than useless. It was invisibility itself. He needed no shadow
to disappear into, he had accomplished that mundanely.
The pain behind his eye screamed at him and
Wank clutched his head, bowed to one knee, groaned in
agony. He rolled to his back, belly up and prone to the
underground world.
Ping. Disgusting little rat!
Some apparition of his sire stood above him, as
when he was a child. Shunted aside with one gnarly knee,
Wank lay in the corner of his mother’s alcove, his young
bowels jelly, his throat thick with fear. The chieftain
grabbed Wank’s mother by the hair, and with a withering
glare of disgust, dragged her from the sparsity of her
hovel, a moth-eaten blanket momentarily in tow as she
gasped.
A human ornament for Rahsik-ba to tote around,
she was small and frail yet remained a lightning rod for the
orc chieftain’s anger, his bravado, his sense of power and
manic self-worth. The half-orc child sat by, watched her
being beaten, showcased, abused for the sake of abuse,
shamed by his own weakness. Rahsik laughed.
The apparition disappeared as the pain behind
Wank’s eyes faded.
Through slitted eyes, as the last vestiges of
consciousness fled him, he saw a yellow streak of light
throb across one part of the cavern roof, broken shelfs
and staggered stalactites surrounding and reflecting it
across ancient striations as lurid shadows taunted him.
63