Huru - Volume 1

Prologue
Somewhere, deep in the northern mountains, a thin, pale skinned, white haired orc girl trudged slowly through the thick snow and howling winds. Beside her, her younger sister slowly walked, gathering sticks, and humming a tune. “Aria, we should head back, it’s getting dark…” Marian’s bright eyes scanned across the dark forest they had been trekking through for the past five hours. Aria looked down at her sister and nodded. “We should have enough wood by now. And anyway, I don’t want us to have to sleep in the woods again.” Both her and Marian shuddered, remembering the time they got lost in the woods, slept on leaves, and hardly had enough food to get past the hours and hours they spent walking back. The cold harsh wind of the north was slamming at their skin. They shuddered with the cold, despite wearing thick leather targons, which were long dresses made with wool, but then another layer of leather on the inside made a sort of jumpsuit.
They spent the next four hours heading back. Aria carried Marian on her back for two and a half hours, and by the time they finally saw the faint glowing of the campfire their legs felt like they were about to break. “There you are!” Their mother, Coua, held out her arms to hug them. “Your just in time for food, and you brought back plenty of wood.” She smiled; Aria smiled back. Her mother passed her some food, tonight’s dinner was a hunk of goat meat, as well as some small veg they had managed to grow in the desolate food crops they had somehow managed to form in the snowy hills.
The orcs surrounded the campfire. Most of them were women. Since their husbands were still at work, either keeping watch, going scouting, hunting or in a small war between orc tribes. Aria sighed and tucked into her portion of food. It was supposed to be warm, but the wind had made it so that as soon as it cooked it went back to being cold and rigid. The other orc children had smaller portions. The logic was that they had more energy already, and the fact that they were smaller meant they had to eat less to fill their stomachs. Most kids though disagreed, since they were the ones who walked for miles to gather things like wood, mud, snow and even in desperate times they gathered frozen grass or leaves to eat.
Aria and Marian gathered wood. And when they got home usually, they practiced using their magic. There were only five kids in their village that had been implanted with the shards. There were more children, but the shards did not grow for them. Shards were small crystals that grew on the sacred rock, Achutin, in the centre of the great hut Achin where the elders lived. Each time a child was born the elders would observe the rock for signs. Then if a shard did grow, they would take it carefully off the rock and give it to the mother and father of the child. Then if both agreed they would have the shard implanted into the child, either in the arm, leg, chest, wrist, ankle, forehead and in rare cases the shard could be placed into the child’s neck. The magic the child had would then depend on the colour and shape of the shard.
For example, Aria, Orion and Marian each had a silver and pale gold, diamond-shaped shard in their foreheads. Each of them, according to the elders, had powers of light, including a spiritual connection to the dead. Each of them was then sent to train their magic, to get to know it better. They spent hours training before they had a good understanding on how to use it. Aria went through the mental notes she made; She could use her magic only when light was around, and the lighter the area the stronger it appeared to become, she could then use the light to form any shape she could think of. Though she had mostly always made small shapes and she thought that any larger object would take longer to form and would require lighter and concentration. Then the more interesting notes that she had found out was that if she focused really, really, hard that she could access an odd part of her mind that was wispy and seemed to sit in a place that wasn’t entire in her mind at all, and if she kept focusing, she could see a different plain entirely.  Her and Orion had named it ‘The Spirit Realm’ though the elders insisted on giving it the fancy name of Sirequa Eastri. They explored it a lot during their training, and, though they did not find a lot of spirits, they did find a girl once with red skin, black hair and eyes and who wore an odd suit made from a dark material that seemed to change colour as she moved. After the girl screamed at them, they quickly left, and did not come back for a long time.
Slowly night came, and as it did the orcs went to their tents. They were small wooden structures with pelts, wool, cloth, stone, and anything else that could be used for warmth or shelter piled into structures. The orc families sheltered, shutting the flaps at the front of the tents, and snuggling into their beds, which were small piles of dried pine needles and then some pelts thrown on top of them if they were lucky enough to hunt and skin an animal.
The night drew on cold and harsh. The wolves howled in the darkness. Under her pelt, Marian stirred. Aria heard her. Marian wasn’t usually a restless sleeper, so Aria turned to her curiously, her bright grey eyes staring through the darkness of the tent. “What is it, Marian?” Aria asked, she was slightly concerned as well. Usually when Marian was worried about something in the night it was important. “I- I can hear rustling.” Marian slowly crawled out of her bed and to her sister. Aria sat bolt upright. For an orc of six suns of age, she had oddly good hearing. “What type of rustling?” Marian listened for a moment before turning back to her sister with wide eyes. “I hear people! Aria wake mother and father!” They both jumped up and out of bed, the pine needles stirring under their feet.
They raced to their mother and fathers’ side of the tent and shook them both awake. “W-what is it? What is wrong?” Then they saw the concern in Aria and Marians eyes and their father shot up and raced out of the tent, their mother staying inside to keep the girls safe. Then came the cries of other orcs as more and more woke up. They raced around for a moment, gather their tools, weapons and armour. Looking around to see what, or who might be moving among the trees. Then. Suddenly, the sound of arrows firing down at tents, the screams as some hit enough to wound. The cries as some hit enough to kill. Their mother held onto them; all their eyes were shut tightly in hopes that their father was safe. Marians small hands were gripping Aria’s.
Their mothers head lowered. Aria looked up at her, and just as she did an arrow plummeted into their tent. Their mother screamed as more arrows came like lightning strikes. Their mother grabbed the girls’ arms and pulled them straight out of the tent and into the dark village. Yet. It was not dark. Whoever was shooting had somehow managed to light their arrows, and now tents were ablaze. Their mothers’ hands covered over their eyes to stop them from seeing the bodies, burnt, ablaze, shot and some just passed out with fear.
The rest of that night went by in a blur. Their mother taking them to the end of the camp and to the gate, running back to help their father after telling the girls to run, run to safety and that she would find them once the village was safe again. Aria felt the cold feeling of snow hitting her skin as she and her sister were hurled out of the camp gates. Aria turned, seeing, beside her, also laying in the snow was Orion. His dark skin made it easy to spot him in the snow.
There was a small trickle of blood coming from his arm. Aria struggled up, in the run to the gate some arrows had zipped past her, cutting her arms and legs. It appeared that the same had happened to Orion. She grabbed his arm and pulled him up, he looked at her with a look of relief that she and Marian were, mostly, okay but still a look of tiredness and in pain. “Aria, thank god your safe. W- We need to run. Now.” Aria looked back, she remembered that the Achutin was still inside the tent, still stuck. If it was burned then 6 generations of orc magic would have been lost.