Page 75 of Orc's Pride
“M…Mal…”
I frown at the scene. “I think he’s trying to say ‘Malik’.”
Pitha searches for me, connecting my voice to my face with a frown.
I shrug at him. “That’s what it sounds like, anyway.”
Old Malik tugs the orc’s face up with a hand at the back of his neck holding his head up with a firm grip on his hair. “I’m Malik.”
Bleary eyes slowly focus on him. “M… message… for you.”
“Gods,” Pitha mumbles before waving a hand. “Can someone grab the medic? We need to take him to the infirmary—”
“No.” There is another choking cough. “Won’t… won’t make it…”
“Shit. Lay him down.”
Both guards bend to set him on the ground gently, positioning him upright enough for him not to choke on more of his own blood. It’s honestly a sad state to see someone of ourown kind to be in. I’d been around enough death in my life, but seeing someone on the precipice of it never gets easier.
Old Malik lowers himself slowly to the ground. “Tell me what you need to. And then we will let you rest.”
The orc raises his eyes, his breath shuddering out of him in a horrible rattling way that has my toes curling in my boots.
“War… it’s coming.”
Everyone around me, including myself, tenses.
“War?” Old Malik prompts, trying to keep him talking.
“The war… with the dark elves. Soon. It’ll be here.”
It’s been a rumor for a while now since Old Malik has arrived that there is something big going on behind the scenes. Not many of us have been privy to the information, but there are enough hardened faces walking out of the meeting’s building to know that something isn’t right.
Of course, most of my fellow fighters have brushed off my conspiracies as rumors and nothing to be concerned with, but it seems that I wasn’t far off from the truth after all.
“They’re going to… they have monsters.” Another rattling cough. “...a portal. That’s what they’ll use.”
Pitha crosses his arms over his chest. “Where did you hear this?”
“Saw it… with my own eyes… They want to destroy the planet…”
Malik raises his head to fix Pitha with a look. They two share the same thought between them silently, a look that has me nervous watching it happen. If the dark elves were planning on making this way worse than it already has become, then we’ve got major problems.
Destroy the planet? Why? What would be the end goal to that?
Don’t they also live on this planet?
When Old Malik breaks away from his staring contest with Pitha, he nods to the orc. “Thank you for getting me this message.”
As he goes to stand, the stranger’s hand snatches him by the wrist in a surprising show of agility.
“They’re using the humans... As spies and planting them… within the alliance. They… the monsters they plan on bringing… they’ll kill us all.”
Around me, other orcs began to murmur at his words.
Things like ‘humans’, ‘monsters’, and ‘kill us all’ being thrown around with a growing sense of worrying. I don’t blame any of them though because I feel much the same. What did any of it mean? That’s the real question. And how much has been hidden from us in order not to cause mass panic and chaos.
There are some orcs that move away from the crowd to disperse back into the base—I’m sure to spread the word to everyone else now that we’re all sufficiently freaked out.