Fated To The Orc King

Chapter 6

▪️I Z A R A▪️

"Izzy, over here!" Mahala shouted across the dining hall.

With a bowl of stew in my hand, I smiled while making my way over to the mostly empty wooden table. I was eager to go eat my lunch with Mahala and another woman named Golnar, who was sitting next to her.

As I got closer to them, I allowed myself to get lost in my thoughts for a moment.

I had met the two women on my first morning of living in the castle. The both of them came over to join me while I sat by myself to have breakfast. Well, it was more Mahala dragging Golnar across the hall towards my table.

Mahala was what we would call voluptuous, having large breasts and wide hips. She was two years older than myself and like my mother, had come from the southern part of the isle. She had smooth dark brown skin and very curly black hair which she kept braided most times.

Even though she was short in stature, Mahala was what we often called tiny but mighty as her strong personality and loud voice would not allow her to be bullied.

Of course, given her connection to the southern region, we became instant friends as she had been able to tell me more about what it was like to live down there. Mahala had only moved to the castle about five years ago to be with an Orc named Conall, but he had unfortunately died during a hunting accident soon after her arrival.

During our talks, I found out that she knew my mother's relatives, something that I had always wanted to know more about. Apparently, my mother, Izabella, had been the odd one out in her family as well. She liked being outdoors and had met my father when he came to personally see about a shipment.

According to what Mahala had remembered from all the gossip, it had been love at first sight when Izabella ran after a pickpocket who had stolen my father's pouch. It was said that she tackled the thief to the ground, returning my father's belongings to him and he had been immediately smitten.

Unfortunately, it would seem that my mother's family did not approve of the relationship claiming that my father, Jaerano, was not good enough for her. Even though he was rich, he did not seem masculine enough for their liking and they doubted his ability to keep her in check so to speak, as if my mother was some wild animal that needed taming.

In the end, my mother snuck out of her house in the dead of the night, leaving the southern region to be with my father. Up to this day, people still talked about Izabella and Jaerano.

I knew that my father had loved my mother deeply, but I had never heard about this part of their relationship. In a way, it gave me a bit of closure, realising that my father pushed me away out of grief, not hate. While I did not agree with how he chose to handle things, I could understand it somewhat.

As my eyes drifted over to Golnar, I took a moment to admire the female half Orc.

She was younger than Mahala and myself, having recently turned twenty. Golnar was often very shy and soft-spoken and from my observation, did not seemed to be very welcomed among the Orcs, particularly the females.

Where her magic was concerned, apparently, she had the ability to manipulate the earth. Usually, half human-half orcs did not possess any magical abilities, but there were occasional exceptions. Unlike Orcs with the same elemental ability, Golnar had the rare ability to not only manipulate the rocks in the ground, but plant life as well, often causing roots and vines to erupt along the ground in her magic's path.

Given the strangeness of her magic, she never really mastered her abilities for the power of it was too unpredictable.

There was a time when she accidentally sprouted an entire tree, the raised roots toppling over a nearby wall. Since then, she chose not to use her powers, although lately, I had been encouraging her to embrace her magic.