The Orc Who Feared Thursdays

Three centuries old and mossier than a wizard’s forgotten shower loofah, Mossbottom Avenue still managed to judge Skarnel harder than his last three therapists combined. Not that that said much about the road—rather more about Skarnel himself, who was afraid of just about anything that moved, twitched, or dared something so horrifyingly presumptuous as breathing.

Skarnel readjusted his N95 Hex-Filter facemask for the umptillionth time. This was a rather challenging endeavour for two primary reasons. The first was that his face shield made even the simplest movements feel like performing keyhole surgery while wearing an enchanted thimble. The second were his impressively inconvenient tusks, which tangled into the mask’s straps like rebellious curtain rods. This was neither the first nor the last time he contemplated having them surgically removed—a drastic and generally frowned-upon procedure for an orc, but social ostracization was something Skarnel feared just slightly less than the possibility of impaling himself on his own face.

Skarnel was less a traditional orc and more a walking anxiety leaflet—a greyhound personified, perpetually trembling and wholly unconvinced existence was meant for him. The fates, he often believed, had accidentally assigned him a body and were too embarrassed to recall the error. Why couldn’t another orc have been born in his place? A question that continually plagued him, alongside the four dozen and one other existential crises that sloshed about in his skull like haunted soup.

He had, of course, tried anti-anxiety medication. What sensible orc wouldn’t? But all it had done was make him vibrate like a possessed kettle left too long on the stove. And the final straw had been a devastatingly persuasive video on ScryTube, presented by a one @UnshackledMage42, which laid out—complete with flashing graphics and an aggressive use of the banjo—how the whole pharmaceutical industry was in fact a Ministry scheme to extract inner peace from the anxious and weaponize it as tranquilizer spells for chronically misbehaving battle-goats.

He’d thrown out his seven packs of MeloMints™, three boxes of Calmcubes™, and four bottles of Liquid Don’tPanic™ (Lavender Nightmare flavour) that very evening, sealing them in a warded box and mailing them to his local representative with a sternly worded Post-It.

This was the one evening a week Skarnel risked all the grim and unsanitary horrors of the outdoors. He dreaded it for the entire six days prior, but it was a necessary evil. One imposed upon him by his mother, who had—in terms most definite—told him that if he did not vacate the bunker (formerly her garage) once a week so she could “de-stenchify the place and exorcise the mould, darling,” she would have him committed to Whimsy Hollow Centre for the Excessively Nervous and Mildly Hexed.

Now, Skarnel had spent a great deal of time—and an even greater number of colour-coded spreadsheets with lamination options—contemplating this proposal, but had ultimately concluded that despite the rumoured cleanliness and allegedly padded surfaces of the facility, there were far too many uncontrolled variables, shared bathroom salts, and communal sponge usage for such a fate to be viable.

Which brings us, nose-first and clutching hand-sanitiser, back to Mossbottom Avenue.

When Skarnel’s mother had handed him twenty coppers (which he had immediately boiled in a cauldron of lemon-scented saltwater) and shooed him out the door, she had no doubt imagined he might go for a walk in the park (too many pigeons; highly judgmental creatures) or perhaps for a nice cup of tea (what if it were poisoned? Or worse—served tepid?) or maybe just a calming stroll through the Salted Winds Apothecarium™ Aisle of Curious Teas and Regretful Lotions.

What she certainly would not have imagined was that he would join a cult.

They inconveniently met every Thursday at precisely 19:03 in the sub-basement of the Department for Obsolete Spell Components. Not a minute before. Not a minute after. Except, of course, when that Thursday fell on the fourth day of the month or the seventeenth. For obvious reasons.

The enchanted door only opened for the week’s secret item—inserted into its mouth. Present the wrong one, and it spat insults about your person, family, and livestock. These items were obscure, frequently inconvenient, and changed weekly. The answer was handed to members at the end of the meeting in the form of a riddle, and often the full week after would be required to solve it.

This week’s had been: “I hum when warmed, sing when steeped, and scream if you forget me too long. What am I?”

The answer to which was, of course: a banshee kettle whistle.

Skarnel had always been rather good with riddles. He had not missed a single one yet—not even the esteemed leader of the society, Howlister P. Barkwright, could claim that. That had been a particularly interesting meeting in his absence. To say the meeting was a touch chaotic would be like saying dragons are just salamanders with ambition issues.

Skarnel slotted the banshee kettle whistle into the door, which consumed it with a loud smacking sound that sent Skarnel scuttling into the room as if physically slapped. As he entered, his eyes flicked nervously upward—where a taxidermied owl glared down from above the door with glassy, all-knowing judgment, like a feathery customs agent for the deranged.

He entered a room that was, in all respects, precisely the type of room one expects for such a gathering. That is: old wooden walls, rickety chairs that resented being sat upon, and a smell that was pickled, musty, and faintly magical like old socks.

Howlister P. Barkwright, who insisted upon being addressed by his full name—especially by family—was already at the lectern, a bundle of flashcards so thick it was practically a bound thesis, and already clicking his long and alarmingly manicured fingernails against the wood.

“Skarnel,” he said, gesturing to a seat in the front row next to a kobold in a foil hat, and a rather overweight pixie who was attempting to fan away sweat from his forehead with his own wings. “Nice of you to join us.”

Skarnel scuttled to the front row and promptly threw himself into the chair. He had wanted to sanitise it before sitting, but he feared attention even more than he feared the notion of the chair being somehow infected with flesh-eating curse spores or spell ticks. He’d seen some wandside documentaries that the increasing temperatures were making them far more voracious.

The pixie held out his hand, and Skarnel took it by reflex.

“Twinklethud,” said the pixie cheerfully. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

Skarnel nodded, and resisted the urge to immediately change his glove, but in the process forgot to introduce himself. Twinklethud—if offended, or if he had even noticed—was immediately distracted by a sudden and violent sneezing fit. Which made Skarnel want to drink bleach and promptly set himself ablaze. He settled instead for quietly changing his glove under the cover of noise.

“I guess it should be me wearing that mask, eh?” Twinklethud laughed, running his hand across his nose with a flourish. Skarnel contemplating crawling into a hole and promptly dying, preferably after thoroughly sanitising the interior.

Before Skarnel could bolt or otherwise ignite something flammable, Howlister P. Barkwright slammed his gavel onto the lectern. This was, of course, entirely unnecessary given that the gathering consisted of no more than a dozen individuals and the only form of conversation ongoing was Twinklethud versus his own immune system. But Howlister never turned down a chance for public dramatics. He was a lawyer, after all.

“I henceforth call this forty-seventh and a quarter meeting of The Grand and Occasionally Coherent Conclave of Lunar Integrity to order,” he declared. (The quarter was due to an unfortunate incident involving a sentient teapot and a fire hydrant.) “We have an extensive agenda today, so I must ask you all to listen quickly.”

He proceeded to rattle off the minutes from the previous meeting in no particular order and with no discernible reason—other than, perhaps, the most important, which was of course to prolong the delight of hearing himself speak.

After this had been accomplished—scored, naturally, by another sneezing fit courtesy of Twinklethud—Howlister P. Barkwright opened the floor to comments.

This was standard procedure at The Grand and Occasionally Coherent Conclave of Lunar Integrity.

“Has anyone seen anything suspicious this week that might warrant discussion?” he said, and suddenly pointed. “You.”

Skarnel froze. He had taken the opportunity to try and change seats—subtly, he thought—but subtlety was hard in a face mask, shield, gloves, and diving mask—especially at seven feet tall in a room full of tinfoil enthusiasts.

“Yes, you,” said Howlister. “You may as well start.”

Skarnel, for whom attention felt like a cosmic punishment just shy of encountering a black unicorn with bad credit, desperately hoped the floor would open beneath him —if only it hadn’t last seen a mop sometime before the invention of socks.

“I— I, yes-well,” Skarnel began, his tusks knocking the mask straps as though trying to escape first. For all his manifold frailties, he was also the unwilling proprietor of crippling stage-fright and a swiftly developing stutter. “I— I have been meaning to mention that I am quite certain—quite entirely certain—that owls are not, in fact, birds at all.”

A ripple of interest (and one allergic wheeze from Twinklethud) passed through the hall.

“They’re— they’re rotating surveillance periscopes,” Skarnel blurted, blanching. “Run by the Ministry of Nocturnal Quietude. The head-swivel isn’t natural. It’s how they tune their aerial antennae.” He swallowed, audibly. “Every ‘hoot’ is a coded transmission. Head-tilt followed by blink: Begin emotional destabilization. Hoot followed by vomiting: Phase Two complete. Memory deletion underway.”

Howlister P. Barkwright raised a single, immaculately groomed brow. “And what, pray tell, is your position on their droppings?”

“Tracking pellets,” Skarnel whispered, clutching his freshly sanitised gloves. “Each one’s filled with miniature parchment scrolls that roll themselves back to headquarters at dawn.” He hesitated, then added in a voice that landed somewhere between confession and small squeak: “I, er— I haven’t slept in weeks.”

Then Howlister nodded gravely, as though Skarnel had just delivered incontrovertible proof of celestial treason.

“An excellent contribution,” he declared, rapping his gavel with relish. “Let it be entered into the minutes of the Grand—and Occasionally Coherent—Conclave of Lunar Integrity that the owl-based menace is once again an active agenda item for investigation.”

Twinklethud clapped (a surprisingly percussive sound for such small hands), someone hissed “Told you so,” and the kobold in the foil hat began sketching diagrams of suspicious avian neck-angles.

Skarnel, pale beneath his face shield but faintly glowing with the perilous satisfaction of having spoken at all, sank back into his chair—pondering, with mounting dread, whether the stuffed owl perched above the exit had always been there.

“But I must insist we now return to the topic at hand,” said Howlister P. Barkwright, tapping his gavel again—for no other reason than that he enjoyed doing so.

This time, however, the gavel gave a distinct squeak of protest, as if weary of being wielded with such theatrical righteousness.

“We are, after all, The Grand and Occasionally Coherent Conclave of Lunar Integrity,” he declared, puffing his chest slightly, “not owls. And so, I must ask—nay, insist, if I may be so bold—that we return to our central objective. There is no telling how much time we have left.”

A thin splattering of applause followed. The kobold adjusted his tinfoil hat. The others, not wanting to appear uninformed, did the same—one does not underestimate the peer pressure of a room full of magical conspiracy theorists.

At that moment, a voice piped up from the corner—clear, confident, and emanating from none other than a ferret-sized wyvern in a paisley necktie, seated atop a stack of poorly alphabetised conspiracy pamphlets and polishing a miniature machine gun. He had not spoken until now, and the fact that he was armed had somehow escaped comment. Not that this was unusual. In such circles, wielding a machine gun was practically a membership requirement.

Skarnel himself had briefly considered acquiring one, but after a traumatic encounter with a retractable quill and his left nostril, he’d decided that anything with a trigger was simply too high-risk for someone who once fainted near a sneeze charm.

“It is as I said last time,” declared the wyvern—who went by the name Crumbleflint—with the bravado of someone far too small for the size of the opinions he wielded. “The moon is not real. It’s a giant enchanted dinner plate nailed to the sky.”

Silence. The kind of silence that suggested several mental gears grinding very slowly toward “maybe?”

“Think about it,” Crumbleflint continued, resting the machine gun across his lap like a beloved lapdog. “It’s round. Chipped at the edges. And when it’s full, I crave gravy. Explain that.”

He lifted a claw skyward with great theatricality.

“And don’t tell me it controls the tides. That’s squid magic and everyone knows it.”

“Crumbleflint, my dear fellow,” sighed Howlister P. Barkwright, rubbing his temples, “I must insist that if you continue to attend these meetings, you make an endeavour to take them seriously.”

“I do take them seriously!” snapped Crumbleflint, indignantly tightening his necktie. “That’s why I brought the gun.”

The kobold in the front row scoffed. “Do not be absurd. We’ve already established—quite equivocally, I might add,” (for he was a kobold of considerable class despite the tinfoil hat), “that the moon has been replaced with a wheel of cheese.”

A nod from Howlister. A slightly larger smattering of applause.

“It is,” the lawyer confirmed, “only a matter of figuring out how, and—more importantly—why.”

Skarnel raised his hand, quite tentatively, never once letting the owl above the exit door out of his sight.

“Yes, dear fellow,” said Howlister P. Barkwright. “The floor is yours.”

Skarnel cleared his throat. Several times, in fact. He made a mental note to see the doctor in the morning—he was fairly certain the consistency of his phlegm was beginning to resemble porridge. He was half-tempted to inspect it but decided that Howlister might not appreciate the delay.

“I—ah, yes—well,” he began, his voice momentarily jumping three octaves before stumbling back down like a drunk on a ladder. “I have a friend.”

“Congratulations,” said the kobold dryly, adjusting his tinfoil hat.

“Many happy returns,” added Twinklethud.

“Well,” continued Skarnel, ears pinkening beneath his face shield, “perhaps ‘friend’ is too strong a word. We—er—we played an online game together. Realm of Spells: Deluxe Necromancer Edition. Very immersive. Mostly spreadsheets and scream-based crafting. Anyway, his username was @CheddarProphet98. He had over three million, six hundred seventy thousand hours of gameplay logged.”

“That’s more hours than there have been hours,” muttered Twinklethud.

“Exactly!” said Skarnel, seizing that as irrefutable confirmation. “He was always online. And then—poof. Just gone. Vanished. Disconnected from reality like a badly enchanted toaster.”

“How tragic for @CheddarProphet98,” said Howlister, arching one brow. “But I fail to see how that has anything at all to do with the moon.”

“Well—yes—I mean,” Skarnel fumbled with his gloves, now visibly glistening from nervous condensation. “He once told me—told me he was the greatest cheesemonger in all of Lower Gribblefen. His cheeses were enchanted. Wheeled. Sung to nightly. Wizards travelled from as far as Saltswallow just to lick his brie. And now? Gone. Just weeks after the moon gets replaced?”

“That does seem an odd coincidence,” admitted Howlister, stroking his beard in the tentative way one might handle a slightly electrified ferret.

“But are we quite certain the moon has been replaced?” asked Twinklethud, adjusting his wing fan, which now smelled faintly of soup and self-doubt.

Howlister sighed. Deeply. “Do we really have to go through this again?”

“I seem to have drunk some forgetfulness cordial,” Twinklethud said defensively.

“You can’t use that excuse every time, Twinklethud.”

Howlister sighed again—professionally this time—and gestured at himself. “Werewolf here. Remember?”

“Rings a bell.”

“And I’m two weeks late.”

“Late for what?”

“Turning, of course. Do endeavour to keep up, old fellow.”

“Ah yes. The whole werewolf thing.”

“Yes. Exactly. And my cycle is like clockwork. Always punctual. Always dramatic. The only logical explanation is that the moon has been replaced.”

“Of course.”

“Naturally.”

It was at that moment that all pure, unpasteurised magical madness broke loose.

Sirens blared—shrill, magical, and deeply judgmental—somehow unnoticed during the previous sixteen meetings... But before he could belabour his own devastating lack of observational skill, the sprinkler glyphs activated, releasing a deluge of anti-sedition foam: a frothy lavender substance engineered to extinguish both magical fire and revolutionary sentiment.

A dozen figures burst through the walls in a coordinated wave of cloak-flapping, wand-pointing authority. They were unmistakably agents of the B.O.G.U.S—the Bureau Of Governmental Unusual Suspicions—an elite and deeply unnerving enforcement branch known for infiltrating rogue astrology circles and issuing citations to time-travelers with incomplete paperwork.

“Hands, legs, arm appendages, hooves—where I can see them!” barked the first agent, a hobgoblin in mirrored goggles, a trench robe, and a shiny badge shaped like a disapproving egg.

“Anything you say, sing, interpretively dance, or dramatically insinuate will be held against you,” he intoned.

“You are all hereby found in contempt of Clause 42-B: Meddling Where One Oughtn’t Meddle, Subsection Paranoia.”

Behind him, the others fanned out, slipping slightly in the foam and shouting things like, “Secure the lunacy chart!” and “Detain the cheese specialist!”

Skarnel had known that stuffed owl was watching.

He should’ve just let his mother commit him to Whimsy Hollow Centre for the Excessively Nervous and Mildly Hexed.

At least they had pudding on Tuesdays.

And only some of it screamed.