Chapter 05
Why Couldn't They Have Been Trolls?
"Yum, I can't wait to crack open their bones, and suck out their marrow. That's my favorite part, Lorrey."
For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, that really isn't the best sentence to hear when waking up. To make matters worse, my feet are dead, and three large green creatures are dancing around a small fire. Nauseously, they're doing that on the ceiling.
Or I'm hanging upside down by my feet. Yeah, probably the later one.
My head feels like Zeus tried to play roller derby in it, and my eyes are bulging from having been down-side-up for too long. The ropes around my ankles and wrists have caused them to go numb.
"Angela," I whisper, hoping the ugly things won't be able to hear me while they talk about how they're going to cook us.
"I'm here," she says loudly enough to make me flinch. "Don't worry, they have terrible hearing."
I look at the creatures again, and a thought hits me. "Shouldn't they have turned to stone in the sunlight?"
"That's trolls that suffer from that curse. These are orcs. Somewhat smarter and not quite as ugly," she replies calmly, and I realize she must have a plan for getting us out of here.
"Naw, I prefer to suck out their marrow before cracking their bones," a different orc states. Smarter than Trolls? How dumb can trolls be?
"How are we going to get out of here?" I ask, hoping to be let in on it.
"They'll cook and eat you first," she tells me evenly, and I feel my stomach drop. "While their cooking you, I'll break free."
"What!?" I shout, before thinking better of it. She's going to abandon me? I know she's technically a demonic creature, but the pain she displayed over having killed someone in the past was real. How can she do this to me?
"Hey now," a gravelly voice shouts at us, grating on my ears, "What's with this chattah? We likes our food quiet."
"And delicious," another one pipes up jovially.
"Well, do you really know how to cook us?" I ask, stealing an idea from Tolkien.
"Tha' lil trick of delayin' us won' work, succubus," their apparent leader responds.
"Ha, Lorrey. You made a rhyme!" says the third Orc.
Okay, so apparently 'smarter' is a relative term for these creatures.
"Shaddup. Lanny, Is the fire ready yet?"
"I'm not a succubus!" I shout at the monster.
He spins back around and walks right up to me. I can smell his fetid breath, and have to fight to keep my gorge in.
"Ya smell like a succubus, you a succubus." He snorts, and his snot plasters my still naked body.
"Oi, what was dat?" Lanny asks. "Lumpy, go check It out."
Lumpy grumbles as he gets up, and starts heading out of the cave. Lorrey goes back to the fire, and backhands Lanny for no apparent reason.
"You were going to abandon me," I accuse Angela, this time quieter, as I try to turn and face her.
"Nonsense," she says, and I can tell her hands are free now, "I just needed you to distract them long enough for me to break free." She swings her slender torso up to start working on the knots around her ankles.
"What was it, Lumpy?" Lanny calls out in time to muffle Angela's drop to the ground. She waits in silence for a moment, then, "Lumpy?"
"Go check it out," Lorrey commands Lanny, and takes the poking-stick from the slightly smaller orc.
I watch in dreadful silence, as Angela creeps up behind the lead orc certain that at any moment the beast is going to turn and club her. She makes it to just behind the monster, when he starts sniffing the air, and then suddenly turns, swinging at the succubus. She blurs, and somehow gets out of the way of the glowing poker, before jumping onto Lorrey's back, and wrapping both arms around the creature's neck.
"Gerr off me!" the thing yells while trying to get Angela off it's back. Her arms barely make it around the monster's neck, and I wonder if she's even doing any good. With the noise the two are making, I'm afraid that the other two orcs are going to return at any moment.
I wish I could help, instead of hanging here useless. Wait, maybe I can. In my mind's eye, I conjure the image of an Amazon goddess. Very tall, bronze colored skin, golden hair flowing, a leopard's pelt her only clothing, and large arms, big enough to crush an orc's neck. Now
this
would be a wild fantasy, I think.
Opening my eyes and looking back to the two struggling supernatural creatures, I see a different woman now, finishing off the large orc. It only takes a couple more seconds, before I hear a very audible 'POP', and the thing's head rolls into the fire.
Maybe I made her arms too strong.
Angela, still in Amazon form, easily strolls over to me, and smiles at me through the gore covering her body. "This a fantasy of yours, huh?" she asks. She is easily tall enough to reach the bindings at my hands now.
"It is now," I tell her, glad to be safe. "Wait, what about the other two?"
Just then we can hear footsteps approaching the entrance to the cave.
Angela crouches, ready to defend us, and with my hands now free, I lift my torso enough to start working on the ties around my feet.
I land with a whump, forcing all the air from my lungs. I'm not as nimble as Angela is. I turn just in time to see a new creature enter the fray.
It's not who I expect to see.
"Brooke?" I yell out and am surprised to see her in pale-blue scale mail armor, and a wicked looking wavy sword covered in ichor in her hands. An odd long skirt, made of the same material as her torso armor, shimmers blue in the firelight, but seems to flow around her legs like water, widening towards the bottom.
