Chapter 26: One Day to Live

Elara gasped, her small hands flying to her mouth. The half-eaten fruit slipped from her grasp and rolled across the stone floor, forgotten.

"What do you mean? What's wrong?" the princess cried, her wide blue eyes fixed on Valkar. "Are you going to die, Mister Orc?"

Sylvana didn't speak. Her entire body went rigid, her violet eyes locking onto Valkar's, searching for the lie, the trick, the orcish jest. But she found none.

The amber in his gaze was stark, the set of his jaw unyielding. It was the face of a warrior staring down an inevitable blade.

"Explain," Sylvana demanded, her voice low and dangerous, a stark contrast to the princess's panicked tone. She didn't ask. She commanded.

"Nothing too complicated. I killed a monster, and it cursed me with its dying breath."

"A curse?" Sylvana's mind raced, sifting through every tale and warning she had ever heard from the elven loremasters.

Curses were not simple afflictions. They were a twisting of natural law, a stain on the very soul. They required immense power, arcane knowledge, or divine intervention to break.

None of which they possessed.

Elara was now at her side, her small hands clutching at Sylvana's arm, her face pale.

"A curse? What kind of curse? Can we help? We have to help!"

"There is only one cure," Valkar said, his gaze unwavering, fixed on Sylvana. "The magic of the creature that cast it. The magic of lust. The curse will burn my life from me unless the act is consummated within a day." 

"..."

The cave fell silent. The crackle of the fire was the only sound.

Sylvana felt the blood drain from her face. She stared at him, her violet eyes wide with a dawning horror that eclipsed everything else—the goblins, the fall, even the death of her comrades.

"A succubus!" she gasped, the word a shard of ice in her throat. "You killed a succubus!"

"Mm," Valkar gave a stiff nod. "And not just any succubus; she was an avatar of an ancient goddess."

"!!!" The two elves gasped.

"By the Mother Tree," Sylvana whispered, her hand going to her mouth. An avatar of a goddess. Not just a powerful demon, but a sliver of divinity given form.

A curse from such a being was not a mere ailment. It was a death sentence, etched into the fabric of his being.

Elara stared, her young mind struggling to grasp the sheer scale of it.

"So… you have to… to…" She couldn't finish the sentence, her cheeks burning with a deep, uncomfortable blush. 

Sylvana, however, was beyond blushing. She was frozen in a cold, crystalline clarity. All the strange pieces of the puzzle clicked into place with sickening perfection.

"So that's why you suddenly appeared inside the goblin cave," she said slowly. "Your body was burning with a fever. You were… hunting."

"Hunting for a cure," Valkar finished for her, his amber eyes never leaving hers. "And I found you."

He didn't need to say more. The 'you' hung in the air, heavy and absolute. It wasn't a request. It was a statement of fact.

Sylvana took a good look at him, truly looked. The raw power coiled in his massive frame was obvious, but now she saw the strain beneath it. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the muscles of his arms. A sheen of sweat beaded on his green brow, despite the coolness of the cave.

He was dying. Slowly. Painfully. From the inside out.

"Sigh…" Sylvana let out a long, shuddering breath, the sound tearing from a place deep within her she thought had been sealed off forever. "There's no other way? No herb, no ritual that can cleanse it?"

"If there is, I don't have the time to find it," Valkar stated, a flat, brutal truth. "The curse is a fire. Soon, my balls will go BOOM!"

"!!!" Elara flinched at the crude, horrifying imagery.

"Your… your balls?"

"Yes."

"BOOM?"

"Yes." 

Elara's face turned bright red. She looked like a ripe tomato, her blue eyes wide with a mixture of shock and morbid fascination. She was a princess of the court, educated in poetry, history, and etiquette. The words 'balls' and 'boom' in the same sentence, uttered so casually by a dying orc, were so far outside her reality that her brain had simply short-circuited.

"Stop saying that!" Sylvana snapped, a sudden flush of deep crimson burning up her neck and spreading into her pointed ears. "Must you phrase it in such an absurdly vulgar manner?!"

"It is the truth," Valkar said simply, his dark brow furrowing. "A literal description. My essence burns. If it has nowhere to go, it ruptures the vessel. Boom."

"I heard you the first time!" Sylvana threw her hands up, pacing a tight circle across the stone floor. Her mind was a chaotic storm of elven pride, duty, and pure, unadulterated disbelief.

Just a few days ago, she was an honored, proud royal guard willing to give her life to protect Princess Elara from the horrors of the world. Now, she was negotiating the preservation of an orc's testicles to ensure their mutual survival.

'The world hasn't just turned upside down,' she thought bitterly. 'It has completely shattered.'

"Sylvana…" Elara squeaked, her hands still tightly gripping her guard's tunic. "If… if Mister Orc dies, what happens to us? Can we survive? And the barrier… will the barrier disappear? What about the other monsters?"

Sylvana stopped her pacing. She looked at the small princess, whose wide blue eyes were shimmering with genuine fear. Elara was right. Valkar was their anchor. Without him, two helpless, weakened elves in the Forgotten Lands were nothing more than a brief meal for the next creature to come along. 

Sylvana already formed a clear understanding of the overall strength of this new world. Her skills and training as an elite knight were barely enough to deal with a few goblins. She had no illusions about facing a beast like the one Valkar had skinned to make this hide, or a flying succubus. They would die. Painfully. 

"W-we… have to do something," Elara stammered.

The little princess subconsciously had grown to view the huge orc as a shield, a protector, someone who could keep her safe. She was young and had seen more blood and death in two days than in her entire one hundred and seventeen years of life. She just wanted it all to stop.

"If you can't do it, Sylvana, then… then I will do it," Elara said with a shiver, though she had no idea what 'it' truly entailed. The concept of mating, of laying with a male, was a distant, academic thing, a chapter in a book on elven lineage she had once been forced to study.

It certainly never involved an orc on the verge of exploding.

"No!" Sylvana's voice was sharp, cutting through the heavy air with the force of a slammed door. She moved to stand in front of the princess, a protective wall of elven steel and simmering fury. "You will not. That is an order, Elara."

Her violet eyes blazed as she turned back to Valkar. The fear was still there, a cold knot in her gut, but it was being consumed by a hotter, more familiar emotion: grim, pragmatic resolve.

"This changes nothing," she declared, her chin held high, her back ramrod straight. She was a shield maiden of the royal house. Her duty was clear, even if the path to fulfilling it had become a nightmare of absurd proportions. "Our deal stands. I will be your mate. I will… perform the cure."

If the goddess Ishtar was here, she would surely shake her head in amusement at the tsundere-like behavior of the dark-haired elf.

Unfortunately, Valkar didn't know what tsundere was, but he was an orc. He already marked her as a potential mother to his offspring, and to him, her sharp words and defiant glare were just that—words and glares.

'What a strong woman. She will bear me strong sons.' 

He did not smile. He did not show any outward sign of relief or satisfaction. He simply gave a single, slow nod of acknowledgment. The unspoken agreement settled between them, heavier than any stone disk sealing a cave entrance.

Elara, seeing this, let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. The tension in her small frame evaporated, replaced by a profound, bone-deep relief.

For the rest of the day, the three of them set to clean and arrange their new home. It was a strange sight to behold. An orc, a knight, and a princess cleaning a cave like some sort of demented family.

Sylvana, with her leg fully healed, was a whirlwind of efficient motion. She gathered old, brittle animal hides from the back of the cave, shaking off decades of dust and arranging them near the fire to create a slightly softer sleeping area for the princess.

Elara, finding purpose in the simple tasks, helped as best she could. She fetched water from the hot spring, her small hands careful not to spill from the stone bowls. She even attempted to sweep the main chamber with a bundle of dried, brittle branches, creating more dust than she cleared, but her infectious, earnest energy made the grim work feel less like a chore.

Valkar, a giant among them, opened the cave to the outside, letting in fresh air and sunlight. He then took the goblin cooking equipment and spent the better part of an hour scrubbing it clean in the stream near the cave, using sand and coarse grass to scrape away years of grime.

By the time he returned, the cave was almost unrecognizable.

The air was clear, the floor was swept, and their small living space felt… civilized.

At least for an orc.

Elara stood in the middle of the cave with her hands on her hips, looking extremely proud of herself.

"Look, Mister Orc! It's much better now!" 

Valkar slowly raised his hand and gently patted her head.

"Good job, little elf," he said.

"Hehehe~…" Elara giggled at the rare praise.

Sylvana, who was arranging one of the hides near the fire, glanced at them.

'He's actually getting along with her.'

It was strange.

Very strange.

She had never imagined an orc could be so… normal.

Most of the orcs she had encountered, either on the battlefield or in whispered tales, were little more than snarling beasts, driven by rage and hunger. They were monsters to be slain, not creatures to share a cave with.

But Valkar… he was different.

So different that she was about to let him take her honor. To let him put his thing inside her. 

'No… I'm doing this to survive. To protect the princess. It's a duty. Nothing more.'