Alex pulled Gill up against the wall, and Manny and the rest of them followed. They stayed there as the smell of the orcs approached.
Gill guided Alex’s hand upward. He pushed down all of her fingers except for her index and pointed to the left, signaling which direction the orcs were coming from.
All five of them froze and held their breath. Alex squinted, tempted to pull off her blindfold and see if her dragon eyes granted her any abilities to see in the dark. It was too much of a risk, though. The sudden shift from being blindfolded to being able to see might be too much.
Alex didn’t need to see the orcs to know they were walking past. Her nostrils filled with the smell of rancid meat and decomposing bodies. How could any living thing smell this bad? Alex thought. Are these orcs or the undead?
The orcs continued past Alex and the rest of them. Apparently, orc eyes were just as bad as human eyes in the dark. They didn’t take any notice of the gnome, drow, pixie, or human who were squashed against the wall, nor did they smell them.
Alex could see the outlines of the orcs through the gloom. She saw that they were holding very long, curved scimitars and had what looked like rifles across their backs. This surprised Alex, but she was growing used to weapons other than medieval fantasy warfare.
They were still a ways from the dragon stables, and if there were going to be this many orcs in the halls, it was going to be slow going. There had to be a faster way to get from point A to point B.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best time to discuss that. The orcs were still lazily walking down the hall. It didn’t seem as if they were in any rush. This made Alex wonder again what they were doing at the Nest.
If this had been as simple as “kill all the cadets,” you would think the orcs would be acting with more urgency. The way they were slowly moving through the corridors didn’t support that, though. So, what were they here for?
Once the orcs were out of earshot, Gill and Alex moved the group forward. Alex thought they needed to take a moment to regroup. Their initial plan was going to get much more complicated.
Alex guided the group to the mess hall. Gill checked to see if there were any orcs in the immediate vicinity, and Alex was certain that she couldn’t smell any of them. All she could smell was the food in the hall.
They reached the door of the mess hall, and Alex extended her hand to open the door with the crystal datapad. When the five of them were inside the mess hall, Alex guided them to a table and sat down.
Brath looked around, trying to figure out where he was.
Manny’d had a harder time adjusting to the dark than he had been prepared for. “Is this the mess hall?” he asked. “By the realms, how were you ever able to see like this?”
Alex laughed despite herself and their current situation. “Trust me, it’s not any easier if you’ve never seen anything before,” she replied.
Jollies, who had been riding on Brath’s shoulder, tried to flutter over to sit down on the table but got turned around and ended up on the floor. “Why did you bring us here?” Jollies asked.
“Because I realized there is a huge flaw in our plan,” Alex explained. “This place has got to be crawling with orcs. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to sneak past all of them to get to the stables.”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
“I don’t think the orcs are here just to attack the cadets. You know, if this was a raid, I’d be busting my ass to get to the end as soon as possible, especially if the raid was on a super-secret base with tons of dragons. But they’re taking their time, almost like they know something we don’t.”
Brath reached out, trying to find the table, and tripped over his feet. He got up with Manny’s help. “What do you think we should do?” he asked.
Gill pulled up his HUD visor, and it glowed dimly in the dark as he scrolled through it. “There are orcs all over the Nest, and they seem to have stopped attacking people. Most of the cadets are holed up on the other side. Guess it was just our hallway where the orcs were killing people.”
For the first time since Alex had arrived at the Nest, she was glad she hadn’t gotten to know anyone else. It would have killed her to have been close to any of the other cadets who got hurt. She knew everyone else must be hurting. She’d seen Jollies, Brath, and Gill with some of the kids on their floor.
If Gill was upset, he was hiding it very well. His voice was even and neutral, devoid of any emotion when he spoke. Alex wondered if that was a drow thing. “I don’t think we should focus on rescuing anyone. The instructors are capable of that.”
Jollies squeaked loudly, and her skin became brilliant red. “Wait, are you saying we should just leave them?”
Brath shook his head. “I’m saying we never planned to do any sort of rescue to begin with. And we are also unarmed unless you want to count my knife. The instructors must know what’s going on. It would be stupid to try to do what they should be doing. We should stick to trying to get to our dragons.”
There was a loud clatter of steel pots and pans in the mess hall, followed by shouts in orcish. All of the kids froze, staring at where they thought the
