The red cloth of the tent fluttered with the leader's pull. Inside, Adam saw neither the carpets nor the luxurious furniture he expected. There weren't even bones like those scraping against each other with each rustle of the cloth. Instead, braziers crackled along a path to a heavy, ash-burnt colored table. The timber was broad and heavy, covered with maps annotated with orcish words circled in red.
The leader tugged on Adam's chains, dragging him inside. The rest of the patrol team didn't follow, didn't seem to want to follow. Adam found out why when the leader flung him to his knees beyond the table.
He raised his face to a throne of wood and steel spikes. Seated on it, two red eyes shone beneath the hood of the first robed orc he saw. But there was something more—a faint, disturbing, stomach-churning feeling in the air surrounding him. It was as if the ever-present mana drifted around the orc, as if it refused to approach him.
