The Dark Sire Issue 4 (Summer 2020) | Page 67

Upon waking, the cavern was dark, as it had been upon his entrance. He had no idea how much time had passed, knew only that he was hungry. Hungry beyond reason. His body trembled from knees to neck. He struggled to hands and knees, head lolled between shoulders, then eased slowly back to sit nearly upright. Sweat dripped from him, though he could not say why. Old fear no longer gripped him, but like the smell of a rotting corpse, the air was steeped in it, his nostrils swimming in the stench of his fetid past. His eyes stung and clouded, teared up as the dripping of the cavern echoed again in his mind. Apparitions formed before him, reeled drunkenly around his swaying head. Ping. Catch the boar! Truss him up! Cook him! High-pitched voices squealed in delight and the patter of bare feet on stone echoed toward him. He stood, a child again, behind the body of a dead worg, its huge mouth open in a death snarl, teeth bared and blood pooling at its snout. The half-orcling, fated ever to play the boar in the game of worg hunt, stood alone among his brood, cast off save when there was need for some prey or other. With nowhere to run, Wank quickly crawled into the slit-open belly of the beast, covering himself with a bloody flap of fresh hide. He lay silently as the muted laughter swept past, and the slapping of feet as if pounding across his skull careened over him, driving his innocence like ethereal sheep before them. As the vision faded, pain once again lanced 65