The Bent Penny Soothsayer

This damn idea won’t leave me alone, so… lucky you, I’m sharing it. Please to enjoy.

The elves, they say, came first.

This isn’t quite true. You and I know they came from the sky. Fell, as if cast down, in a burning vessel larger than any city. They stood on the world and knew it as something to be conquered. For all their poetry, their metalskill, and the pretty urns their half-breed children hock at the markets, they came fleeing a war and started a new one.

It’s no wonder there are almost none of them left, and those… Well, fallen, still.

The dwarves, now, are something else. Arrogant. Stocky with it, but you’ve heard about that, and you’ve seen the beards. And no, the women don’t have beards, but they’ve lustrous locks to rival any in that storybook you hold so close. The arrogance, though. That’s a thing that comes from being cast down, too. Cast, by their parents, for it’s also said that they are the shrivelled, stunted throw-aways the elves first birthed on coming to this cursed world. To say the dwarves hate the elves would be like saying a sword hates the sheath. True, but insufficient.

So where does that leave the orcs? Were they here first, as they claim, or were they… called? Certainly we know they’re better suited to this bitter place. The wind that blows from the north comes with teeth, and it’ll carry away your children. The orcs care for none of that. Strong, and tall, and that might be enough to put them above the dwarves, except for the power of the mind. We know them to have no skill with sorcery, but they also have no skill with letters. Doomed always to fail at the first page, for all they want to study, to crack open the wizened nut of knowledge.

Oh, stay. I see you’re upset. You think that this is a set of confronting statements said to make you angry. It’s not, or at least… not in the way you think. Because we come at last to you, the not-one, not-other of humanity. Your people have cracked open the outer place and brought in the whispers of magic. You’ve got skill with metal and word, but insufficient of either to topple the elves or dig with the dwarves. Good enough with a blade, but against an orc, as dead as they come. But there’s a secret no one’s told you yet. It’s as old as the world, and the truth is as terrible as any kept from the sun this long.

Can’t you guess? No?

You came first.

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If you want to check out what else I’ve done with fantasy, why not check out the freebie novella Tomb of the Six? You’ll meet Geneve, and she’s awesome.