Taken By The Orc Crime Lord

Chapter 1

Kinley

     I am woken by the wind.

     The wind, rippling and crashing through the sky at a thousand paces per second, comes booming down against the roof of my apartment block before dawn and sends me jolting into consciousness.

     I groan as I roll over onto my back, wincing as the wind comes roaring in from the east like a herald for the sun, which I am sure is just an hour or two away.

     When I finally get out of bed, swinging my legs over the side of the low, old mattress, I wince when my bare feet make contact with the tiled floor. As I wake up, my daily morning routine becomes a race against the crash and roar of the wind, trying to get ready before I freeze to death.

     “This is what you get for living in Tlouz,” I grumble to myself.

I walk around the screen that separates the sleeping area from the bathroom and fight back a yawn.

     I could say a lot of bad things about the continent which is my home. I wouldn’t be the first. Tlouz is a wasteland.

     Tlouz is a death trap. Tlouz is a monster. Tlouz is an open coffin, and we’re all already dead.

     The words repeat in my head like a song as I complete my morning ablutions. My bathroom isn’t much of anything. It is a toilet, a rusty, yellow sink, and a large bucket that I only fill up once a year when I have saved enough money to heat up the amount of water that will fill the bucket.

     The bucket rattles across the floor when there is another boom of wind – a boom that could rival the thunder we get during summer storms – and my skin prickles, not from the cold water I’ve just splashed over it but from pure fright.

     “Get yourself together, girl.”

     By the time I walk back around the screen, the dusky gray of the morning has lightened. Now, my bedroom is almost orange as weak sunlight starts to stretch over the horizon.

     Time is running out, I think to myself as I pull on my factory coveralls, and for a second there is complete and pure silence. The wind settles.

     Get to work. Now is not a good time to remember how alone you are.

     I pull my boots and gloves on, and then finally pull on an old coat with a high collar that will protect me from Tlouz’s ruthless, unforgiving elements.

     The building is waking up when I leave. I might be lonely in the tiny fifth-floor apartment that I call home, but right now all around me, the other humans who work in Tlouz’s various factories are also either preparing to leave for work or coming home after the night shift.

     Jurtil is still dark when I hop off the lowest step leading from my apartment block to the street, despite the sun rising somewhere in the desert.

     “It’s the damn mountains,” I murmur to myself as I reach into my coat pocket for the small sandwich that I shoved into it before I left. “They always keep the light out.”

     Jurtil looks dangerous because it is dangerous. It is also almost always dark and grubby and quite disgusting.

     One of its only redeeming qualities is that everyone leaves each other alone. Life might be hard, but at least there aren’t many dark elves enslaving humans around here.

     I am walking down my usual route when I see it. When I see them. Three orcs standing in a doorway, holding what is clearly an unconscious dark elf woman.

     She probably deserved it, I think. I nod politely at the orcs before I withdraw into myself and pick up the pace.

     That dark elf woman might have deserved it, but I know that I don’t, so I walk quickly enough to get out of the vicinity before the orcs can place a target on my back.

     The factory that I work in lies at the center of Jurtil, and it is enormous compared to my five-story apartment building, which was once the largest building I had ever seen. It must be twenty or thirty stories high and looms overhead like an avenging god, come down to smite us.

     But it is only a building. A building made of dead things where living things like me go inside to produce more dead things.

     I let out a raspy chuckle, nearly choking on my bread as I walk into the front office and reach for my timecard.

     I am one of the first people to arrive for the morning shift, and I greet some of those who are walking off the production floor, ready to head home.

     I swap places with Nina, a woman who is eight months pregnant but cannot afford not to work, and I look thoughtfully at her before I take off my coat, fold it up, and bundle it underneath the table.

***

     There is a word for what and who I have become since starting to work in the factory.

     Apathetic.

     “Apathy.” I murmur the word to myself just so that I can feel what it is like in my mouth.

     Sarah, the woman standing across from me manning the other part of the machine, looks up at me, her eyebrows raised.

     I shrug at her. I wouldn’t be the first person to start talking to myself in this place.

     We stand for twelve hours a day and get a thirty-minute lunch break. A lot of us have stopped drinking water throughout the day because the bathrooms are too dirty to use, and we’ll be penalized if we leave our stations more than once.

     There are no open windows or doors, and after the first hour, the cool, crisp morning air has faded. All we’re left with for the rest of the day is air as hot and arid as the air out in the fucking desert.

     It is noisy and hot on the production floor and the air is somehow thick and wet, but sharp and dry, at the same time.

     Apathy.

     By my sixth hour on the production floor, my breathing has slowed down, and my skin is warm. Sweat has pooled in the small of my back, and my heartbeat would probably be undetectable to a Healer.

     My mind is sluggish, and I am moving slightly slower, and my hands and legs are straining for relief.

     And yet, I wouldn’t change this for the world. I don’t care enough to change my life. I don’t have the power to change my life even if I could.

     And so, I continue to work every day, even though I can feel it killing me. I continue to nod politely at the beings who run Jurtil, and I continue to avoid helping the dark elf women who become their victims.

     Maybe I should have helped that woman. Female solidarity and all that. Yet, I couldn’t find any pity within myself to extend to her.

     She probably deserved it, I think viciously to myself as I insert another part into the machine.

***

     It is close to eight at night when I leave the factory. Sarah, the woman who heard me talking to myself, walks me out.

     Maybe she thinks I’m crazy and wants to protect me. Sarah is older, and though I have never been close to her, I know that she is somewhat of a mother hen to the other girls who work on the production floor.

     “You shouldn’t be walking alone like this,” she chides me. “You do know that Rachel went missing a few weeks ago? We should honestly all walk home together.”

     “I’ll be fine.” My voice is mild, devoid of emotion. I don’t really have the energy to listen to Sarah preach, so at the first moment, I excuse myself and turn down into a side street that will cut my walk home in half.

     It is slightly more dangerous, and Sarah will probably have a stroke just thinking of me trying to walk home, but maybe when I walk into work tomorrow, she’ll shut up about my safety in the future.

     Sometimes I think Tlouz, and Jurtil by extension, are alive.

     Sometimes I can see the sky take a deep breath before a gust of wind explodes across the cosmos. Sometimes I can convince myself that the sun is chasing after the moon like a scorned lover.

     And now, as shadows stretch and bloom and shrink around me, I am more sure than I have ever been that Tlouz has no need for the creatures who dwell upon it.

     It is alive all on its own.

         The shadows begin to laugh raucously.

     Not shadows. Orcs.

     I am not sure if I am afraid. I have been standing for twelve hours, so I’m probably too tired to be afraid. But no one, especially no human woman, wants to walk into a clan of orcs when it is this dark.

     My vision is hazy from exhaustion, so I slow my walk and lift my hand to rub my weary eyes.

     The orcs haven’t spotted me yet, so I remain still, to try and figure out how painful my potential death could be.

     There are five of them standing on the steps outside a pub, and they’re exchanging sacks of what are probably coins for large wooden boxes. One of them looks up and in my direction, and he stares at me for a second before looking away.

     Okay, they probably won’t kill me for this, I think to myself before I decide to walk further.

     I want to get home before midnight because Jurtil becomes more dangerous the later it gets.

     I pass the pub as I walk by the group of orcs. Heavy footsteps echo down the alley, so loudly as to rival thunder.

     I throw myself against the wall, flattening myself against it, my behavior entirely instinctual before I turn around.

And I see him.