Island of Sorrow RPG

[Envinyatar]

The Lady's Orcs

‘You’ll help me, won’t you dears?’ Giledhel asked in a shaky voice. ‘With what I have to do . . .’

The thick, blue curtains that had once hung about Giledhel’s bed had rotted and fallen to the floor long, long ago. And only the ghostly remnants of them remained in the Orcs’ memories. They had clawed them apart when they entered her chamber that day the fortress was overtaken. She had been hiding behind the mound of pillows at the headboard, in the darkness of the drawn curtains, measuring out her breath so that she made scarce a sound. But it was not by her breathing they found her. It was the smell of her . . . the fair clean Elvish scent that nearly gagged them with its foulness. The room reeked of her and of her fear. And they found her . . . and defiled her . . . and killed her . . .

Now, gathered at her feet as she sat at the edge of her bed, they suffered with her as she fought back her tears. She who had once been only prey to them, was now their little star. More sane than she, if truth be told, still they were ensnared by her kindness to them . . . her mad kindness which had taken them under her care as the sons she never had. It was a conceit they nurtured, both in themselves and in her. Who could tell now if they did not half believe it themselves.

And so, as tears glistened on her cheeks, Gorgu offered up a scrap of cloth to her, so that she might dab them away. Ashukh patted her knee gently with his great, dark hand. It was Zlog who answered her trembling question with a firm ‘We will, m’lady! Of course we will.’

When her mind had drifted on to other things, as it was inclined to do; when she had gotten up to settle it a bit as she called it by working on her weaving, then did the three creatures recall their Orcish natures and begin to plan how they might accomplish her desires.