Completed Looks Like Meat's Back On The Menu!

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

Her world was pain. It was the first sensation Dianaimh felt as she slowly came back into consciousness. Her entire body ached and burned, she could feel the bruises with every movement. "Gods" she muttered, her voice coming out huskier than she imagined.

She shook her head and immediately wished she hadn't. It sent a spasm of pain through her, causing her to make a sound like a wounded animal. She risked opening her eyes, blinking away tears in the half light.

She was in a crude hut, sprawled on a dirt floor. She flexed her limbs but she was bound hand and foot with crude rope. She didn't have the energy to sit up right so she crudely flopped and wriggled her way up. Her sense of balance was all off with her hands tied behind her back.

She didn't feel pretty. Her clothes were scorched and torn from the battle through the ruins and the subsequent escape from falling rubble. Drained of energy, she was as weak as a kitten. Resting back on her legs, she took stock of her surroundings. Esmeralda lay drooling on her side, a nasty cut to the side of the head showing what had knocked her out. From the way Dian's felt, she imagined she had the same.

Crude bone fetishes and talismans hung from the doorway and rafters. Dian's gaze took it all in before her eyes locked on a human skull mounted on the lintel. Her face paled and she began to nudge Esmeralda with indecent haste. "Esmeralda? Wake up!" she hissed, giving her a shove with her shoulder. "Girl, are you even listening?!"

Esmeralda

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda felt the oddest sensation of being rattled, her cloud of comfort jolting from side to side. The haze pulled back, revealing dull pains and a rolling headache. Every part of her body simply ached, as if she had climbed a mountain or dueled a lich.

Wait. Yeah, she had done one of those.

She groaned in response, stirring a bit and finding she had very little strength to call her shaky hand to the gash in her head.

"Wha-wha?" She mumbled incoherently. The hut they sat in was lost to her, events surrounding today momentarily fuzzy.

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

"Can you sit up please?" Dianaimh's voice sounded scandalised, like she'd found Esmeralda drunk in an alleyway. The last thing she remembered was running towards the light, then everything had gone black. Now she was in some stinking mud hut with a barely conscious companion. "Wake up!" she hissed before tensing at the sound of approaching footsteps.

A broad form bent to enter. An orc. Swathed in furs and scraps of leather and metal, he eyed the two women appraisingly before grunting. An older tusker. Dianaimh kept her eyes on him. He said something incomprehensible and she shook her head. Spitting on the floor, the orc left the hut.

Dian groaned. Captured by orcs. Things could only have gotten worse.

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda flickered in and out of consciousness for a moment, indescribably weakened by the magic she had been forced into. Dammit, she was getting soft.

She came back around and stayed so this time, groaning and trying to push her face off from the dirty ground it drooled into. "D-Dian? O-Ouch, my head- what-" She saw her surroundings then, an edge of alertness entering her expression.

"What did I miss?" She demanded of her charge, making a rather pathetic show of trying to get her body upright. But her strength had literally been used up by Dian, her muscles unable to do more than shake as she tried to take charge of them. Which was a rather frightening position for the mage to be in.

If she was weak she couldn't protect them.

She instinctively reached out to her pendant and .... found it disturbingly drained of the stored energy.

She gasped, horrified. "What have you done!"

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

Dianaimh watched Esmeralda regain lucid thinking with somewhat more rapid progression than she had. She grasped that they weren't just sleeping off a binge. She sprawled on her side in the dirt, groaning her fate. She shook, whether from a spasm or cold she didn't know.

"What did you miss? Well clearly we're guests of royalty" she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. She rolled her eyes at the horrified gasp, "What have I done?! Why do you bloody well assume it was me?"

The curious pendant that hung from her neck seemed empty of any energy, it was dull and lifeless, "What does that little charm even do anyways?"

She felt drained as well, with zero energy or enthusiasm for anything.

 

[Esme]

"Charm? *Charm*? It held all my magic! And now it's gone!"

Well, not entirely. There was still a nugget left. Enough for another miracle or two. Not that she'd fess up to that. "Do you know how long it took me to store all that? You spent it so carelessly!"

The cost of letting someone untrained so crudely handle all that power. No tact.

She flailed at her bindings. "Don't just sit there, where's your creeps?" She snapped, referring to those undead the woman wielded.

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

"What are you blathering about?!". Held her magic? "What about whatever, well what's in you?" she demanded with a useless wave of her hand. Every mage and school of magic was different, they all drew on different things. "Spent it when? I wasn't the one fucking casting blasts or moving like quicksilver".

She snorted as she thrashed at her binds, "Don't even bother. Those binds would hold you even if you were a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier. The orcs didn't take chances".

She rolled her eyes, "I'm as exhausted as you are girl. I doubt I could even control a dead mouse".

 

[Esme]

"What's in me is all used up! Magic isn't endless, there's limits to it too!" She let herself flop back over, realizing abruptly that the only way out of this was to let her self recover and regain her strength.

"Unbelievable, unficking believable.Well what do they want with us? Why can't they take the treasure and let us go?" She snapped, highly agitated.

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

Dianaimh didn't want to say it but she let her head nod towards the skull on the doorframe. It wasn't the only bone charm in the room. "Some orc tribes...do not like magic. We might be a sacrifice to appease their gods".

The next part was harder. "Or we might be supper".

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda groaned, letting her head thunk back against the floor. "I want you to know that if I could eat you and gain your powers to escape I totally would right now." She stared at the ceiling, letting her vision grow fuzzy.

Alright. Breath. This wasn't the end of the world, she had certainly been in worse. All she had to do was. Survive. She could do that. It just required not being killed. And in order to assure that, all she needed was time.

"When you say afraid of magic, you mean...?"

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

Dianaimh scoffed. "By the looks of you, I'm not sure that you've ever had a proper meal in your life. You're as skinny as a boy". She drew her rags about her, shivering a little in the cold.

"Afraid in the sense that while some bright lights and noise might scare them, it will also make them want to take our heads off. Or their shamen might try to torture us to get our secrets".

 

[Esme]

Esme ignored that dig, having heard it many times before. In fact, she fell completely silent, begrudgingly choosing to conserve all energy than waste it on quips with the girl.

She let her eyes drift close and forced her breath to go even, trying to lull herself back to sleep. It would be the fastest way to recover her energy back to her. She always felt the strongest with magic after a night of proper sleep.

She didn't tell Dian any if this, leaving the seething woman to believe she was just taking an impromptu nap.

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

Dianaimh's mouth opened and shut as Esmeralda just ignored her and lay back, closing her eyes. She gave her a nudge, incensed at being ignored. "Did you get knocked on the head or something?" She had but that wasn't the point. "How can you sleep at a time like this? We need to get out of here!"

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda pushed her breath through her nose, trying to keep her temper cool. "And do you have any ideas on that, or are you relying solely on me for that also?" She asked, her tone level.

In, out. In, out. If not sleep, a meditative state will do. Lower the heart beat...

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

"You're my fucking bodyguard!" Dianaimh hissed, "I pay you to keep me safe, not to fucking sleep when we're captives!"

Any further discussion was cut off as orcs entered the hut. Their speech was incomprehensible but their intention clear. Dian struggled as they hefted her up, one to each arm, before they marched her outside. Esmeralda was brought out right after her.

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda's eyes snapped back open, unable to help the palpable fear resonating in her chest. She had not felt so powerless or vulnerable in quite some time. Her thoughts spun, wondering when exactly the right moment would be to tap into the dregs of her reserves and break them out.

One wrong move and she could just waste it and end up stew.

She didn't want to be stew.

She tried to shoot Dian a 'keep calm' look as they were brought out and tossed to the ground before another set of feet. Esmeralda couldn't help but to groan, scrambling to sit up and take stock of their situation.

Was it feast or torture. And did she have to use magic to buy time for one or the other. She turned, feeling a heavy set of eyes on her.

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

Orcs in general were bigger and bulkier than humans. Neither Dianaimh or Esmeralda were particularly large women, they were overshadowed by the monstrous beasts. Dian let out a squeal as she was dropped to the ground, forced on her knees in front of what seemed to be the headwoman or chieftainess of the tribe.

She was swaddled in furs and wore a battered coat of chainmail. The orc next to her was the one who had entered the hut originally, his garb suggested he was one of the shamen for the tribe. Their grunts and guttural speech made zero sense to her but she didn't like the way they were being eyed up.

She struggled as they were hefted up, the chieftainess giving one of their arms an appraising squeeze. The same was done to the leg before she nodded and grunted at the shamen. Dianaimh began to struggle more frantically as they moved her away from Esmeralda.

The blonde was seized and marched to a stake that had been mounted in a beaten area that served some of the huts as a courtyard. They bound her to it, she was forced to stay in a cross legged position while her guards amused themselves by flicking pebbles and twigs at her.

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda continued to not pitch a fuss, biding her time as she fussed out the situation.

The hands that started to poke and prod her gave her a golden opportunity, giving her a chance to sap away at the energy of the Orc whenever their skin touched hers. And given the state of her clothing, there were multiple chances for it.

For a moment she was grateful they were so big. Scraping off their energy would barely feel like an itch of exhaustion to them. To her? It was the equivalent of multiple cups of coffee shot through her at once.

"What are you doing with her?" She called out to chieftainess, wincing at a pebble that flicked at her head.

 

[Dianaimh Ui Muirgheal]

The orcs seemed to have no idea what Esmeralda was up to, her subtle touches and snatches going unnoticed. Her insolent cry made the chieftainess frown and she said something to one of her guards. The guard nodded and stepped forward, sheathing her sword. The orc backhanded the blonde with a casual swipe of her arm before stooping to come to her level. "You. No. Talk. Leader" she grunted in barely comprehensible Common.

The chieftainess spoke again, "Dá mbeiféa ann, bheinn áthasach leis". She added some more words accompanied by hand gestures. The guard translated, "Friend guest. Honour much. You see. Later".

 

[Esme]

Oi. You know what isn't pleasant. Being backhanded by an orc.

Esmeralda felt her head her head spin and didn't resist it, faintly hearing the orc's words.Time, she had time at least. She slumped a little in relief then did something utterly questionable. She took all reasonable energy from her body and channeled it into the pendant, knocking herself right out.

She would recharge faster that way.

When she woke up next it was night. The camp was in a stir, campfire light reflecting every which way in her hazy vision. She lifted her head, regathering herself and taking stock of the scene around her. She was certainly stronger, her limbs no longer feeling shaky. Her body felt her own, spare her injuries, and her thoughts came easier to her.

Her thoughts.

Dian!

She struggled against her spike, looking around for the woman.

 

[Ragna]

There was no sign of Dianaimh on the pole next to her. But she could see the gathering down below, in a crater or hollow that the village was built around. Large fires lit up the scene and the orcs of the village were gathered there, chanting in slow rhythmic voices. There was a lot of them, their attention focused on the stone altar in the middle.

Dianaimh was tied to a pole in front of it. She'd been stripped of her clothing and eldritch symbols painted onto her skin in blood and mud. The shamen moved around her, chanting and spreading liquid from a clay jar. The mage looked terrified, her frame wriggling as she tried her puny strength against the bonds.

There was an audible snap to Esmeralda's right. One of her guards lay crumpled on the ground, her neck twisted at an odd angle. Two monstrously large hands gripped the other. Ragna's hand covered the orc's face to stop them crying out for help. The other grabbed him by the shoulder. She snapped his neck with a clean break like a farmwife with a chicken.

The giant rose in a half crouch and moved to cut the blonde's bonds. "Where is Dianaimh?" she asked in a low voice, the sound like rocks rubbing together. One hand stayed out to catch the mage in case she fell.

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda leaned heavily into the giants hands, blinking back spots from her eyes as she imprudently leeched away at the giantesses strength.

"D-down there."

She grabbed onto the woman, pulling herself up and steeling herself with the strength she had managed to regain. "They're going to sacrifice her," she growled, fire entering her eyes as she resisted the urge to run down charging, no weapon and barely any magic at hand.

"Please tell me you brought reinforcements."

 

[Ragna]

Ragna easily held the small human, steadying her until she could stand on her own. "Hold" she growled, her large hands easily restraining the mage. Her teeth flashed, the white visible in the dark, "It is me alone" she said, the giant was clearly uncomfortable using Common.

"Wait" she ordered, her hands giving the merest squeeze, hints of the true strength behind it. "Magic. Can you cast anything?". She sounded reluctant to admit her concern, "There are too many for me to face alone".

 

[Esme]

Esmeralda grimaced, trying to steel herself. "Not enough to do enough," she admitted, souring as she did so. "I need my strength. And for that, I need energy." She glanced forlornly down at the dead bodies that were too far gone for her to steal from.

"Any energy will do. I can access it. Do you know of any lifeforce I can take from? One they won't notice or miss?" It was grim magic, but it would be necessary to get the woman out alive.

 

[Ragna]

The giant's face looked at the mage with a perplexed expression. She didn't quite understand what the mage was talking about. "You little ones don't have much strength" she said, gritting her teeth as she studied the encampment. She made a decision and rose, looming over the small mage. "Can you light a fire? I want these huts ablaze".