23:02, Rotation 264 / 365, 232 AE, -67.287899, -68.762616, Reath

  Orcans did not use condoms. But a gynous orcan could, with great effort, transmogrify a poisonous condition for embryos in the womb, allowing them the agency over their own bodies, the decision to terminate their own pregnancies. This was a horribly painful process, however, and there was usually recrimination to the father.

  Should no violence occur from the get-go, most orcans elected to go ahead and have the child, promptly ditching the caretaking to the Chief and the rest of the village. Sure, they’d hang out with their kid, but it was exactly that- a hang out. Enmeshment. Orcans were very often terrible influences on their children. That’s how the Horde worked, after all, ‘it takes a village’, right? And so this system was heartily abused. The village was all it took to raise an orcan child, so why bother the parents?

  For everything else-

  “Zholl - unh - Zholl - remember - don’t - mmf, oh! - donsha cum in me - ah - ungh! - alright?”

  “Mmh- Mmh- Mmh- Mmh!! Oh! Oh. OH. OH YEAH!”

  -there was coitus interruptus. It was the orcan way.

  “HNGH-”

  While they had been at it for enough time for Lawrah to be satisfied, and Zholl was indeed an above average lover – at least he knew which angles to hold for mish and muttstyle – when it came to cowgurl he didn’t get the hint and kept going like a jackhammer, and that wasn’t the point- that was Lawrah’s turn to shine. She was the cow now, and it would be she who would ride him. She was so looking forward to unfurling her kundalini serpent to awaken her tantric power. Instead, it just felt very- mechanical. Geshzugas, that was the word she was looking for- mechanical. She felt like she was just trying to stay on top of a mechanical warg at a rodeo. She noted that her body felt a lot more sensitive to touch and feel, which was awesome, until it wasn’t. She wished she had more control. If she could have measured her own dose of dick, she would have found what she wanted. Instead, it was like the hectic closeouts Zholl surfed, wave after wave, and no break.

  Not until he came.

  And now he was fast asleep.

  If she had to be perfectly honest with herself, she’d had much better zug-zug. She had to admit she didn’t really know Zholl all that well, not yet.

  And there was a lingering, haunting disappointment she couldn’t shake. It felt like Zholl served himself first, did not care to hold back or even bother to ask what she wanted. There was an animalistic appeal to just mindless skai outs, just pure taking of what was wanted. Discarded in a rotation. But that’s not what she expected. She had thought that it would be something a little bit more- romantic? She looked down at his glazed eyes, wanting to ask him- wait, what are we right now? Are we gurlfriend and boifriend now? Friends with benefits?

  Zholl was just stoked he got laid. He was trying to open his eyes to whisper a few sweet nothings to his new gurl, but in the throes of the afterglow, he just- he couldn’t be fucked. Couldn’t be fucked. Wu Tang. Ah, life is good. He sunk back into a solipsistic bliss.

  There had been some performance anxiety, but luckily his desire for Lawrah was so great that it overcame the shrooms and- nine? Ten? It was more than ten, but he wasn’t going to count past that, skai that. Ten plus tankards. Of- whatever, that malt liquor swill. He drifted off again.

  No answers from the glob. As Lawrah’s hand idly drifted down her still naked body – they were shielded from the glow of the bonfire and the gaze of leering voyeurs by a hedge of bamboo sprouting from a running trunk encircling them – snaked down her stomach in sudden urgency, reached down to gently feel her labia, and felt- it was sticky. It was dripping. Out of her. Oh.

  Oh no. Oh no! NO! Nuk-nuk! NUK-NUK, FUCK!

  “Zholl, didsha just cum in me?”

  “I pulled out, Law. Sha saw.”

  “Are you sure you did it in time?” Orcish gone. Real talk.

  “Yeah I’m sure. I’m- I’m pretty sure.” He was not.

  “Zholl, are you sure?”

  No, he was not, for sure. He wasn’t even thinking then, how could he be sure of anything at all? “I’m sure!”, he lied, and then, of course, the defensive excuse, an androus classic, “Besides, I mean, like, sha can’t get pregnant right?”

  “I’m sorry, excuse me?”

  “You were a boi when sha was young, yea? Sha mogged into that beautiful bubhosh zug body, oof.” He nuzzled up to her, springing alive from his refractory haze realizing that she was mad, and that it was crisis mode if he wanted to keep this going. And this was bubhosh ghash.

  “-That means it don’t work, and we can just zug-zug all rote-” he was trying to climb back onto her for a second round, for the orcan refractory period was very brief.

  Hai! Did he not understand how orcan biology worked? “Zholl, sha glob! I mogged my- my lady parts when I was just six revs, I just knew it even then, and that’s well young enough to mog a perfectly working - lady parts.”

  Lawrah was beginning to grasp the sheer lack of consideration. Brutish Zholl! It mortified her. All this time, behind all that confidence and charisma, all that duruk and rizz, and he was just this selfish cis het scum gezzno glob… prick?

  “Of course it will work sha gezzno prick, but I don’t WANT a kid right now!”

  “Ai-sha, zug, I’m sure I-”

  She slapped Zholl hard on the face.

  “Oi! The fuck was that for?!”

  “You selfish, gezzno glob prick!”

  They argued on and on.

  She criticized him for not being more responsible.

  He defended by saying he wouldn’t have come inside her if she just gave him a blowjob right when he was ready.

  She told him that he didn’t ask, and she would have happily given him one if he did.

  He then asks for one right now. Then she slaps him again.

  Zholl, getting pissy, hurled contempt: “Ya snaga slut, I toldja I didn’t-” Slap.

  But he would never hit a gurl. Never. Zholl had chivalry as much as he had machismo. Hot flipped to stone cold, and so, he began to stonewall. He looked away and refused to say a word.

  “Zholl you snaga fuckboi piece of nuk-nuk shit, answer me! Sha acting like a fucking stupid, gezzno globshit child, will you grow up please? Look at me! Zholl! You nitwit, you imbecile, I can’t believe I even liked your dumb orc ass, I hate you so much right now, Zholl! Zholl!”

  It went on for a while.

  And then the assholes noticed the drama, drawn to it like mosquitoes to flesh.

  “Think I’ll lose my mind if I don’t find something to pacify,

  Can you help me OCCUPY MY BRAIN?”

  Meanwhile and elsewhere, Zhon was finally ejected from the moshpit, he had not proven himself to be hardcore enough, for the clearing had morphed from an inviting razza warmer to a more curated experience, and so the lyrical content became a bit bleaker, the moshing more intense.

  Zhon was no metalhead, and the truth was Zhon was simply a follower of hype. Always having tried his best to outdo his brother, Zhon could not imagine a world in which he didn’t have to compare himself to someone. Hideously lacking in self-awareness, Zhon was quick to judge but slow in apologies. He still had ambition though. So, his only recourse was to seek the most gof ghash shit that hyped him and then suddenly make whatever new spinsum it was his entire personality.

  As designated middle child, Zhon easily got the least attention from Gnosta and Zahul. Zahul would always tell him to be more like Zholl – whom Zahul set up with every opportunity for success – but even when he did better than older bro, his successes would be minimized. Whenever Zholl had a skai up, the older bro was treated well and encouraged to try again. Whenever Zhon had a skai up, it was a catastrophe, the end of the world, and the younger bro would simply be scolded and punished. It was endlessly frustrating.

  Right now, with the malign influence of the Lions, it was being a partyhard fuckboi, and scoring as much hai, while drunk as orcanly possible. See, to Zhon, it was the combination of still being able to score while at the limit-break of inebriation that made the mark of a real gofboi’s rizz, sober pulls didn’t count, those were too easy.

  “Skai sha hai-”

  He dusted himself off. Disappointed that they hadn’t set anything on fire in the clearing yet, he decided to go to where he felt Deyandra would be- maybe he still had a chance with her? In the techno tent.

  The techno tent was blasting a squirmy, wormy tone that wriggled out a burrowing melody that slid through folds of gray matter. Scratchy blasts of static bass rubbed against it- a dragon curling through ominous clouds to a destination unknown.

  Githarie finally squirmed and wormed her way out of the dirt and trampled mud to a little techno forest pocket, overhanging branches providing a low cover from the tall, that was relatively separated from the music. She was bad tripping the worst she’d ever felt now. She was now terribly lacking in motor skills, emotional resilience, and clear cognition. She had been awake for too long, having gotten up before the passing of the last rote, when the twins sang her the birth-rote song. She had also drunk too much beer at the Tusk and Tooth. And then ate too many shrooms. And did too much coke, let’s not forget. She didn’t realize that going so hard at the Tusk meant that she was crashing on whatever waves of serotonin and dopamine that lifted her up then, she was crashing now- at the peak of the bad trip.

  Was more ever enough? “Skai-ai-e,” Githarie moaned and put her face in her palms, her voice trembling on the vowels. How was she going to get herself out of this?

  “DEY? Oi, DEY!”

  Zhon’s voice!

  Surfaces seemed to inhale and exhale, warp and bend, and she had to crawl on all fours to get out of the cramped, running bamboo nested little pocket. When she got out, she shouted, “Zhon!”

  “GITH?” He could pick her up easily.

  “ZHON!” Marco.

  “Gith, stay there!” Polo. He closed his eyes and began to echolocate.

  “Zhon, help.”

  And like that he found her, it was like a halo of rippling naz that he could connect to and trace, but not with his eyes, though the squirming music cast an alien landscape of squiggly forms writhing all which way. ‘Zhon, help’ burst through the faint tangle of lines like a guiding star. It all happened in an instant. It was hard to describe, the starburst rippled over the contours of the crowd reflected by the wiggly lines, and so he knew where to step and where not to, but he couldn’t for the life of him tell you what any of it looked like. It wasn’t vision it was- feeling into darkness with the voice to find his sister. He liked this bat hearing, and then he was entranced with that awe, because he was still deep in the current of the psychedelic trip.

  “Hai! Yer covered in dirt,” he brushed her off as best he could, “Whatsha doin’ there anyway, Githie?”

  She bent her head and tried her best not to sob, “Lawrah and Deyandra ditched me.”

  “Aw, that’s too bad,” Zhon scratched his head because he couldn’t understand what the big deal was, because he got ditched all the time. “I’m sure we’ll gimb-”, his attention began to drift, “-atul.”

  Miserable Githarie frowned. “But where?”

  “Ai-i sha, let me thrak you there, sis.”

  As shitty as the Zedholes might be, they would still do anything for their sister.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He scooped her up and she clambored back upon his back for another piggyback ride, and Zhon carried her to the ziggurat.

  When they reached the edges of the pyramid there was a swarming chaos of orcans bobbing their heads frantically fast, pumping their fists too, and stamping their legs. The whole pyramid seemed to shake and wobble with the sub-bass, but this did not worry Zhon, and that alone was enough to ease Gith. When they got to the first row of girders, Githarie swung her arms up to nab the bamboo pole that formed the base of the girders for the second layer and pulled herself up. Many other ravers had climbed up here too, but they were serene, bopping with the beat. The skeletal frames quavered with each beat as if the whole thing would collapse into the music itself. Still, she felt safer up here, higher above and away from all the orcs. Zhon gave her a puzzled look until she started climbing along to follow him and then he shrugged.

  It was the only stage that hadn’t switched to needles yet and was still building live performance music. The magick music machine being used was an orcan attempt to replicate a relic, constructed in McMurdo. They had only a few broken-down artifacts to work from, and a lot of the soldering was uneven, so it gave strange warbly whines from time to time. The deejay operating it, Jhaurd Kovaks, incorporated this into his sound into this live production.

  Sitting back on a girder base bamboo pole perch, she felt her spirits light up, alive again, and the relentless, pulsing beat, so much more rapid than the ones she’d chanced upon so far, ripped through her like lightning strikes of liquid energy. Colors reverberated in a fractal pattern around her, kaleidoscopes of pyramids and pentagonal prisms, and she was slightly overwhelmed. There was sudden deep unease at having lost such faculties of her senses after having just pulled herself up to a perch. She tried her best not to think about P.E.

  But she gritted her teeth and blinked twice and- yes, even though everything was overlaid with this repeating crystalline pattern of twinkling sacred geometries, she could still see. She could still see, thank God!

  She could still see what was right below her which was: a raving happy Zhon who had the biggest, silliest grin on his face she’d ever seen. It was so stretched out that it just completely gave away his altered state of mind, like the corner of his cheeks had been stapled to his ears, and maybe she might have felt a little freaked out by the maniacally grinning visage, but at the same time he just looked like he was having so much fun, his eyes squeezed together, his head rolling about and- well, she was rolling her shoulders in the same motion too!

  Bhubhosh ghash. Everyone loved Drum and Bass. It was simple and pure.

  The first time Githarie ever heard Drum and Bass she felt like her brain had exploded. She was completely sober then but still danced so hard she was a dripping swamp of sweat when she was finally done.

  And as she chanced upon more gigs throughout her sixteen revs, she decided- you know, after a while, it all kind of sounded the same. Sure, there would be the most bizarre and eclectic samples used, but the intense fastbreaks and somewhat derivative warbling basslines always went ohpee on everything in the end.

  Then again, when she was in the mood – and now she maybe, kinda, really, definitely was – it slapped.

  And when it really snapped, and it was a proper banger, it was awe-inspiring to hear, but all she could distinguish was- did this weird sample complement that calm before the storm that would be the hypercane drop?

  Well, you know, it did. It really did.

  She swung her way down and landed by Zhon.

  And as if on cue, Jhaurd laid out the fucking drop, and of course he didn’t actually have a sampler, but he remembered the lyrics to that life changing song his father and he loved, and roared into a megaphone:

  “Now I’m ready for the rave! When I COME OUT SO GOD DAMN LONG, C’MON!”

  Atul went apeshit.

  But it still- it still just didn’t sound quite right, quite the same to Jhaurd, to that wonderful track that he heard all those revolutions ago. His old man had thought he nailed it but of course an orcan father thinks the best of his son. Jhaurd was unsatisfied. It wasn’t good enough. Just an echo of a dead world. He would have to try harder. More bass. It was never enough.

  Still- he got atul to go apeshit.

  “WA-AGH!”, screams, “WOOT!”, cheers, and “C’MON! C’MON!” hollabacks, usually followed up with “LET’S GO!” and “LEEROYS!” rang out, barely able to press through the crashing waves of sound. The entire crowd began jumping synchronously before quickly and chaotically losing tempo with each other, so then it just became a stampede of stamping just like before. Arms thrown outstretched and raised, it was like a holy communion or a crazed desert dance for the first rains, and then that is when Githarie’s bad trip started to come back again. Oh why, oh why did she choose this moment to leap in?!

  Jhaurd held the wub-wubs for so long that it really began to make her anxious. Moreover, the intensity with which the dancing crowd – like a single organism now – flailed their limbs, she was terrified of getting smacked. She was already getting shoved, so tight they were packed together she was getting shoved whether she liked it or not, she had no space to nimbly spring out of the way as she normally did. Shouldn’t have swung down! Gezzno!

  It was too much. Way, way too much. She had come out so goddamn long.

  Finally, she had enough. No more.

  She felt sick, as the nasty shroomy psilocybe taste that was both manure earthy and chemical bitter came up in the back of her throat- yeah, she definitely needed to actually vomit now. She tried to grab Zhon’s pumping arms, but his elbow just struck her cheekbone.

  She grimaced and grabbed him by that same elbow, hooking it with hers, and he got the message quickly and held it out so she could lean on it for support. Instead, leading the way, Githarie pulled Zhon frantically out as she gingerly navigated her way through the hard thumping bassheads, ducking under armpits to avoid gerekt pokgai, because she felt right now that a bad enough hit could kill her. Zhon just slammed his way through the dancers.

  As long as Githarie had Zhon by her, she felt safe. But she had snapped back to survival mode – need to find a place to puke! – and even the visuals had mostly faded, but shadows looked more burz, lights more piercing, colors more saturated and deeper, and it made everyone, who had unsettling expressions of confusion, ecstasy, and euphoria look like wicked demented clowns. She hated clowns so much. And why was she sweating so much when she wasn’t even dancing that hard? She felt like she was limping from heaving body to heaving body, barely able to take the next step. Fuck!

  A shove interrupted her from her vicious cycle train of thought, and she threw herself into Zhon. She was cringing and at the verge of tears once again, and they tore away to a small clearing – the heavy scent of piss everywhere – at the edge of the throbbing, thundering stage.

  Though the music wasn’t so in your face here, the aggressive tunes still blasted out here to the fringes. Jhaurd had moved to the turntables, taking out his beloved holy black discs – time for the ancient ghash – and faded his own stuff that he kept looping on a repeater into:

  “Gurl you haven’t got time, you gotta get out- go far away…”

  She couldn’t agree more. “HU-Aaahh-”, nothing but a projectile liquid stream of liquor. It was excruciating to try and vomit with everything in the stomach digested, like her guts were all squeezing together as hard as possible into a scrunched-up knot, only to twist out a few droplets of moisture. “HU-AAA-” another hose blast of gastric acids and teensy bits of shroom fired out of her maw. She had eaten nothing since she finished classes, appetite stolen away by the cocaine. “Huh-huh,” she was good, she was bub, she was- “HU-AAHHH-”. Oh no, no, nuk-nuk, nuk-nuk, she got gastric juice all over Lawrah’s sweater! There was even a dangling buckwheat noodle stuck to the sleeve. She brushed it off.

  Zhon just tried to soothe Githarie by rubbing her back gently, patting it vigorously when a stream spat out to encourage more emetic discharge. But wow - the needle drop had released an even more torrential energy and, oof- his eyes strayed away to a passing ghash hot zug, although he kept it up with a few more pats on her back.

  Puking helped. A little. Her head felt… clearer? Maybe. Maybe at least… a little less drunk. The booze had faded from disorienting dizziness to just a dehydration headache. She felt relief. A little. Warmer. Like a burden, dropped. But then she felt cold. Really cold. That last puke – it was the final straw for her current composure. The post-puke warmth gave way to biting chill as her blood pressure dropped. Food. She needed food. Her stomach churned. And churned. She didn’t feel much better at all… she couldn’t even tell how she was really feeling anymore. Now she was shivering, and trembling. Like she was frostbitten. Maybe she was feeling worse. And worse. And worse. And it would just keep getting worse. At the end of the last “HU-AAA-”, when she finally stopped barfing, the gagging “-AH-” of the retch was replaced with an, “Ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh” soft blubbering of a rek tang zug.

  Zhon didn’t know what to say, he had never seen his sister in such a state.

  “Zhon, this is nuk-nuk, mubru, I took too much, I’m freaking out. Zhon. I took too- too- too-” The dam broke. All out now. “B-buh-huh-huh,” she tried so hard, so hard to keep it together, she would freak Zhon out crying this hard! But she couldn’t stop! She was Rek Tang Tang. Defeated. Beat down hard. It was despair now. “Ah! Aah-huh-huh! Aah! Aah!” She was sobbing, heaving, entire body trembling, and even her own shaking from fear was enough to make her nauseous again now, so disastrously misattuned to her senses, a psychic state she had never found herself in before. “AAH!” and since she couldn’t stop crying, she got angry. Frustrated. “AAAH!” She pulled at her hair and started screaming. Maybe, maybe if she just could- “AA-AA” Just purge some more of this- “AAH-UUH” she shoved a finger up her throat to try and force herself to vomit. “HUH-HUH…” But she knew that she had nothing left to throw up anymore, so even if she tried, it would just be senseless suffering. She spat.

  And then she lost it. “AAAAAAAAH!!”, she just let it all out in a scream. Why can’t this just be over?!

  It was as if her mind was being flayed.

  Zahul and Gnosta tried very hard not to set the bad example that their peers did, and given their smaller family it made it easier.

  And just like that – without express consent to ejaculate inside her vagina but doing it anyway, only pulling it out half way through his jizz in a half-hearted attempt – he raped her.

  Got milk, bitch? Got beef? Got Beef. Got steak, hoe? Got cheese?

  She had a misguided understanding of what cows were.

  Lawrah was never going be as nurd as virgin Githie over there, maybe she didn’t have Zhube’s body count, but Lawrah knew what she wanted and took it. Such was the case with Zholl. The Durban’s Daughter held her own.

  Really giving that Gemini energy, there, Zholl. And yes, coincidentally enough, the twins were Geminis.

  ‘Wu Tang’, orcish for ‘no fucks given’. A bit idiomatic- if ‘to go hard’ was ‘to give a fuck’, then ‘Wu Tang’ is ‘to not give a fuck’. Wu Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ to fuck with, they do not give a fuck.

  In his gluttony for pleasure, he had gotten greedy, and lingered just a few seconds too long, and would eventually impregnate Lawrah. The sperm was just working its way up there, currently. In his own defense of himself- it was cowgurl! He couldn’t shift her off in time!

  This was in fact one of the reasons why Zholl was crushing on Lawrah in the first place- creampies. Zholl really was a bit of an orc sometimes.

  We didn’t start the fire. But we’ve kept it burning since the world’s been turning.

  She could not say ‘vagina’, it was just too awkward for her. She had to say ‘lady parts’. She had spent so long transmogrifying it – no small feat for a young orcan – that the very organ felt to her divine, it had a holy reverence about it, so much so that she could not even speak its name.

  She could not say that, either.

  He was unlikely to win against Lawrah anyway. Lawrah trained hard in jiu-jitsu and the art of eight limbs. While Zholl was big and strong, and he knew how to intimidate, when it came to hand to hand, he was hopeless. His grappling was mediocre, as Mell had demonstrated earlier in the rote, and his striking was worse. He had never scrapped enough wurls because, quite simply, any boi who thought of stepping feared the wrath of Zahul. While Zahul might not have been the biggest or strongest adult orcan in Rothera, he was unmatched in actual combat experience. There was a reason why Zahul was the War Master.

  Really giving that Gemini energy there, Zholl.

  Paranoid - Black Sabbath

  He could never handle the Zedbois at the same time. They fed off each other’s energy whenever they were together – and that was all the time – they became insufferable. Whenever he got a moment with Zholl he would mentor, and he never bothered with Zhon for these moments. He assumed Zholl would pass it all on down to Zhon. Zholl did no such thing and sometimes changed the lessons to set gullible Zhon up to be more easily manipulated. Being compared all the time made Zholl insecure too, so he needed Zhon to be his snaga. If Zhon was doing more poorly than Zholl, everything would be ok.

  Zhon truly was a meathead of an orc sometimes, rivaling his brother, because what he didn’t grok was that he only told himself this to buttress his own ego: he assumed sober pulls would be easy only because he never actually approached girls sober, and it was a great excuse to explain his middling body count – only six gurls – one from when he snuck out to Carvajal by himself without Zholl out of frustration, only to realize he just felt more shame and vowed never to tell a living soul, but of course he did tell Zholl eventually, who found it top, top kek. It was just harder because he was playing by his own self-imposed rules. Had he been more sober he would have realized he could have banged Deyandra the moment she asked him to be her lokboi. But he missed the tells and the chance was gone.

  Traffickers - reflecting skin

  I lost my Da, my friend, my sibs and my home. I’m going to a destination I still don’t know.

  Her set: no one, alone, for Deyandra ditched her. Her setting: the dark techno forest.

  In the darkness bind them.

  It really was just too much shrooms.

  But not too high up, as to trigger her phobia.

  A Korg MS-20.

  He was trying to ape something that he had heard long, long ago, when his scavenger father had recovered a broken down arcane tome that hadn’t been scrambled by dragonbreath aura, and though the file was corrupted and he could only hear part of it, what he fell in love with was 1:24 to 1:47 of the song Hypest Hype by the Godlikes Chase and Status, and the Godlike Tempa T, and he had been trying to replicate that sound ever since. Indeed, it was how he and his dad – dancing right behind him – discovered drum and bass together in the first place. He hoped he had made him proud.

  Always some guy saying ‘selector’ in a Rasta accent? But atul would wave their hand, palm down, from side to side, in front of their face, every time. Every time!

  Orcish for ‘overpowered’, or ‘overpowering’. This is a very rare honor.

  Hypest Hype - Chase and Status x Tempa T

  You lose it all before you feel the blame. The taste that medicine won’t take away. And claiming innocence don’t heal the pain… Why can’t I see that too much is never enough for me?

  Her orcan biology would preserve her through a lot more than that – she would be surprised what the orcan body could take and still survive – but right now, thinking about death more than she ever has in her life, realizing just how brief and short this precious nazge existence is, she was terrified of it all being taken away from her.

  Whiteface. It was offensive to elvans.

  Witchcraft - Pendulum

  Mom’s spaghetti.