The Only Good Orc is a Half-Orc

The Traders – Part 1

A good several minutes later they were both walking away from the village and on to the next. Neither said anything more about what had happened as it was not needed. Like she had said, it wasn’t a goodbye and they would return to Lyrika’s home. For now, they put that behind them, moved on to the future, and talked about how they would deal with the villages to come.

“So the closest village to us is the one the chief was at before us. It is quite a large village as it’s near the road that connects a couple of human towns. Traders sometimes divert from the road to trade there sometimes.”

‘Oh, I wonder if one of the towns is where I left Ameril. I really need to get a map of this world or something to figure out the lay of the land.’

“The problem with this is that there will probably be a lot of people there, more so than in my village. The chief might have also left people in this village as well which makes things more complicated. They may also know about me.”

Olivia thought about this for a moment and realised the chief’s men might not be a problem.

“That might not be the case. He left those people before reaching your village right, so they probably haven’t been told about you. Even if they were, they haven’t seen you before, not like the ones in your village. All they would have to go on is a description of you, or maybe a sketch. All we have to do is get you a disguise, just in case.”

“Why didn’t we do that before? I could have seen my pa…father.”

‘Ok, I’m going skip over the slip as she looks very annoyed.’

.....

“Everyone knew you in your village. Even with a disguise someone would probably recognise you and ruin everything. But, in this village, do you know anyone there?”

“Err- no, never met anyone from there..”

“There you go. No one at all will recognise you. Which is why a disguise works here.”

Lyrika just grumbled as she realised she was wrong.

…

Their trek took them to the morning of the next day, the night of which Lyrika did not enjoy, as she had to stay awake for longer in order to keep watch, having rotated through their positions. This also had the added benefit, although Olivia wasn’t too sure that’s what it should be called given how good the solution to it was, but with the differing and shorter sleep cycles she didn’t have her morning wood. It was also possible that dealing with Lyrika’s emotional state and the journey had exhausted her enough that it didn’t happen. She also thought that maybe the evening activities from the night before may have been the reason it didn’t show. She honestly had no clue how this morning wood thing worked.

What she did know was that the ambivalent look on Lyrika’s face when she woke up and saw that Olivia was fine in terms of her little friend meant she too wasn’t sure whether her having no morning wood was a good or bad thing. It did however look like she was leaning more towards the disappointment side of things though.

Putting that aside, and the fact that Olivia knew she would have to look more into the whole morning wood and dealing with her penis in the future, they got to work packing up and heading out.

…

They had been very lucky in their travels. Aside from the wolves, deer thing and the man that held Ameril captive she had not tangled with anything else on her own. Even when travelling with Lyrika the worse she had faced so far was an Effler.

Having said this thought, it occurred to her that, while they were in the forest, it was only ever the outskirts she was in. While denser than where they currently were, it likely paled in comparison to the centre of the forest. She really did count herself lucky that she arrived where she did when first coming to this world.

The outskirts had a lower amount of trees and the surrounding kingdom would likely deal with any pests that leave the forest where they could. All of these probably went towards removing dangerous threats in this area.

Now though, they were in a landscape more akin to plains than forest, as they travelled further away from it, the likely hood of a wild animal or monster attack dropped considerably.

But, even though they were heading away from the forest, there were still large clumps of trees here and there. Because of this and being around villages and towns, the chance of a bandit attack was now very high, which is why having someone on watch was completely necessary.

While this was the case and the risk of this type of attack had increased, being in an area far from roads did decrease it somewhat, and so they were both able to reach the next village with ease.

Now all they needed was a disguise of some kind.

…

As they walked ever closer to the village that was in sight, they looked around the area for any ideas. Trees, bushes and flora were all that graced their sight, and none provided any inspiration on a disguise.

They still had the disintegrating tent fabric they had been using for sleep but using that to assist in making a disguise just seemed wrong. They really needed to get rid of that thing and get some actual bedding.

As they ventured closer and closer, they realised this place was a little different to Lyrika’s village. Given her home’s proximity to the forest, it had walls surrounding it, but with this trading village, there were hardly any. In the distance, they could see a few watch towers and it seemed that only the centre of the village was enclosed in walls, the rest of it was very much open plan.

Thankfully, this meant that if they needed to they could ‘borrow’ something from a house nearby to use as a disguise. But given that they were trying to convince these people to go against the new chief, stealing something from them would not help their cause.

As they looked around for something to use, they continued moving towards the village, where they realised that with all the houses around there should be people as well.

There were a few fields that were starting to get overgrown and houses that had gardens contained plants that were dying. Looking at each other they realised there was something a little odd about this scene and decided to get closer to the nearby house. As they drew nearer, Olivia was able to see that it was reminiscent of a wooden cottage and looked quite homely.

They got to the back of the house and slowly peered through the window, but all they saw was an empty home. Nothing was disturbed, toys of some sort were on the floor, and nothing was damaged, it just looked like someone had left the house.

“They could be in the village centre.” Was Olivia’s thoughts that she told to Lyrika.

There were a few more houses before the village grew denser in buildings and so they decided to check on them as well, but the same story revealed itself.

One thought was that the people were just in the village, shopping or something, but that was quickly thrown out the window as they saw mouldy food on a couple of plates. It also didn’t explain the dying gardens.

Thoughts of what had happened to these people ran through Olivia’s and Lyrika’s minds. Did they just leave? Have they been abducted? These were a few of the scenarios that they came up with. Either way, they needed to get to the bottom of this, since it’s difficult to talk to these people about the new chief if there were…no people.

Continuing past the buildings they came across the same scenario in each. Even the outside and the areas around the houses looked fine with nothing appearing to be out of the ordinary.

They decided to take on a bigger risk and moved towards the denser area of the village. The houses were more frequent and some stalls also appeared along the road. Olivia stayed back slightly as they walked, the hope being that Lyrika would see people first, and then her, rather than Olivia being seen and causing an incident.

But that didn’t happen.

Now surrounded by buildings they were still welcomed to emptiness. In all of the houses they looked in they saw no one. They even found the main market area deserted. Stalls were empty, shops were the same, it was like a ghost town. Or ghost village more accurately.

“What is going on.”

“I don’t know.” Was Olivia’s dumbfounded reply.

‘What happened her?. Mass vanishment. Is that a word? Were they all kidnapped? I would have thought the chief’s men would have done something if that was the case. Unless the chief had something to do with it. If it was an animal or monster attack, surely we would have seen people hiding in their houses as well as damage and animal tracks or something.’ Olivia wondered as she looked around.

To be sure of that, they did enter a few houses, of which the doors were unlocked. But alas, no matter how much they searched there were no signs of people. What they did find, was that now that they were closer to the centre of the village, mess and damage was actually visible. In these houses, it did look like someone had broken a few chairs and plates. There was no blood, but the damage and destruction were evident.

“What do we do?”

As Olivia thought about that, her eyes wandered, and she caught sight of a church. Wooden in construction, but it looked soundly built. If you wanted a secure place to stay, the biggest, strongest building was your best bet.

“Well, if people are going to be anywhere, it’s in the church.”