The Dumb Orc C Learns To Pray

Orc C, a slow-witted and disposable soldier in a brutal clan that measures worth only by violence. During a failed raid, he is separated from his warband and wanders into the ruins of a human monastery. There, he encounters a faded mural of a kneeling monk instructing others in prayer. Orc C cannot grasp the meaning of the image, but he memorizes it. Instead of returning fully to his warband, Orc C carries the image of the kneeling monk in his mind like a wound that will not close. The gesture makes no sense to him, yet it unsettles him. Before the next raid can begin, he slips away from the clan’s encampment under cover of darkness. He does not know where he is going, only that remaining among warriors who measure life by bloodshed now feels intolerable. He abandons his weapons except for a simple wooden staff, too blunt to kill easily, yet enough to keep him from being defenseless and begins to wander, repeating the strange posture of prayer whenever fear or hunger overtakes him. His solitary journey leads him across lands scarred by war and abandoned by their people. He imitates the ritual without understanding its words or purpose, and it changes nothing about his strength or intellect, but it alters his behavior. He hesitates before violence, avoids killing when he can, and feels a dull, persistent ache he cannot name. As he travels, Orc C struggles to make sense of this new feeling within himself, groping toward ideas of faith, guilt, and choice without language to contain them.