch as he disappears into the gaps between the fallen stones. Then even that fades, leaving only the sound of settling rock and our own ragged breathing.

It's over. They're all dead. And for the first time since I can remember, I'm not afraid of what I am.

Because I chose this. I chose him. I chose us.

The power that runs through my veins isn't a curse anymore. It's a gift I finally know how to use.