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monstersandmaw · 4 years

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Female orc (Rakasha) x male character (nsfw)

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Yes, her name is Rakasha, not rakshasa. Sorry if that’s confusing for those like me with some form of dyslexia! Why do I do this to myself. Anyway, folks, this is a story reward for one of my higher tiers, featuring a snarky orc, a Tired(tm) healer, and a pair of cursed rings...

I really hope you enjoy it!! Don't forget to let me know if you did by reblogging it! It means the world, but if you're shy, a click on the heart button is also great :)

Content: past family deaths, nsfw, and fluff. :) Word count: 9206

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Virion stepped through the bazaar, trying not to gaze around him and gawk at everything as if he’d never been in a town before. That was a sure-fire way to stand out and attract a cut-purse, or perhaps worse. Trinkets here and there caught his eye, but he never lingered long, slouching along with his hands in his pockets.

Taller than many of the humans, he nearly tripped over a tiny fae creature as they scuttled along after a what he had thought was a puppy at first, but when he saw it had six legs, and scales mixed in with the fur, he blinked, shook his head a little, and moved on. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and just let the current of people pull him along through the bustling, tightly-packed stalls until he came to a tiny, extremely narrow shop crammed into the space between two larger facades, almost as though it had been deliberately stuffed into the gap between two buildings. On closer inspection of the roof line, he saw that that was exactly what had happened.

Equal parts amused and intrigued at the odd little place, he pushed the door open, his palm pressed flat to the cool, warped glass panels, and stepped into the fusty old shop. A smell of damp paper and slightly mildewed leather filled the air, and despite the apparent narrowness of the space from the outside, a huge amount of ‘stuff’ was crammed into the shop. Cabinets of curiosities lined the right hand wall, while various trinkets and pieces of mismatching armour were aligned along the left. A helmet with a completely bashed in faceplate stood proudly on a small wooden pedestal on the table, and around it were an arrangement of bronze arrowheads etched with runes. Down the centre of the room were piled trunks and boxes and crates, right up to the spider-webbed rafters.

It was only as a shadow moved further down the shop that he realised he was not the only customer.

A tall, well-built, female orc wearing a studded, leather travelling jerkin moved idly to examine some daggers arranged in a stand, and Virion found himself drawn down the narrow corridor of space between the wooden crates and the left hand wall. He’d always found orcs a strange people, and one he knew very little about despite having travelled a fair bit. She had a lethal looking re-curve bow strapped to her back, and a number of other weapons glinted and caught his eye the longer he looked.

From behind a nearby box, a tiny, stoop-spined old man suddenly and rather gleefully croaked, “Visitors!” and both the orc and Virion startled, whipping round to face the source of the exclamation.

The orc growled softly to herself, fingers gripped around a knife at her hip and muttering under her breath in a language Virion didn’t recognise, but he knew softly-hissed curses when he heard them.

“Peace, peace,” the ancient little man laughed - a sound like a piece of dry, crumpled parchment. He poked his half-moon glasses back up his bulbous nose with an arthritic finger and grinned toothlessly up at the orc. “Ah,” he said. “I see you have found my collection of daggers. I would direct your attention to this one, with the hilt made of-.”

“I’m not interested in those,” she said, bluntly cutting him off. “I need some more arrowheads. You got any?”

“Hmm,” the shopkeeper said, bobbing his head repeatedly like a child’s toy and seemingly unperturbed by her rudeness. “Yes, yes. Finest goblin forged steel? Or perhaps you’re looking for something a little closer to home? We have orcish wares too…”

“I don’t care. It just needs to be about this big -” she held up her finger and thumb and Virion glimpsed scars and some dotted tattoos across her knuckles before she lowered her hand and shot him a nasty look. “And I need them sharp. I can’t be bothered pissing about sharpening them. I’ll take about twenty.”

“I’ve only got ten goblin forged -”

“Whatever. I’ll take what you have then.”

Virion’s brows knitted but he decided to keep back and mind his own business. Traditionally, as far as he knew anyway, orcs were quick to anger, and not the kind of creature you wanted to piss off.

Turning his attention back to the plethora of things arrayed along the wall, he found his eyes resting on a pair of rings in a simple wooden box. He’d always been curious as a child, and suddenly a very child-like urge to pick one up and try it on overwhelmed him. Unable to stop himself - after all, what was the harm in trying on a simple band of tarnished silver? - he reached for it and slid it onto his right index finger.

Holding it up in the dim light, he saw that it wasn’t a plain ring after all. Engraved into the band was the design of two dragons, their snouts almost touching, their wings outstretched along the middle of the band, while along the upper and lower extremities seemed to be some kind of text, ancient and unreadable to him at least. It caught the light in a pleasant way and he smiled, considering asking the shopkeeper how much he wanted for it.

The wizened old man, however, had disappeared to fetch the small batch of arrowheads, the orc wandered over and picked up the other one, turning it over in her jade green fingers. Her expression softened somehow, the tension melting from her brows, and she reminded Virion of his late sister trying on their mother’s jewellery. Not that she’d had much, but Clara had always held it with a wondrous kind of reverence. It brought a smile to Virion’s face to see the tough woman enjoy something so frivolous and harmless as trying on a ring.

The shopkeeper returned and handed her the arrowheads, and when he saw what she was doing, his blue eyes lit up with joy and he clapped his hands together.

The orc didn’t seem put off by his odd reaction, but then she actually slid it onto her finger and everything happened at once.

A light flashed between Virion and the orc, bleaching his vision blank, and a burst of energy exploded from its epicentre. Objects went flying from the shelves and rained down onto the flagstone floor around them. Virion was knocked back, landing heavily on his backside, while the orc reeled and staggered into what sounded like a tower of wooden crates.

Virion rubbed at his eyes, blinking furiously, and gradually his sight began to return to him. From the way the orc was mashing the heel of her palm into her own eye sockets, he assumed things were going as slowly for her as they were for him.

“What the fuck?” she rasped a moment later. “I… I can’t…”

Still blinking, his ears ringing a bit from the release of whatever force had been cooped up in the two rings, he tottered to his feet and looked down at his hand. The band, which had been darkened with age was now bright as a newly struck coin, but what sent a jolt of real, ice-cold terror through him, was the fact that it wouldn’t come off. It wouldn’t even budge. Somehow, a ring that had been a little bit too big for his finger when he’d first slipped it on, was now nestled snugly around it, and was refusing to come off.

The orc, he saw when he glanced over at where she still sat on the floor, was in the same situation.

“Where’s that little fucker?” she snarled, pushing herself up with the lithe speed of a panther and looking around for the shopkeeper. “He’d better not have been a fucking fae… I’ll rip his head off his scrawny neck if he can’t fix this…”

“Easy,” Virion murmured levering himself more carefully to his feet. “There has to be an explanation. He must be here somewhere. Perhaps he was knocked over by the explosion as well?”

The orc fixed him with such a derisive look that he actually took a step back, her amber eyes glowing in the dim light of the shop.

But the little man was nowhere to be found. They searched the entirety of the shop, finding nothing in the back but spiderwebs and the dry skeleton of what might have been a rat. When they emerged from the storeroom at the back, they passed through the shop - careful to touch nothing this time - and the orc growled, “Listen, there’s a goblin who runs a jewellery shop back up towards the town square. He might be able to get this off.”

Virion nodded, still shaken and feeling a little wobbly in the knees. Magic wasn’t something he wanted anything to do with, and yet here he was, with some ancient ring stuck on his hand. Just like him to barrel headlong into trouble without a care in the world.

“Since we’re in this predicament together,” he ventured amicably as the orc led the way through the street without looking back at the shop, “I’m Virion.”

With little more than a fleeting, sidelong look down at him from her impressive height, she grunted, “Rakasha.”

She seemed to have little interest in further conversation, so he simply strode along beside her, keeping pace easily enough, and occasionally bringing his hand up to stare at the ring in the sunlight.

The goblin, however, had no good news for them. He tried to cut the rings off using some beefy looking wire cutters, but they glanced off the surface without leaving so much as a scratch. “I suspect a saw wouldn’t do any better either. Might lop your finger off, and who knows what that would do to you…” He rubbed his long ear thoughtfully with gnarled fingers and said, “Mmm… these are magic, for sure. You’d be better off going to somewhere like the University up at Grantbridge. They’ll have mages there who’ll be able to help you. I’m sorry.”

Rakasha snarled and stormed out without so much as a thank you to the goblin, and Virion turned back to the tiny creature with a sigh. Before he was able to articulate even the first syllable of his thank you, blinding pain erupted in his stomach again and his knees buckled. Clutching his middle, he went down like a felled tree as white heat burst through his skull and he could barely think through the sudden shock of agony.

The goblin scuttled around the counter and crouched beside him, just as Rakasha lurched back in through the door. As she did, the pain eased, and Virion opened his eyes, panting. “What the…?” he wheezed.

The jeweller looked from one to the other of them and his black eyes widened. “I’ve heard of enchanted objects like this,” he said, his reedy voice grim and hushed. “You can’t go further than a short distance from one another…”

Virion chuckled mirthlessly. “You might have mentioned that sooner, friend,” he said, and the goblin shot him a sheepish look of apology.

“Oh fuck this,” Rakasha rumbled, still holding onto the open door for support and looking a little paler than she had done a minute ago. “As if having a cursed ring stuck to my hand wasn’t enough, I end up tied to a pathetic little human? How far is it to Grantbridge from here?”

Virion wasn’t exactly a hulking tower of warrior muscle, but neither was he small or weedy, and he scowled openly at the orc.

“Three weeks on foot?” the goblin hedged, steadying Virion as he clambered to his feet for a second time since putting on the ring. “Maybe a bit less for you two,” he added with a wry grin down at his own small boots.

“What if I just kill him and cut the ring off his finger?” she growled.

The goblin’s mottled grey-green skin blanched a little at that, and he held up his hands in a pacifying gesture, as if he thought she might just gut Virion then and there in his shop. Virion too took a step back, eyes fearful. The jeweller stammered, “M-Most of the time, or so I’ve heard, with such objects… if you were to do that, you’d only kill yourself as well… Your… Your life forces are linked, somehow… I’m not a mage though, so I… I don’t know the consequences of such extreme action…”

Rakasha looked at Virion with her amber eyes blazing like the setting sun, and said, “Tell me you don’t have some pressing business you need to get done first, right? Some wife and a brood of whelps you need to tend to…”

He shook his head sadly. “Just me,” he said. She seemed so full of anger, so defensive, so short-tempered and quick to dismiss others. This was going to be a long few weeks, he was sure of that.

After a brief stop at the tavern where he’d been staying, to collect his belongings and settle up, the two headed to the western corner of the small trading town, and began their journey up to Grantbridge. They would have to cross the Whispering Plains, a vast tract of grassland inhabited by centaurs, minotaurs, a few cervitaurs, and the bison folk, before hitting the Granta river, where they hoped to take passage on a barge, at the suggestion of the innkeeper at Virion’s former lodging. It should shave a few days off their journey time.

That first day as they trudged in almost complete silence along the Queen’s Road, through lush copses and gentle rolling hills, Virion thought Rakasha might still risk lopping his head off with the axe at her belt. She spoke no more than a few words to him, and by the time the sun was tipping towards the horizon, he had given up trying to make conversation with her. She just ignored him, as though he were some kind of yapping stray puppy who had decided to trot along at her heels for a while, and who would soon grow bored and go away.

Rakasha was tense, her shoulders set, her pace relentless as she marched along, and every now and again she would cock her head to one side, as though listening to the woods on their left for trouble. The sun grew warm in the late afternoon, and she shucked her long sleeved leather jerkin off to reveal her impressive torso, wrapped only in the bindings around her muscular breasts and leaving her smooth stomach and muscled arms bare. Virion, despite being more than wary of the orc and having only encountered her kind as vicious raiders in the past, couldn’t help but admire a being in the peak of fitness and conditioning. She was gorgeous too, he supposed in her powerful way.

Some time later, taking his eyes off the dirt track immediately in front of his boots, Virion glanced up and scowled. Up ahead there seemed to be a young looking cervitaur, lying limply on the side of the road. The two of them spotted him at the same time. Rakasha’s hand eased her axe in its holster while Virion immediately darted forwards, his mind already trying to evaluate his condition, even from that distance. The creature looked half-starved for a start, his hips standing out and his cervine and human ribs obvious as his chest heaved weakly.

Before he’d made it two paces down the road, Rakasha grabbed him by the top of his travel pack and hoiked him back as if it were the scruff of his neck, and growled at him to be careful. Biting back a hot flare of irritation, he batted her off with a carefully aimed swipe of his forearm. She released him more from surprise than his own martial arts skills - which were admittedly very limited. He’d just gone for the vulnerable bit where the muscle was thinnest and the bone unprotected. Who needed martial arts skills when your grasp of anatomy was as good as his…?

Kneeling at the dirty looking cervitaur’s side a moment or two later, he saw how thin and weak he looked.

“Help me?” he rasped.

“What happened?” Virion asked, wanting to run his hands over the cervitaur to check for injuries, but restraining himself to get permission first. “What hurts?”

Before he had the chance to hear any more, the cervitaur’s hazel eyes darted to a point just behind Virion’s head, and the man frowned, ducking sideways instinctively.

A gnoll had sprung silently out from the rocks above where the scrawny cervitaur lay, and launched himself at Virion. With a roar, Rakasha launched herself at a second bandit and at the same time, ripped the attacker back from Virion with her free hand. She cracked their skulls together, leaving them staggering and concussed, before knocking them out with the back of her single-bladed axe and turning to face the last bandit who had rounded a huge boulder just down the road.

Her hair fell down her back in its loose ponytail, and as she squared off, Virion’s eyes widened. The cervitaur she was facing now was huge, almost as powerful and muscular as a bison taur. With his stag’s antlers held high, he pawed the ground, and then lowered his torso a little and charged her.

Virion crouched beside the younger cervitaur, frozen with a kind of fascinated horror as the two fought. She was a complete force of nature. The cervitaur’s hooves lashed out but she ducked and dodged them, his antlers swept from side to side, but eventually she locked him in a wrestling move and tipped him onto his side, slamming him into the dirt of the road so hard he was left stunned and winded. Her axe blade hovered mere inches from his throat and he fell still.

From beside him, the younger cervitaur gasped, “Uncle…”

“That’s your uncle?” Virion blurted, horrified that the kid was so young and malnourished compared to his relative.

Rakasha still had her axe blade to his throat and was snarling something in his ear. The cervitaur nodded in response, and suddenly she’d bashed him on the side of the head too, leaving him unconscious as well.

“He’ll be fine,” she growled as she prowled over to the pair of them. Virion suspected that all three of them would need to see a healer though; concussions like that didn’t just go away. “I take it you were bait, kid?” she said and the cervitaur nodded. She shot Virion a look that told him quite plainly what she thought of him for falling for the ruse so quickly. “Can you stand?”

Shakily, he staggered to his feet and accepted the water skin that Virion handed him. “Thank you,” he said.

“You should run while you can,” Virion said. “Get to the town… This is no life for you, kid…”

“I’m not a kid,” he said with a watery smile. “I’m nineteen.”

“You need to get some meat on your bones,” Virion murmured. “There’s lots of work in the town, and it’s only eight miles or so that way. You’ll have to be careful.”

“I’ll be alright,” he shrugged.

Virion grinned at him, though it was hard not to feel deep concern for the underfed and malnourished young cervitaur. Virion had been there himself: alone, aimless, adrift from his family. He offered him the knife on his belt, but the cervitaur refused him gently. “Alright, well… take care,” Virion said, scratching the back of his head.

The two of them watched him trot off down the road, and Virion shot a glance over the three unconscious bandits. The male gnoll who had attacked him was still out cold, but the female flicked an ear groggily.

“Come on,” Rakasha snarled, and he turned to face her.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, only just noticing a bruised-looking gash on her upper arm, presumably where the stag’s antlers had got her.

She shook her head. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait,” he said, picking up his pack from where he’d slithered out of it during the scuffle. Rakasha continued down the road, and when she hit about twenty five feet from him, she grunted, staggering. Virion, however, experienced blinding pain in his gut and head and was not ashamed to howl in protest. “Fucking shit, Rakasha, at least let me grab my stuff will you?”

The orc grudgingly let him catch up and then grunted, “We should make camp for the night soon… while there’s still enough daylight.”

With a glance over his shoulder at the still-prone bandits, Virion added, “Let’s get another few miles first, eh?”

He couldn’t stop fussing - silently and only to himself, however - about the cut in her arm, and when they finally turned off the road perhaps only twenty minutes before sunset, she surprised him by allowing him to tend the wound. It wasn’t deep, and hadn’t needed stitches, but he fished out some alcohol and a clean cloth from his bag and wiped it down, eliciting a hiss from her, and a softly spoken curse in her own language.

“You know,” he said, “I… I feel like I have an apology to make to you…”

“For that?” she snorted, jutting her chin towards the freshly-tied bandage around her arm. “Please. That didn’t hurt.”

“No,” he laughed softly. “No, for assuming you were just a brutish thug, I guess.”

She raised an eyebrow at him and he flushed hot. “Care to elaborate?” she laughed.

He swallowed thickly. “You could have killed those guys today…” he said. “But you didn’t.”

Rakasha shrugged and stood, moving over to a log and rolling it a bit closer to the fire pit before plonking down on top of it and inspecting the bandage curiously. “I was going to, but I don’t want the law on my hands for murder. I’ve already got enough shit to deal with, being tied to you and cursed with this ring…”

Virion’s shoulders dropped a little bit and he caught Rakasha’s amber eyes watching him over the flames, glowing in the dim light.

“I’d be halfway across the plains by now if it weren’t for you,” she added, her voice gritty and harsh.

“What? How?”

She laughed, and while wasn’t exactly cruel, it was gruff and spoke of a tougher race than his own, for sure. “You can’t run beside an orc all day, human. Get some rest. We’ll start before dawn.”

He shook his head, fighting the disappointment that had bloomed in his chest. After so long on the road alone, he’d half hoped that this might turn into a tentative friendship, but the orc clearly regarded him as little more than a bothersome parasite. Honestly, he was tired, and although he was fairly fit and lean, his muscles ached from the pace she’d set that day. The orc was right - there was no way he could have run all the way to the ferry crossing on the Granta. Self-doubt and misery began to crowd into his mind, bringing with it memories of the most painful night of his life; the night he’d ended up alone and wandering the roads of this corner of the kingdom.

Needless to say, what with the creaking of the woods and the roots digging him in the back, and the nebulous unease that clawed at the inside of his mind, he didn’t sleep well. When he had sat up and scrubbed at his eyes with his hands, he found Rakasha staring at him.

“What?” he grumbled.

“You look like shit.”

“You’ve got leaves in your hair,” he retorted immediately, oddly reminded of the repartee he’d had with his sister for a moment. The sudden reminder and pain of Clara’s loss lanced through him and almost brought tears to his hazel eyes.

Rakasha, perhaps more curious than concerned, grunted, “You alright?”

“Yeah,” he said, though it came out as a croak. He cleared his throat. “You ready to make a move?”

She nodded but didn’t speak.

“How’s your arm?” he asked, standing and feeling the need to answer nature’s call.

She shrugged her beautiful, bare shoulder experimentally and pursed her lips. Her tusks were thick and short, her jaw heavy, but there was something monumental about her that he found strangely beautiful, especially in the dim pre-dawn light between the birch trees. “It’s good,” was all she said.

As he’d returned - not going all that far because he didn’t want to risk the flaring hot agony of getting beyond the permitted range of the rings - drawing closer to the campsite, he felt something odd tugging at him on the inside with each step. It reminded him of the intense pain he’d felt in his gut the day before when she’d gone on ahead of him. If he concentrated on it hard enough, he realised that it was drawing him towards her.

“You felt that too, I take it,” he said when he returned and saw that she had paused, halfway through scuffing out the embers of the fire. In answer, she simply shouldered her bow, axe glinting softly in the loop at her belt.

Stepping out onto the road, Rakasha rolled her shoulder again and said, “Where’d you learn medicine like that?” she asked. “You’re not a mage, are you?”

He shook his head, secretly pleased that he’d helped with the already-advanced healing process orcs possessed. “Nope,” he said, letting the consonant pop. His chest fizzled as he felt the conversation steering around towards his past, but he didn’t shy away from it. If they were going to be travelling together, he didn’t mind trying to forge some kind of relationship with her this way. And besides, her curiosity was better than her contempt from the previous day.

“My father was a physician,” he said, voice catching on the tense of the verb. “My older sister too.”

“Was?”

“They’re both dead.”

“Spirits shelter their souls,” she murmured reflexively, and he smiled at the unexpected sentiment. “What happened?”

Virion swallowed thickly and ran his hand through his scruffy brown hair. “I used to travel all over with them… helping people here and there, you know. Setting broken bones, stitching up cuts, that kind of thing. But I didn’t take it all that seriously. Not like they did.”

A stone scuffed beneath his boot and he kicked it along the path, watching it bounce off the ruts in the road.

“I… I was much younger than my sister, so their work always seemed like ‘grown-up stuff’, you know? I felt like an outsider a lot of the time, and even when I was seventeen or eighteen, I would usually go off and drink or show off for the girls or whatever instead.”

As lighting runs ahead of thunder, amusement flared in her golden eyes and Rakasha tipped her head back and laughed heartily this time, and Virion caught sight of a bead in her ponytail that was quite obviously made from an orc’s tusk. He immediately burned to ask her about it, but it felt like an extremely personal question, so he refrained from voicing it.

Instead, he asked, “What’s so funny about that?”

“Did it work?” she said, still chuckling. “Did you impress any of these soft human women into bed?”

“What do you think?” he grinned, encouraged by this more playful side of her.

She shook her head. “I can’t see anyone swooning into your lap, human,” she said, punching him on the arm. “But I’m an orc, so…”

“What’s impressive to an orc then?” he asked, trying not to show that her words had stung more than the punch had. “Rippling muscles and a bellowing war-cry?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “But I bet a mouse could fart louder than your war-cry.”

“I don’t even have a war-cry,” he said. “I’m a healer, remember?”

“True,” she hedged. “Maybe you don’t need one.”

They lapsed into silence after that for a bit before he continued his story. The sky above was cloudless and the pale blue of courtly silk, much like it had been that day when he’d walked into the village, heart heavy with dread and found them. The trees became sparser as they walked, and up ahead he could glimpse the sea of shifting grass that was the Whispering Plains and the start of the White Road.

“There… There was a report of plague and they… uh…” he cleared his throat, ignoring the prickling in his eyes. “They went to see what they could do for them.” He didn’t need to articulate what had happened next. “I didn’t hear from them in weeks, and eventually I went to look for them.”

Bodies bloated in the sun, the stench of death that the cloth around his mouth couldn’t mask, the withered remnants of his only family… He closed his eyes briefly, stilling his churning stomach, and then said, “I burned them and promised them I’d do better, that I’d be better.”

Rakasha blinked as he finished his story, looking down at him from her height, and tilted her head slightly. “That’s a terrible fate for anyone to meet,” she said respectfully. “And you risked bringing it on yourself as well to honour them…”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t leave them like that. They were all I had left.”

She nodded and returned her eyes to the road ahead. Something seemed to have shifted between them, like the stirring of a breeze after a week of stagnant calm.

In the two days it took them to cross most of the plains, using the White Road, so called because it had been cut into the chalk downland of the plains to leave a gleaming white ribbon across them. Virion learned something about Rakasha in return. She was the daughter of the chief of a big clan, came somewhere in the middle of eight siblings, and had set off on her own with her clan’s blessing to see a bit more of the world.

“It’s becoming more common,” she said, swatting a fly out of her face as they traipsed along. In the distance, a herd of centaurs looked up, sounding a short blast on a horn at their presence. Rakasha didn’t seem bothered, and the centaurs in these parts were not known for attacking travellers. “Younger orcs are almost taking it as a rite of passage. We’ve come to call it the Wandering.” She scratched at her tapered, pierced ear and shot him a look that was surprisingly self-conscious.

“What have you learned so far then?” he asked. He inferred from something about her manner that she’d found it a bit of a culture shock, but he was curious to see what she’d say.

The centaurs made no move to come any closer, but they were now all watching them now, perhaps half a mile away.

She shrugged. “Not to pick up shiny bits of jewellery in back-ally shops for a start…”

Virion chuckled and said, “Well, it’ll be a tale to tell when you get back to the hold.”

Her face darkened. “I hope this mage can help us,” she said, twisting the band of the ring on her finger.

“Tired of me already?” he quipped. He found he liked the challenge of trying to make her laugh, but the look she gave him this time took him by surprise; it was almost fond, behind the scowl.

“You’re like a stray dog that’s growing on me,” she said.

With an easygoing shrug, he laughed, “I’ll take what I can get.”

The centaurs turned out to be traders, and they exchanged a few objects and coppers for some roasted seeds and nuts, way-bread, and dried fruits to sustain them on the final stretch of the plains. It took a week to cross the plains, and in that time Rakasha opened up to him a bit more. She explained the meaning behind the dotted tattoos on her knuckles and when he dared to ask about the tusk bead in her hair she smiled and said it was in remembrance for a dear friend she’d lost in one of the raids.

Finally, on a swelteringly hot afternoon, they made their way down through the sun-bleached and -blasted grasses towards the Granta river. A modest, wooden jetty stuck out a few yards into the slow-moving water, half hidden by tall, rustling reeds.

They only had to wait overnight for a river barge going downriver to come by the empty dock, and after bartering with the harpy captain for passage, the two were welcomed aboard. At the stern of the wide, flat river barge was a structure a bit like a shed, built to shelter the travellers and crew from inclement weather, but the rest of the deck was full of cargo boxes, crates, and barrels.

“There’s not much room for you to lodge,” the harpy said, as they stepped aboard, “But we’ll be there in three days and the weather’s set to stay fair.”

“Thank you,” Virion said with a deliberate smile that ruffled her feathers a little.

She scowled at Rakasha though and croaked, “You keep your weapons sheathed and cause no trouble, orc.”

To Virion’s surprise, his companion only bowed her head and strode to the other side of the barge to stare off into the water as it sloshed past.

He joined her briefly and she turned her head a little as she admitted, “I’ve never been on a boat before.”

“Hope you don’t feel sick,” he grinned. “If you do, I think I have some ginger somewhere in my pack.”

“I’d rather not chew on a tuber that’s been rolling around the bottom of your bag for spirits-only-know-how-long,” she snarled, but there was no venom in her tone now. “It’d probably make me sicker than the water.”

Their fellow travellers were not numerous, it being a cargo barge after all, but a small group of musicians was headed to the university town as well. Virion immediately settled down in their midst that evening after a day of reading one of the books he’d picked up in Sycamore Gap - the town where he’d first met Rakasha. He found himself welcomed by three tieflings, all with different skin colours and horns, and an enormous and extremely friendly firbolg. Rakasha kept very much to herself, but on their first night, when the group pulled out a bodhrán, violin, a small harp, and a flute, and started to sing, she looked up from the crate where she’d been seated for most of the day.

On the second night, the firbolg, named Aeqen, asked her if she’d like to come and have a drink with them, and she nodded gruffly, sitting cross legged on the deck beside the small barrel where Virion been perched.

Glancing down at her, he saw the way the fae-light in the lamps highlighted her cheekbones and glinted on her unadorned tusks. As if feeling the weight of his gaze, she looked up at him, and scowled. He laughed and handed her a beer from one of the tieflings, and she downed half of it in one go.

“Ready to make port tomorrow?” Aeqen asked conversationally, and began to beat a rhythm on the bodhrán in his lap. Liliana, one of the tieflings with freckled blue skin began to trill out a quick tune on her flute and in no time the other two tieflings were dancing.

He nodded. “It’s been a nice change of pace on the water though,” Virion said.

They sat finishing up their beers for a while, but every time Virion looked over at the firbolg, he saw the way the creature’s large eyes lingered on Rakasha as she sat there thoughtfully, her eyes on the dancing tieflings as if she’d never seen anyone dancing before. Assuming it was interest on the firbolg’s part, and that if anyone might have the physique to impress the orc, it would be him, Virion found that the dregs of his bottle tasted bitter, and he set it aside and stood, silently excusing himself and stalking to the back of the barge.

He was still sifting through the roiling emotions when someone cleared their throat behind him and he turned around to see Rakasha standing in the shadows, back lit by the fae-lamps further along the deck. “You alright?” she asked, her already husky voice gruff and quiet.

“Yeah,” he said, turning his back on her. “Just… wanted some air.”

“You want me to go?”

When he didn’t respond, she stepped closer to him, and they both felt the draw of their cursed rings. She put a hand on his lower back and tension ratcheted up his spine, one vertebra at a time.

“Did I hurt you?” she asked, her touch fluttering slightly.

Virion shook his head and the pressure of her warm palm returned for a moment before disappearing completely.

“I wish I understood you humans,” she said, chuffing a soft laugh and leaning her forearms on the railings, mirroring his posture.

“Let me know if I can help,” he said. “After all, you are leashed to one…”

She nodded but didn’t go any further.

The water slid by in a river of inky blackness, the reeds whispering at the edges.

Rakasha broke the silence again a few moments later and said, “I wonder if there are merfolk in these parts…”

“Probably,” he said. “They’ll be upstream of a city, for sure. I think I saw one of the alligator folk earlier. Their eyes reflect in the dark a bit like orcs’ do…”

He shot her a sidelong look and found that her golden eyes were indeed flashing in the dark like a predator’s as she stared at him.

“I was wrong about you,” she said quietly.

“Oh?”

“Mmm. Remember when I told you that I was doing my Wandering when I first met you?”

Virion nodded, but didn’t dare move a muscle in case he spooked this new, gentler side of her.

“I’ve not mixed with other species much,” she said.

That much was obvious, but he kept that to himself.

“I… I guess you could say I was - am - pretty naive…”

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that,” he said with false politeness and they both laughed.

After a moment she continued. “I thought humans were… honestly pathetic. Most of you have so little muscle and you’re so damned fragile… but… you’re not, are you?”

“There’s more than one way to be strong,” he murmured, watching the reeds slip by in the dim glow cast by the barge’s lamps. “You want to go and dance?”

She laughed, and perhaps her cheeks darkened a bit, but it was hard to tell in that light. “I think I’ll just watch for now, if that’s alright.”

They returned to the small party, and while Virion sat on his usual barrel, Rakasha decided to lean her body up against it so that her head was almost touching his thigh. He found it hard to get to sleep that night, with thoughts of what her long, dark hair might feel like and what her skin might feel like against his. He thought that he should have been surprised to be thinking like that, to be seeing the orc in a new light, but if he were honest with himself, he’d admired her physically from the beginning. It was only now that he was starting to get to know Rakasha that he found himself fantasising about her a little though.

Grantbridge, the city that cradled the university in its midst, was vast. Rakasha was obviously completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people, the chaos and noise, the bustle, the clatter, the shouting and the smell of it all, but she never flinched or backed down. Perhaps surprisingly, however, she did follow Virion’s lead as they found their way - eventually - to the university, and at last were admitted to the professor’s study.

“Thank you for seeing us at such short notice,” Virion smiled, and the tall woman in a long, white robe grinned at him. Her skin was dark and flawless, and her black eyes glittered with warm intrigue. “I thought we might have to make an appointment and come back another day.”

“When the clerk informed me that we had a case of cursed rings on our hands - oh, please excuse the pun - I couldn’t refuse you, my dears,” she said. “Now, if you’ll let me examine them?” she asked, stretching out her hand, palm up.

Virion cautiously obliged first, and she turned his finger over, examining the markings on the band.

“Oh, yes,” she crooned delightedly. “I’ve heard of such rings! These are incredibly rare. See this inscription?” she said, pointing at the writing that neither of them had been able to read. They both leaned in and then nodded. “It’s in Ancient Telvhen - a precursor to modern High Elvish, which in itself is a very old language. Fascinating. And the dragons - I believe this alludes to a very old story from the Telvheni empire about a prince and a beautiful dragon shifter… Oh, I’d love to hear where you got them from, but that’s a story for afterwards perhaps. Let me translate the inscription for you.”

She slid a pair of half-moon spectacles onto her nose and cleared her throat.

“It is more or less as follows: ‘Each with different heart, together shall they part.’”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Rakasha asked, a heavy scowl weighing down her dark brows.

“Let me see yours, my dear,” the mage asked, not even batting an eyelid at her coarse language, and Rakasha obliged with a wary glance at Virion. He nodded and she gave him the ghost of a reassured smile. “Ah yes, look, the same inscription. And you’ve travelled together from Sycamore Gap to get here? Impressive.”

“Fuck how far we’ve come,” Rakasha snarled. “How can we get them off?”

Bile rose in Virion’s throat, fearing that if the orc continued to insult the mage she would refuse to help them, but the woman only laughed brightly and said, “Have you tried just taking them off?”

“Of course we did, you -” she began, but Virion cut her off with a thwack across her stomach. She turned to look at him, about to snarl something at him for hitting her, but when she saw the look on his face, she cursed in orcish.

“That, my dear,” the mage chuckled, “Is a phrase I will have to remember for the next time I’m in the company of the necromancers from the Chapter at Arlesford…”

Rakasha didn’t even respond as she watched Virion slide the ring easily off his index finger. “How?” he breathed, staring at her with his hazel eyes wide. “We couldn’t… We… They were…” Astounded - and a bit embarrassed - he couldn’t fathom it.

The mage smiled. “‘Each with different heart, together shall they part’” she quoted. “Might I be wrong in suggesting that the two of you have come to see things differently during the course of your journey here?”

At that, Virion and Rakasha exchanged a look. “Well… yeah,” he said, “But…”

“You mean we didn’t have to come all this way here?” she said. “That we could have just taken them off before now?”

“It’s hard to know when the magic left the rings,” the mage replied, turning back to her desk with a twinkle in her eye. “But I believe they have done their purpose…”

“And what purpose is that?” Rakasha asked. Virion noted that she had made no move to take her own ring off, but he thought that perhaps she was still too stunned.

It was Virion who answered. “To bring two people with different views together.”

“It’s a famous past-time amongst the meddling fae,” the mage said as she sat back down at her desk. “I might suggest that if you were to go back to wherever you came across these, you would not find things quite as you left them.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough gold to go back to that place,” Rakasha laughed. “So we’re free of the magic completely now?”

“As far as my not-inconsiderable abilities can tell, there is nothing left in those rings. They are but ordinary bands of silver. Do with them as you please, and go where you will. Though I suspect that if you take them off, you will not find them in your possession for long. These things have a way of finding new owners and new people to help…”

“Interesting way of helping,” Rakasha grumbled.

“Thank you for your time,” Virion said, his voice a little shaky.

“Pleasure,” the mage said. “Though I suppose I should be thanking you for helping delay the inevitable…” she eyed a stack of papers at the corner of her expansive desk and groaned, “First year exam papers…”

“Good luck!” Virion laughed, and they left her to her marking.

Outside the university, in the wide square directly opposite the main building, they stood and watched the stalls and stages going up for the festival which began that very night. Too stunned for conversation, they just stood there like additions to the statuary that lined the walls of the old university. A short while later, in a far corner of the square, they glimpsed the musicians with whom they had travelled downriver, and the giant firbolg even waved at them across the open space.

Rakasha waved back and Virion nodded.

“What now?” the orc asked as the musicians returned their attention to their preparations for the evening. It was the first time either of them had dared address the issue.

Virion shrugged. “I guess we could go our separate ways… no need for you to delay your Wandering by - what did you call it? - ‘babysitting a stray puppy’?”

Rakasha’s cheeks did darken to a beautiful olive green at that, and she kicked at a pebble beneath her feet, sending it skittering under the iron rimmed wheels of a passing waggon. Her fingers twisted the band on her finger as she said, “I think you know I don’t see you that way anymore…”

With a grin, he said, “We could stay here for a bit then?”

She nodded.

The first inn they found charged outrageous prices, so they went a little further back from the market square and found a boarding house run by a drider who was friendlier to non-humans and offered them surprisingly reasonable rates for her one remaining room. A double, as it happened.

“You mind sharing?” Virion asked and she grinned.

“Do you?” she fired back.

The festival was beautiful. Mage-crafted fireworks soared into the sky from the crenellations of the university building, and music played and people danced. There was a play that utterly entranced Rakasha, and after they had sampled from a number of stalls selling food from all over the continent, Virion even managed to coerce Rakasha into dancing with him, the two of them slotting into line at the end of a simple partner dance before it started.

It wasn’t complicated, and he found himself entranced at the way her eyes glittered in the low light and how her tusks glinted as she laughed.

They caught up with the troupe from the barge some while later, but Virion could hardly take his eyes from Rakasha. Her skin gleamed with a slight sheen of sweat from dancing, and she seemed almost a different creature now.

“Here,” Aeqen laughed, putting a flower crown around her head. “Perfect.”

She blushed like a temple virgin and tried not to look at Virion, which only made them all laugh.

Eventually, when they’d had their fill of festival sweets and vigorous dancing, they shared a look that said the same thing, and they left the square, heading through the streets to their little boarding house room. Rakasha took his hand in hers and squeezed it.

“You enjoy tonight?” she asked, and he nodded. The rings clicked softly together as the bands connected briefly in their intertwined hands.

“Yeah. You… uh…” he said awkwardly. “You looked…”

“What?” she laughed, her long hair loose and flowing down her back. She was still wearing the flower crown.

“Honestly… gorgeous…” he finished rather lamely, and she grinned, halting.

They’d paused in a tiny little square with barely enough room for a stone fountain in the space between the houses, but she drew him close and leaned down, tilting his chin up. His jaw bore the scruff of more than a few days without shaving, but she didn't seem to object as she tilted his face up and lowered her own towards him. Her eyes were incredible and he forgot how to breathe as she began to kiss him.

He reached his hands up into her thick, dark hair and gripped her so tightly she growled and drew back.

She quirked a questioning eyebrow and he nodded.

The two of them made their way back to the boarding house without stopping again, though Virion’s dark leggings definitely seemed a size too small.

Inside their room, Rakasha backed him into the door by way of closing it, and ground herself against him. He wasn’t short, but he felt more than a little dwarfed by her size and strength. Exhilarated by that, breathless, dizzy, and thrumming all over, he kissed her back, his hands wandering over her body, desperate for a touch of her skin.

He pushed her back, and she obliged curiously. Virion��s fingers slid under her loose tunic and she shrugged it off, bearing her muscular torso for him. He jutted his chin towards the bed and she backed slowly towards it, coyly undoing the laces at the top of her loose trousers. He sank his teeth into his lower lip and watched her slide the fabric - trousers and undergarments as one - free of her wide hips. Next came the fabric binding around her breasts. The muscles of her abs clenched as he reached for them and with a feather-light touch, he pushed her back onto the bed.

She parted her legs invitingly and he struggled out of his own clothing, abandoning it all on the floor beside the bed.

When he returned his attention to her, her fingers had slid between her legs and she was slowly circling her swollen clit, her golden eyes locked on him. Her other hand had cupped her breast and she pinched her hardening nipple between finger and thumb and he felt his cock twitch and swell.

Her eyes tracked the movement and she jutted her chin, trying to get him to come closer. He obeyed and ran his hand over the clearly-defined muscles of her thighs, watching the way her breath hitched visibly, her back arching at the drag of his fingertips over her dark green skin.

“Rakasha,” he said, voice husky and a little deeper. “Tell me what you want?”

“You,” she snarled. “I want you.”

His hand closed around his cock and he worked himself to full hardness while he watched her teasing herself. She was slick and wet and so inviting that it didn’t take long for him to kneel between her legs and line himself up with her entrance. Her lips parted and her jaw went slack, and he watched her throat work as she swallowed. He wondered what it’d feel like if she did that with his cock in her mouth, and it responded accordingly, twitching and leaking pre-come down onto her clit.

“Hurry up,” she snarled, bending one leg at the knee and shifting her hips invitingly. He didn't need telling twice.

As he slid slowly inside her tight heat, he rested his left hand on her bent leg, stretching her as he entered her, and she let out a deep, guttural moan. Her muscles clenched around him and he fought the urge to come like a virgin inside her already. Breathing deeply, he sank hilt-deep into her and paused.

“You’re so tight,” he gasped, leaning forwards head bowing.

Reaching for him, she grabbed his hair and snarled, “Move…”

Unable to deny her request, he rolled his hips back and forth, breathless at the sensations of her body around his, the slick heat of her. Sounds began to roll out of her as her chest heaved and she played with her breasts. She never took her eyes off his face though. He moved his thumb to her clit and circled in time with each thrust, and he felt her react to his touch immediately.

Her breathing quickened, chest heaving, and she arched and thrashed as he took her closer. White hot pleasure coiled in him and he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. Picking up his speed, he altered his angle a little and caught that place inside her that made her cry out. Her tusks jutted upwards, her hands abandoned her chest and grabbed the sheets as she arched and writhed beneath him.

“Come for me,” she demanded, opening her eyes again, and as her gaze met his, his release ripped through him like a landslide. A second later, she followed him, and the clenching of her muscles around his cock drew out his own pleasure until he was shaky and weak all over. He fell forwards onto his elbows, breathing hard, barely missing her face as he collapsed on top of her.

Her hands found his back and began to trace idle lines over his skin while he panted, heartbeat thudding in his ears.

Playfully, she squeezed her inner muscles around him and he grunted a half-hearted complaint, which only made her laugh.

Eventually he rolled onto his side, grunting softly as he slid free of her, and she followed and tucked his body gently against her side. Her lips landed softly on his sweaty temple and she whispered, “Little human, did I break you?”

He shook his head, unable to form words just yet.

“You sure?”

“Shut up,” he grinned, considering elbowing her in the ribs, and she laughed.

“If someone had told me back at that bazaar that I’d be lying in bed with a human who had just made me come like that,” she said, “I’d have sunk my axe into them… probably…”

“Funny how the world works,” Virion said, his words slurring a little as an immense exhaustion washed through him.

He barely noticed Rakasha slipping free of him and cleaning herself up, only to return and draw the sheets up over them both. She curled up on her side, facing away from him, and he rolled over and nuzzled up against the bulwark of her back, inhaling the scent of her thick hair and the expanse of her soft green skin.

He let his hand play over the dip in her waist for just a moment longer, and then hugged himself a little closer before sleep claimed him and he sank willingly down into it.

—

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#female orc #orc #exophilia #monster girlfriend #orc x human

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