Wizards and Warlocks: Adventure II

Part V: Heritage

Adeen woke up suddenly. She calmed her breaths, trying to remember her dream or to figure out what noise had waked her. Then, she heard a bubbling yet horrifying burst of laughter. It sounded familiar, which made her even more uneasy. Was it...? Adeen creeped out from the bedding, carefully passing a sleeping Violet, and stepped carefully in the direction of the noises, swiftly grabbing her toolbag as she did so. She glimpsed firelight through the leaves, and slipped up a tree with low-hanging branches.

It felt strange to be a dozen feet in the air, she mused, shifting carefully to a closer tree. Glimpsing a sight of gray, hefty humanoids in a clearing, she was glad to be up a tree. Sneaking around in trees would be stranger for an Orc, who would be much heavier. She edged closer.

Adeen surveyed the scene with growing horror. A woman was strung over an enormous fire, seemingly paralyzed with fear. The fire was burning her alive and even from the tops of the trees, Adeen could smell her burning flesh. A group of Orcs sat around her. From this vantage point, she could only see four Orcs, but there could be more in the shadows around the fire. She now understood why the sound was familiar. Adeen had heard Violet speak the language when they were children. She still cursed in the language.

The four sat in a circle around the fire, speaking in their rough language. They grunted occasionally and pointed at the slowly roasting woman. Adeen could hear some Speirman thrown in, and strained to listen. Something about several human men and a shed? Was it an Orc joke or something that had happened? No, something something sorcerer? Prison? Or was that poison... Adeen wished Violet had taught her the language.

The woman looked close to death, the suffocating smell of burning flesh getting worse every minute. Adeen decided that she had to act now. She could not wake up Violet for fear the woman would die. She reached into her tool bag and pulled out a hammer. Adeen contemplated the hammer. Rubbed her thumb over a scuff on the handle- remembered that had happened when she tossed a bag if tools out the window by accident several years back. Without a second thought, Adeen hurled it through the air and landed a solid blow to the Orc. She winced as he went down.

She hadn't expected to hit anything.

Her first kill.

The sound of the hammer's dull thump and click on bone resonated in her head as the hammer went pierced the eye socket. As the orc's eyes drooped closed, the wide gray discs reminded her too much of her sister. Another shudder was in order.

Strangely, the other Orcs seemed to not have noticed that one of their own had gone down. They continued to talk casually in their strange grunting way. Although a bit alarmed, they didn't seem to realize he was dead and not abruptly napping, despite the liquified eyeball running down his chin, aqueous humor dripping into his shrivelled ears. 

Adeen took aim once again and knocked another Orc (TO THE AFTERLIFE AND BACK OH MY GOSH HE'S SO DEAD, SO DEATH THE HAMMER'S SPINES ARE IN HIS SKULL) unconscious. Unfortunately for her, this one was in the middle of a sentence to the others immediately got up, roaring and trying to find the source of the flying death-weapon. A fifth orc came running out of the woods shouting and grunting. She was older, larger and uglier than the rest.

At least they had a sense of camaraderie, right? She pulled out another hammer and rustled around in her bag. She felt nine nice, sharp hammers left. Sounded about right, she owned twelve hammers and had brought them all. Pretty pointy, those hammers.

Adeen pulled out another hammer with her other hand. She hurled them both. Thunk...thunk. Each hammer solidly buried themselves in between two grey eyes. Now she had eight left. Both throws thudded against a meaty head and punctured the tough grayed skin.