Chapter 22 Forla
FORLA
The village spreads below us like a wound that refuses to close, its crooked houses huddled against the rocky coastline where gray waves gnaw at black stone.
After three days of walking through empty hills, the sight should bring relief.
Instead, my stomach clenches with the same dread I felt watching Talia and Brom's lifeless eyes stare at nothing.
Thoktar grunts beside me, shifting his weight to favor his injured ribs. "Finally. Civilization."
But there's something wrong with the way the village sits against the shore.
The houses lean inland, their backs turned to the sea like they're afraid of what might crawl out of the waves.
Fishing nets hang between buildings in impossible tangles, stretched like spider webs across narrow alleys, and beneath the salt tang of ocean air lies something else—the sweet-sick smell of meat left too long in the sun.
"At least they have boats," Rophan says, his deep voice carrying hope for the first time since we fled the arena. His massive frame towers over us both, but even he seems diminished by the strange emptiness of the place.
We pick our way down the rocky path, loose stones skittering ahead of us like fleeing insects.
The village appears completely deserted—no smoke from chimneys, no voices calling across courtyards, no children playing in the narrow streets.
Yet I can't shake the feeling that we're being watched from every dark window, every shadowed doorway.
A weathered wooden sign leans drunkenly beside what might once have been a proper gate. The letters are carved deep, filled with something dark that might be tar or dried blood: PENMORVAH. Below it, smaller words in a script that makes my eyes water when I try to focus on them.
"Penmorvah," I whisper, tasting the name like medicine gone bad.
The first street we enter runs parallel to the shore, but every door faces inland as if the sea is something to be ignored rather than embraced.
Fish bones lie scattered in deliberate patterns between the cobblestones—spirals and crosses and shapes that seem to shift when I'm not looking directly at them.
The bones are bleached white, picked clean, but they're fresh enough that they should still stink.
Instead, they smell like nothing at all, as if the scent has been carefully removed.
Nets hang everywhere—not just between houses but draped over windowsills, stretched across doorways, bundled in corners like sleeping animals.
They're not ordinary fishing nets either.
The mesh is too fine, the knots too complex, and when the wind catches them they whisper like voices sharing secrets.
"Where is everyone?" Thoktar asks, his hand drifting to his axe handle.
As if summoned by his words, curtains twitch in the windows above us. A pale face appears for an instant at a second-story window, then vanishes so quickly I might have imagined it. But the feeling of being watched intensifies, pressing against my skull like fever.
We move deeper into the village, our footsteps echoing off stone walls that weep with moisture despite the dry afternoon air.
The houses grow larger as we approach what must be the village center, their rooflines decorated with carved fish that seem to writhe in my peripheral vision.
Every alley we pass exhales the sound of whispers, conversations conducted in voices too low to understand.
A cat slinks across our path—at least, I think it's a cat until I see how it moves, its joints bending in directions that make my bones ache in sympathy. It pauses to stare at us with eyes like green glass, then flows away into the shadows with liquid grace.
Seabirds perch on the rooftops above us, but they don't call or cry or move the way birds should. They simply watch with heads tilted at unnatural angles, their beaks hanging open as if they're trying to taste our scent on the wind.
"This place feels wrong," I murmur, stepping closer to Thoktar's warmth.
"Everywhere feels wrong lately," he replies, but his voice carries the same unease that's crawling up my spine like cold fingers.
The village center opens before us—a circular plaza paved with stones that spiral inward toward a well. But it's not water that fills the well. Something dark and thick laps at the stone rim, and the sound it makes is like gentle sobbing.
As we stand there, uncertain whether to advance or retreat, doors begin to open.
They emerge slowly, one by one, the people of Penmorvah.
An old woman from the largest house, her movements careful and precise as if she's walking on ice.
A younger man from a doorway to our left, his arms hanging at strange angles.
Children who might be seven or seventeen—it's impossible to tell because their faces carry an ancient weariness that belongs to neither age.
"Travelers," the old woman calls, her voice carrying the hollow sound of wind through empty shells. "Come. Rest. The tide brings few visitors to Penmorvah."
She approaches us with measured steps, her eyes the pale green of deep water. When she smiles, I catch a glimpse of teeth that have been filed to points—not sharpened like a warrior's might be, but worn down to needles through deliberate use.
"I am Grandmother Netts," she says, and the other villagers gather behind her like kelp following the current. "These are my children. We welcome those the sea delivers to our nets."
The way she looks at Rophan makes my stomach turn. It's the expression of a fisherman who's just spotted a prize catch struggling in shallow water.
"We need passage north," Rophan says carefully. "I seek passage to Miltar, but my friends need to go to the north of Rach. We can easily drop them on the way. We can pay."
Grandmother Netts' smile widens, revealing more of those needle teeth, but her eyes turn cold as deep water when they fix on Thoktar and me.
"Payment for the minotaur, yes," she says, her voice taking on the hollow sound of wind through empty shells. "The deep ones smile on horn and hoof. Twenty silver and you sail with the evening tide."
She pauses, letting her gaze linger on us with obvious distaste, then leans forward and inhales deeply near me. Her face twists with disgust.
"But not for orcs. Never for orcs."
Heat floods my cheeks, but beneath the shame burns something harder—anger that this creature dares speak of what Thoktar and I share as if it's contamination.
A young man steps forward—or perhaps he's old, it's impossible to tell with the way shadows seem to pool in the hollows of his face. His arms bear what look like deliberate scars, parallel lines that might be decorative or might serve some purpose I don't want to contemplate.
"The waters reject orcish flesh," he says in a voice like grinding shells. "Makes the catch go bad. Poisons the deep pools where the children play."
"And the girl?" Rophan presses, his voice carefully neutral though I can see the tension in his massive shoulders.
Grandmother Netts tilts her head like a bird studying prey, and something hungry flickers behind her pale green eyes.
“I smell orc cock on her, damned to the land she is. The deep ones forbid their kind from traveling the waters north. Too much... screaming. The nets remember.
“You take their offer, Rophan,” Thoktar says.
“I can’t leave the both of you here,” Rophan says.
“The north is only a week or two walk away.” Thoktar says. “The fresh air will do us good.”
“We want you gone, orc. And the whore.” A deep voice from behind them says.
Thoktar shifts around, fist clenching. “What did you say?”
“Master Sinks was only joking, weren’t you Master Sinks.” Grandma Netts says glaring at him.
“Jokes are lost on orcs, the truth too.” Master Sinks says as turns quickly and walks away.
Thoktar begins to move, Rophan grabs his arm. “Easy.”
I grab the other one, “No trouble my handsome orc, no trouble.”
Grandma Netts spits on the ground and looks at Rophan, “Yeah or nigh?”
"When do we sail?" Rophan asks, his tone making it clear he wants to leave as quickly as possible.
"Sundown," Grandmother Netts says quickly, too quickly. "We never sail in daylight. It upsets the children."
As if summoned by her words, small faces appear in the dark windows around the plaza. They're child-faces, but wrong somehow—too pale, too still, with eyes that reflect light like a nocturnal animal's. One of them opens its mouth in what might be a yawn, revealing rows of tiny, sharp teeth.
Thunder rumbles overhead though the sky was clear when we descended into the village. The villagers all turn their faces skyward at once, mouths opening to catch drops that taste like brine.
I catch Thoktar's eye and see my own unease reflected there, along with cold fury at Grandmother Netts' words. We have no choice but to wait, nowhere else to go, but every instinct honed by years of surviving as a slave screams that Penmorvah is a trap disguised as sanctuary.
The child-faces in the windows smile down at us with their needle teeth, and somewhere in the growing darkness, something that might not be thunder begins to call back from the deep water beyond the harbor.