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The Orc Invasion
🕑 Added 2022-07-26 19:26:01 +0000 UTCThis story was requested by SouthernCelt
Like everybody else in the king’s court, Prince Frederick was incredibly troubled by the growing number of reports he was receiving about orc attacks on the fringes of his father’s kingdom.
For over five-hundred years their nation had known peace with the various other races that populated their world. Unfortunately, for reasons beyond Frederick’s understanding, hostilities had arisen between the humans and orcs over the past several years. The word “war” had been thrown around in the king’s court more than once in that time but his father was hoping to avoid an all-out conflict, which was why he had sent the crown prince to a small town on the edge of their kingdom. There were rumors that the orcs had set up a camp only a short ride away from the hamlet, so Frederick had been tasked with making contact with their tribe leaders. Given he was famous throughout the kingdom for his superior diplomacy skills, Prince Frederick hoped that he could create some sort of peace before the conflict became too extreme. It was the most stressful responsibility he had undertaken but he owed it to his father and the people of his kingdom to try his best!
Once he had arrived at the isolated town and stowed his horse away in the local stables, the prince began his investigation in haste. The locals were stunned to have the crown prince among them and were quick to express both admiration for his father and concern for the attacks on their livestock and destruction of their fields. Frederick sincerely felt for them. Although he had always lived in luxury as a result of his royal heritage, he was well aware of his privilege and did his best to support those less fortunate. There were a number of times when Prince Frederick had been responsible for bringing issues of the kingdom’s lower classes to his father (who was so often caught up in the petulant dealings of nobles). With the permission of the king, Frederick had been able to ensure that new roads and homes were built to support their growing communities, and that taxes to the throne were slightly lowered. After all, the kingdom didn’t have a very large military, so why should the people be taxed so heavily? Given the growing threat of the orcs lingering just outside the kingdom’s boundaries though, the prince was beginning to wonder if that had been a bad idea all along…
After speaking to all of the eye witnesses of the orc attacks, Frederick decided that the best next step would be for him to get eyes on the encampment that was supposedly deep in the forest that surrounded the town. One of the local guards had volunteered to come with him, but the prince refused the offer, stating that it would be easier for him to be stealthy if he went alone. It was precisely the kind of thing that his father would have advised him against, but Frederick much preferred getting things done himself rather than having to rely on anyone else. He wasn’t exactly going to be marching into the orc encampment with the intention of taking them all on, he was simply getting necessary information about their numbers and their weaponry. He could then send those details back to the capital for the king to decide what the next steps should be.
Unfortunately even with all the care he took to stay as stealthy as possible as he made his way through the forest, Prince Frederick was spotted by one of the orc scouts, who had rapidly passed the information all the way back to their chieftain. Unaware that he had been compromised, the naive prince ended up falling right into an ambush - one moment all was quiet and in the next, he was completely surrounded! Frederick barely had the time to utter a swear word under his breath before something solid made contact with the back of his skull, knocking him into complete unconsciousness.
It was a mere twenty minutes before the man returned to his senses but in that time he had been carried into the heart of the orc encampment and tied down to a tree trunk, with rope binding his hands together on the other side. His ankles had been similarly tied, he had been stripped down to his undergarments and a gag had been placed in his mouth to keep him quiet. Despite knowing that he lacked the strength he’d need to break free from the ropes, Frederick was naturally compelled to struggle against the bonds in an attempt to escape. While being captured by the orcs was definitely not in his best interest, his surroundings suggested that their intentions weren’t to torture him for information about the kingdom like he had initially anticipated. Various unfamiliar symbols were carved into the dirt around the tree and there were at least twenty candles surrounding those bizarre runes. Some sort of ritual, the prince deduced, before an even more alarming addition pushed itself to the forefront of his mind: a ritual sacrifice?
Beyond the carvings and the candles were a crowd of orcs, the first time Frederick had ever seen any with his own eyes rather than just in the paintings around his father’s castle. Even the shortest among them was at least seven foot tall and they were all twice as wide as the human man, who suddenly felt incredibly frail in their presence. Their pale green skin and the large tusks that protruded from their bottom row of teeth only added to the intimidating factor of the creatures. Frederick had grown up hearing stories of orcs that feasted upon human corpses - was that to be his future? The gag in his mouth prevented him from asking, but it didn’t stop him from casting his eyes towards the sky and making a wish to his gods for some divine intervention.
His pleas would fall upon deaf ears. The gods would not be coming to save him, nor would his father or any of his men. Prince Frederick was at the mercy of the orcs and they had something far more wicked in mind for him, something that would ultimately help them in their quest to tear down his father’s kingdom.
One of the orcs approached the captive human, stepping carefully so as to not disturb any of the carvings in the dirt. Like most of the other orcs that Frederick could see, this one was bare-chested and there were a large amount of tribal tattoos covering the vast expanse of green skin. The beast’s beard was tied into a long braid that traveled all the way down to his belt but aside from that he appeared to be completely hairless. Frederick barely had time to acknowledge that the orc held a knife in one hand and a wooden chalice in the other before the former made contact with his cheek, slicing open a small part of his flesh. The orc then held the cup to the cut, allowing some of the blood to trickle into whatever mixture was already inside of it. As he did this, Frederick was forced to endure the hot breath making contact with his face and he resultantly wrinkled his nose in disgust at the rancid smell. “Something for later,” the orc growled in a low rumble as he pulled the cup back and slowly made his way back out of the circle.
While the chalice was placed somewhere out of Frederick’s sight, the orc who had approached him remained at the front of the crowd who were ogling their human prisoner. Although absolutely terrified, the prince maintained eye contact with his captor in an attempt to exhibit a defiance that he truthfully didn’t actually feel. His nerves were further shaken when the orcs all began to chant in unison, uttering their words in their harsh-sounding native language. As they did so, the candles that surrounded Frederick started to glow brighter while the temperature dramatically crept upwards and both of these things only intensified as the chanting grew louder.
Due to the now blinding lights of the sea of candles, Frederick was unable to perceive the effects of the ritual, but the gathered crowd of bloodthirsty orcs were treated to quite the unique sight. Slowly but surely, the human ascended from his normal height of an even six foot, all the way up to a mammoth seven-foot-five, making him the tallest human on the continent by quite some extent!
Frederick looked bizarrely elongated at his new height but this did not last for long as he soon adopted a width that was more fitting of his larger proportions. It was as if there were invisible hands holding his shoulders and pulling them apart, showing no care for the pain he was experiencing as a result. Frederick screamed into his gag but there was nothing he could do other than endure the pain and hope it (or he) would end soon. Having always been something of a slender man, the rapid expansion of Frederick’s muscles was incredibly noticeable. Attached to his boulder shoulders were absolute cannons, with his upper arms now as wide as his waist had previously been! These new muscles prompted an explosion of strength within the man and the ropes began to fray under the pressure of containing such musculature, but by that point Frederick had been locked in place by the ancient magic that was transforming him. Even if he had any awareness of what was happening to him, he wouldn’t have been able to escape!
Large trap muscles slowly rose from these imposing shoulders, linking to a thicker neck that his head suddenly seemed far too small for! This mismatch between his hulking body and his unchanged head didn’t last much longer, as the features of his face shifted and were robbed of much of the handsomeness that had made him the most eligible bachelor in the kingdom. His thin nose adopted a more bulbous appearance, with small forests of hair emerging from the wider nostrils he now possessed. Frederick’s eyes then sunk further back into his skull, while the striking sky blue of his irises was downplayed into an unremarkable muddy brown. By far the most noticeable change to the prince’s face though was the sudden emergence of a pair of tusks that burst forth from his bottom row of teeth. These tusks settled at eight inches long and were a sickly yellow in color, while the rest of Frederick’s perfectly white teeth became similarly discolored and shifted so they were jutting out at different angles.
The prince had always worn a small bit of stubble upon his face, but these hairs went through a rapid growth as they started to populate the much wider jawline of his transformed skull. While his stubble graduated to become a full beard of knotted hair, the rich locks dropped away from his scalp, leaving him completely bald. Then, as if he wasn’t already unrecognizable enough, a flood of green washed across every inch of Frederick’s body, eliminating the last sign that he had ever been a handsome human and firmly establishing him as just another crude, ugly orc.
All at once, the crowd ceased their chanting and the flames of the candles extinguished in tandem. The carvings in the dirt had been completely wiped clean and the ropes binding Frederick to the tree had burst, allowing the hulking beast to drop down onto his knees. As he stared down at the swollen green hands, a horrified understanding crept through the former human. He had no idea how they had managed it (clearly some dark magic from their accursed gods) but they had turned him into one of them! A chorus of laughter echoed through the encampment, further intensifying Frederick’s panic. He knew there were mages in the king’s castle who might be able to undo this wicked spell, but the capital’s guards would riddle his orcish body with arrows the moment they saw him! What was he going to do? That wasn’t his only question either: just why had they taken his blood?
To be continued...?
