Terror. That was the only emotion overwhelming Torek, as thick drops of sweat beaded on every pore of his skin. The stench of slaughter mixed with the aroma of roasted meat. Yet that didn’t seem to disturb his captors. Torek, on the other hand, wished to lose his sense of smell—and perhaps more than that.

He shut his eyes to block out the sight of the bodies strewn around him, even within his crude cage, and slumped into a corner. He tried to conjure an image of his village in his mind's eye, of the meadows generously watered by the Ivaris, so fertile even the stones seemed to bloom. There was a time, not so long ago, when he could have built a peaceful life there.

He hadn't inherited the talent of his ancestors. Even some tall-legged folk were better at the forge, hammer, and whetstone than he was. No, metalworking wasn’t meant for him, and he had realized this long before seeing his thirtieth Harvest.

What was his alternative in that small corner of the world called northern Doriande? Herding. From pen to pasture and back again. Feeding, watering, repeating, until Sleep would come with its cold breath, forcing him indoors for at least three cycles of Sel, until the first snow melted.

How long could he have endured that life? If lucky, he might live another three hundred years or more. His kind was rare now; most were his kin, making it hard to find someone to build a family with. He would never have children or grandchildren of his own to pass down the tales his grandfather once told by the fire. And since he couldn’t even play music to pass the time, he’d end up talking to his sheep.

“Sheep, shmeep,” he muttered. “At least I wouldn’t be here now.” The butcher’s knife now seemed preferable to the once-glorious sword. That thought brought his mind back to the butchers feasting a few meters away. He opened his eyes again.

Only the carcass remained on the spit. A sturdy orc, carrying a huge oak barrel strapped to his back with leather harnesses, not unlike those used in shield grip, served the soldiers through a copper tube protruding from its side. He shared the coarse features of his comrades but seemed different. His tusks were smaller, his pointed ears less pronounced, and his gaze remained fixed on the ground and the soldiers’ cups.

As he started to leave, the orc at the head of the table growled something in their harsh tongue. The server turned hesitantly, as if he was expecting the blow that came swiftly to his face. The soldier pointed to the cups of his group, who meanwhile had greedily emptied their first round and now demanded more. The server silently and obediently refilled them and lingered briefly to ensure they were satisfied. Then he started moving to the next group, where more abuse surely awaited, for being late this time.

If they treated their own this way, he didn’t want to imagine what they'd do to him. At least death found the others swiftly, most of them without even realizing it. Few were those who managed to draw their swords from their scabbards; fewer still who struck a blow before hitting the ground.

If only they hadn’t been caught flatfooted that night by the enemy descending the steep mountain slope thought impassable, especially by an invading army. If the watchmen on the towers had seen something and raised the alarm, morning would have revealed a very different scene. There would still have been impaled heads—only those heads would’ve had tusks.

But the enemy, against all odds, had acted cunningly and swiftly. A small force, divided into nimble units like the one now celebrating, had humbled one of the Eastern Line’s proudest fortresses. It would’ve taken just one person spotting them before they scaled the wall. If someone with night vision hadn’t skipped the watch to gamble with cards...

Torek shook his head. "Focus on the now," he commanded himself.

After draining his second cup and wiping his muzzle with a rag suspiciously similar to a piece of the fortress banner, one of the seated orcs began smacking his swollen belly in satisfaction, a sick grin spreading across his ugly face. Torek expected it to stop eventually, but the beast continued striking instead, louder and louder, building towards a rhythm, until it resembled the war drums of a marching battalion.

Another orc, who had been carving something with his knife, raised it to examine under the scarlet dance of the fire. It was a bone from their prey! Interpreting the grotesque expressions of these creatures was near impossible, but the orc seemed satisfied with his creation in Torek's eyes. He brought it to his lips like a bard’s flute, and from it came reminiscent tones, albeit somewhat shrill and primitive.

The others, lacking instruments, began beating their metal cups on the makeshift table, complementing the bulky orc, who was playing his belly with masterful technique, using the air being pushed out with every beat to resonate in base, rough tones accompanying the makeshift flute.

If that scene already seemed surreal, what followed stunned Torek so deeply that he found himself no longer caught in his own predicament. The orcs, one by one and then all together like a grotesque choir, began to sing—in the Common tongue:

Your supper is earned, soldier, now eat, drink, sleep,
Remember those who fell, your oath to Arjesh keep.

You climbed the crags, the summit's peak, you crossed a path so steep,
Your supper is earned, soldier, now eat, drink, sleep.

You took their castle, lit the fire, you brought them to their knees,
Your supper is earned, soldier, now eat, drink, and ease.

Our grandsires took Rolfgar, now Fiorlas will be ours,
Your supper is earned, soldier, rest through the twilight hours.

It was the first time he had heard them speak words he could understand. Not with broken accents as he imagined, but with correct diction and pronunciation, which although bearing something foreign, was not out of place. No, the orcs could sing his language as fluently as his own comrades, who—were they not lying dead around him now—would likely celebrate their victory with a similar manner. Perhaps less grotesquely, even though some of them - oh, Anara, let them be huge trees in your garden - were as barbaric and violent.

The song’s early verses were mundane, exactly what one would expect from a group of soldiers resting after battle, honoring their dead, celebrating their win. It was of course weird, watching the monsters of fairy-tales in such a "civilized", given the circumstances, moment.

The post-battle celebration was was such a familiar picture to Torek, that for a prolonged moment he wasn’t even shocked he could understand them. Perhaps in his mind, he thought that shock and fear made him believe he understood the lyrics, or even tried to smooth the edges, building a scenario where he could leave unscathed, address an orc as if they were a civilized species and convince them he was just observing his duty. Or maybe the diminishing firelight left the darkness to soften their scary faces, their harsh features softening into something almost elven, like the forest-dwelling elves he had only heard of.

But all his thoughts were cut short, the moment he heard the name “Rolfgar”. Torek had been born in Doriande, centuries after the catastrophe and he had known no home other than the cold north, before joining the fort. Fiorlas, with its ships and polished merchants, meant little to him. It was just another job, one which wouldn't mean shoveling dung - or so he thought before enlisting - and the cities didn't matter, as long as they sent provisions and his silver on time.

But Rolfgar was different. And not because he believed the myths claiming all races sprang from there.

He looked down at the pendant hanging from his neck, a fragment passed down from grandfather to grandchild through generations lost to time. Therein lay the roots of all dwarven stories told across the world, which were so similar to each other because they contained shards of the truth. Pieces which exactly like the fragment he possessed, were once part of something bigger and whole.

Torek didn’t know the real history — and as fate had it, he would never do, he did however know the fireside tales his family told him ever since he was little, of the First Kingdom, the symbol of hope, that civilization can thrive over the beasts and build its own place on this world.

He also knew the macabre ending of the legend. The hubris of the dwarf that built his throne on the Navel of the world lasted only a moment, before the fire awakened by the orcs rose from the mountain's depths and devoured everything his ancestors had painstakingly built. When the ashes settled, nothing was there to commemorate the magnificence of what once stood there, in the center of the world.

Nothing except for fragments carried by refugees, covering the largest possible distance to build their homes elsewhere, each one to a different corner of the horizon. Thus, after the first dwarven nation, there wouldn't be a second. Instead of that, their knowledge and wisdom became a seed in the newfound lands, offered to the other species as a gift, to let them into their territory, so that the dwarven flower blossoms again. Or so it was in Doriande.

Torek now was certain. The song wasn’t just for the orcs. it was for him to listen to, to break his spirit, mock him as he lay helpless in his cell. If they wanted to kill him, they'd done it already. They wanted to make a servant out of him, and so he should learn his place.

He let out a bitter chuckle at the irony now so painfully clear: Instead of shoveling dung at home, he’d shovel orcish filth until the end of time. Fortunately, the soldiers didn’t notice his outburst. They were rolling out their bedrolls, otherwise they'd have gutted him for daring to laugh in such insolence and insult their pride.

He spent some time lost in his thoughts, until he noticed the server approaching him. Torek recoiled. The half-orc silently passed him a cup and a half-eaten scrap of meat through the bars.

The firelight played its quirky game across the server’s sunken cheeks. Sometimes it revealed scars from abuse, sometimes his resemblance to his masters. Torek couldn’t decide whether to pity or hate him—fear him or trust him.

“Take,” the half-orc whispered curtly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. “Soldier eat, drink”. He tried to discern whether he was being mocked, or the common language was difficult for the servant, making him depend on what he had heard from the others to communicate.

“Why feed me?” Torek finally asked. The half-orc stared at him for a while, right in his eyes, then answered with a weird expression: “Today, not dead.”

Torek nodded in thanks, uncertain if the orc understood the gesture, and took his offering. The half-orc started walking away, eventually disappearing in the shadows. The music had faded, and the all fires that were lit by the conquerors were now dying out completely, giving their place to the night and the light from Sel and Lun.

All except one. A small ember, which was slowly growing into a flame, and then a wildfire, like the unstoppable ones that burn everything to the ground, leaving nothing but ashes behind.

He clutched the sharp bone given to him by the half-blood servant tightly.

"For Rolfgar"