The Tale of Draxxos

Entry 1

It all began on a chilly morning in the Wrothgarian Mountains, when Orc children become capable men and some day even soldiers. The weather was not cold enough to bring snow, but enough to rattle the ribs of a mer, and slow the running of skinny men. This day for a quiet Orc teen was the day that many had to go and hunt alone, with little food and limited shelter. His name was Draxxos, a name his mother gave him, from a dream she had shortly before his birth. He was told not to return until he had brought the skin from either a bear or a mountain lion. Draxxos was more hesitant of other dangers, like bandit gangs and legends of odd spirits and creatures lurking in the wilderness, but a simple cat or bear wasn't his major concern.

As he ventured past the wooden fence barriers of his village, he held tightly to his sword he had forged months earlier, another right of passage amongst Orcismer.
The blade had never touched living blood yet, and nervousness of the hunt was setting in. "Will it be sharp enough?", " Will it break against the creature's bones if I even find one?"
He thought to himself. Carrying on with the task at hand, he continued down a narrow path through the mountains of his homeland and into the unknowns of the wilderness.

The sea of dark green trees covered all but the tip of the mountains, and snow was barely visible in the sky. Young Draxxos had to maintain his barings on the land, because roaming too far would mean he would be stepping in another country, since the Wrothgarian and Dragontail Mountains were located between High Rock and Skyrim.
As he ventured on through the thick pine forest, and the daylight barely shimmering through the tree tops, he noticed a small clearing where the stream from the mountains met a cluster of bushes, berry shrubs, and a few dead branches ideal for a fire's fuel source. He stopped against a nearby stone to rest his legs and check for anything edible, but unfortunately small rodents had cleaned most of the pickings from the shrubbery, because their foul smelling "present" was left opposite of the stone Draxxos was leaning on. But after a moment of rest,
he heard the faint sound of crunching and breaking of branches, and dropped to a prown position to prevent detection. From the corner of his eye, he noticed four brown legs standing amongst the treeline just outside the clearing, nawing and feeding on what little nuts and berries that were able to grow in such a climate. As the sense of danger left his gut, a loud snap echoed through the darkness.

A hollow thunder shook the smaller trees and brush just feet away from the deer that was feeding, and shook all the leaves around it like a gust of wind. A fraction of a second afterward,
a large jade-colored arrow had appeared from the far side of the clearing and immediately landed into the deer's lower neck with a force of a falling boulder. Draxxos laid still as a corpse, hoping whoever or whatever had fired the shot didn't notice him laying there. Luckily, the brush had camouflaged him from the arrow's origin. The deer flinched at the sound and was dazed from the impact,
so it took off in a last effort to escape, despite it's fatal injury. As the deer left Draxxos's line of sight, three adult Orcs came from the darkness running toward the direction of their next kill.
They were not of the same clan, nor were they allies of Draxxos's clan, as they had red and yellow markings on their forehead and jawlines. His father, and his father's father always kept blue painted faces,
and was an easy distinguishment between warring clansmen.

The Orc huntsmen carried their longbows and hatchets proudly as they raced to the direction of the deer, each of them having small horns above their brow and ear piercings. To Draxxos, these men were simply occupying their time between battles, this hunt for game was merely sport, not survival. They were trained and hardened warriors, and the young Orcismer that laid flat in the bushes did not want to try his luck with them on this day. He thought to himself once again, "They'd send me to slay a beast, and I'd come back with a few dead soldiers!" . Of course, he knew it wasn't worth the risk, but a bit of humor kept his spirits up until he accomplished what he was really set out for. The men dissapeared, leaving no trace of their presense besides the blood from the successful strike, and Draxxos crept up quietly and jogged forward following the tiny stream up into the mountain side...

After an hour or so of hiking the terrain, and looking over his shoulder from time to time for the Orc warriors, Draxxos came to the end of the stream where the rocks aided the water in drifting downhill. Nothing special to him in scenery, but it was where the water was purest, so he bent down and gathered a few handfuls of spring water. "Quenched thirst, but an empty belly." He grumbled. Still no positive sign of any large beast nor anything else with large claws, he continued to carry himself further up the hill, noticing the more quiet details of the land, like the formations of stones and the sound of snow finally falling onto the tree limbs. But when he outreached his hearing to those distant things,
he also began to hear something he did not want to hear, but prayed for it the whole trip; heavy breathing. He stood firm, frozen in his tracks. Too late to drop low to the ground and even later to raise his blade, he slowly inched his neck and head around to see where the breathing was coming from.

Two deep, amber eyes glared at him as he steadily looked towards his left, and as his eyes focused on them, the rest of the image got clearer. He had walked right into the path of an arctic wolf, three times his size in weight and the teeth of a dozen daggers. He could'nt have been more still, but the Orc boy had just became a grown adult when his heart and muscles raced with adrenaline. Seconds felt like minutes, as neither he nor the lurking grey wolf moved an inch. It was resting on a rock jutting out from the cliffside, with a red tint to it's mouth. Draxxos remained where he stood but cautiously surveyed the area. The remains of the Orc warriors layed torn, dragged and mauled across the ground just below and to the side of the towering wolf.
But it was not the wolf that was breathing so heavily, it was one huntsman that had been drug from his comrades, barely alive and with multiple wounds to his chest, legs, and abdomen; His right arm was missing due to the encounter. Draxxos studied his enemy with every brain cell he could muster. They had died because they were not paying attention, and stumbled upon the wolf's den just underneath the large rock. They wouldn't have went home unscathed because they had hatchets and the bows were useless in close quarters. Draxxos had both key advantages: A head start, and his weapon's longer range. As he calculated the outcome of the Orc hunting party, he then closed his eyes but for a brief moment. Thinking about the criteria of what to bring back home, to tell the story about the dead soldiers, or if he should run from the situation completely, he felt a revelation appear. if he could best the beast that brought down these men, that would be enough for his pride even without evidence of their struggle earlier, since achieving something they could not was a tantilizing gamble of fate, despite certain death. He feared death, but in the way any Orc should, and that was if he died without a glorious battle. But he quickly opened his eyes at the sound of teeth gnashing against one another and the growling from the throat of the grey beast. He took a deep breath, unsheathed his sword with courage, and stepped one foot closer to the wolf's den. As Draxxos took his combative stance, the wolf raised off its sitting position and jumped from the overhead rock and landed directly in front of the boy's raised sword. Fate. Skill. Luck. These were the things Draxxos had studied on all his life, and he was about to put all three to the test...