The orc gave her a toothy grin. “See?” It roared to the others. “She is still alive.”
“And naked.” One of the orcs said, laughing mischievously.
The orc holding Eldana gave her a lecherous glare, and she felt the dire urge to vomit.
All the while, Eldana had been staring at the orc, keeping it focused on her, while she pulled out the shard of ice she had used to impale the other orc with her mind.
She roared, hurling the shard of ice at the orc holding her with her mind, for it to pierce the back of his head, and out of his mouth. The orc’s grip loosened, and Eldana fell to the ground.
The remaining orcs stared, stupefied, at their fellow as he crashed to the ground. If Eldana were hale, then this would be a window of opportunity that she would have utilized to finish off the orc hunting party, but sadly, she was not. Blood spilled from her mouth, and she could feel her strength waning. Fear gripped Eldana tightly, she choked with it. She did not have the strength to mutter a spell or manipulate any of the elements with her magic.
She saw the remaining two orcs turn and face her, their eyes filled with such malignancy. Tears dropped down the sides of her eyes.
No, she thought. Please, No.
The orcs began to approach.
In the last bid of defiance and desperation, Eldana screamed, and stretched her mind out, seeking to slam into the orcs. Suddenly, Eldana’s mind was filled with foreign thoughts and images. They were so much, that they induced a feeling of giddiness. She retched and cried because the motion hurt badly. Her mind was piqued when she noticed that the thoughts and images were centerd on her. It was then that it dawned on her. She was in a foreign mind.
She looked up at the orcs and saw that they stood still, like inanimate objects. Eldana began to laugh, and then she lapsed into a fit of painful coughing. And then she cried. She tottered between elation, relief, and pain.
Eldana had just successfully become a telepath. She looked at the orcs, whose eyes were still trained on her, and she felt a spike in their thoughts. Their thoughts had just moved from one of malice and aggression to full-blown fear.
I’ll show you fear, she thought.
She forced her mind to go deeper, throwing aside any consideration that Kochob had admonished that the telepath has. The thoughts became clearer, and then Eldana touched something else. It was like a minute incorporeal mass. The thoughts seemed to emanate from there into the larger space. Intuitively, Eldana knew that this was their essence, the very core of their minds. This was what controlled their bodily movements. She latched on to it with her mind and fed it new thoughts.
Eldana watched with a cold stare, as the orcs turned mechanically towards each other and began to claw and bite at themselves. Eldana’s eyes stayed on them, even as they ripped pieces of their flesh out, and sprayed blood everywhere. She watched until they fell to the ground, dead from exhaustion and the gravity of their wounds. Eldana sighed, and breathed softly, so she would not aggravate her broken ribs.
I have to get back, she told herself.
Slowly, she placed her hands on the floor, heaving, and wincing with the pain that the effort had caused. After so many trials, she was able to use her hands as support, to lift herself off the ground. The pain was too grievous to let her stand straight, so she walked to her clothes in a slouch with one hand free, and the other arm pressed gently to the side of her ribs that hurt.
With her free hand, she managed to put on her clothes, and then she trudged up and out of the chasm. The walk back to the elves’ settlement was difficult, and she often stopped to catch her breath but she kept moving anyways. As she went on, she established telepathic communications with squirrels, birds, badgers, and any other animal she could connect with. Their minds were different from the orcs. They did not have coherent thoughts as the orc did. Their mind worked with sensations and impressions. So she impressed on them her desire for directions back to where the elves were and also asked them if there were any orcs ahead. The animals, though wary of her presence, sent back images of the forests, leading up to the elvish settlements. But none came back with any sense of more orcs in the forests. She moved on anyways.
It was not long afterwards that she came to the spot where she had met Meko earlier.
How quickly things change, Eldana wondered, instead of the usual tranquillity that had pervaded this part of the Ciroc, the princess’s feelings were now tinged with what she had just experienced.
What was supposed to have been a quest for relief, as Meko had suggested, had turned out as something much worse. As Eldana went further into the familiar ground, her ears began to pick the clamor of steel, and shouting voices. And when she broke into the home clearing of the elves, she saw a sizeable band of orcs engaged in a battle with elves. Some of the orcs had fallen, but so had some of the elves. Eldana heard a loud maniacal roar and turned to see Hermon battling an especially large orc. Hermon had transformed, his eyes were black. Yet he had not gone full berserker (surely for fear of shortening his life span). In the commotion, Eldana was uncertain of which side was winning. But it seemed to her like the orcs were growing more aggressive with every passing moment.
Eldana limped forward, and just then saw an orc about to bludgeon an elf
