Page 3 of Rapunzel's Outlaw Orc
My savior backs away, stricken.
“No, please,” I cry. “Don’t go. I just need to figure it out. Please. Don’t leave me.”
But he does. And the sunlight dies with him.
Chapter 2
Brannock
“How in the ever-loving abyss do I get out of this gods-damned forest?” I mutter, swatting at a bramble that has the audacity to smack me full across the face. Thorns rake angry welts down my arms, tug at my clothes, and tangle around my legs like the forest is trying to keep me here. My shirt snags—again—and I growl, ripping it free.
I shoulder my way through another thicket, branches clawing at me, sweat plastering the rough linen of my prison-issued shirt to my back. When I finally burst into a clearing, I gasp like a man surfacing from deep water.
The relief is short-lived.
The clearing is ringed by trees so tall and tightly packed that their branches weave together into a suffocating canopy. Only a thin, reluctant slice of night sky peeks through, like the moon is afraid to look me in the eye. Off to the left, frogs croak in rhythmic chorus. A pond? Or—if the gods are feeling generous—a river. Clean, cold water.
I’d trade what’s left of my dignity for a drink right now.
I’ve been stumbling around for hours. Maybe longer. All I know is that it was enough time to come apart at the seams. Time doesn’t behave normally when you’ve spent gods-know-how-long in a magical prison built on silence and nothingness. No sun. No moon. Only the darkness and the weight of your own mind, whispering things you’d rather not hear.
And the reason I’m here in this gods-forsaken forest? Because back home in Drokthar, I killed a zombie.
Yeah. A zombie.
It was guarding some necromancer’s apothecary, and I was injured. I broke in for a healing draught, got ambushed, and did what any trained warrior would do when something half-rotted lunges at him with a blade.
I took its head off.
Apparently, that zombie was part of a state-sponsored workforce rehabilitation program.Technically alive,they said.Protected under necro-labor accords.
I did not get that memo.
So, I was sentenced to five years of magical imprisonment and declared “unfit for reintegration.”
Then, without warning, I woke up on the ground in this cursed place with nothing but a threadbare shirt and a splitting headache, with vague memories of a portal and bad dreams.
Redemption through relocation, a voice said in my dream.Serve your time in another realm.
Nobody mentioned being ejected from my world and dumped into this plane through a swirling portal. Or this forest being alive and hellbent on eating me for breakfast.
As if to prove my point, a twisted root lunges out of the undergrowth and nearly takes me down. I catch myself on a tree, panting, the bark gritty beneath my callused palms. I pause, trying to get my bearings. The forest gives me nothing—no moss to read, no stars to navigate by. Just dense shadows and a strange sense of being watched. The kind of awareness that prickles your neck and makes you feel like prey.
A rabbit scampers out of a nearby bush. Its eyes catch mine, see the scars and the sheer size of me, and it bolts like I lit its fur on fire.
I don’t blame it.
I’m not a good man. Hell, I’m not even a man.
I’m an orc. Big, broad, and green. Black hair, green eyes, tusks. My hands are better at breaking than building. And my temper... well, that’s what got me caged in the first place. Gods-damned zombie.
Now I’m free—sort of. Banished, technically. With no map and no way back to my world, to my friends, to a tavern with decent ale and too much noise. Anything but the sound of my own breathing in this cursed place.
The sun has set, the temperature dropping with it, but hunger claws at my insides and thirst burns my throat like fire. I don’t remember the last time I ate or drank. Or felt something that wasn’t weariness.
Luck finally throws me a bone when I hear rushing water. I don’t hesitate. I crash through the underbrush like a half-mad… well, orc, thorns and branches slapping me as I barrel toward the source. Hitting the riverbank, I drop to my knees, plunging my hands into the icy current. I drink until my stomach aches, cold water dribbling down my chin.
Heaven.
