An Orc at College 2 Read online

  “Weaker in others,” Trorm said, modestly, more to distract himself from the horrible pit in his stomach. It was remarkably like the one he’d felt while standing before the class earlier. It was hard to tell with most of the script written in elvish, but the basics seemed to line up. Mostly.

  “I’m not sure,” Trorm said. “But even if I were, I would not help you.”

  Soliana recoiled as if slapped. “What?”

  “This is illegal,” Trorm said. “Even if your argument that it can’t affect more than a certain target or area holds weight, it’s still illegal. It would cost me everything I’ve worked for. Also, it’s beyond dangerous. You could very easily kill your mother with this spell.”

  “She’s already dying!” Soliana shrieked. “Nymal, help me.”

  Nymal shook her head. “Go be with your mother, Soliana. Spend what time you have left with her, with her, not trying to make this illegal magic work for you.”

  Soliana stared, then glared, at them both. “Fine! Fine.” She snatched the notebook out of Trorm’s hands and began shoveling her books and notes back into her bag. Several fell off the table in her frenzy, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Screw you, brother,” Soliana said. “Guess it’s not just your people you’ve turned your back on.” She stormed from the apartment, slamming the door behind her, cutting off Nymal’s protests.

  “That,” Nymal said pathetically, falling into Trorm and letting his bulk support her, “Could have gone better.”

  Chapter Four

  The impact lifted Trorm off his feet. He had a glimpse of blue sky overhead before hitting the ground hard. A facemask appeared over him, the red-cheeked player’s face almost hidden by the shadows of his helmet as he shouted a battle cry. He pulled away and Trorm pushed himself upright.

  It was the fourth time the linemen had allowed defense through to sack him that practice. Trorm wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, which meant the light was constantly stinging his nocturnal eyes, but he didn’t need their enchantment to tell the team was angry. They blamed him for losing their star player and their status. Never mind that Arlen “Hellhound” Hunt had tried to set Trorm up and then tried to kill him, Trorm had revealed that he’d found a way to use magic to cheat during games and the team’s victories for Arlen’s entire career had been called into question, to say nothing of Arlen’s death.

  Things had been tense with the team for the last few weeks. They had their first preseason game in a week though, and Trorm had hoped that their anger would either cool or be directed toward victory through a common goal. Today dashed those hopes.

  “What the fuck was that?” Coach yelled from his raised platform that let him oversee everything. He had a megaphone that blasted his voice across the field in angry tones that would make a war chief proud. “What the gods damned fuck was that Watkins? You let one more asshole past you and your ass is benched for the next game because I’m going to send you to the fucking infirmary with my boot up your fucking fairy ass! Again!”

  They lined up. Offense knew the plan. Trorm wasn’t the starting quarterback, but it was still his job to call the plays. He’d tried when they’d first taken the field and been summarily ignored, so he’d adapted to his teammates as best he could. It hadn’t been hard. The problem was, it wasn’t hard for the defense either.

  This time it was Morris who let them through and Trorm found himself sacked again almost as soon as the ball touched his fingers.

  “Fuck you, Spinach,” Scott, the player who’d sacked him, screamed down into his face. All of the players had nicknames. War-names, Trorm had thought of them. Things that they were to be known by when the media interviewed them. He’d been supposed to earn one with Arlen, but that had all been a setup that had exploded spectacularly. Literally. The magical augmentation’s that had protected the stadium from magical cheating, in theory, had been completely destroyed.

  Spinach had been the name that the team had saddled him with. Trorm didn’t protest. There was no point in arguing with anger. He’d learned that lesson from his brothers back in the Glorious Horde. And truth be told he didn’t hate the nickname, not matter how racist it was. Spinach was rich in iron, it made one strong. Perhaps it was time to demonstrate just how strong he was.

  The coach blew his whistle, calling their practice to a halt.

  “Will you chicken shits pull your act together! I don’t give any of the gods damn about you fucking with Spinach, but you pull that shit on your own time. Arlen fucked us all over. He fucked us up the ass with a sandpaper dildo covered in chili powder. The fucker’s dead and we’re left with his gods damned mess. You want to take a shit in Spinach’s cereal, you go ahead and fucking do it if it makes you feel like your dick isn’t the size of a half-dead string bean, but don’t you dare fucking prove to those assholes out there that Arlen’s fucking cheating was the only reason we were fucking winning! Fucking practice like you mean it!”

  The players waited four plays before letting the defense through. Morris again. Trorm was watching, ready for it, and saw him simply give way, allowing Scott through. Trorm made no move to begin passing and instead planted his feet and went low right as Scott threw himself at him.

  With a roar, Trorm met him, shoving off the ground with his full might and meeting Scott’s tackle shoulder first.

  Since coming to Aflana as a transfer student, Trorm had made it a point not to openly demonstrate his strength. He was six and a half feet tall, green, and tusked. Humans already stereotyped him as a brute or a savage. Reminding them that he was naturally stronger than most of them without trying, let alone with the steady workouts he’d been doing since before coming to Aflana and which had only grown more intense since, had never struck him as a good way to alleviate their fears. Right now, he was ready to sow a little fear.

  Scott was knocked backward off his feet to slam into the grass. Trorm darted back, took aim, and let fly the ball to their running back…who wasn’t paying attention because he’d expected Trorm to be sacked again. The ball caught him squarely in the facemask, hitting with enough force that the shocked player stumbled backwards and fell over, the ball sticking out of his mask.

  The coach blew his whistle. “Spinach!”

  Practice came to a halt again as the players stood to attention beneath Coach. “What the gods damned ever loving fuck was that? Huh? You could have been doing that this whole fucking time and you’ve been letting these shit dicks pussy foot around? Cram it up your ass! All of you! Do none of you give a flying fuck about winning anymore? Did Arlen take your balls with our trophies? Where’s your gods damned dignity?”

  Trorm wasn’t sure whether he was more ashamed or more angry. His fists clenched and shook at his sides. All around him, his fellow players made similar gestures. The anger was almost palpable as it filled the air around them like a living thing. Trorm furrowed his brow. The anger seemed to be…shifting.

  He looked around, trying to find the source. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say someone had cast a spell over the team.

  “Spinach!” Coach screamed. “Are you too stupid to pay attention when I’m cussing you out, boy?”

  Trorm gritted his teeth and cast out with his magical senses. This would be so much easier with his staff. “Someone’s spellcasting!”

  The spell struck.

  The world flipped upside down. Then upside down again. Vertigo hit like a wrecking ball and Trorm could feel his own brain doing somersaults inside his skull. Nausea followed. He crashed to one knee. All around him his fellow players also fell. Many began to scream, clutching their heads through their helmets.

  Perhaps it was all the recent life or death struggles with Arlen and his eldritch monkey monsters, or Soliana’s sudden attack on him outside Nymal’s apartment, but Trorm tossed out a hand and instinctively cast his shield spell. Without his staff it was harder, but Trorm had long ago come to the understanding that he wouldn’t always have an implement available.r />
  Beside him, Scott shrank. He fell over, helmet suddenly too big as he transformed from young adult, to teenager, to pre-teen.

  A few yards away, Watkin’s grabbed his head and began to scream. “Where am I? Where the hell am I? Mom!”

  Coach toppled from his stand as his legs gave out. Trorm moved without thinking, racing forward as fast as his legs would carry him, and dropped the shield spell as he threw his arms out to catch Coach before he hit the ground. He grunted from the impact, then fell as vertigo hit him, his skull flipping about inside his own skull…

  He was on a football field. A human football field. Where was Trisha Madden? They’d just been talking in the hallway. No…no he didn’t know a Trisha Madden…the world summersaulted…what happened to the airport? He’d just gotten off the plane to Aflana and had only seen a single other orc hurrying by to a connecting flight. How had he gotten here? Where was he? What was wrong with all these humans?

  A scream drew his attention to the ground beside him where a human man in his mid-twenties was bleeding from what appeared to be two bullet wounds to the chest and a massive laceration across his belly. Had someone shot him then cut him open with a sword? Something glittered around his neck—dog tags! The man was a soldier?

  Trorm had no idea what was going on, but he moved to apply pressure to the man’s wounds. He was no cleric, let alone a medic. Healing magic was beyond what he knew. He was specialized in divination, evocation, and abjuration. Perhaps a transmutation spell could—the man screamed as he caught sight of Trorm and began to try and strike at him. What the frozen hells? Maybe he was flashing back to the war?

  Around them, others began screaming. Youthful cries. There were children and teenagers in football uniforms too big for them. Young adults his own age crying as if they were children.

  Trorm threw up his shield spell, for all the good it would do. Something was very wrong here and he didn’t know whether or not his spell would have any effect. Remarkably it seemed to. A faint dizziness he hadn’t been aware of seemed to be pushed back.

  He looked at his spell. Was it his spell? He’d cast it differently. Some kind of modification that he couldn’t remember ever learning. That was almost as scary as the screaming, dying man on the ground beside him. The shield spell began to glow. Something was pressing against it. Something he couldn’t see.

  Trorm hadn’t had much cause to use his divination magic recently but he called upon that knowledge now. Seer Sight was a basic spell, one that just about every wizard interested in divination started out with. It enabled the caster to see magic as if it were a physical substance. It was an amateurish spell, the kind that was only useful until you developed your sixth sense and overcame the need to use your eyes. Only in this case Trorm’s sixth sense was all kinds of messed up.

  The spell went off and Trorm could see it. A dark mist, pulsing with a with darkness and silver purple light, like a thunderstorm come to life, hovering over the ground, tendrils reaching down to touch everyone around him. One tendril pressed against his shield, making it glow. Why was his shield spell glowing?

  “GO BAAAACK…” said the pulsing mist and pressed against his shield harder.

  Another tendril came around, trying to get behind his shield. A face appeared at the end of it, holes for eyes and a gaping maw. “HATE YOUUU!”

  Trorm stumbled backward, falling to the ground. This turned out to be an advantage. He was able to get the dome of his shield spell up over him completely. It glowed brighter as the spell—the spell that was talking to him—pressed against it. What did it do?

  Go back, the spell said. He was at the Saint Scrolwerds Stadium. Everyone was in Saint Scrolwerds uniforms. They were turning into children or acting like children. Go back, it had said. Whatever this thing was, it seemed to be trying to transform them back into children or something. Was that why he couldn’t remember getting here and why he’d cast a spell with a modification he couldn’t remember? Had this thing already set him back?

  Wait, they were at Saint Scrolwerds stadium. It was supposed to have impervious magical defenses. Spells couldn’t be cast here. Yet he was casting, and whatever this thing was, it seemed to be working magic. That didn’t make any sense.

  His arms began to shake with the effort of maintaining his shield, which had become painful to look at.

  “GO BAAACK!” The mist screamed. “GO BACK TO NOTHIIING! BE UNMADE. I HATE YOUUU!”

  “It’s mutual,” Trorm snarled. If he’d made a modification to his shield spell, it had to provide some means of counter attack. It was all he had without his staff and no better idea of what was happening. He screamed and pushed with all his will into his shield.

  The counter spell exploded in a shower of light. The mist caught it, swirling about it like a hurricane of light and shadow. The mist screamed and cast the light down.

  Something shifted. Magic unlike anything Trorm had felt washed up from the ground. He found it impossible to cast spells, like his magical muscles were immobilized in molasses. The mist shrieked and fled upwards into the air, pushed away by the stadium’s magical defenses, which had suddenly been restored.

  Trorm’s memories came flooding back. He knew where he was. He understood what had happened. Somehow that thing, whatever it was, had caught his redirected spell energies and cast them into the stadium, which had restored its previous defenses, defenses which had then cast it out. Whatever that thing was, it was pure magic.

  All around him players groaned and got up, finding themselves back in their normal bodies. Coach sat up, clutching at his body where his wounds had been. Sweat drenched his face.

  All eyes fell on Trorm. What energy his muscles had left gave out and he collapsed backward onto the turf.

  “Practice is fucking over,” Coach called out.

  Chapter Five

  Trorm leaned back in his chair and breathed a sigh of relief. It had been two days since the incident at the Stadium. There had been no further practices, though counseling was being offered to the players. The pre-season game was still on and an investigation was underway. It seemed to Trorm that the investigators were looking more into the restoration of the stadium’s wards than they were the attack itself.

  They seemed to think that what had happened was some kind of precursor to the wards reestablishing themselves. No one had so much as mentioned a magical creature or temporal magic. Both of which were fine by Trorm.

  It was too much of a coincidence for his liking that so soon after meeting Nymal’s sister, who came demanding help for a temporal manipulation spell, that a creature of some sort with temporal manipulation powers attacked him and his teammates at the stadium. Only, if it was a creature, how could it have been repelled by the stadium’s wards? They only protected against spells and spellcasting, not summoned or interdimensional lifeforms.

  He supposed it didn’t matter. If that was some kind of spell, it would be dissipated by now. Solaria, if she’d been the caster, would doubtless have learned her lesson, and that was the end of it. No one would be asking pointed questions about why a foreign exchange student was involved in illegal magic.

  Life went on. Which was why he’d done his best to go about business as usual and applied for a position at the university’s tutoring center. He’d just gotten word back, much faster than he’d expected, that they’d be ecstatic to have him. Apparently, there was a shortage of arcane-focused tutors. Trorm supposed that wasn’t really surprising. Talking to non-spellcasters about magic, or even magical theory, could be tedious.

  It wasn’t that he particularly enjoyed the idea of teaching non-wizards about magic. There simply weren’t a lot of employment options for football players. It turned out there were a lot of restrictions placed upon them that he hadn’t fully understood until arriving in Aflana. It was his understanding that a few players did jobs that paid cash under the table, but for the most part the collegiate football league frowned upon its players being employed, which seeme
d stupid to Trorm. Tutoring, however, they had no problem with. They were a part of an education system after all.

  He allowed himself a grin. Finally, something was going right. He had enough money from his scholarship to get by, but not to thrive. To take Winnie out in the style she deserved and actually live beyond studying magic and playing football. If he ever got to play football. The way things were going the team was destined to hate him and he’d spend his entire collegiate career on the bench, the token non-human on the team.

  The grin slipped away. There were worse ways to spend his time at college, he supposed. After all, whether he played or not, he was having his education paid for by the school. And as much as he enjoyed the sport, it wasn’t like he intended to go pro. He was going to be the Arcane Advisor to the Great Chief of the Glorious Horde. If he could survive.

  First Arlen Hunt and now Nymal’s crazy sister—because who the frozen hells else was going to pull a crazed stunt like that? It wasn’t late but he was ready to fall over into bed and collapse.

  A knock sounded on his door. Or rather, the doorframe. He’d taken the broken door down and repaired the doorframe since breaking it down, but hadn’t gotten around to actually replacing the door itself. In part because he didn’t have the money. Neither did the Maddens. Another reason for his new part time job. For the moment, a strung up curtain served as the barrier between his borrowed room and the rest of the house.

  He turned around from the makeshift desk to find Abigail standing in the room’s entryway, a grin lighting up her pretty face. “Hey you.”

  Abigail Madden

  Gender: Female

  Emotion: PLEASED. INFATUATED. AMUSED. MISCHIEVOUS.

  Interest Level: 10

  “Hey,” he said. She’d been doing better in the last few days.

  “Your girlfriend’s here,” she said in a singsong voice.

  He blinked and Winnie bounced into the room in her cheerleader uniform. The bunnygirl hopped into his lap, wrapped her legs around him, and pulled his mouth to hers in a searing kiss. Her tongue slid over his and she ground herself into his lap, pressing as much of her soft body into his as their positions allowed.