Author's Note: As usual, thanks very much to Krissta for editing this for me! If this is your first time reading this story then you should know that as well as Sci-Fi/Fantasy, it contains elements from the following categories: Erotic Couplings, Group Sex, Mature, Lesbian Sex, and NonHuman. This particular chapter is also a bit more violent than the last ones. So, if any of that turns you off then now would be a good time to stop reading. If not, then I hope you enjoy!
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Ash and smoke: it was all that filled his senses. It had been all that the ring had left. A circle, as wide as a man was tall, had been burned into the grass. The boy who had foolishly placed the ring on his finger was no more. Even his bones had blackened and flaked away to sail through the air on the whim of the evening breeze.
The silence and stillness that had fallen upon the camp made the moment disturbingly serene. All had been there to witness the deranged Freddie Lounds place the ring upon his finger before slowly being burned alive from the inside. Algra's whisper upon seeing the terrible conflagration still rang in Gregory's ears.
Dragon fire.
Gregory had never seen a dragon, but if that was what their fire did to a person then he was damn certain that he never wanted to meet one. He remained sat in shock as the embers of death still remained heavy in the air. It wasn't until he felt the wet drops of Janette's tears spill upon his bare shoulder that he realised he hadn't taken a single breath since Freddie had slipped the ring onto his finger.
The world seemed to come alive again as he suddenly took in a deep gasp of air. Orcs and humans began running around the camp. Some made hurried rushed toward their tents to get away from the sight of the ring as it glowed hot in the blackened earth. Others started to crowd around to look upon what had happened.
Gregory turned to look upon Janette and found her eyes glistening and her cheeks stained with fresh tears. She wept in horror at the sight she had just witnessed. Freddie had once been with her before she'd come to her senses. Although she did not mourn his loss, she cried for the pain and the fear she'd seen in his face before it had been engulfed by the flames.
It was the sight of that beautiful face laced with such sorrow that finally tore Gregory from his own reserve and made him suddenly realise that he should be trying to find out what the hell had just happened.
"Algra!" he raised his voice and found it surprisingly strong.
The orc female turned from the sight of the scorched earth to look upon Gregory. He found that she was obviously taken aback by the power of the ring but the sight of a man being incinerated didn't bother her in the slightest. She was a warrior. She had seen men burn before.
Upon hearing her name, she rushed over to make sure that her human master was alright. She found him unharmed except for a few swollen knuckles. Shortly before Freddie had put on the ring, he'd been lying in the dirt getting his face re-arranged by furious Gregory. The sight of her master beating his enemy had given the orc a powerful urge to ravish him once again. Now it seemed that there were other matters to deal with.
Gregory was lifting himself to his feet and helping Janette to hers in the process.
"Take Jan back to the tent and make sure Valise sees her."
Algra nodded in the affirmative and he slipped the weeping redhead from his arms and into the welcoming embrace of the orc. He then turned to look back at the ring. Its glow had faded considerably, though it still glimmered brightly in amidst the ashes.
"No one touch it," he growled.
A few of the orcs had been stepping toward the object and suddenly jumped back at the sound of Gregory's voice. He walked over to Torren's tent where he found the blacksmith had been watching from behind its canopy. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for as the pair of iron tongs came into view next to the smith's anvil. After snatching them up, he walked back over the blackened circle and caught the ring in amidst the pincers. He carried the thing to the cooling trough and allowed it to drop in the clear water. It made a small hiss as the hot metal hit the liquid and a tiny wisp of steam lifted into the air.
"I need some string."
Torren had been watching whilst rooted to the spot in fear of what the ring might do next. At Gregory's words, he snapped out of the fearful trance and fumbled about in amidst his tools to emerge with a long piece of string. It was taken with a small nod of thanks from the younger man before he reached into the water and took hold of the ring itself.
"Don't do that!" Torren made to move forwards in fear that Gregory would be the next one to erupt in a blaze of fire.
"It's fine. I've held it before." Of course, that didn't mean he was stupid enough to put the thing on his finger.
Torren hesitated and watched as Gregory looped the string through the golden band and tied the ends together before lifting it over his head. He wasn't going to forget about it ever again. The ring hung there upon his bare chest, still glinting but otherwise doing no harm to Gregory. After a moment's wait to see if anything happened, Gregory left the smith's tent to walk outside to see Grolfir had appeared in Bolut's camp along with five of his guards.
The crowd had quickly dispersed at the sight of the great warchief. Gregory couldn't blame them. Right about then he'd have paid good money to have had the ground swallow him whole. This wasn't helped by the fact that Grolfir saw him and his eyes narrowed in anger. Gregory would have felt more comfortable trying to stare down an erupting volcano.
"What, by the First, has happened here?" Grolfir's voice rung through the air like an oncoming avalanche.
"I will explain." Algra's voice. She had left Gregory's tent upon seeing the arrival of her uncle and was moving to head off any undue rages that might follow.
"No." Gregory held up his hand and Algra halted immediately whilst casting a questioning look over her shoulder at him. "This is my fault."
The female orc growled in quick defiance at her master's assessment of the situation.
"It is not-" she began.
"It is. I had Freddie released here. Into my care. He escaped because I didn't think to post a guard and I was too caught up in other things to even realise that I'd left the ring practically out in the open. It was stupid. It was my fault." Gregory looked up to the big warchief whose eyes had fallen upon his chest where the ring now hung.
"What happened?" The great orc curled his lip over a large tusk and folded his arms across his massive chest as he regarded Gregory.
"Freddie escaped. I don't know how he got free. I changed my clothes and forgot I'd left the ring in my pocket. He found it and put it on. He thought that because it brought us here that it would send us home... or at least send him home. I lost control of myself." Gregory felt Algra's hand upon his shoulder and realised that he was talking too fast. His breaths were becoming difficult as he relived the horrifying sight of Freddie igniting from within after being beaten bloody by Gregory's own fists. He stopped and closed his eyes tightly to keep from losing control and then when his gaze settled back upon Grolfir it was calm and steady. "I beat him. He was saying awful things about what he'd do to Janette and I couldn't hold myself back. I felt his face breaking on my fists and I couldn't... I couldn't stop it." Algra's hand squeezed reassuringly against his tight muscle. "I realised what I'd done and scrambled to get away. Freddie managed to put the ring on and he..."
"The ring has great power. It burned the mad child to nothing but ashes before our eyes." Algra's voice cut in so that Gregory did not have to finish. Her words were cold and clinical. A soldier's report.
Gregory found himself suddenly very grateful to the beautiful orc.
"Show me where the fool was bound," Grolfir ordered after a moment of thought. His eyes never veering away from Gregory's.
The words sparked a sudden clarity of focus in the young man's mind. He too wanted to know how Freddie had managed to free himself. The last time he'd seen the disturbed boy, he'd been chained up to an iron post. Freddie didn't exactly strike him as the most adept of escape artists and so the question of how he gained his freedom was definitely relevant.
Without a word, Gregory nodded to the warchief and turned to lead them along the tents of Bolut's camp to where Freddie had been shackled. What he saw when he came to the iron post made him freeze in his tracks. Torren, the young blacksmith, was stood in front of the post whilst scratching his chin. He hadn't noticed the approach of the others as he regarded what once had been a very long length of iron embedded into the earth.
Instead of the smooth iron post, there was nothing but a badly rusted heap of iron shavings. It was as if the post itself had been almost wholly disintegrated.
"Sorcerer," Grolfir growled.
"No." Gregory shook his head. "There's no way that Freddie could have done this. He didn't know anything about magic. He was just about the most un-magical person you could imagine."
Gregory took a few steps forwards and crouched by the crumbled remains of the post. There was a strong smell of sulphur in the air close to the ruined iron. He didn't like that one little bit. He then turned to look at Torren, who had by now noticed that he was in the presence of his master and the warchief himself. His face suddenly paled at the realisation.
"Do you know anything that could have done this to iron?" At Gregory's words, all eyes turned to the smith.
"N-no! No sir. I couldn't do this m'self if I wanted to. I forged that post. It was a simple job. Used the same stuff I forged this shield from." He quickly stepped inside his own tent for a moment before emerging with a perfectly fine looking iron shield. He looked over the metal to see if there were any signs of sudden decay when a thought occurred to him. "Unless..."
Torren stopped himself as the ramifications of his train of thought suddenly became clear. The many sets of eyes resting upon him suddenly made him become very nervous to the point where he lifted his shield up to his nose.
"Torren, what is it? It's alright if you made a mistake." Gregory meant it. Though he would have been somewhat shocked if that had been the case. Torren might have been a little bit of a shy klutz but it was obvious that he knew his trade well.
"Master it's..." he hesitated yet again, glancing nervously to the warchief.
"Speak boy!" Grolfir suddenly bellowed and made half of those in attendance jump with fright.
"I remember I
have
seen something like this before. I'd got this chunk of metal jammed in a frame I'd worked up for a cart. Couldn't budge the thing. So I went to Valise and she had this potion. It just ate through the metal so I could get it out. When the chunk broke free it looked a bit like..." He nodded toward the rusted scraps of the metal shaft.
