IM AN ORC?

1 - The Taste of Ash

The last thing Aiden Cross remembered was the sound of silence. Not a peaceful, but a profound and terrifying emptiness. The rhythmic, indifferent beep of the heart monitor that had been the soundtrack to his final days had simply… stopped. There was no white light, no replay of a life barely lived. There was only a slow, cold fade to black, unremarkable end to a quiet existence. He had been the nice guy, the one who never made waves, the one who always finished last.

Then, the silence was shattered.

A scream tore through the void of darkness, and with a horrifying jolt of awareness, he realized it was his own. It was a sound of pure agony. The sound came from a throat he didn't recognize. The scream was followed by a onslaught of torment that washed over his new consciousness. Pain was the first and most immediately after was a searing fire that felt less like an injury and more like a state of being. His body was in misery, every nerve ending was aching.

Then came the smell. It was a thick miasma, a cloud of old blood, damp earth, unwashed bodies, and something ancient and primal that turned over in his gut. He was lying on a cold, damp stone floor. The chill of it seeping into his bones, was nothing compared to the fire in his nerves. He tried to open his eyes, but they were crusted shut with filth, sealed by some thick fluid. With a burst of desperate will, he forced them open, and a sharp, splitting pain shot through his skull as if it were being bursted in two by a rusty axe.

The world swirled into a blurry focus. He was in a vast cavern opening, sprawling grotto illuminated by the flickering, greasy light of torches set in iron sconces. The light threw long, dancing shadows that twisted like spirits. The walls were rough stone, that were slick with moisture and adorned with carvings depicting hunts and battles. Piles of bones, animals, some disturbingly humanoid, were scattered in the corners, gnawed clean and discarded. The air was thick with the reek of filth and the unsettlingly savory aroma of cooked meat, an aroma that made his stomach clench with a hunger that was painful painful.

The beings of this hellscape… they were everywhere. Hulking, monstrous figures, their skin a patchwork of greens and grays, their bodies corded with brutal muscle. They were orcs. Not the stylized, almost noble savages of fantasy games and novels, but real, living, breathing monsters. their faces a collection of scars, broken tusks, and brutish features. They moved with a heavy, predatory movement, their presence filling the cavern with an aura of violence.

Most of them paid him no mind, their attention focused on a large, crackling fire pit in the center of the cavern where a massive, unidentifiable beast was being roasted on a spit. But a few who were closest to him, glanced down, their expressions a uniform mask of contempt and utter disinterest. He was less than dirt to them, He was nothing.

He tried to push himself up, to gain some type of dignity, but his arms were thin, tiny things that trembled under his own bit of weight. A wave of vertigo and nausea washed over him as he looked down at his hands, and a fresh surge of horror threatened to overwhelm him. They were small, with sickly green skin, and tipped with jagged, filthy nails. This wasn't his body. "This cant be real", He said to himself. This had to be a nightmare, a cruel trick of a dying brain.

A massive female orc gazed upon him with her eyes holding a casual cruelty, nudged him with a heavy, iron-shod boot. The impact sent a fresh spike of pain through his ribs. "Still breathing, this one," she grunted, her voice like grinding stones. She didn't seem angry, or even particularly interested. It was a simple statement of fact. "Waste of air."

Another, hulking male with a single, milky-white eye and a broken tusk that jutted from his lip at a jagged angle, let out a short, barking laugh. "Grummok will have his due, this whelp is leftover meat, Nothing more."

Whelp? Leftover meat?

Grawler's jaws snapped shut on empty air, its momentum carrying it past him and slamming it into the tunnel wall with a wet and meaty thud. It shook its head, disoriented, and turned.

Ruk didn't think for a moment he acted. He threw himself onto the creature's back, his arms wrapping around its neck, and he activated DEVOUR.

The sensation was indescribable to him, it was like plunging his hands into a fire that didn't burn, chaotic energy flooding into him through his skin. The Grawler thrashed and shrieked with a whimper, its legs scrabbling against the stone floor, but Ruk held on with a grip of pure and desperate will. He felt the creature's life force and essence, flowing into him and it was the most intoxicating thing he had ever experienced. It was warmth and power and hunger all at once, a feeling so great and so right that it was almost terrifying.

The Grawler went still in less than a minute.

Ruk knelt over the creature's body, he was breathing hard with his small chest heaving.

A new notification pulsed in his vision.

[DEVOUR successful. Grawler essence absorbed.]

[+15 Raw Evolutionary Energy]

[Skill Gained: Low-Light Vision (Tier 1) — You can now see clearly in near-darkness.]

[Strength increased: 2 → 3]

He stared at the notification for a long moment, letting the warmth of the absorbed energy hum in his bones. He then slowly creeped a smile across his face. It was not a kind smile, it was the smile of a man who had just discovered that the game he had been losing his entire life had different rules than he had been told.

He looked back toward the faint glow of the main cavern, where Bor and the others were waiting for him to be consumed. He thought about the contempt in their eyes and the ease with which they had dismissed him. He thought about the word 'whelp', and the word 'leftover', and the word 'bait'.

Then he looked down at the dead Grawler at his feet, and he thought about the word DEVOUR.

He would start small and he would be patient. He will let them underestimate him, because underestimation was the greatest gift an enemy could give. Then one day, not today, not tomorrow, but one day, every single one of them would understand exactly what they had thrown away when they had called him leftover meat.

He picked up the Grawler's body and began dragging it back toward the light. He had a kill to show them, and a reputation to begin building, one small but careful step at a time.