“Do not fear the savage ogre, but pity him. He is the wild aurochs, given to destruction and ire. The yoke is the most glorious necklace of the ox, a gift of purpose.”
Pieron Gerong, Gurngamosi Historian
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“You’re supposed to do this on your own. I have already helped you more than I would most candidates.” Kelk grumbled, despite the fact he was leading the way.
“The way I interpreted the rules was that I should use my skills. My skills aren’t in climbing on dragons and yanking swords out of their bodies. They’re in getting somebody else to do it.” I smiled up and Kelk and he huffed, turning away so I wouldn’t see his smile in response. I assume that was the case, anyway.
For the first time, Kelk was more worried than me. He stared at every bush like an entire giant human might be hiding in it somehow. It was just a case of our experiences, I supposed. To him, a feral ogre was one of the most dangerous possible creatures to run into. Those who survived in the wild were only the most clever and ruthless of the lot. But they were still human, and more important than human, they were Gurngamosi.
Normally, an unusual child, growing too quickly and often showing unusual deformities, would be picked up at a young age by the local tax collectors just like goblins. Ask any honest goblin and they will tell you that things fall through the gaps. Sometimes two provinces both thought a certain village belonged to one another. Sometimes an area got caught off from contact by disaster, rebellion, or invasion. And sometimes Pergen the treasurer just forgot to assign anybody some villages on their patrol.
These forgotten towns were the most likely to produce feral ogres. Few villages would raise an ogre on their own. Their exaggerated growth had them eating more than an adult before they hit puberty, not to mention they chewed through their wardrobes quicker than the richest nobles.
Humans also had the maddening tendency to judge by appearance, and while goblins were cute, ogres were not. They tended to be born looking off and only grew more gruesome over time. And so, these unfortunate children, those who weren’t killed outright, were often left to fend for themselves in the woods.
Hopefully, this one wouldn’t take out their abandonment on us.
The footprints led us on a general downwards trek until the ground began to level out, flatter than anywhere else. I tested this flat ground with a foot and found it damp and soft, a layer of squishy moss over squishier mud. In the lower areas, the only reliable ground was formed by a spiderweb tangle of tree roots, merging and melding into knotty platforms just big enough for me to hop along. Dry hills rose up like the humped backs of sleeping giants, bristling with thickets.
“Ugh. Let me light some bugweed…” Kelk rummaged in his pack, but I walked right into the swamp and Shiro didn’t hesitate to follow. When a truly abominable swarm of mosquitos rose up to investigate us, Shiro and I ended up nearly entirely ignored, while Kelk instantly became more insect than skin to my eye. I had long since learned that bugs didn’t like green blood.
“No need for bugweed, I know how it smells.” I imagined sniffing that sour stench, then radiated the sensation like the sun radiates warmth. Immediately, the cloud of biting insects thinned out.
“I smell it too now. Illusions are creepy.” Kelk managed a grateful smile despite his unease.
Right, superstition. Fear of magic was common in rural areas where few people practiced it. Perhaps I should use a little less for a while? It was a little mentally draining to constantly imagine hard enough that other beings saw, smelled, or heard what I wanted. It wasn’t something I could keep up without thinking about it like my disguise.
Could a learned ability become as mindless to use as an innate one? I supposed that must be the case, else knitters would always have to watch their hands. In that case, I had best use it to my fullest extent till it became as natural as breathing. Sorry Kelk!
The further we got into the swamp, the lower the ground sank. The muddy ground went from damp to saturated to completely underwater, and soon things were deep enough that I had to stick to the hills to avoid swimming. We moved slower at this point, Kelk having to leave a reluctant Shiro to check for traces of passage in the swamp’s bottom, still shallow by ogre standards.
At one of these points, I rested ashore with Shiro. He glared at me and I wondered again just how smart this animal was. He certainly seemed to realize it was my fault he was in this horrible place where he had to get his hooves wet. To me, it was a nice change of pace, especially after the eerie, silent desolation of Ki’margarhara. The scent of a bog may repel humans, but to my nose the waterlogged, rotting vegetation was similar to how the still water reflected the leaves above. Here, plant and water mingled more than anywhere else.
I jogged up to the top of the hill to get a look ahead. I had been particularly interested in those strange, long-legged birds I had been seeing. They were taller than me! Indeed, several of those birds, the color of a lightly-clouded sky, waded before me now, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. All the birds were relatively close, hanging around our island or those nearby. Further out, the islands got smaller, sparser, no space even for trees. The ground dipped even more precipitously, the water higher, until there was a stretch of nothing but water, a good 300 feet of it before coming to a sheer cliff.
“Kelk! It’s a dead end! We should-” I looked back over the hill and saw the ogre just as he exploded from the thicket where he was hiding.
It was fast for something so big, a tawny blur, but it seemed that Kelk was faster. He had been nervously clutching his bow this whole tracking trip, and in the blink of an eye he nocked and loosed an arrow. It flashed out like the blackbirds of the swamp and the ogre stopped with a skid, splashing up swamp water.
Not dead. One oversized palm marked with webbed fingers, six of them, had guarded his face. But he was wary. From my point of view, I could see his eyes, warily staring this new enemy who could sting from a distance. He was already hunched, his back a bumpy peak of muscle, but he crouched even further to guard his vital points from attack. I could see the tip of a gnarled branch protruding, tip whittled to form the crudely of spears.
“Wait! Wait! I want to talk!” I yelled down in Gurngamosi.
The ogre looked up in surprise and Kelk took the opportunity. I could see his eyes lock on the ogre’s neck like a hawk spying a rabbit.
“No, wait!” I yelled, but the only one who heard me was the ogre. His head snapped back towards Kelk and instead of spearing his neck, the arrow loosed struck his cheek. It skimmed over the bone, ripping away a strip of flesh. The ogre screamed in pain and fury and my heart dropped. In my haste to find an ally, I had just thrown two apex predators at one another.
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