Page 3 of Orc’s Little Human

SELENE

T he silence in this cramped room presses against my eardrums like water at the bottom of a well.

Every creak of the longhouse settling, every distant murmur of orc voices, sets my nerves jangling like broken glass.

I sit on the edge of the rough sleeping pallet, hands clasped tight enough to leave nail marks in my palms, and wait for whatever fresh hell this chieftain has planned.

The room itself tells a story I don't want to read.

Weapons hang from iron pegs driven into the wooden walls—curved blades that gleam with recent sharpening, a war hammer whose head bears suspicious dark stains, throwing axes arranged with the precision of someone who knows exactly how much force it takes to split a skull.

Furs drape every surface, some still bearing claw marks from whatever beast died screaming to provide them.

The air tastes of smoke, old blood, and something else—something metallic that makes my teeth ache.

This is where he brings his victims.

The thought crawls through my mind like a parasite, feeding on every shadow that dances in the flickering light seeping under the door.

I've heard the stories whispered around campfires, seen the evidence carved into survivors who escaped orc raids.

They don't just kill—they make art of suffering, stretch death into something that lasts for days.

And this one, this Korrath with his molten gold eyes and scarred tusks, he's their leader. Whatever twisted appetites the others indulge, his will be worse. More creative. The kind of cruelty that comes from intelligence married to absolute power.

My fingers trace the Mark of Neptheris hidden beneath my torn shirt, the raised flesh still tender even after all these months.

If he discovers it, if he realizes what I am.

.. The death camps will seem like mercy compared to what orcs do with magic-touched humans.

I've seen the empty sockets where they carved out eyes that saw too much, the stumps where they took hands that channeled power they couldn't control.

Minutes crawl by like wounded animals. My stomach clenches with hunger I've learned to ignore, but the exhaustion is harder to push aside. When did I last sleep? Really sleep, not the half-conscious fugue state that passes for rest when every sound might signal discovery? Three days ago? Four?

The bar across the door shifts with a grinding scrape of wood against wood.

I'm on my feet before conscious thought catches up, every muscle coiled to fight or flee despite knowing both options lead to the same bloody end.

The door swings open with deliberate slowness, designed to maximize fear, and I brace myself for the sight of Korrath's hulking frame.

Instead, a child slips through the gap.

She can't be more than nine or ten, all wild black hair and curious amber eyes that seem too large for her moss-green face.

Ivory tusks just beginning to push through her gums catch the light as she grins at me with the kind of fearless enthusiasm that makes my chest tighten with old grief.

She carries a wooden bowl in hands still soft with youth, and her bare feet make no sound against the stone floor.

A trick. Has to be a trick.

Orcs don't have children—that's what everyone knows, what the stories all agree on.

They spring from the earth fully formed and bloodthirsty, born with weapons in their fists and violence in their hearts.

This... this is something else. Some sick game designed to lower my guard before the real horror begins.

But she moves with genuine childish awkwardness, bumping her hip against the doorframe and nearly dropping the bowl in her eagerness. Her eyes hold no malice, no calculated cruelty—just bright curiosity and something that might be sympathy.

They're using a child. These bastards are actually using a child.

The thought hits me like a physical blow, rage and revulsion twisting in my gut until I taste bile. Bad enough that orcs exist, that they hunt and kill and feast on suffering. But to corrupt innocence, to teach cruelty to something so young...

"Hello!" The girl's voice rings with genuine warmth, like she's greeting a friend instead of a captive. "I brought you food. Are you hungry?"

She holds out the bowl with both hands, the gesture so earnest it makes my throat close up.

Inside, I catch glimpses of what might be stew—chunks of meat in dark broth, steam rising like small prayers.

My stomach clenches hard enough to double me over, betraying just how long it's been since I've eaten anything more substantial than berries and stream water.

Don't take it. Don't trust it. This is how they break you—small kindnesses before the real pain starts.

But she just stands there waiting, head tilted to one side like a curious bird. No impatience, no threat lurking behind the offer. Just a child holding food and watching me with those impossible amber eyes.

"You don't have to be scared," she says, stepping closer despite every instinct that should be screaming at her to run. "Korrath won't hurt you. He promised."

Korrath. The chieftain.

The name sits heavy on her tongue, spoken with the kind of absolute faith that only children can manage. She believes it completely—believes that this monster capable of leading a clan of killers somehow transformed into a protector because he gave his word.

The naivety should be laughable. Instead, it makes something crack open in my chest, some carefully maintained wall that's kept me functional through months of running and hiding. She looks at me like I'm a person instead of prey, like my survival matters for reasons beyond entertainment value.

It's not real. It can't be real.

I want to shake her, to explain that trust is a luxury that gets you killed, that believing in promises from predators is the fastest way to end up as bones scattered across camp grounds.

But she's already settling cross-legged on the floor, placing the bowl between us like an offering to some benevolent god.

"I'm Thalira," she announces, like we're meeting at a market instead of in a prison cell. "But everyone calls me Thali. What's your name?"

The question hangs in the air between us, innocent and terrible in its simplicity. Names have power—every survivor knows that. Give someone your real name and they can use it to hunt you, to call in favors from people who knew you before the world ended.

But this is a child. A child whose smile hasn't yet learned to hide knives, whose hands haven't yet learned the weight of weapons.

Everything about her radiates the kind of genuine warmth I thought died in the camps, the kind of uncomplicated kindness that belongs to a world where people still believe in good endings.

She's going to get herself killed.

The thought comes with surprising clarity, cutting through the fog of exhaustion and fear that's clouded my thinking for days.

This sweetness, this trust—it won't survive first contact with the real world.

Someone will teach her that mercy is weakness, that compassion only makes the blade cut deeper.

They'll take everything bright about her and grind it into the same gray ash that coats everything else in this gods-damned existence.

Unless...

Unless what? Unless you save her? You can't even save yourself.

The bitter voice in my head speaks truth, but I can't stop staring at her expectant face, can't stop thinking about all the children who didn't make it out of the camps. All the bright spirits snuffed out before they had a chance to learn that hope was just another word for delayed disappointment.

"Selene," I hear myself say, the name slipping out before I can stop it. "My name is Selene."

Her smile could power a lighthouse, brilliant and warm and utterly unguarded. She claps her hands together like I've just given her the most wonderful gift instead of a single word that could destroy us both.

"Selene! That's pretty. I've never met a human before." She leans forward conspiratorially, lowering her voice like we're sharing secrets. "Are you really as fragile as everyone says? You look tougher than that."

The casual way she discusses my species like we're some exotic creature makes my skin crawl, but there's no malice in it. Just the innocent curiosity of someone too young to understand that humans and orcs don't trade compliments—they trade blood.

What kind of place is this? What kind of clan lets children wander free while captives wait in locked rooms?