Chapter One #2
The one with the spear stabs me right in the tit. Fucking orcs.
* * *
So, about what I expected. But here’s the thing about being so close to my starting point—it doesn’t bother me much.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, being stabbed fucking hurts.
Other than that, though, I haven’t lost anything.
Another quick walk through the forest and I’m in a position to try again.
And again, and again, and again, if necessary.
I can’t help but think of this as “save-scumming,” after the old gaming practice of loading your save over and over to try to get a good result on some RNG.
6 I don’t even count these mayfly existences against my total roster of lives. Keeping track is hard enough as it is.
Point is this is not an unexpected result.
Next time I go into the forest, I know where my orc friends are going to be patrolling.
They catch me one more time (sword to the back of the head, instant death, 5/5 stars), and then I’ve got an idea of their route, which makes it easy to get past them.
I’m tempted to murder them, if only for their boots, but given my ultimate objective, it seems counterproductive.
I guess that they’re walking a circuit around a raider camp, and lo, so it comes to pass.
There’s a whole bunch of tents pitched around a big clearing with a bonfire.
I can see a gang of wilders, maybe thirty, mostly orcs with a few wolves and lizards for variety.
I know these guys. In fact, I’ve killed them many times. A more typical start to a life might go like this:
Follow Tserigern after his stupid fucking speech.
Meet up with a party of Guildblades in the area. Offer to guide them to their prey to prove my worth.
Find the closest raider gang (this one) and get to hack-’n’-slash.
It’s a nice trick because it gets me in with the Guild from the very start, which helps propel me into the thick of the Kingdom’s affairs without too much “Who’s this scruffy girl who says she’s here to save us?
” style bullshit. Since I’m now reversing the polarity on everything, though, it behooves me to get to know these people as something other than a red mess on the other end of a battle-axe.
The trick is living long enough to do this, since as far as they’re concerned, I’m just some human wandering into their camp, and for wilders pretty much the only good human is a dead human. Some fast-talking is called for.
“Hello, friends—gark!”
“Can I speak to you before—blarg!”
“Please listen for a minute before you stab—whatever noise being stabbed in the eye makes!”7
It takes a few tries.8 I vary up my approach, trying different angles.
The direct route brings me up against a big deep-green orc with a sideways mohawk who barely seems to notice what I say before he slaughters me.
Taking the long way around means the first wilder I encounter is a woman stitching leather who seems less inclined to immediate violence.
At this you might say, Davi, why bother? I get that you don’t want to fight the orcs, for altruistic and/or emotional reasons relating to your mindset on this particular life, but you could at least go around them. Just dodge the scouts and get on with the plan!
So, first of all, where the fuck do you get off giving me advice, imaginary person? Have you been horribly killed an unknown but four-digit number of times? I suspect not, and I invite you to (a) respect my expertise, and (b) fuck off into the sun.
Second, if I must elaborate, talking to the orcs is the plan.
See, Dark Lord isn’t a thing you just stroll into.
You have to work your way up. For obvious reasons, I don’t know very much about the actual process, but the Dark Lord gets crowned9 at a big wilder shindig called the Convocation, way up past the mountains at the other end of the Hedsine River.
As noted, it’s a bring-your-own-minions sort of occasion.
In other words, just turning up isn’t going to do me any good. Ideally I’d be at the head of a vast horde, but even a little horde10 is better than none.
Thus: orcs. Small-time and close enough to my starting point that I can fuck around.
“Hey,” I tell the leather-stitching orc, who startles and jabs herself in the palm with a needle. “S’up.”
She looks at me wide-eyed but doesn’t immediately disembowel me. Progress!
“Please don’t scream,” I tell her.
She screams. A whole gang of orcs arrives and does unpleasant things with edged weapons until I stop moving.
I reconsider. Maybe a more layered approach is needed. Next time I stay out of sight around a tent and call out, “Hello? Lady with the sewing?”
There’s an intake of breath, and then, “Barlav? Is that you?”
Actual conversation!11 “Um, sure?”
“What?”
Footsteps. She looks around the corner and I give her a reassuring grin.12 She screams. Chop chop chop ow ow splat.
Try again.
“Madam, I am forced to admit that I am not, in fact, Barlav.”
“What?” A rustle. “Who’s there?”
“Before you turn the corner,” I say, “let me put my cards on the table and further admit that the sight of me will probably alarm you somewhat. I assure you that I have no intention and indeed no ability to harm you or your companions, and my sole desire is to establish peaceful relations and amicable dialogue.”
“What the fuck—” She turns the corner, screams. Choppy choppy.
Again. Maybe adjust the verbiage to be a little more immediately approachable.
“Please don’t scream. I just want to talk, I don’t have any weapons.”
She turns the corner, sees me, sucks in a breath. Pauses. Lets it out slowly.
“You—” Her eyes flick to me, then back toward the center of camp, where the choppers are waiting. “You’re human.” A deeper shade of green colors her cheeks. “And naked. Why are you naked?”
“As to the first, I’m not, I swear.” Better to start laying the groundwork early. “I’m guilty on the second count, though. It has been a rough”—thousand years— “couple of weeks.”
“You speak properly.” She straightens up a little, coming out of a defensive crouch. “I’ve never met a human who can do that.”
“As I said, I’m not a human.” I cough. “May I ask your name?”
“Maeve,” she says.
“It’s good to meet you, Maeve. I’m Davi.”
“What are you doing here?” Her eyes flick over her shoulder again. “They’ll kill you if they find you.”
“Believe me, I am aware of that,” I say with a certain amount of well-earned gravitas. “I need to speak to your leader about something important. Is it at all possible we could arrange that without too much bleeding on my part?”
“You …” She shakes her head. “You must be mad.”
“As a March hare,” I answer automatically.
“A what?”
“Never mind. Can you just … go and find the person in charge and tell them I would deeply like to have a word? They’re free to kill me afterward.”
“Maeve?” a deeper voice says from around the corner.
“Over here, Barlav,” Maeve says, backing away from me. “There’s something you should see.”
The sideways-mohawk orc comes into view. He sees me and his eyes go wide. But, crucially, Maeve is between him and me, so he has to pause a moment to push her out of the way.
“Wait!” I shout at him. “Please. I know I look human, but I’m a wilder and I can prove it. Please just let me show you.”
I reach into my makeshift pouch and pull out the thaumite I got from Tserigern. There’s not very much, two green stones, one orange, one purple, none of them larger than my pinky nail. They’re polished into smooth spheres, like marbles that glow very slightly from the inside.
The sight of the little gems at least gets Barlav’s attention. I grab one of the green ones, put it on my tongue, and swallow. It makes a hard lump in my throat as it goes down.
Maeve and Barlav stare at me. I stare back at them, waiting.
* * *
So, thaumite.13 Thaumite is pure arcane power crystallized into glowing gems, which come in every color of the rainbow.
Back in the Kingdom, it’s considered the ultimate bling, and for good reason—with the right training, humans can use thaumite to do magic.
What exactly they can do and how much of it depends on how big a chunk you have and in what color, among other factors; if you ever see someone coming at you with a chunk of red stuff the size of a fist and an angry expression, for example, all your shit is about to get blown up and/ or combusted.
On the flip side: I am, of course, probably the best magic-slinger the world has ever seen, but with the junk Tserigern had on him, I can probably manage to cast “Heat to the Point of Mild Discomfort” or “Cure Hangnail.”
That’s what humans do with thaumite. Wilders have a much more basic, primal relationship with the stuff, which is a fancy way of saying that they eat it.
The magic runs through them and lets them do things, not as flashy as human sorcery but more reliable.
But the salient point at this specific juncture is that if a human is stupid enough to eat thaumite, that human is going to have a bad time, somewhere along the axis from “painful and immediate death” to “actually exploding like a decomposing whale.”
So, Davi, you say, are you about to explode? Because that seems like kind of an elaborate prank, talking your way up close to these orcs only to shower them in your mangled guts.
And you would think so! Because I am, as best I’ve been able to determine,14 human.
Like I don’t have fangs or cat ears or a snake tongue or the other shit that wilders usually have.
And yet, as I determined by experiment long ago, I can eat thaumite with no ill effects and even use it the way wilders do.
And I can use human-style magic! Kind of a cheat-level skill set, right?
Not that it’s done me much good, since in the Kingdom if they find out you can eat thaumite, they burn you at the stake and not as a figure of fucking speech.