Chapter 3 – Vows, Villains, and Very Bad PR

Part 1: A Queen's Gambit and a Trial of Tongues

The corridor presented a different mood; the stones themselves seemed to swallow the torchlight, exhaling a cool, damp breath that smelled of ancient grievances and wet earth. Heavy banners, depicting a coiled dragon swallowing a sanctimonious sun, sagged with the weight of old smoke and older wars. Outside, the storm wasn't just raining; it was laying siege to the castle, its relentless drumming on the slate roof a constant reminder of the world’s hostility. Rain needled through the arrow slits, blurring the landscape beyond into a wash of wet, indifferent gray silk.

“Council,” Rina said, her heels clicking a sharp, impatient rhythm against the flagstones. Her voice was bright, laced with a deliberate, almost defiant cheerfulness, a splash of vibrant color against the oppressive gloom. “Gachi de, your generals have been glowering in there for fifteen minutes. The room has officially hit maximum brood capacity.”

Evelina didn’t break her measured, regal stride. Her gaze was fixed on the heavy oak doors ahead. “They can glower longer. It improves circulation.”

Rina’s grin flashed, a flicker of white teeth in the dim hall. “Maji? I heard glowering only burns, like, eleven calories an hour. At this rate, we'll need a century to work off the pre-war stress carbs.”

“Then add dread to the regimen,” Evelina replied without a hint of a smile. “We are, above all, efficient.”

They pushed through doors that groaned with the weight of their own history, as if resenting being disturbed. The War Council chamber stretched out before them, a dark oval of cold stone. At its center, a table shaped like a massive iron leaf was scarred with the ghosts of past campaigns and currently scattered with maps pinned down by ceremonial daggers. A tall, arched window framed the storm like a piece of violent, living theater: lightning stuttered over a churning black sea, and the faint, distant glow of the town’s lamps looked like embers scattered under a giant, smothering hand.

Three figures waited in the charged silence.

To Evelina’s left stood Gorund Volsarith. He was a mountain of an orc, vast and green-gray, his battle-worn plate armor engraved with neat, complex sigils of warding and reinforcement. Where his right arm should have been, a masterpiece of arcane engineering hummed with contained energy—his Aetherarm. Polished bronze plates, intricate gears, and glowing conduits formed a prosthetic that was as much a weapon as it was a limb. In the broken, guttural Common that humans expected, his voice rumbled, “Queen. Come. Sit. War soon.” he spoke with the brutality of a man who saw enough conflicts through, while also being the reason for those same conflicts.

Across from him, Caelum Umbrael rested like a carved shadow, utterly still. He was a dark elf of impossible grace, with midnight skin and hair as white as bone, braided with tiny, polished vertebrae. The air near him was slightly colder, slightly more willing to listen to secrets. Rings set with tiny, sharp teeth glimmered on his long, elegant fingers. He inclined his head just enough to prove he had a neck. “My queen.”

At the far end, a chair stood empty—reserved for Griksha, the goblin matriarch, whose attendance was always on her own terms. In the doorway beyond, the restless shadow of a goblin scout fidgeted, clearly terrified to either enter fully or retreat.

Evelina took her place at the head of the table, the high back of her throne-like chair framing her like a portrait of command. Rina slid into the seat beside her with a casual rustle of fabric, treating the grim war room like her personal lounge.

“Report,” Evelina said, her voice cutting through the low hum of the storm.

Caelum folded his long fingers, the faint clicking of his rings the only sign of his agitation. “The Hero has been summoned to the Cathedral of Centralia. The bells proclaimed it thrice; the wind, as usual, repeated it incorrectly. Lux Sancta’s priests are, as the humans so crudely put it… feeling themselves. Intelligence suggests he is a 'level one with unlimited potential,' whatever that insipid phrasing implies.”

Gorund’s Aetherarm whirred softly, its articulated fingers nudging a set of brass markers across the map—fortifications, tracked by magnets beneath the parchment. "Human army forms. At Ashvane Plains. Spies saw it.Dwarves build for them. Siege engines. New kind. Three dozen. They call them… ‘Godhammers.’" He grunted, a low sound of derision. "Foolish name. But… They are strong. Math is sound. They will break walls. And the elves. Always the elves. They send their… ‘curators.’” His lip curled around the last word, as if it were a piece of rotten meat he was forced to taste.

Evelina’s dark eyes sharpened, missing nothing. “Timelines.”

“Three weeks to first probing raids along the Grimfen border,” Caelum stated, his voice a calm, chilling monotone. “Six to a full, honest army with good shoes and a misplaced sense of righteousness.”

“Six is generous,” Rina murmured, examining her nails. “That assumes the dwarves drink on schedule and don't misplace a few crucial blueprints in a tavern brawl.”

Lightning bleached the room for a heartbeat, casting the figures in stark, skeletal relief.

Before Evelina could respond, the chamber doors slammed open with a crack of thunder. The small goblin scout skidded inside, panting, rain dripping from his patched leather cloak to puddle on the ancient stone.

He slapped a hand to the floor in a salute that was more of a panicked splat. “Majesty! The matriarch begs to leave, there is news,huge! Like, world-ending, history-changing, huge-huge—”

Rina, ever the pragmatist, flicked a hand. A nearby towel flew off a peg and landed squarely in the scout’s face. “Breathe, bae. Use your words. Preferably in an order that makes sense.”

“M’sorry, Lady Rina—” The goblin scrubbed his head, blinking his big, luminous yellow eyes. “A human. He crossed the Grimfen border, just past the Wailing Spires. Alone. He’s wearing the dragon-coil armor. And he—uh—he surrendered.”

The chamber didn’t just go silent. It felt as if sound itself had ceased to exist, leaving a vacuum in its place.

Caelum’s perfectly sculpted brows rose a half-centimeter, a tectonic shift for a man so composed. Gorund’s tusks lifted in what, among orcs, was an expression of profound shock. Rina’s mouth formed a perfect O of surprise, which then slowly, deliberately, twisted into a wicked grin.

Evelina’s voice remained as cool and steady as the stone around her. “Describe him.”

“He’s tall,” the scout said quickly, words tumbling over each other. “The plates of his armor are black-violet, and they move like it’s alive. He carried a massive sword and a shield shaped from a skull. He put them down the second we yelled. Didn’t even fight. Then he said, and please don’t kill me if I get this wrong, he said, ‘Take me to your queen. I brought apologies and bad ideas.’”

Rina clapped her hands once, a sharp, delighted sound in the stillness. “Iconic. Absolutely legendary behavior.”

Caelum steepled his fingers, his gaze distant. “The Coilmail of Nithraga should be sealed in the deepest vault beneath the Hallowspire.” His eyes slid to Evelina. “Which it was. Until, it seems, it wasn't.”

Evelina’s tail flicked once, a sharp, precise movement, like a metronome changing its rhythm. “And what, precisely, did the light elves lose this time?”

“Their composure,” Caelum said dryly. “And, reports suggest, a rather important sword and shield.”

Gorund’s Aetherarm rotated at the shoulder, its internal joints chittering like a thoughtful, metallic beetle. “It is a trap. The Hero’s first gambit. The shine-boy sends a man in cursed mail to sniff our warding spells and test our defenses from within.”

The goblin scout bobbed his head vigorously. “The Matriarch says the same, majesty. She says it’s a trick wrapped in a riddle, and to not let the pretty, dangerous metal inside the pretty, dangerous castle.”

Evelina leaned back in her chair, her fingers templed before her lips. Somewhere outside, thunder counted for them, slow and deliberate. She was the kind of queen who could sit perfectly still and make everyone else feel like they were moving incorrectly, fidgeting with their very existence.

“Rina,” she said, her voice a low command.

Rina tilted her head, a single gold hoop glinting in her ear. “Majide, this is either giga-stupid or giga-brave. Either way, those are my two favorite flavors of chaos.”

“Translation,” Caelum murmured, a hint of weariness in his tone.

“She says she’s intrigued,” Rina explained, crossing one leg over the other with a rustle of silk. “And frankly, so am I. This is the most interesting thing to happen since you tried to teach the gargoyles to unionize, Caelum.”

Gorund grunted, a sound like grinding stones. “Curiosity kills armies.”

“It also builds them,” Rina shot back, her voice sweet as cake and twice as cutting. “Evi’s instincts have kept this kingdom from becoming a footnote in the Hero’s epic. We should trust them.”

Evelina’s gaze cut from her map to the door, to the storm raging outside, to the trembling scout, and finally, back to Rina. The tiniest lift of an eyebrow was all the confirmation Rina needed. She grinned like she had just won a very important bet. “Bring him,” Evelina commanded. “Not into the heart of the castle. To the Throne Hall. I will see him in steel and in ropes.”

The goblin swallowed hard, saluted again, and bolted from the room, his borrowed towel trailing behind him like a flag of surrender. Gorund’s jaw worked, a muscle flexing along his tusk line. In Common, he said, “Majesty. Risk.” his eyes unusually full of worry for his queen.

Evelina answered in the matter that she knew best. “And that’s the risk that I am willing to take! If he tries to do something, then we will end the armor and its bearer right where they stand!” she exclaimed to reassure not only herself but her generals.

A flicker of warmth entered Gorund’s eyes, like embers remembering they were once fire. Caelum rose, his dark robes sighing around him. “I will stand at your right and count his lies.” Rina leaned in, her voice a low, wicked whisper meant only for Evelina. “And I will stand beside your heart and ask the really important questions.” Evelina did not sigh. Queens do not sigh in front of their generals. She stood, and the room stood with her.

They moved through corridors that knew their footsteps by heart, the castle’s ancient arteries pulsing them toward the great Throne Hall. As they walked, Rina fell into step just a hair closer than protocol dictated—the small, intimate space where affection and teasing lived. “So,” Rina said lightly, her eyes cutting up at Evelina’s composed profile. “What if he’s handsome?”

Evelina’s ear twitched. “Irrelevant.”

“Gachi de?” Rina’s smile widened, becoming weaponized. “Because, you know, you have been hella lonely. Like, ‘staring wistfully at the storm’ lonely. And sometimes the universe gets messy, and sometimes it throws you a snack. A cursed, heavily armored, possibly dumb snacc.”

“Rinali,” Evelina said with terrifying calm, her voice dropping a full octave. “If you say the word ‘snacc’ again, I will requisition your entire supply of lip gloss as a strategic war asset for lubricating siege engines.”

“You can’t. It’s a limited edition summer shimmer.” Rina paused for a beat. “Also, if he is handsome, are you gonna do the tall, intimidating queen stare, or the quiet, disappointed scolding voice?”

“I have one voice.”

Rina leaned even closer, whispering conspiratorially. “You don’t. When you get comfortable, or when you’re talking to one of the castle cats, you do the soft ‘stay’ voice. It makes everyone in a ten-foot radius want to kneel for entirely different reasons.”

Evelina’s tail betrayed her by flicking twice, a sharp, agitated motion. “Enough.”

Rina simply bumped her shoulder, a gentle nudge from conspirator to empress. “It’s okay to hope, you know. Even queens get to hope for something other than a swift and decisive victory.”Evelina didn’t answer. The hall ahead unfurled before them—pillars like petrified trees, banners that seemed to turn the very wind into a display of posture, and a long carpet the color of old blood and final judgments. At the far end, the throne rose from its dais—carved from the heartwood of a shadow oak and capped with jagged iron, ringed by braziers burning with a cool, violet flame.

“Positions,” Evelina said, and her voice once again had the clean, sharp edge of a blade that had strong opinions about stone.

Gorund took his place to the left of the steps, his Aetherarm humming a low, combat-ready thrum. Caelum drifted to the right, melting into the shadows. Rina slipped behind the throne, where her counsel could become a whisper in the queen’s ear. Guards, clad in dark, silent plate, set themselves in the architectural nooks that make assassins nervous.

The great doors at the far end of the hall groaned open.

Two goblin outriders, spears held ready, hustled a figure forward. He was tall, clad in those impossible black-violet plates that seemed to ripple and shift with a mind of their own. The Coilmail looked like a dragon who had learned just enough manners to not burn the castle down, but had made no apologies for its presence. Renji’s wrists were wrapped in thick ropes that had broken lesser men and, according to castle rumor, at least two pieces of belligerent furniture. His head was bowed.

Evelina’s heart did not lurch. That is not what the hearts of queens do. It did, however… reconsider its schedule for the afternoon.

He stopped ten paces from the first step of the dais and went to his knees without prompting. The goblins tied a final, theatrical knot, as if to say, We did our best; please don’t kill the messenger.

The hall waited, holding its breath. The storm outside seemed to pause with it.

Part 2: Of Trials and Tongues

The Throne Hall smelled of iron from the braziers, the damp chill of ancient stone, and old banners that had absorbed too many storms to ever smell clean again. The torchlight was a deep, moody orange, making every shadow in the vaulted chamber a little too long, a little too ambitious.

Renji knelt in the center of it all, ropes biting into his wrists, the black-violet plates of his armor humming with a faint, contained energy, like a sulking cat in a cage. He had expected to be terrified. His heart was certainly pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs, a frantic drum solo of pure panic. But overriding the fear was a current of dizzying, incandescent awe.

Because Evelina Duskbane was ten paces away.

And in person, she was worse. So much worse. Worse in the way a supernova is worse than a sparkler, worse in the way a perfectly composed symphony is worse than a single, lonely note. She was tall, her dark skin seeming to absorb the firelight and reflect it back as a subtle, regal glow. Horns, polished to a dull silver, crowned her head, and her long, serpentine tail, tipped with a wicked barb, curled with a perfect, almost lazy disdain. Her gaze could have audited the imperial treasury, found a single copper coin missing, and sentenced the entire kingdom to a lifetime of paperwork out of sheer principle.

Renji’s brain, a normally reliable organ trained in the rigors of contract law, fired three thoughts simultaneously, each one overriding the last in a cascade of terminal simping:

“She’s real. She’s gorgeous. I am going to embarrass myself so profoundly that my ancestors will feel it.”

The goblin outriders gave the ropes a final, vicious tug, nodded nervously to Evelina, and scurried out of the hall like sensible people who valued their continued existence.

“Human,” Evelina said, and the single word cracked through the chamber’s silence like glass under unbearable strain. “State your name.”

Renji lifted his head, the weight of the helm suddenly feeling immense. “Renji Volkov.”

The syllables hung strange and foreign in the air, half his, half claimed by this new, impossible reality. He saw Evelina’s ears, elegantly pointed and sharp, twitch almost imperceptibly at the sound.

Then Renji’s gaze met her face fully, without the filter of a screen or the buffer of pixels. And the last, thin, fraying thread of his self-control snapped. He stood.

The ropes, woven with what the goblins had assured him was “Grade-A, troll-proof hemp,” groaned, split, and fell away in limp pieces. His legs moved without consulting his brain. His arms, heavy in their draconic gauntlets, lifted with a singular, overwhelming purpose. They wanted to wrap, to clutch, to worship.

“Hug her. Now. Hug the queen.” his mind roared, the desires long contained begging, no demanding a release.

Nith snarled inside his skull, the sound a psychic shriek of pure, unadulterated horror. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Before Renji could take a second step, black-violet scales, sharp as obsidian shards, spiked from his greaves. With a sound like cracking stone, talons slammed into the flagstones, rooting his feet to the spot. His forward momentum died instantly. The gauntlets on his hands ratcheted shut, locking his fingers into fists. His whole body jolted to a stop, frozen mid-lunge like an idiot caught in a game of tag.

Out loud, Nith’s voice, a layered, vocoded rumble of dragon and man, rolled from the helm. “Apologies. My bearer occasionally mistakes basic etiquette for optional furniture.”

Gasps flickered around the chamber. The guards tensed, hands flying to their sword hilts. Even Caelum Umbrael’s perfectly sculpted brows rose half a gesture,a monumental expression of surprise for the dark elf. This wasn't the berserker rage of cursed armor dominating its host. This was symbiosis, control, with a zelch of teamwork.

Evelina’s tail gave a single, slow curl, a sign of intense focus. She rose from her throne, not with a sudden movement, but with a gradual, deliberate ascent that made the very pillars of the hall seem to stand straighter in her presence.

“HUMAN,” she thundered, and her voice, amplified by the hall's acoustics and her own immense power, was no longer just a word but a physical verdict. “TELL ME WHO OR WHAT YOU ARE.”

Renji’s chest seized. His legs, though locked in place, shook—not from fear, but from sheer, unfiltered hormonal awe. “She’s yelling at me… She’s so cool…” His jaw hung open. His brain, already short-circuiting, finally blue-screened.

“…marry me.” The words tumbled out, unbidden and utterly catastrophic.

Nith didn’t hesitate. A crackle of static, sharp and violet, arced through Renji’s body. It wasn't a lethal jolt, but an internal, disciplinary taser zap that made his teeth clack together hard.

“GAAAAH OKAY, RESET, RESET” He flailed against the rooted armor, tiny puffs of smoke venting from his helm.

“Coherence,” Nith muttered grimly in his mind. “Find it. Now.”

Renji coughed, the phantom smell of ozone in his nostrils. He straightened as best as the talon-roots allowed and blurted, “I’m Renji Volkov. I… I died. A truck was involved. It's a long story. I woke up here, in your world. I swear on every limited-edition figure I own, I am not here to conquer. I’m here for one thing, and one thing only.”

The entire hall seemed to lean in, the silence thick with anticipation. Renji met Evelina’s eyes, felt his soul char a little under the intensity of her stare, and said with every ounce of conviction he possessed: “To save you.”

The silence that followed was not empty. It was heavy, judgmental, and deeply confused, like a book that had been slammed shut on the wrong page. Then, laughter, not mocking, but sharp, bright, and utterly astonished, spilled from Rina Larkspur, who was perched on the arm of the throne like a mischievous gargoyle. “Majide? This simp is running here on pure devotion to you my queen. Meccha bold.”

Evelina didn't laugh. She tilted her chin, her composure a fortress of carved steel. “Save me? I am one of the greatest mages on this continent. Armies kneel at my decree. What possible threat could a fool in stolen armor imagine I need saving from?” Renji swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “From a story that ends wrong. From a history that lies about you.”

Caelum’s rings chimed faintly as he folded his hands, his expression unreadable. “He speaks in poetry. The most dangerous kind.” Gorund rumbled, his great tusks flexing. “Words are wind. Test him.”

From the shadows near the entrance, a small, hooded figure slipped into the hall, taking the empty Matriarch's chair as if she owned it. Griksha had arrived. “Trial by cost,” she purred, her voice a rasp of dry leaves. “See what he pays when the paying hurts.” Rina’s grin went sly. “Yabai, let’s give him labors! Hero-style trials! See if our little armor-boy can actually bite.”

Evelina’s gaze cut from general to general, a silent, lightning-fast calculation. Then it settled back on Renji, pinning him in place more effectively than Nith's talons. “Three labors. One set by each of my commanders. You will complete them, or you will be unmade where you stand.”

Renji bowed his head, the helm dipping as much as the armor would allow. “Deal.”

“You are making promises with no strategic plan whatsoever,” Nith hissed in his skull.

“Story flags, buddy,” Renji thought back, a thrill of insane purpose cutting through his panic and growing excitement. “This is how you unlock the romance route.”

“Or die miserably.” thought Nith.

“Guards,” Evelina commanded, her voice smoothing back into ice. “Untie his ankles. Feed him. If he runs, let him. The wild will chew him faster than we will.” The talons withdrew from the floor with a reluctant scrape. Guards approached, their expressions a mixture of wariness and grudging respect, and cut the last of the ropes. Renji flexed his wrists, bowing again.

Evelina did not look away, but neither did she smile. Queens don’t smile for gambles.

“Tomorrow,” she said, turning away. “The first labor.”

“Tomorrow,” she had said.

Tomorrow came sooner than expected.

When the guards led Renji from the Throne Hall, his mind still reeling and his ears still ringing with Evelina’s voice, Gorund Volsarith was already waiting. He loomed in the side corridor like a misplaced wall of green-gray stone, his massive form blocking out the torchlight. His Aetherarm hummed faintly, its intricate cogs and gears shifting with a quiet, constant life.

“In Common,” Gorund rumbled, the words blunt stones shaped by a mouth not made for them, “Labor begin now. You fight. Or you die.”

Renji arched an eyebrow behind his visor. Then, something odd happened, he felt like, like he could speak, orcish? “Umm Nith, why do I feel like I can speak orcish?” thought Renji making his armor companion chuckle. “I lived for more than a 1000 years, I speak every language current and lost to this continent, a simple orcish shouldn't be a problem, just read what I put on a visor and you will be fine.”

“I would rather speak than swing, Magister. But I will do either, if it is what it takes to earn your respect.” Spoke Renji by reading what he saw on his visor’s eyes, and it came to him naturally, as if it was his second nature.

The corridor fell utterly silent. The guards froze mid-step, their jaws slack. Except for Nith who felt proud like a teacher whose student didn't screw up for the first time, with a low, appreciative chuckle echoed in Renji's mind. “Oh, very good. They do not expect a human throat to bend around those vowels.”

Gorund’s great tusks parted, not quite a smile, but the shadow of one, a flicker of stunned surprise. In Orcish, he asked, “You… speak the True Tongue?”

“Indeed I do,” Renji replied, the formal grammar flowing more easily than he'd expected. “My partner here gives me an ability to understand any language that he had encountered in his life."

The orc general gestured, a sharp, decisive motion. “With me. Alone!”To the bewildered guards, he switched back to his rough Common: “Stand back. He is mine, until I see fit to return him!”They obeyed without question. Orcs don't ask. Their sheer weight and presence is the request. Renji followed, the articulated steps of the armor echoing against the solemn stone as he was led away from the main halls.

The orc wing of Evelina’s fortress was not a barracks. It was a cathedral. Basalt ribs arched overhead, banners dyed in the deep rust and gold of geological strata swaying like long-held breaths. Braziers smoked with cedar and resin, giving the air a clean, sharp scent of thought.

And the sound, it wasn't the brawling or roaring of human tales. It was a chant. A low, harmonic, multi-layered chorus of syllables, measured and mathematical, rising and falling in disciplined waves. Long, heavy workbenches stretched in rows. Orcs sat bent over slates of polished obsidian, chalk scraping as they mapped stars, solved complex physics equations, and drafted the blueprints for load-bearing arches and aqueducts.

Renji slowed, his steps faltering, utterly stunned. “They're studying.” That was not something he had expected to see today.

Gorund glanced back, his tusks catching the firelight. “We always were,” he said simply.

They passed a niche where three orcs were locked in a furious but silent debate over a theorem, chalk flying as they covered a wall in frantic calculations, one slamming a fist on the table to emphasize a successful derivation. Another group worked on a model of interlocking gears and pulleys, a miniature siege machine they were dismantling and reassembling not for war, but for efficiency, their massive hands moving with the delicacy of watchmakers.

Renji whispered, the sound swallowed by the vastness of the hall, “You’re all,geniuses! Engineers! Mathematicians! Physists!” his eyes running around in disbelief as he could swear that he saw sketches that reassembled a primitive car engine.

Gorund snorted, a sound that was less amusement and more weary resignation. “The brain is a muscle as well, ours grow just as big as the ones on our body.” he spoke as he flexed the muscles of his non mechanical arm. “But humans see only the tusk, not the thought behind it.”

They entered a side chamber, this one lit by a steady, soft orange glow. Large, uncut crystals sat in heavy iron cages, humming with a low, resonant frequency that seemed to amplify and clarify sound. Bent over one of them was an older orc, the tips of his braided hair gone white, his tusks chipped but polished with age. His massive hands, which could have crushed a helmet, turned the crystal with a gentle, listening touch.

“Renji,” Gorund said, his tone softening with respect. “Meet Professor Bronta Feldspar, Master of Stonesong and Resonant Harmonics.” The elder looked up, his eyes as bright and intelligent as new bronze. His Common creaked like a rusty hinge: “Hu-man?”

Renji switched tongues immediately. “Master Feldspar, it is an honor.” his visor analyzing what was in front of him. “Another gift of mine.” spoke Nith. “Consider analyzing anything you see, spell, or as your world calls it, search engine?” spoke the dragon as it dug deeper inside Renji’s mind to understand what a search engine was?

“Your work on crystalline resonant frequencies is brilliant. Groundbreaking, even.” spoke Renji as he analyzed what lay in front of him, an ore that is capable of long and short wavelength sound resonance, essentially, conceptual start of a microphone or a dynamic.

The old geologist’s jaw dropped. He croaked out in a rush of astonished Orcish: “He speaks! By the core of the world, he truly speaks! With a tongue that should not be able to shape the sound!”

Renji managed a self-conscious laugh. “Turns out I’m very good at strangest things ever. So not to sound rude or anything, but if you guys' language is this scientifically rich, how come your common, well, make you sound like you prefer skulls for breakfast?” Renji asked, this actually not being in the game, or any fantasy lore he had read before, thus his curiosity demanded to be sated.

Gorund folded his massive arms. “Humans cannot form Orcish words correctly. Your throats are not built for it. We chew bone and crack marrow; our vocal cords are thick, ridged. The common tongue bends wrong in our mouths, for us to speak it, its like for you to talk with a bone inside your throat, painful and will come out sounding wrong.”

Renji’s chest tightened with a pang of secondhand injustice. “All this time,they weren’t dumb. We just never bothered to listen correctly, or even try to understand them.” thought Renji made even Nith sneakers. “And that's one thing I love and hate about you humans, you rush into conclusions without ever bothering to understand another side, be happy, you are the first human to make a dragon and orc want to talk to you. Have a cookie.”

Professor Bronta tapped the humming crystal. “But this stone is interesting, it echoes smoothly. And from what I have seen, it can bend sound.”

That made Renji’s tongue click. “Wait, bend the sound? So, would it be possible, to tune a series of these resonance stones to reframe the phonetic and harmonic properties of speech, you could build a device that gives orcs a voice everyone else can finally understand.” Renji crouched, his mind racing, excitement buzzing through him like the crystal’s own energy.

Gorund tilted his head, a gesture of profound thought. “The sound is not the problem. Its the way the ears of others perceive it. "

“Then we fix the ears,” Renji said, his grin sharp and fierce. “We can build a device that translates in real time. They won't be perfect, but they'll be enough. A small bridge of understanding.” he said as deep down he was feeling guilty for thinking that orcs were mindless brutes this entire time.

“Your brain itches with schemes,” Nith purred in his skull. “I find it… stimulating.”

Renji looked from Gorund to Bronta, both orcs already beginning to sketch blueprints. “Give me the list of what you need, and I can try to get the supplies you need. The right metals, the conduits, the focusing agents. But to do that, I’m going to need to trade with the goblins, and I can only do that when you two pronounce my first labor completed.”

At the word, Gorund’s eyes narrowed—not with anger, but with deep-seated caution. “Goblins trade only when they believe the deal hurts you more than it helps them.” Renji shrugged, the pauldrons of the armor rising with the motion. “Then I’ll just have to make hurting me look incredibly profitable.” he said with a playful snickering.

Professor Bronta let out a booming, joyous laugh that echoed off the stone walls. “This one! Yes! A clever human indeed! Bring me the ore, and I will help you build this bridge of tongues!”

Gorund’s tusks flashed in the crystal light, a clear expression of something that looked almost like pride. “The first labor is passed, in spirit,” he declared. Then he paused, his gaze intensifying. “But the spirit is willing while the stone is not yet singing. The true trial is not in merely speaking our tongue, but in helping it be heard by the world. You will work with Professor Feldspar. You will not leave this wing until you have succeeded or failed. This is your labor now.”

The next three days were a blur of chalk dust, resonant hums, and the surprisingly pleasant smell of hot metal and ozone. Renji was given a workspace in Professor Bronta’s personal laboratory, a cavernous chamber filled with geological charts, half-finished projects, and crystals of every shape and size humming on their stands like a choir of stones. He was introduced to Bronta’s engineering team: a young, prodigiously gifted apprentice named Korgath, whose enthusiasm was matched only by his clumsiness, and an older, deeply skeptical master artisan named Ghorza, whose braided beard contained more tools than Renji’s old-world workshop.

They showed him their existing work. The resonance stones could indeed pick up the complex frequencies of Orcish speech, but when they tried to convert it to the simpler phonetic structure of Common, the result was a mess.

“The crystal amplifies, but it also distorts,” Bronta explained in Orcish, his huge hands gesturing at a diagram on a slate. “It adds a harmonic ‘fuzz,’ a ghost-frequency that muddles the output. We can make the words audible, but not understandable.”

Their first prototype was a testament to this failure. They placed a fist-sized, humming crystal into a bronze housing and invited Gorund to test it. The general, looking deeply uncomfortable to be the subject of an experiment, cleared his throat and spoke a formal, complex Orcish sentence.

“We must calculate the optimal parabolic trajectory for the new siege munitions to bypass the enemy’s forward shield enchantments.”

The crystal vibrated. The bronze housing glowed. After a moment of crackling static, a disembodied voice spoke from the device in Common.

“Oh, sorrow! The heavy stone doth weep, desiring a path of arching doom! It yearns to kiss the foe’s bright shield with a farewell of fiery gloom!”

Renji stared. Korgath groaned and put his head in his hands. Ghorza snorted in disgust. Gorund just looked confused. “Why does the rock think I am a sad poet?” asked the general while the room filled with dread.

The second attempt was even worse. After a full day of recalibrating the energy matrix, they tried again. This time, Gorund’s sentence was translated as: “Your mother is a large and structurally significant boulder.”

Gorund left the lab without another word, and so did everyone else for the day.

“This is the problem,” Bronta sighed, rubbing his temples. “The stone captures the emotion and the rhythm of our tongue, but it mangles the literal meaning into. this.”

Renji, however, was having an epiphany. He was treating this problem like something magical, trying to force the magic of this world to work for him. Yet he needed to start thinking like an engineer from his world and Nith was a great help with that as he began pulling up every single fragment of knowledge that Renji’s brain managed to store. He grabbed a piece of chalk and a clean slate, his mind racing with concepts the orcs had never considered.

“You’re trying to do everything with one crystal,” he said, sketching furiously. “You’re sending a raw, complex signal and asking one device to amplify, convert, and translate it all at once. The signal is too noisy.”

Ghorza scoffed. “And what would a soft-skinned human know of crystal harmonics?”

“I don’t know your magic or physics of this world,” Renji admitted. “But I know the sound. In my world, we have something similar. We call it frequency modulation. Signal filtering. Dampening.” He sketched a new design. “You don’t need one big crystal. You need a series. You need a second, smaller, specifically cut crystal before the main one. Its job isn’t to amplify. Its job is to filter. It can be tuned to isolate the core vocal frequency of the speaker and dampen the harmonic ‘fuzz’ before the signal ever reaches the main translation crystal.”

The orcs stared at his diagram. It was a bizarre, alien concept to them. Their magic was about power, resonance, and direct application. The idea of using a second crystal to deliberately weaken a signal to make it clearer was counter-intuitive.

But Bronta, a true genius, saw the mad logic in it. His eyes widened. “A filter, hmm, a harmonic sieve, hmm, by the core of the world, that might just work.”

The final prototype was a thing of strange beauty. It was a bronze pendant with Bronta's large resonance stone at the front, but just behind it, set in a delicate mithril housing, was a smaller, razor-thin shard of quartz that Renji had helped them cut and tune.

They brought Gorund back. The general looked deeply skeptical, but he trusted his people. He placed the diadem on his brow. He took a breath and spoke the same sentence as before.

“We must calculate the optimal parabolic trajectory for the new siege munitions to bypass the enemy’s forward shield enchantments.”

There was a moment of silence. A soft, clear hum emanated from the pendant. And then, a voice, crisp and clear as a winter morning, spoke from the device in perfect, eloquent Common, retaining all the gravitas and formal structure of the original Orcish.

“We must calculate the optimal parabolic trajectory for the new siege munitions to bypass the enemy’s forward shield enchantments.”

The lab was silent. Korgath’s jaw was on the floor. Ghorza’s eyes were wide with disbelief.

Bronta, the old Master of Stonesong, did not cheer. His great shoulders began to shake, and a single, thick tear traced a path through the chalk dust on his cheek. He looked at Renji, his eyes shining with a profound, soul-deep gratitude.

Gorund slowly reached up and touched the device on his forehead. He spoke again, this time a line from an old Orcish epic. “And the truth, once trapped in stone, was at last given a voice to shake the mountains.”

The device translated it perfectly. “And the truth, once trapped in stone, was at last given a voice to shake the mountains.”

For the first time in centuries, the world could hear not just the words of orcs, but their souls, and meaning behind those words!

Gorund placed his massive, warm Aetherarm on Renji’s shoulder. The weight of it was both a burden and an honor. “Do not waste this gift of the tongue, Renji Volkov,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Too many of my people have died with the truth trapped inside them.”

Renji nodded, his own throat tight. “I’ll make sure that their truth is heard from now on!”