ARJTC pt. 7

[Rhoach]

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |

Part 5

Part 6

Meanwhile, Uglutz had lackadaisically ambled his way over to where Rhoach lay, still twitching slightly. Grulg knelt down next to the wounded troll and stared at him for a bit.

“Don’ wanna go ta lockpickin’ practice…” the juvenile troll was muttering feverishly in his comatose state.

“Hmm…” Uglutz pondered to himself. “Dis olog blah oomie blah…” Nodding to himself, Uglutz called upon his shamanistic powers to heal the jagged scar of charred flesh running down the length of Rhoach’s back. Gradually, Rhoach stopped muttering as the magic did its work. The shaman’s powers restored the blackened skin and scrambled muscle the way Rhoach’s natural powers of regeneration could not. Rhoach’s eyes fluttered a bit, then opened fully. When he saw Uglutz crouched over him, he sprang backward and would have sprinted into the forest in a blink had the shaman not called out to him.

“Ug! Lat der!” the orc called after the starved, but still spry, troll. “’less lat stup, me vudu lat!” Rhoach froze upon hearing the word voodoo, if he understood nothing else. He had witnessed the power of Uglutz’s magic. He did not wish to be hit by lightning twice in one day. He turned back slowly to Uglutz. The shaman grinned and tapped his fingernails together, out of which sprang large dragonflies. Rhoach stood, not daring to move.

“Olog. Lat hep Grulg. Dat Grulg.” The shaman pointed at the field of battle. Rhoach assumed that this strange being was referring to the other orc, now in the action of parrying a strike from the human’s warhammer. “Clomp da oomie.” Uglutz pulled his lips down to cover his jutting teeth in an impression of a human, then mimed hitting himself with a large axe he unstrapped from his back, wearing an exaggerated expression of fear and speaking in a high falsetto: “No! Dun’ clomp me, me jus’ liddul panzee!” The shaman looked over to Rhoach, who wore a befuddled expression on his face. He was trying to figure out if the orc before him was playing some kind of trick on him, wanted him to do something, was mentally unbalanced, or perhaps all of the above. Uglutz interpreted the befuddled look as complete understanding. “Gud. Go. Clomp. Or me vudu lat.”

Rhoach cocked his head to the side. He understood what the shaman wanted of him (after a little pondering), but he didn’t know what he would get out of it. The privilege of being allowed to remain in the world of the living? A particularly loud clash sounded from the center of the clearing. Uglutz poked him and pointed sharply towards the duelists, his patience at an end. Rhoach shrugged and slinked off in the direction of the combatants, keeping low to the ground and fingering the dagger strapped underneath his forearm. His smart aleck attitude had been the cause of several scars from Kzar. He wasn’t fond of making himself appear meek, much to his former mentor’s chagrin.