Note: This is a much shorter chapter than usual with no nookie in it. I wanted to tie up some story threads here so that the final act can have a clearer focus. Business shall resume as normal in chapter 12.
*****
Trying not to run was frustratingly difficult when you had not seen your lover in almost a month. Despite it being a bright and warm afternoon, there was a scarcity of orcs out about their business; even the public fountains were unattended. There was an oppressiveness in the air that made haste feel disrespectful somehow, even though Misty usually cared little for pretense. Still, the human had been made to wait and she was torn between rushing or taking her own sweet time.
Misty had been summoned by the Sibyl, the orc community's combined leader and holy woman. After almost half a year absence, on some self-appointed task that Misty did not have the details for, she had returned. That had been four days ago, the out of place human had spent half of that time unconscious.
After her initiation/near death experience her friend, Avelee had taken Misty back to her and Ghoen's house where Misty, after demanding to see Roaji immediately, had passed out from magically induced exhaustion. She had awoken on the third eve, demanded to be taken to Roaji, but had been convinced to eat and wait until morning. On the fourth morning, she had been ready to charge off when an orc messenger she did not recognize summoned her to the Sibyl's hall.
The human had been receiving ominous warnings about the head orc since she had arrived at the nameless orc settlement, yet she was still unsure as to what to expect. The Sibyl seemed to demand a great deal of respect through fear, a technique Misty was used to seeing being wielded ineffectually by her home town's self-important elders. From what she knew, however, the Sibyl was no ranting fogey.
It did not matter; Misty would deal with the politicking after she had seen Roaji safe with her own eyes. She had not had much time to consider her feelings for the orc over the past weeks, being too busy negotiating the cultural and social battleground that was to live among an alien species. The most terrifying of all words: 'love' had crossed her mind more than once, though the concept was as foreign to her as the orcs themselves.
Would she have put herself out as much as she had for Roaji for any of her human lovers? She would like to think so, but she could not be certain and she had not been able to save her lads from being marched off to war. Before she could reminisce further, the village hall was before her. Misty did not hesitate before entering, she did not even knock on the wide door.
The human squinted as she crossed the threshold as it was bizarrely brighter inside. She resisted the urge to shield her eyes from the ethereal glow and made herself move slowly forward towards the center of the room. She had not been in the hall that often, but she quickly recognized that it had been vastly redecorated. The most obvious change was a quartet of levitating lanterns that slowly circled the room filling it with bright light.
As Misty's eyes adjusted, she noticed the second biggest change: a large dais had been erected on the far end of the hall upon which sat a handful of chairs and a sumptuous looking white divan. There were people occupying the seating, but to look directly at them she had to look up at the lanterns also so they were little more than silhouettes to her.
"Greetings... Misty, is it?" an orc voice speaking Kingish filtered down to her like cool rain, making her shiver despite herself.
The human shrugged off the uneasy feeling and responded with a solid, but non-committal, "Hi."
There was a long drawn out silence which Misty knew she was expected to fill, but she did not. She was done with niceties and playing along with orc women who looked at her like she was unwanted pet. She just wanted to see Roaji and talk to him; alone. She squinted up at the figures above her, there were about a half-dozen. The chairs to her left she noticed had humongous leaves draped over them to provide shade from the glare, whilst the lounger to her right did not.
By their figures, Misty could tell that those seated were orcs, whilst the one reclining on the sofa was possibly human. In between them a pair of male orcs stood slumped and wretchedly, one of them might have been Taldereht. She was deeply worried about that orc; in a fairer society he would be blameless, but among the orcs she did not know what fate might befall him now. That she had not heard a peep from or about Enge left her feeling more worried than relieved.
The voice that Misty assumed was the Sibyl spoke up again, "You have travelled far to join us, Misty. You brought home to us our most favored gatherer of herbs, Roaji. You have my sincerest thanks."
"Um... You're welcome," Misty kept it brief again; Roaji had warned her not to talk of the dwarfs and she was not going to volunteer any information she did not have to. The girl understood that she was being interrogated again and wondered if the elevated lighting was meant to purposefully disorient her.
"You have been initiated into our kinship by my Second. Allow me to formally welcome you into my home."
There was a muffled feminine sounding gasp from the person reclining on the couch that cut off Misty's wary words of thanks. The woman sat up straight and, Misty could tell, stared right down at her. The woman streamed off a series of alien sounding fluty syllables at The Sibyl who replied in kind. Incredulous shock hit Misty like an anvil; it was an elf! An elf sitting right above her, hissing in her elf language.
As her vision finally adjusted, the human could get a detailed look at the rare being. She was almost inhumanly long and slender, well over six-foot-tall with skin unblemished and paler than Misty had ever seen. Her face was an equally lengthy oval with pointed ears that extended to her scalp. The elf's large piercing eyes turned back to her and Misty flinched, realizing that she had been staring. Too awestruck to think of something witty to say or do, Misty instead looked away, straight into the eyes of Roaji.
He had been there all along, one of the two slouched male orcs. They only made eye contact for half a moment before he looked down again at his feet, but the warning in his expression was clear. It was hard to heed it however, when the relief of seeing him alive was dizzying. Misty almost went to him before the warning sank in.
Was Roaji cautioning her for a reason besides the obvious though? She was behaving as politely and passively as she could force herself to and she already knew how terrified by The Sibyl everyone was. She did not know, nor could she think of anything she could do differently. Misty knew she was being interrogated again, but she would take The Sibyl's false niceties over Enge's paranoid fury any day of the week.
It all seemed tremendously petty, however, when a month's build-up of fear had finally been assuaged. That said, her lover did seem worryingly gaunt and pallid on closer inspection and Misty wondered if that transition had happened before or after he had joined up with The Sibyl and her retinue.
The orc leader raised her voice to draw the human's attention back to her, "Speaking of my Second, the matter of her punishment has yet to be decided."
Seemingly awaiting this cue, two large orc females entered through a side door dragging a hysterical Enge through with them with a frightened looking Taldereht trailing behind them. What the fuck was going on? The Second looked terrible; maniacal and haggard in a way that should take longer than a few days to achieve. She spied Misty and lunged at her with a scream, but was barely held back by her retainers. Misty was too shocked to even flinch.
"What did they do to you?" the girl whispered to herself.
The Sibyl heard her, "She disobeyed me, shirked her responsibilities and attempted to murder you. She has been dehydrated pending judgement."
Dehydrated? The idea of doing that to a person who was literally a water elemental was one of the sickest things Misty had ever heard. She could not help but pity the orc despite her attempt on her life, "Looks like she's been punished enough."
The Sibyl's eyebrows quirked in what may have been amusement, "You think so? I like to give the aggrieved party a say in the offender's discipline. Would you have her pardoned? I'd wager that if we let her go now you'd be dead in moments. My former Second really has a great dislike for you."
She had Misty there; there was violence in Enge's eyes. It made little sense that the orc would blame her potential victim for her current unfortunate state, but hate was a funny thing like that. The human looked to Roaji for help, however he was casually ignoring her as opposed to pointedly ignoring her. Was he trying to keep whatever their relationship was a secret? How much did The Sibyl know? That was not the issue at hand however, Enge and Taldereht were.
"What is the normal punishment?" the girl asked carefully.
"Treason or attempted murder individually can warrant an execution by a variety of means. Besides that, banishment is a harsher sentence."
"What about jail?"
