Act One: Chapter One

A Chapter by Casey8c

This chapter throws you into the story and action, briefly introducing you to the characters and the start of the story.

The night's sky is cloudless, bright with the glistening of stars, the mixture of starlight and the moonlight is keeping the world from pure darkness, a perfect night to lay in the grass and star gaze, looking for the constellations. The smoke from a burning village down below is starting to block the view of the moon and stars. You can hear screams coming from that village, the lucky villagers able to flee the town escaping both flames and orcs. Barbaric beast, foul, dumb creatures with more strength than most humans, having skin tones ranging from various shades of green mostly. The orcs mercilessly killing the villagers, leaving blood and bodies in their path, the few soldiers that the village had were easily killed, they didn't stand a chance. Women, children, elders, it doesn't matter who you are to these savage orcs, they are just killing all that they come across for sport and their own entertainment.

We find a young man not even twenty yet named Dominic, he's running into his home to help his family get out before it collapses from the fire. It only took him a quick few moments to help get his family outside, however before he could make it out himself, a large chunk of the ceiling collapsed in front of the door blocking his path, and access to the front part of the house. Fire lines the walls weakening them by the second, smoke filling the air and his lungs making it difficult to breathe, the heat and anxiety making him sweat. Dominic is beginning to lose hope, satisfied that he got his family out at least, but he has to keep trying for them. He looks around the house some more, the smoke obscuring his vision more, he barely notices that the window is still an optional way out, though a partly collapsed column is in his way which is why he didn't notice the window at first glance. He backs up a little, breaking into a run and drops into a slide under the column, scraping his legs and arms on the floor in the process. He gets to his feet, seeing that the flames are surrounding the frame of the window but not the opening itself, without a second thought or a second glance he throws himself out the window, hitting two orcs who were running by eagerly looking for their next victim. They turn around and one pushes Dominic into the wall, making him fall onto his bottom. He tries to stand but the stinging pain that's not done exploring his body causes him to fall back down, the two orcs laugh at him. The orc who pushed him began to move his arm ready to thrust his sword into Dominic. Dominic looks in terror as he blindly tries to grab anything to defend himself. He quickly glances to his right to see if there's anything to grab but instead he see's his friend, Maximus whose also his age but bigger than him, charging right at the orcs, tackling the one who was mere seconds from stabbing Dominic. The standing orc turns and kicks Maximus off, Maximus tries to stand up but the orc punches him, knocking him back down, the orc leans down speaking in a very poor common language "strong like orc but still weak human" Maximus tries to get up again but the orc just punches him back down again. Maximus grabs the orc by the arm and pulling it down with him, he begins to wrestle the orc for control. The first orc is starting to get up, but Dominic lunges himself at the orc barely knocking him over. The orc easily rolls Dominic over, pinning him down and says something in the orc language while it grabs their dagger, raising it above Dominic's chest and plunging it down. Dominic managed to grab the orcs wrist since it had to let go of his arm to grab the dagger, he was trying to keep himself from being stabbed, but the orc is above him and much stronger so the effort is only stalling, but turns out a few seconds was all he needed after all. He see's the end of a small kitchen knife go through the orcs throat, as the knife gets pulled out, the orc immediately lets go of him and the dagger grabbing at its throat, the flat side of the dagger hitting Dominic's chest as it falls. The orc now gargling on it's blood as it pours out of his mouth and throat unable to keep it inside of itself and the blood starting to pour onto Dominic. The lifeless body falls forward, Dominic barely catching the body before it landed on him, struggling with the weight to move it off of to his side. He sits up, wiping the blood from his face, he can now see that his other friend Lela was the one holding the knife, realizing that both of his friends saved his life. Lela hurries over to help Maximus with the orc he's fighting but the wrestling made it difficult to accurately stab it, only stabbing it in the shoulder, the knife not even going through the leathery armor. The orc turned and smacked her away, Maximus using the small distraction to his advantage by punching the orc and pushing it off himself. Dominic using this time to pick up the dead orcs dagger, running over to stab the orc while it's trying to fight Maximus again. He plunges the dagger in the side of the orc's chest puncturing one it's lungs, he lets go of the dagger and pushes the orc over to let it die while it gasp for air, that wasn't entirely his plan but wasn't going to waste time thinking about it or how much more brutal it was than it needed to be, not like the orc doesn't deserve it though. Dominic breathlessly looks at his friends and says "T-thank you both for coming back and saving me, it means a lot." Maximus looks down the dirt road at a small group of orcs who just came around the corner, he says quickly "We need to go while we can!" The Orcs noticed their two dead tribe mates, they growl at the three of them and began to charge them, Dominic, Maximus and Lela sprint off away from the village hearing the loud thuds of the charging Orcs behind them, each of the three mentally thanking that their village was big enough with each street full of commotion and that the other groups of orcs were to caught up in everything else to notice them killing the two orcs and getting away because the small group that noticed them could've been much bigger. They ran into the tree's, the orcs being more interested in the raid gave up chase halfway to the tree line and went back to the village to continue their raid.

The village has a spot to meet up in case of a crisis so they made a half circle change of direction towards the location, unfortunately they saw a larger group of orcs heading down the pathway towards the meeting spot. So they could only assume the worse, and hope their families would be okay, now wasn't the time to breakdown with panic or chase after them. They ran back the way they came. Thankfully their luck got better as they were able to stay away from the orcs view without having to wander deeply through the forest with potential night predators, due to the blanket of shadows from the smoke covered sky and the Orcs lack of perception especially while distracted there was no way they would notice the three of them crossing in the distance. Barely ten minutes later with that time to think Dominic stopped momentarily which caused the other two to stop and look at him. "Shouldn't we go back and help the rest?" Lela shook her head "Think about it, we barely saved you from two of them caught off guard by us, we can't save the others from a lot, they'll likely be dead before we get back to them, or scattered." Maximus said "I don't like it either, I much rather not leave them, but what choice do we got?" Dominic did not want to agree but he couldn't deny the truth in it, and so with the adrenaline still pumping in their body they continued running for an hour. They did not have the energy to run any further, but they still needed to keep going, so they walked for a while longer until they came across a valley, they ventured into it as a route to get farther from their village and from the orcs in it. They spotted a small pathway under some tall bushes and plants, they followed it since it was the less noticeable way to go paranoid that they were being followed. They went over some fallen trees, under some tilted ones until they came to a little clearing decently hidden away by rocks and lots of foliage but mainly hide because the darkness. They figured this would be enough cover just for the night, or until they recovered their energy. The three of them were exhausted, terrified, and sore, they all sat there calming down lost in thought. Each of them believed they were to scared to sleep but the exhaustion took over and they fell asleep. Oh shoot I'm getting ahead of myself aren't I? You don't even know who our young adventurers are, so let me tell you who they are first before I continue their story.