"Sorry, sir, I was distracted. Would you like me to repeat the report?" she asked, and Reginald smirked. She always knew the right thing to say—a great quality.

  "No need," he replied with vigor, standing up. Now, the energy was back in his voice and posture, his white robes flowing in a non-existent wind as his confident, authoritative self replaced his previous depressed one. "Come with me. We are going on a trip."

  "A trip, sir?" She raised a brow. "Where, if I may ask?"

  "To the city council. I have an announcement to make, and the mayor, along with part of the council, needs to hear it." The town hall, where the city council was currently taking place, wasn’t far. Ten minutes on foot would suffice.

  "Yes, sir!" she replied, ready for departure. Everybody called him Master, but not she. She was the only one who called him sir. He didn’t mind, of course. A title was mere words.

  "Oh, and Meadow?" he called out as they approached the light blue double doors. "Make sure to enjoy our walk through the town. It won’t be this calm again for a long, long time."

  Ted was a somewhat tall, lanky human making his living at the docks. He was one of those men who would go unnoticed in a crowd, a man whose sole eye-catching quality was having no eye-catching qualities.

  Usually, one would find Ted carrying crates from a ship to a warehouse or vice versa during the day, and during the night, he would either be drinking with his buddies or relaxing with his girlfriend at the small house they shared in the Lower District. For the last few days, however, Ted was not working as usual. He was instead huddled up in his home, trying to overcome the last few days’ fright.

  First, he’d seen an army of Ted-sized crabs jump out of a manhole and rush around him. That alone was scary enough. A couple of days later, just as he was getting over the crab incident, another manhole burst almost under his feet, spitting out two men and a large orc. Right afterward, adventurers emerged from that manhole too, and their leader mistreated Ted until he spoke of the previous men’s whereabouts.

  Considering his recent experiences, Ted responded by very calmly blocking his toilet. His girlfriend wasn’t so keen on the idea. She wondered why Ted was acting so irrationally, and whose toilet exactly was he going to use, if not his own? It wasn’t every day that things come out of the sewers, she had added, and he should get over it before it annoyed her too much.

  Ted, however, informed his girlfriend that the number of sewer-related occurrences had seen a massive increase lately, and that he would rather be safe than sorry. As for the toilet issue, he had decided that he’d find a solution when necessary. Future problems should be left to future people; didn’t his dear girlfriend agree?

  She did not. She recommended that Ted visited an asylum—she knew a great one nearby—to which Ted honestly replied that he wouldn’t consider it. Asylums didn’t have blocked toilets.

  Therefore, both made up their minds. Ted stuffed some big rocks deep in his toilet, while his girlfriend went to stay with a female friend of hers for a few days, leaving Ted to get over his sewerophobia by himself.

  Future problems should be left to future people; that was something Ted had argued for. However, his future self disagreed. He had not come up with any good solutions, his intestines were about to burst, and he needed to use a toilet, scary crabs or not. What would future Ted do? He had blocked his toilet so well that unblocking it would be very difficult, even without his inner sewers threatening to spill out.

  In desperation, he decided to visit his best buddy, Ned, who, by sheer chance, happened to own a toilet.

  And so it was that, after two days of isolation and failed attempts at inner peace, Ted finally stepped back into the outside world. He could have tried to enjoy it, but his situation was urgent, so he settled for simply running to Ned’s home as quickly as he possibly could, doing his best to hold in his pain and other, smellier things.

  If Ted was paying more attention to his surroundings, he would have noticed that the town was quite different from the last time he’d seen it, two days ago. The usually busy streets were now almost empty and filled with silent tension, even though it was the middle of the day, while ruined houses with broken-down doors could occasionally be seen. The few people that wandered the streets wore armor and had sharp gazes, using their eyes to follow the lanky man who walked with fast steps, his head lowered and his forehead sweaty.

  If Ted had seen any of these, he might have suspected that something was going on. But he didn’t.

  The trip to Ned’s house was short but filled with agony. Ted’s surroundings went by in a haze. Eventually, however, he reached his friend’s door and began anxiously beating on it.

  "Ned!" he shouted. "It’s me, Ted! Let me in, quickly!"

  Barely four knocks later, the door opened an inch, Ned’s head peeking through. "What happened?" he asked. "Are you alone?"

  "Yes, godsdammit, I need to use the bathroom!" yelled Ted, pushing the door open as he burst into the house, only to find Ned holding a sword.

  "Ned?" He froze, almost losing control of his inner sewer.

  "Don’t just burst into people’s homes at times like this, you idiot!" Ned shouted, his bearded form in full display, and Ted hesitated.

  "Wh—why do you have a sword? And what times like this? What do you mean?"

  Ned’s eyes widened as he hastily pushed the wooden door, using a small iron chain to lock it shut. "What the hell, man? Don’t you know?"

  "Know what?" Ted asked anxiously, only to regret it as he eyed the slightly ajar door that led to the bathroom. He really needed to use it. Right now.

  "Unbelievable. Did you stay under a rock for two days?" Ned shook his head. "The Adventurer Guild allied with the purebloods. They are finally moving! They are purging the half-bloods!"

  "They are what!?" Ted looked back at Ned, shocked.

  "Yeah, man. They’re chasing them all over the place… There were battles throughout the town! Most of them fled to the forest—word got around quick—but some got caught, and some humans who tried to help them too… I thought you were chased, you idiot! People are dying!"

  "Caught? Chased? Purged? What the fuck are you talking about, Ned?"

  "What I’m trying to say is…" Ned took a deep breath. "We’re at war."

  War… And with that, Ted’s final string of concentration broke, and his intestines finally unloaded themselves all over the backside of his pants in a mixture of relief and disgust.

  War had begun.

  TWO

  WE DO NOT LIVE TO DIE. WE DIE TO LIVE

  After what seemed like an eternity, Phac’s eyes fluttered open.

  A moment of confusion followed. Phac stared at the brown ceiling above as memories of what had rendered him unconscious resurfaced.

  "Oh…" He let out a half-curse, half-groan at his situation.

  Shit… Things are bad. Is this the Guild? That one-eyed pretty boy must want a good talk with me...

  Soon, however, Phac noticed something odd.

  Hmm? I’m not tied up.

  Which was definitely weird. Using his elbows to lift his upper body, Phac immediately realized two things.

  One, he was not in pain; there was only a permeating numbness flooding his body. Two, the room he was in didn’t seem like the Adventurer Guild’s basement, or any basement, for that matter. It was small and circular, with sunlight coming in through the door and the two windows, all three of which were covered by a hanging blue rag instead of, well, a door or windows.

  He currently lay on some sort of hard bedding on the floor, while a table, two chairs, and a cupboard were the only other furniture he could see. Pincer, his crabby greatsword, was also there, resting upright on a wall.

  The walls themselves were brown like the ceiling but at a lighter shade, as was the floor. The walls did seem a bit odd, however, as if they weren’t made from the usual brick and mortar. Instead, they seemed to be made entirely of some mud-like material.

  The mud-like walls, the dominant brown color, the hanging door rags, and the room’s circular shape made Phac immediately think of a hut.

  Where the phac am I… Where are Rain and Otto...

  Having concluded that this was not, in fact, the Adventurer Guild, he decided to take a look around—and the first step toward that was standing up.

  His first attempt failed due to excess numbing. His feet gave in, and he was forced to sit back down. His second attempt failed due to excess crabbing. Just as he was about to force himself up, something flew at him with the force of an arrow, and Phac was forced to sit back down with a groan as the unknown shape hit him in the center of his chest.

  Before he could get ready to attack, however, the mysterious projectile raised its pincers and spoke in Crabbian.

  "Messiah!"

  "Oh, it’s you, Hero." Phac smiled as he found the cute crustacean on his chest, waving its pincers from side to side in ecstasy. The crab had apparently shrunk again, the once knee-high crab now having reached a size slightly smaller than his open palm. "Why are you still growing smaller, little pal?"

  However, if the crab was in the open and not under his shirt, as it used to be, then whoever had brought him here should have seen it. And, if Hero was seen, then his relationship with the sewer crabs might have been unearthed too!

  "Motherfuck—" Phac frantically looked around for anything resembling rocks, but didn’t find it. He cursed again. Crabbian was spoken by rubbing and clicking one’s pincers, so Phac needed rocks to imitate the sounds.

  "Messiah! Alive! Me! Happy!" Hero spoke to its messiah, who, unfortunately, lacked the means to respond.

  "Huh…" Phac sighed. "Let’s go find me some rocks, Hero. I need to know what happened."

  With that, Phac made a third attempt at standing up, and he finally succeeded. Hero, who had climbed on his shoulder—now small enough to fit comfortably—did its best to help by using its pincers to pull on Phac’s dirty old suit, the one he still had from the gala. Laughing, Phac thanked Hero. Who could expect crustaceans to know physics?

  An exclamation mark was blinking furiously in the corner of his vision, but he chose to ignore it for now. It meant that Dunce had something to tell him, but figuring out where he was, and with whom, took precedence.

  Stomping a few times to get the blood back and flowing into his legs, Phac grabbed Pincer, along with its sheath, and placed it on his back. It was probably unnecessary, since he wasn’t tied up while unconscious, but he had learned from his mistake when he’d been forced to fight the Guildmaster unarmed. From now on, wherever Phac went, Pincer went too.

  Lastly, he made sure Hero was comfortable on his shoulder. Having someone constantly singing praises next to his ear was an uncomfortably pleasant, though disorienting sensation.

  Phac was ready to depart. He grabbed the rag that served as the door and pulled it aside.

  Immediately, he was blinded by the sunlight—and, as soon as he got used to it, his jaw dropped.

  He was indeed in a hut, as he had guessed. Dozens of similar huts stretched out around him, and beyond them, he could clearly see the forest’s towering trees.

  What surprised him most, however, were the village’s inhabitants. Green, tusked, and fearsome, he was surrounded by a tribe of orcs! Orcs!

  Some regarded him with surprise, a few with wariness, but most with utter indifference as they went about their jobs, carrying timber, weapons, or animal carcasses to some other part of the village. They were big, almost all of them taller than Phac—who was considered tall for a human—and wore colorful garments adorned with feathers.

  Jaw still hanging, Phac rubbed his eyes. "Do you see what I see, Hero?"

  Of course, the now-little crab did not reply, so Phac quickly approached a duo of orcs carrying a pack of timber on their shoulders, one walking at the front and one at the back. They both only wore what resembled a green skirt made of Juiceberry leaves—which were long and narrow—leaving their upper bodies exposed, though the one behind had a strip of cloth covering its—her?—chest. They each wore a brown bandana, and they both had sandals on their green feet.

  "You are orcs!" he exclaimed, still full of surprise.

  The two orcs stopped, and the leading one directed a blank stare at Phac. "Your eyesight is outstanding, dirtskin," it rumbled in its deep voice.

  "What?" Phac blinked, finally managing to close his mouth.

  "He must be equally smart and tall," the second orc replied in a higher voice than the first one, and the two of them burst into laughter as they walked away, the timber they were hauling rocking along with their bodies.

  "A village of Oregs…" Phac whispered to himself. "So much stupid humor… A nightmare…" He smiled widely. "A village of Oregs…"

  Shock giving way to joy, Phac once again looked around, his eyes taking in more details than before. The orcs all wore some kind of bandana, and the colors he could spot were green, brown, and red. They mostly wore the same kind of leaf-skirt as the ones he spoke to and nothing else, besides the bandana and sandals, leaving their scarred upper bodies bare. Some also wore the chest-covering cloth, and those were the females. Taking another look, he found there were other differences between the men and women too.

  Orcs, in general, were green, tall, and bulky, with wider upper bodies than the average human would have at the same height. They all sported long or longish hair, wearing it in a ponytail—as Oreg did—braids, or simply let loose. Besides their obvious aversion to unnecessary clothing, they seemed to also have a general dislike for anything metallic, besides weapons, as everything Phac could see was fashioned either of wood or mud.

  According to Phac’s indiscreet and short inspection, the females had slightly shorter tusks and were slimmer, exchanging the bulky upper bodies of the males for wider waists. They also seemed to have a preference for braids, while the males mostly had their hair in one of the various ponytail styles. Letting your hair loose, however, appeared to be a unisex style.

  One thing that had to be mentioned about the females was that they seemed to lack the feminine beauty found in the other races, making Phac wonder about the existence of half-orcs with an orc mother—or the existence of half-orcs in general, as the males did not seem too aesthetically pleasing either, being too rough and dirty compared to the city folk.

  Then again, it wasn’t like he currently looked any better. He had been going through the sewers for days without a shower; who was he to judge?

  However, what made the largest impression on Phac was that the orcs were smiling. Everyone was going about their business, but they were all smiling, both to themselves and when greeting each other, and a general feeling of joyful fervor was blanketing everything he could see.

  Like happy ants…

  As he looked over the tribe, a weird sight caught his eye. A few huts over, there was a column stretching ten meters high into the air as if connecting earth and sky, but it was supporting nothing. It was simply a column.

  Itching to take a better look, Phac headed over as if magnetized, the column filling his entire vision. Before he knew it, he was standing right below it, in the middle of a spacious empty space.

  The column was not exactly a column. It was blocks of wood stacked on top of each other, and each was intricately carved into the shape of an animal’s face. There was the face of a monkey, a rat, a deer, a panther, a rabbit, a fish, an eagle, an ant, even something that resembled a wolf with small wings at the back of its head. There was a crab too!

  This was not a column, but a totem, and a damn imposing totem at that.

  "That’s the World Spirit,” a reverent voice came from beside him, and turning to look, Phac saw a female orc with loose hair as red as fire and as orange as oranges. Like most orcs, she had orange eyes and a flat, wide nose with a short metal spike acting as a piercing at its left side, while two short tusks emerged from her underlip.

  A red bandana decorated her forehead, and she was around his height, shorter than most orcs. She looked muscular and well-built, as well as much too burly, like all orcs. As for her garments, she only wore the Juiceberry-leaf skirt and the chest-covering cloth, as was common around these parts.

  It wasn’t easy for Phac to tell orcs apart yet, but strangely, there seemed to be something familiar in the way this particular woman held herself. Or was it something in her eyes?

  "It looks more like a column to me,” he replied, and the orc’s brows cramped at his comment.

  "You should mind your words, human. Do not joke about our faith."

  "Sorry." He smiled. "It’s been a rough day. Please don’t take offense." Phac was not one to easily take a step back, but he had indeed misspoken.

  "It’s okay." She shrugged, her auburn hair following the movement of her head. Then, she once again opened her mouth, her short tusks momentarily grabbing Phac’s attention. "The World Spirit is everywhere around us, within each and every life that exists, hiding in every nook and cranny of this world. It is everywhere, yet nowhere at the same time. You have some of the World Spirit inside you too, even though you humans refuse to acknowledge it."

  "I see… Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think this totem is beautiful."

  "Heh." She chuckled. The sound was strangely familiar. "I don’t know what you’ve heard about us, human, but we rarely take things the wrong way. We also aren’t bloodthirsty, animalistic, and backward savages like the other races like to say."

  Chuckling again, she took a step forward, extending an open hand as she approached Phac. "We are simply barbarians. The name’s Egna."

  "I’m Phac,” he replied, shaking her hand firmly. "Hold on, did you say Egna? That’s…"

  "Egna, daughter of Oreg." Her orange eyes looked deeply into his, and he thought he sensed some…hope? Fear? "Your friend said that you knew my father. Would you rather we speak here or in my hut?"

  "So, you’re Egna…" Phac gazed at her again. Even though she was green and about as tall as he was, his gaze softened. This is Oreg’s daughter…

  "Your hut," he replied softly, and for a moment, he saw dread in her eyes before she turned around.