Gyda Lionrock thinks her visit to Asclan Peak is for one reason and one reason alone-to procreate and finally welcome that child of her own. She could have never guessed she would also leave something behind inside the mountains, but it was her hear...
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"No?" I looked at Orvar, who slowly lost his angry frown.
"No. Stay." He stood up, standing in front of me, blocking my path to the door. "Uh... Please."
"Are- are you sure?" I asked. "You seem angry with me."
He seemed to be enraged a moment ago. He'd raised his voice and growled at me while his hands trembled in anger.
"Yes," Orvar answered. "I mean yes, stay—not yes, I'm angry with you. I'll keep calm. I'm—I am sorry for barking at you..."
The last thing I wanted was to make a seven-foot-tall orc angry, but if I was honest, I didn't want to go home just yet. There was so much more he could tell me; things my family would never share or even knew about.
We both sat down again and a somewhat awkward silence fell, where Orvar scratched the back of his neck, and I didn't know where to look.
"Uhm..." I started. "Could you maybe tell me what you know about the history of the orcs and humans? Like, from the start. How did everything begin?"
"From the start..." Orvar repeated. "I think it all started when our orc women slowly disappeared, many, many years ago. It was when we still lived in harmony with humans, in houses under the sunlight. It is said that a lot of us even lived and mated with humans."
"They did?" I asked, intrigued.
"Yes. After all, we all descend from the same ancestor and we know we can interbreed. And orcs were probably more appealing to your kind back then..." He gave me this odd smile and I fully understood that he knew how women felt about orcs' appearances. "Then our orc women slowly became extinct. Nobody knows why it started exactly, and it was only an insignificant problem at the beginning. But because of that, more orcs had to turn to humans for offspring. The theory is that the female human gene was dominant in humans, thus more human females were born and the orc females slowly started to disappear. I can only imagine how frightening that must have been over the years."
"And then more and more orcs went after our women?" I interrupted.
"Yes. And probably not in the kindest way... Wars started, and because humans were physically much weaker than orcs, we killed most of their men."
"But that still doesn't explain why so few human boys are born today," I said. "Why is that, you think?"
"Well... that's when the problem for humans kicked in." This time, Orvar smirked. "The male gene is dominant in orcs. Who needs weak men if you can have strong ones?"
"Hm," I hummed, thinking about it all. I was thrilled with this new information—probably more than I should be. I didn't know where this fascination with history and the orcs came from, but it had always been in me. "And the breeding agreement?" I asked.
"Breeding with humans didn't seem to work all that great either. Women were stressed and their babies died. Then the peace accord came: orcs were to leave your women alone, and we all agreed to come together once a year. In exchange, the women would give us our sons."
