Orcblood Legacy: Skirmishes: Orcs Bernard Bertram (good books to read TXT) 📖

begged him in his mother’s voice. Stop, Fangdarr. This is wrong. Do not hurt them.

But he couldn’t listen. There was only the hunt. Without hesitation, the orc swung his axe through the child that stared up at him in fear and confusion. Her face never changed even as his weapon cleaved it in half. Without a word, Fangdarr bent down to tear the ears off the girl’s severed halves and tucked them into his nearly bursting pouch.

As the orc rose, he turned his axe toward the man whimpering behind the furniture. The soldier’s face was pressed against the wooden floor as he waited for the blinding light of death to take him.

Just as Fangdarr was about to paint the floor with the guard’s blood, a woman charged out from her hiding place. Fangdarr turned his attention toward her, thinking to intercept her lunging attack. But he wasn’t what the woman was after. He halted his swing mid-air to see the woman, tears streaming down her face, wielding a small, pronged utensil. She dove toward the man on the ground and began stabbing into his skull relentlessly, crying out in sorrowful rage. After the cowardly man beneath her was gurgling his own lifeblood, she rose to her feet and charged Fangdarr.

ALONE

Fangdarr felt the sharp sting of the pronged iron as the woman plunged it deep into his abdomen. Momentary bewilderment caused the orc to stare down at the utensil and its wielder.

As the orc’s eyes met hers, she didn’t shy away. He saw within them the same fire and hatred that he knew lay behind his own. Beneath the furrow of her brow came her piercing gaze, channeling every bit of her sorrow and fury. Determined to bring an end to the monster that killed her child, the woman placed both hands on the makeshift weapon and pressed with all her might.

Fangdarr didn’t wince as the fork sank further into his stomach. His focus lay solely on his attacker, roaring in her rage. For the briefest of moments, the orc came to understand the reality of his actions. He had killed a child, her child. His fury had blinded him from a horror so real that Fangdarr wondered what else he may have done in his enraged trance.

Is this what it means to be orc? he wondered. Kill without remorse. Bring pain to others. End daughters and sons. Mothers and fathers. Is this the height of our purpose? Suffering?

Pulling out the utensil, the woman plunged it into Fangdarr again in a fit of sorrow, this time just above his heart.

With the piercing pain, Fangdarr’s brow furrowed as his mind cast aside all deeper thoughts to be replaced by a single, overwhelming truth. I will not fall to an unnamed human.

As quick as it had subsided, the orc’s blind rage returned. The outrage and anguish previously in the woman’s eyes turned to fear as their gazes met once more, knowing that she had missed her opportunity to avenge her child. She pulled out the fork and aimed to plunge it into Fangdarr again. But the flesh the woman expected to meet never came. Instead, she felt the monstrous beast’s hand wrap around her forearm.

Knowing she had failed, the woman wailed in anguish. The few eyes of the surviving onlookers hidden in the room watched her in silence, too afraid to move against the invader as she had. She looked to her child for strength, as if her fury would be enough to break past the orc’s hold. Her free arm tried to lash out but was caught as well. Next, her feet, kicking out desperately. Nothing worked. Her rage slipped away, and she called out to her daughter with a dozen apologies.

The woman’s wails only grew louder as Fangdarr carried her to the next room. She begged those hidden for aid. But they only waited, hoping their window of opportunity would present itself at her expense. Seeing her friends hide caused the woman to thrash, shouting curses between her sobs. Her resistance only spurred the orc more, driven by dominating lust and power. The blindness of his state sifted out any thoughts detrimental to his course of action, save for one.

Is this what it means to be orc?

In a blink, the thought had vanished. Fangdarr squeezed through a small doorway as his victim sobbed profusely. Driven by an urge common amongst his kind, the orc glared into her eyes and she knew her fate. She watched as those who had remained concealed in the shadows took their chance to flee. None turned to save her. Not even a moment of consideration. Her eyes closed as the unbearable pain began and she knew she would be forced to bear it all alone.

ENOUGH

The orc stepped out of the room on unsteady feet, his chest rising quickly from the exertion. After the brutal event had passed, the shroud of fury dissipated from his mind. Fangdarr knew what he had done. He could feel the stench of its immorality rising through his stomach as it tensed. Within his mind, the disapproving glare of his deceased mother hounded him, only adding to his shame.

With new clarity, the orc stared around the room and saw the gory scene he had created. The corpse of a small child lay in a pool of her own blood, mixed with the man’s next to her. Fangdarr felt as if he could hardly remember what had happened. In his enraged state, he had done unimaginably horrid things. The events replayed in his head and he held back tears as he realized just how monstrous he had become.

Then, Raz’ja stepped inside with his wicked grin that only spread wider upon sight of the carnage within. The sensitivities Fangdarr was feeling fled immediately, replaced by a toxic necessity to show no vulnerability. That hurt him more than anything else, knowing that he had felt the painful reality of what he was becoming, only to force it away at the first risk of exposure. All the atrocities