Elric and Claude froze in their tracks. The sappy grins on their faces from seeing a beautiful lake dispersed at once as sweat fell off their foreheads in buckets. On the other end of the lake, the Orcs too seemed confused at the sudden appearance of the humans on the other side.
Taking in a deep breath, Elric took a step forward.
"E-Elric…" Claude muttered but stopped when Elric shook his head. The auburn-haired child walked up to the edge of the lake and cupped his hands in front of his mouth.
He had to confirm something.
"ARE—" Elric screamed. "YOU HIDING ANY PRINCESSES?!"
"Princesses~"
"Cesses~"
His voice echoed through the waterbody, reaching even the other side.
The Orcs all tilted their heads to the side.
Then, the green monsters with rotund faces spread open their mouth. The tusk-like fangs sticking out of their deformed lips gleamed menacingly as their split tongues stuck out.
"GRAH!!" The orcs screamed right back and jumped into action. Two ran in both directions, trying to circle the lake.
"I guess not," Elric said.
"Y-you bastard!" Claude grabbed Elric's shoulders and shook him back and forth. Right then, the last and the largest of the orcs leaped into the lake and swam toward them.
"H-hey! We were planning to drink that!"
Elric wailed on, his words ignoring the shaking of the ground with each step the two-meter hefty giants took toward them. Before he could complain any further, his hand was clasped tight and Claude ran off with Elric.
The two of them were on the other side of the vast river, with the forest right behind their backs.
The orcs couldn't chase them.
***
"Grrr! Garra!"
"Grgr!"
Nasal grunts were exchanged like words between the two giant pig-faced monsters. The two orcs waved their hands around and turned their backs. The first one pulled back the leather skin hung from a rope and pulled it aside as the other orc crouched slightly and walked through the door of the weak house. Straw and wood curved upward to create a small but tall house.
The stench of manure cementing the houses wafted through the air, but even that wasn't as bad as the natural body odor of the orcs moving around with their bodies barely covered by the rotting hides of their game.
"Smell it, you bastard. Still think boiling would work? Huh!?"
Claude averted his gaze at Elric's words. He covered his nose with trembling eyes, the stench was that bad. Elric, on the other hand, was still offended by Claude's nonchalance at the corruption of their lake water, not thinking that many creatures might have used it in the ages.
The two children found the presence of the many orcs a big incongruence when they got to thinking. Since they had established that the mist separates anything and everything, multiple orcs being around could have only been a coincidence, but upon investigating, things couldn't have been further from the truth.
Beyond the bush they had taken refuge in, more than two dozen huts of mud and manure stood tall. The giant pig-faced orcs moved around in the clearing of the huts with a trodden path from the center leading to another clearing full of huts.
Adjacent to the lake, in the ever-changing mystic forest, there was an entire settlement of Orcs, immune to the mist and its whimsical changings.
"Elric," Claude muttered, scouring the huts with his eyes. "We can't leave this place."
"Right," Elric nodded, doing the same. "We have to stay here…"
"… For a clue to escape."
"… For revenge of the water."
Elric and Claude blinked. They turned to their sides and faced each other with a scowl.
"Fuck is wrong with you, man? Revenge? Water revenge?"
"What would you understand? You are not a water attribute! Do you think your escape is as important as water?"
"Hell? You can't do anything but create water and then faint! And it's just one lake! Heck, do YOU not care about escaping?!"
Before they could grab each other's collars and start a chain of 'Hmmm!'s with each other, the two of them clicked their tongues and looked away.
"Anyway," Claude said. "These Orcs know something about the forest. Before the mist comes in, we should follow at least one of them."
"That and the water," Elric nodded. "And, we don't need to follow, it seems some of the huts are occupied."
"Does that mean the entire area moves at once?"
"Hm, I don't think the entire place is being counted as one and then being moved normally. Everything except this place moves? That makes more sense, or the structures would have collapsed long back. That and, it explains how they found it."
Claude raised his eyebrows and nodded. The changing terrain below would have caused a lot of problems for the state of the houses. Convinced, Claude slowly got on his feet, he looked around the place once and then dashed out of the bushes. He jumped over the roots and the rocks and bent low against the gate of an empty hut, the one that one of the orcs standing out just now had occupied.
Claude slowly leaned further toward the gate and peeked inside the door. He looked to the left and right, then turned back to Elric, beckoning him over.
Elric stood up straight and casually strode over to Claude.
"Fucking hell! What do you think you are doing!?" Claude screamed in a whisper, a superhuman feat only the most annoyed of people could perform.
At Claude's nagging, Elric finally crouched down too and the two of them slowly crawled their way inside the hut.
The stench of the manure only increased inside as the windowless hut with its door covered by skin accumulated a lot of stale air. The structure inside the hut was simple, a pile of hay stacked up to form a bed on the left and a legged table with a hollow bottom on the right. Light coming in through the door shone on the table, revealing all the disheveled cuts in its making, the pitcher on the table as well as the small fireplace made of stone and sand right next to it.
Elric and Claude walked around the room for a few seconds.
"Nothing particularly important," Claude said.
"Are you serious? You think someone can live like a monk here?!" Elric was going on a different tangent as he tapped the ground and the walls. "Look, there might be a princess or two underground or hidden somewhere!"
"I don't know if I should be worried about your obsession with orcs and princesses." Claude tapped the hay, then smelled his hand and frowned, taking his hand away. "Ew. They don't live like monks. Orcs just don't have the mental capacity—"
A shuffling sound rang out as the cloth covering the door was pulled to the side. Claude and Elric did not even turn to the door as they dived down to the table.
An orc, laughing nasally stepped inside the hut.
Its eyes shifted through the room. Right as two pairs of legs scuffled under its bed, its eyes fell toward the table.
Claude's head banged on the bottom of the table in his rush.
The orc looked away.
It hadn't noticed.
It stepped toward the hay.
In front of Elric and Claude's eyes…
… The pitcher of water fell off the table.