85. Katrina (below)

Fragment 2.

At the age of twenty-five, he had already been promoted to the rank of second lieutenant and was awaiting his knighthood at a royal ceremony the following year. Being a second lieutenant in the army additionally means being a commander, and even second lieutenants in charge battalions are much less likely to die in battle, let alone in an infantry division.

Her mother was a rabbit girl in a private dance troupe called the Purple and Gold Mosaic in the Imperial capital, originally a slave girl bought by the troupe's owner from a slave trader, the law of the Empire required that all citizens of the Empire could only be untouchables at the lowest level, and only foreigners could redeem themselves after the war by becoming slaves. A sweet-looking human-beast hybrid like Mother Katrina was the easiest to pass off as a human, but with a playful, short, furry tail that could not hide her half-orc status.

She was bought by Katrina's father for seven gold coins from the owner of the dance troupe because of her hot body and good looks, but the good times did not last long when the southern defences of the Grimm Empire became so tight that the independent infantry division, which had been withdrawn to the rear for rest and recuperation, was moved to the front again. The lieutenant's father died on the front line. Six years later, the dancer, who had been a bunny girl in a dance troupe, was once again sold by the lieutenant's official wife, and five-year-old Katarina, who had distinctive red eyes, was also sold as a bastard along with her mother.

The man who bought Katarina and her mother was a foreman in the mines, and there were many of them out and about in the Grimm Empire, often running away from home at the beginning of the year to find work and sending home regular sums of money, but never taking their families with them, sometimes going to brothels or dance troupes for fun when they had money to spare. But the lucky foreman, having received a windfall of money, chose to buy Katarina and her mother back into the mine and became the foreman's young wife.

When Katarina was six years old, her mother and the ever-black-faced foreman gave Katarina a younger brother.

But the peace did not last long, and before Katarina could get used to eating the rough black bread, the foreman died in a mining accident, for which the mine owner paid a sum of money, but the money went to the foreman's first wife, not to Katarina or her mother. In addition, the three of them had to move out of the adobe house where the foreman lived and into a ramshackle hut, and every day Katarina's mother went to the mine to carry stones for a mouthful of black bread for the three of them.

Well, it was difficult to eat even a mouthful of black bread later on, especially after Katarina's mother was injured by a rolling stone, which certainly added to the family's precarious situation. A month later, Katarina's mother died on her bed. Katarina, aged eight, and her two-year-old brother are left to beg for food in the mines.

Episode 3

The Norrie Hills opencast mine on the far outskirts of the Grim Reich is the largest in the vicinity, supplying almost a third of the coke and coal in the Reich. The children of the mine labourers would spend their days in this dump trying to find something of value, perhaps a broken sleeper or a rusty nail, as long as they could get black bread for it. If only for black bread. Katrina was one of the first children to come to the dump every day, and she waited until noon to take her brother to the town diner to try her luck, where the kind owner might give her half a bowl of leftover cold porridge.

Until one day, an orc shaman came to the mine, dressed in an eccentric costume like a French chicken, and found Katrina directly in the dump, where the shaman priest stood on a large, grey, greasy stone, holding a wooden wand inlaid with magic crystals and a set of astrolabes in his other hand, something that orc priests usually use for divination. In the other hand was a set of astrolabes, something that orc priests usually used for divination. When the hands on the astrolabe pointed directly at Katrina, the drained orc shaman's eyes were relieved. Only when he saw Katrina, his wise eyes showed infinite arrogance and he said to Katrina: "Child, the orc gods have guided me to you. Come with me or stay here for the rest of your life as a scavenger in the mines, one of the two!"

"Will we have black bread if we go with you?" Katrina asked innocently as she crouched by the rubbish bin, picking up a tattered overshoe with one hand and holding her brother with the other.

The shaman priest nodded slightly and said, "If you will come with me and return to our tribe of orc rabbits, I can guarantee you endless black bread every day, and I can even serve you a little tart applesauce or strawberry jam and the occasional snowy white wheat cake."

Katrina wiped her dirty little face a little embarrassed, trying to wipe it clean, a little girl her age already knew beauty from ugliness and wanted to show her best side more in front of outsiders, and asked the shaman, "Will you let us eat ground potatoes? I have heard that it is very common to eat ground potatoes inside the orc tribes."

The old shaman lowered his slack eyelids and said steadily, "No, you don't need to eat those things!"

Katrina's face turned pale and hard as she thought of the mean sarcastic remarks the children of the town had made about her the other day, calling her a lowly slave still ringing in her ears. With some concern, she asked, "Will you make us slaves, I have heard that orcs like human slaves."

The old shaman looked a little tired, he simply thrust his wooden staff hard into the ground and sat himself slowly on the boulder, calmly and with a great deal of meaning, looked at Katrina and said, "No, but you will marry the strongest man in our tribe, perhaps our current chief or perhaps in the future. You will not be a slave, for you are an Orc. Our tribe never makes slaves of Orcs. Come on! We don't have much time, my son, so let me get you out of here!"

The old shaman stood up, took Katarina by the hand, and turned to walk out of the junkyard.

"Hey, why don't you take my brother with you?" Katrina turned around and was stunned to see her brother still in place, struggling desperately to break free of the old shaman's big hand and stumbling back to pick up the frightened, crying boy in a strained hug, angrily questioning the old shaman.

The old shaman hesitated, but finally spoke up and explained, "He's a human child, he doesn't belong in our orc world!"

Katrina couldn't believe her ears and with round eyes and desperate sobs she asked, "You want me to leave him?"

The old shaman finally looked a little more impressed, thinking that the orcs had finally become a little less concerned about the separation of flesh and blood, and that this little human girl, who was in a precarious situation, would not give up her brother even now.

The little girl said stubbornly, "I don't want to leave him behind, he's the only family I have left in the world!"

She remembered her own promise months ago, before her mother died, that she could not imagine her brother surviving without her care.

The old shaman's words were so dry that I'm afraid even he didn't quite believe the truth of his statement, orcs had never been very good at lying, so the old shaman said something like, "No, you will only be separated from him for a while, perhaps you will have the chance to meet again later."

The little girl's stubbornness exceeded the old shaman's expectations, and he had thought that he would coax the little girl away, and that it might not be long before she forgot what had happened when she was a child, but Katarina opened her red eyes and said, "I don't, I'd rather collect rubbish to feed him than be separated from him."

At last the old shaman often sighed, in this Grimm Empire you might be able to persuade an Imperial to leave the country, you might see beggars dying of disease in the streets, but as a strong outsider you could not force anyone to leave with you, that would break the laws of the Empire and you would be hanged on the stake like the slavers.

So the old shaman said, "Then I cannot take you both out of here with me, and you have the right to stay here if you choose! But I need to take back that part of you that belongs to the orcs until the day you change your mind, I just need to carve a sealing spell on you so that you can leave the orc tribe once and for all, but remember, don't reveal this secret to any orc, you are irresistibly attractive to any orc, because the bloodline in your body has awakened a very magical ability, and this ability is called 'The Killing Heart' ..."

That night, Katrina met the legendary Guardian of the Wastelands, the Ghost Wolf, whose pale blue eyes were like two beacons shining deep into her heart, the shaman priest, known as the Soul Walker, used his own blood to draw a cage on Katrina's chest "Sign a sacred pact with my blood to the Lord of the Beasts, that this cage will never be broken in my lifetime, and that you will The blood of thy courage shall be gathered in thy heart and made into ice crystals, and this ice shall never be opened in the years of my life."

This was the oldest of all life contracts, and even the old shaman had to borrow the form of the Soul Wolf to keep the ritual going until the end, and Katarina never said a word of renunciation until the end, her heart only remembering the words she had promised to her mother: never give up.

But Katrina has lost her courage ever since, mostly like a cowardly mouse, daring to live in the shadows.

What exactly is courage? All this time, Katrina struggled to find it. Until one day a girl in a grey and white striped devotional magic suit with a fine magic sword on her belt stood up to her and stared into her bright red eyes and asked formally, "What is your name?"

"Katrina!"

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