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Isekai Terry AHS: Chapter 7 – Orcs!
🕑 Added 2024-11-22 02:27:07 +0000 UTCTerry woke up early the next morning. It wasn’t quite zero dark thirty, but it was close. He’d accomplished that particular feat by crawling into his tent almost immediately after finishing his bowl of soup and cleaning up afterward, thereby avoiding any meaningful conversation with the Kelima. He figured escaping the girl was worth at least one more shot. After all, anything worth doing was worth doing repeatedly. He swiftly dismantled his tent, tucked the still-napping Dusk into his pack, shot a dirty look at Kelima’s tent, and was on his way. She’ll surely get the point this time, he thought while harboring a quiet dread that nothing he did was going to get the idea across. If that happened, he’d have to do the unthinkable and have a frank conversation with her about boundaries and leaving him the hell alone.
The introvert that was still alive and well inside of him recoiled from that prospect. He had gotten better about meeting conflict head-on, but there was usually violence or money involved. If someone got violent, he had to defend himself. If someone tried to cheat him, well, he needed money. It wasn’t quite as crucial as it had been in his old life where not having money meant freezing or starving to death on the streets, but he still liked having readily available shelter and food that didn’t require him to hunt it first. Maybe that made him soft, but he was confident he bear up under the pressure of that insult. Either way, he had strong motivations to meet those conflicts directly.
The kind of awkward, aggravating, interpersonal conflict that the noble brat’s continued presence heralded was something different. She wasn’t too violent and there was no money on the line. He just didn’t have that internal motive to address it. It was so much easier to just avoid it if he could. Although, she wasn’t making that very easy for him. Besides, he had other and more important things to worry about. That monster army encampment bothered him a lot. It was far too close to his newly purchased house for comfort. If the monsters marched toward the Miner’s Mark, there was little chance that Haresh, Ekori, and Jaban could defend his home from them. He hoped that Haresh would hurry the younger two back to town where there was at least a chance of survival. No, Kelima was not his priority. Getting his new sword and getting back was his priority. Anything else was just a distraction.
By the time it was light enough out to be called early morning, Terry was almost enjoying himself. If he’d been able to walk at the pace he preferred instead of the fast walk he’d taken up to hopefully outpace the noble girl, he might have actually been enjoying himself. The morning air was crisp, but his steady pace was keeping the chill at bay. Still, he was between pockets of civilization and looked human. It wasn’t a terrible shock when three hulking, gray-skinned creatures emerged from the mist-shrouded trees to confront him. They had small tusks protruding up from their lower jaws and carried heavy, iron-banded clubs. Holy shit, thought Terry. Those are orcs.
His amazement at seeing the things was swiftly snuffed out when the largest of the three let out a bellowing roar and lunged at Terry, club lifted high. Terry leapt backward. First, that let him avoid getting hit in the head with the club. Not getting brained was always something Terry considered an unalloyed good. Second, it let him gauge the strength of the monster. He got his answer when the club struck the road and sent a wave of dirt flying into the air. Okay, he thought. It's pretty strong. It might have even seemed like an intimidating level of strength when he’d first arrived. After squaring off against the foliasaur plant monster and a pack of massive dire wolves with seemingly endless endurance, Terry’s bar for what qualified as frightening had gone way up. The lead orc bellowed in rage. It seemingly viewed dodging as a grievous and unforgivable offense.
“What?” demanded Terry. “You didn’t think I was just going to stand there and take it, did you?”
All three orcs stared at him and blinked in confusion for several seconds. Terry wasn’t sure if it was because people didn’t normally snark at them, or if it was just the sound of his voice that had confused them. Either way, he decided not to waste the opportunity. He surged forward and punched the biggest orc in the chest. There were ugly noises as heavy bones in the thing’s chest gave way. It flew back several feet before crashing to the ground. Terry started to turn his attention to the other two orcs when the first one staggered back its feet. He was astounded to hear noises like the bones snapping back into place.
“Well, you’ve got some impressive resilience. I’ll give you that much. I guess I should have been taking this a bit more seriously.”
Terry drew a jian from each hip and let himself settle into the more focused mindset he’d started to adopt when facing serious enemies. He let his eyes focus a little into the middle distance. That would alert him if more than one of the orcs moved, although he got the sense that the biggest orc was now treating this whole thing as some kind of grudge match. It was even making a bunch of grunting noises like it was trying to hype itself up for something. This time, Terry started moving a mere fraction of a second after the orc did. The creature was trying the exact same attack again, lunging forward and trying to bring the club down on Terry. Except, Terry was on top of the orc by the time it had managed to lift the club up. There was a flash of steel. The club fell away with an arm still gripping it tightly. Terry didn’t even look as he swept the sword in his right hand behind him. It was only the telltale resistance on the blade and the orc’s bellow of agony that told him he’d connected.
The other two orcs who had been standing back from the fight were seemingly engrossed by the sight of the huge club and arm falling to the ground. Neither of them was actually looking at Terry as he closed the distance with them. These things aren’t very bright, he thought. The sword in his left hand lashed out and took the head off of one of the distracted orcs. Its expression of confused curiosity never changed as the head rolled off of its shoulders in a spray of blood. He brought the sword in his right hand around and helped the other orc with the diet Terry imagined it was on by cleaving one of its legs off. He swiftly turned around to find one orc desperately trying to stop the explosion of blood from the stump of its leg. The leader of this merry band of idiots was leaving a trail of blood as it tried to crawl down the road with its remaining arm.
Terry just looked at that for a minute and tried to figure out what was wrong with the picture. It finally hit him the orc leader wasn’t using its legs at all. Terry could see where he’d left a nasty wound near the base of the orc’s spine. Sighing to himself, he went over and finished the job of the two orcs that were still alive. He added their heads to head sack, which now bulged ominously but showed no signs of actually giving way. He mangled all three corpses looking for cores but only found one in the leader. He was extra annoyed to discover he couldn’t absorb it. He did take a minute to drag the bodies to the side of the road so that any farmers pulling carts along wouldn’t have to go over the stupid things. He almost put them back when remembered the Kelima probably wasn’t that far behind him, but he couldn’t quite convince himself to be that petty. There also wasn’t any way to be sure that she’d be the one to find them first.
Sighing a little to himself, he started heading down the road again. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to slow down. The person he was looking for didn’t live in a city proper for reasons that Analina either wouldn’t share or straight-up didn’t know. They lived about a day’s travel north of the next nearest city. A place called Baleston, apparently. Of course, they also didn’t right near the road like a sane person might choose to do. They lived off in the forest with all the monsters. There was supposedly a trail, but it was also notoriously difficult to spot unless you were really looking for it. He'd been scanning the sides of the road for the better part of an hour when she finally caught up to him. He glanced back at the girl who wasn’t quite gasping for breath.
“I thought those clothes were dirty,” he noted in a bland voice.
Kelima tried to answer but had to keep taking deep breaths for most of a minute before she was finally able to gasp out some words.
“Self-cleaning and repair enchantments.”
Terry turned to glare at her.
“You’re telling me that there are clothes that will clean and fix themselves but no readily available storage treasures?”
Kelima was so surprised by the heat in his voice that she took a step back and said, “Yes. What of it?”
“Oh my god, I hate this place so much,” growled Terry.
“Listen—” started Kelima.
“No. You listen. I think I’ve been pretty clear about this, but maybe I’m overestimating myself. So, have I not made it obvious that I don’t want your company?” demanded Terry.
Comments
shackcat
TYFC
BelligerentGnu
Hooray! Assertiveness!
Angela Roberts
Okay, I'm rolling with it.
Eric Dontigney
This is really a kitchen sink world, so, why not?
Angela Roberts
And, what the heck with the Orcs?
Angela Roberts
Finally.
