***** Author's Notes *****

I didn't want to leave my readers hanging too long who've become attached to Zathra ;) so I hurried to finish up this chapter faster just for y'all! I really appreciate all the comments I received. It really energizes me to write faster 3

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45

Zathra's head was spinning... No, HE was spinning in a great arc through the air. First one direction, then another, and back again. A disorienting whiplash rattled his brain, quickly making it impossible to know which direction was up. His body screamed urgently for the pain shooting up his arm from where the earth had locked its jaws into his flesh. Scrambled as the thrashing was, it was all he could do to pump every last ounce of his depleted magic reserves through his hand. From where the limb was firmly down the warg's gullet, the orc sent a massive flare of energy out of his fingertips. A pale blue light blasted outwards from the gray beast's orifices, crackling with raw power.

The warg's teeth, which had been holding him firmly in their grasp, snapped open in a yelp of surprise, but not before Zathra felt a jaw-clenching crack as flesh parted from flesh. It was probably a blessing in disguise that he was already going into shock from the attack, for when his arm separated in two, all he felt was a numbing sensation. The charge of his magic rippled and stretched, before finally buckling as his concentration was destroyed by the agony of being torn into pieces. The static and sparks sputtered like a severed artery and petered out into nothingness. The extremity felt as if everything below his elbow was stuck in a buzzing nest of angry morgai flies.

No... He thought rather absently even as he was thrown across the clearing, weightless, floating. It was strange how time seemed so slow to him. Thoughts passed through his mind at a leisurely pace, an unearthly feeling indeed. He may have even described it as seeing the world from outside his own body as he observed with despondence, Nothing below my elbow anymore...

Then the ground rose up to meet him.

A string-like arc of black orc blood crested through the air behind Zathra, spattering across rock and dirt as he landed. He heard slate shards crackle and clink under his weight and get scattered by his momentum when he hit. It seemed an eternity might pass him by while he lay strewn across the forest floor. His lungs wouldn't respond; the impact had knocked the wind out of his chest and his mouth gaped for oxygen. With great effort, he bore down mentally, knowing he only had seconds to regain control of his body if he were to survive. Taking stock of his surroundings allowed Zathra to bring things back into focus, at least a little.

From the corner of his eye, he could see where Barbaurak was preoccupied with a trio of wargs. The leader orc's eyes snapped to Zathra with a darkened expression, then back to the cliff, finally focusing on the cave. Then he turned and charged out of Zathra's line of sight with the wargs following in hot pursuit.

Zathra's mind was still swimming and fuzzy, but he was able to recognize just how bleak their fate looked. The advantage was on the claws of the hunting beasts; Neither orc had proper weapons, and the wargs knew the lay of their territory with the natural ease of born predators. It was a mere matter of wearing down the resistance of their prey, but it was clear the game could end quickly with a well-aimed bite.

Zathra groaned and rolled, shifting to see what his warg opponent was doing. No doubt it would be coming to make short work of its chew toy. His gaze fell upon it just as the glow of Zathra's fiery magic was fading from its nostrils and mouth. He noted with a smirk that its eyes must have been blinded as well, just like when he had pulsed magic into the human woman's ocular socket. It spat his detached forearm upon the ground in disgust at the searing zap of the magic, before setting upon the limb once more with renewed animosity when it regained its sight. He watched the beast whip its head around like one might see a dog do to a rabbit it caught. It ripped and tore at the flesh of his arm, chewing and gnawing until the bones crunched between its molars.

Though nauseatingly horror at seeing a part of himself being devoured threatened to make his stomach betray him, realization dawned upon Zathra's vaguely focused mind, The beast's distracted! I have a chance!

The moment the gray warg turned its back on him to toss the limb through the air, Zathra began to drag himself back towards the tree line. No other warg eyes were on him. He glanced back, still hefting himself onward despite the pain that bruised him up and down. To his relief, he was able to see that Barbaurak had made it to the cliff and had killed one of the wargs with a well-aimed kick down the spear still embedded in its vulnerable eye socket. But Zathra didn't have the luxury to ensure his boss, nor their captive, had escaped the peril, at least not while he was exposed in the clearing. Half of an orc arm wouldn't keep a warg the size of a draft horse occupied for long. He had to move fast.

The moment he slipped into the undergrowth, Zathra hauled himself upright, ducking behind the broad trunk of a tree. He sucked in a couple of aching breaths, not quite ready to check the stump the warg had left him with. Whatever damage had been done would have to wait to be healed anyways; the attack he'd used to get the warg to release him had completely drained him of magic. The orc tilted his head around the girth of the tree, just enough to see the remnants of his arm slide down the warg's throat. He glanced at the cave, halfway up the cliff face, spotting Barbaurak laying against the wall, seemingly addressing the human woman.

He wanted to take in the relief, knowing both had made it to safety, but Zathra wasn't afforded the same. The wargs that had pursued Barbaurak chattered incessantly, trying to claw their way up the shear rock. Once or twice it seemed they may have gotten a footing, only for the small juts of stone to break away under their weight. But his eyes locked onto a thin black stream that was starting to run down out of the mouth of the cave. It was impossible to mistake the sight of orc blood. A LOT of orc blood.

"Skai..." he breathed, eyes wide.

Without a doubt, the cascade of blood meant only one thing. Barbaurak was badly wounded. Maybe even mortally so. If that were the case, dead or dying, that meant he and the sharlob were trapped in the cave with no way out aside from the clapping jaws distantly below.

Zathra grimaced with resolve, knowing there was nothing he could do to save them, Lass is goin' ta kill me...

He didn't have time to deliberate either. The gray warg was starting to huff at the air and ground, wondering just where the rest of its meal had slipped off to. It was almost as if Zathra could hear its mind, interrupting his own thoughts. It was as foreign as a beast's might be, rife with hunger, searching wildly for the orc. He could almost sense the taste on its tongue that spoke of rabid fervor; as if the stupid beast was enamored by its little snack. Zathra grabbed a rock with his remaining hand, and launched it as best he could in the opposite direction that he needed to go. He mentally prayed, to whatever greater power might hear an orc's wishes, that the warg would follow the sound of the rock as it clattered to the ground a good distance off. And then, he made a break for it.

Once he had regained his faculties, Zathra found himself surprisingly unhindered for someone who had just lost a limb. As he clambered over root and through bush, he would have suspected it would cause him to lag, and while it did affect his center of gravity slightly, he wasn't sick with blood loss at all. When he had gotten a bit of distance between himself and the clearing, he paused briefly and glanced down at his newly stumped arm. The orc expected to see gore and viscera, yet, beyond the drying blood at the tattered fringes of his armor, not a drop was spilling from it.

"Wha' the..." He drew back the fabric and leather to get a better look.

Under the folds of his gear, where his bicep terminated at the elbow, the whole surface looked almost like freshly healed skin; not quite as clean or smooth as his normal work, but there wasn't even a scabbed-over wound in sight. It dawned upon him fairly quickly what had occurred. He had forced so much of his magic into his hand to blast the warg that when his forearm was ripped from his body, the magic must have snapped back like a taut rope being cut, and without even intending to, sealed the open wound by instinct.

His eyes went wide with a cocky half-grin of relief, "Tha's useful..."

At the very least, he probably wouldn't die as easily! Maybe, he fantasized for a moment, he'd be able to get one of those metal prosthetics he's seen on other orcs. A great big spike could be a built-in weapon or hooks for a replacement hand; there were plenty of options.

But now wasn't the time to dream up such things. A lone, unarmed, and disarmed orc wouldn't survive a week on the south side of the river. He doubted he could even evade the wargs for an hour once they really set back on track to hunt him. In a morbid way, he could probably thank Barbaurak for bleeding himself dry down the surface of the rock. That might keep the wargs off Zathra's tail, even for a brief moment. Hopefully, it would be just enough time to follow back up the trail the trio had forged from the river's edge.

As he gave his stump another scan, something else in the underbrush caught the corner of his eye. Tangled around the twigs of a bush, strings of vibrant red fluttered in the breeze. A couple of thoughts crossed his mind in an instant as he recognized it. The warg that Barbaurak had speared must have ripped some of the woman's hair out when it grabbed her, then discarded it in the pursuit.

It was the perfect proof needed to fulfill his plan to save Barbaurak's and the human's sorry hides. He knew his was a truly desperate strategy, one he was under no mistaken pretenses that could very well result in all their deaths just as easily as it could end in a rescue. However, it was the only thing he could think of that even had a modicum of a chance to save their lives. Zathra had an olog to find.

***** Translations *****

Skai - Shit