4 Read

The man's consciousness slowly stirred for the first time in a long time.

He could hear the rhythmic sound of a horse casually trotting forwards, and the sound of creaking wood and heavy rain too. He felt his entire body being shook back and forth, and his back against a hard surface.

Slowly, his eyes opened to check his surroundings.

He was in a well-made, excessively large wooden carriage, though it was plain. The dark wood seemed to be polished, and a single lantern was tied to a metal hoop at the carriage's roof, keeping the area well-lit despite the lack of windows. It was swinging back and forth slowly.

'Where am I?' the man thought silently. He stirred, beginning to get up as he moved a light-blue blanket off of him.

"{Hey, you. You're finally awake.}"

The man heard a guttural and rough voice behind him, one that he couldn't understand. He turned his body to see who it was and felt his eyes widen involuntarily from shock.

"What the hell?!"

A younger voice than what the man was used to resounded throughout the carriage as he spoke.

"What the hell…?"

He then turned his focus to his body, and he noticed that things had changed.

For one, he was wearing rags. It looked like he was wearing a strange, tattered white robe that was marred by dirt here and there. It even had a waist belt, but it was extremely loose for some reason.

However, despite the poor state of these rags, he had to admit that their material felt rather nice against his skin.

And, he could see that although he still had some well defined muscles, they were much smaller than what had become normal to him.

Yet, those thoughts went to the back of the man's mind. There was something far more pressing in front of him right now…

An orc!

Dark green skin, tusks pointing upwards from their bottom jaw, and an unreal amount of bulging muscles that seemed ready to rip its clothes apart!

Surprisingly though, its face was more human than the monstrous depictions of them he had grown accustomed to in popular media.

He even had some stubble growing, showing that the Orc had shaved not too long ago.

The Orc was wearing some interesting clothes. On its torso, it wore a brown leather vest that had fur around its collar, with a black short sleeve shirt underneath that seemed skin tight. The vest had some red and blue zig zag patterns at the hems, there purely for fashion's sake as far as the man could tell.

The leather seemed aged, with a few scratch marks here and there. Its pants were a lighter brown than the vest, and they looked simple and slightly baggy, evident from the many pronounced wrinkles here and there.

Its forearms had a some sort of stylized tattoo reminiscent of a fire. The tattoo snaked around its arm in a helix pattern, looking like they ended in cuffs as it turned into a fiery band around the wrists. It also wore several piercings. Three simple golden clasps on each bottom lobe of the ear, with a small hoop earring hanging near the top of his right ear.

There was a small golden hoop hanging off the left side of its bottom lip, and it had three piercings going through its left eyebrow. The most pronounced piercing it had being a golden hoop that hung from the inside of his nose.

Its hair was black, and it wore it in thick braids that were held together by iron clasps here and there.

It was also holding an open, leatherbound book in one of its hands.

"{What? Is there something on my face?}"

Again, it spoke, but the man couldn't understand what it was saying.

"Do you know where I am?" the man asked hesitantly.

"{Come again, human?}"

The man sighed. He heard the inquisitive tone, and could only understand that he probably didn't understand him either.

"Man, I'm so confused right now."

{"Your dialect is strange... I was speaking the human tongue, yet you still do not understand? What gives?!"}

The man noticed how the orc grew frustrated, and how it seemed to be speaking another language now. There was a very noticeable difference between how it spoke before and how it just spoke now.

The first language was gentle, even with the Orc's rough voice. Yet the second language was far more guttural, and the man noticed how it spoke with that guttural language with much less strain.

The Orc pointed at him with his free hand, and then said "{Stay put. I'm going to give you an opportunity most kids your age would be envious of.}"

It then got up from its seat, setting the open book face down where he was sitting and went to the other end of the carriage, seemingly unaffected by the turn that made the man put his hand to the wall for support.

Now that he was up, the man could see that the carriage was even more barebones than he thought. The chair the orc had been sitting on was actually a crate, because there were no chairs to speak of!

He seemed to be in some sort of supply carriage.

'How did I get here? My memories all seem hazy at best… It's like there's some sort of invisible barrier between me and them… Bits and pieces are still accessible, like what I should look like right now, but not everything. I can't even seem to recall my own name…'

He watched as the orc seemed to dig through the crates, moving them around as he searched for something.

"{Aha, there you are.}"

The Orc picked up a crate like any other, though by now the man had noticed that each crate had a different, special mark on their top, probably numbers if he had to make a guess. The man still had no idea what the Orc was doing.

It opened the crate with its bare hands, rummaged through it for a short time, and then pulled out another leatherbound book.

Afterwards, he put the book down to the side and slammed the crate's lid back into place, using only elbow grease in order to make it airtight once again.

He then walked back to the man.

The Orc pointed at his eyes with his index and middle finger, and then pointed to the book.

"{Read.}"

It then pointed to the man.

"{Read?}" the man imitated the Orc's phrase as best he could, while grabbing the book that had been handed to him.

He had roughly understood what it wanted him to do.