Beastly || Legolas

Prologue

The dark sky was overbearing and weighted but the fires still burned, their glow creating a circle of light around them. Thick smoke filled the air and the crackling of the flames was the only sound in the still. Blood covered the ground. Bodies littering the stone and the structures, that might have once been buildings, now lay in ruins. Stone torn apart and metal corroded. Twisted iron shackles hung from the remains of walls, blood dried around the edges and hair caught in the links. It was a ghastly sight. Bodies mangled of both captor and victim lying in pools of their own blood.

Only one figure stood alive in that place. His head bowed, hair matted and hanging around his face. It was stuck with blood and mud that caked his skin. No clothes covered him. The orcs had never given them any and the ones he had once worn were long gone. Scars littered his back and arms, thick white overlapping lines from whips and chains. They gleamed white in the firelight as he moved, working to pull the bodies of his people towards the fire. Each body, like his was thin and filthy. Some were children, some were adults, each dead and gone. The fire welcoming each new body easily. No funeral for them.

He had been working for days. Evident in the stink of death and the way the crows and flies circled around him. He had moved from to the outskirts of the slave camp. His people now belonging to the flames while the bodies of the dead orcs were left to decompose with the elements. It was when he was moving the corpse of a female that he heard it. The female body was pale in his arms. Her mane of thick long black hair trailed over the ground as he hefted her up. He remembered her. She had been pregnant when they had been taken. Her breasts were still full of milk despite the hollowness around her ribs. Now her stomach was empty and bloodied with a gaping stab wound. The fire took her with open arms and he sighed as he pulled back.

A whimper made him pause. He looked up, listening. A small weak cry broke the silence. The man turned toward the sound. It sounded young, animal, a call for a mother. There was an outcropping of rocks nearby. Boulders leaning against each other on this mountainside, covered in moss and smoothed by years of rain. He strode over to them, hope a fluttering bird in his chest. No orc made sounds like that. His hands smoothed over the stone as he listened, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion and pain in his bones. He had buried so much of his kin today, let him have this.

He found the bundle hidden in a crevice between the stones. It was wrapped in a bloodstained ragged piece of material that must have been stolen. The moss cushioned it as it wriggled. His hands, that were stained and had dealt in so much death, were careful as he reached in and picked up the bundle. Another whimper emanated and it wriggled. A hand pulled back the fabric and he found himself staring down into deep brown eyes. Little legs trembled and the infant's eyes welled up with tears. He was a small babe and bore more characteristics of humans than of their race. The only hair that grew seemed to be on his head but the baby claws on his nails told the man that they were at least of similar relation. The babe was skinny and malnourished, far to small to be alive yet there he was. Whole body fitting in one hand but skin warm and eyes wide.

Their kind was born autonomous, like their animal counterparts. So the babe, despite being less than a few months old, wriggled in his hand and rolled over to push himself up into a sitting position. Limbs chubby with baby fat despite being thinner than they should be. The man couldn't help but watch with wide eyes as the infant reached out and grasped a strand of his hair with one hand. The babe tugged and whimpered again, bottom lip sticking out as he worked himself up for a proper cry. It burst out of him in a wail, small lungs surprisingly loud in the dark night.

The man felt his own eyes well up as he watched the infant sob. He brought his other hand up and cupped the babe to his chest. They were alone now. Their people dead and gone and their blood still littering the ground. "Hello cub", the man whispered, one hand on the baby's back as the infant's wails calmed to shaking sobs. "I am glad to see you. My name is Beorn". He cradled the child as he lifted him away to stare into those big brow eyes again. The infant had a tuft of messy black hair just like his mother. She had been a cat-like beast so it was easy to guess that he would be similar.

"Namir", Beorn smiled as tear tracks carved their way through the dirt on his face. "I'll look after you Namir. So don't cry". The babe sniffed, staring at him with big eyes and placed as fist in his mouth. The gaze remarkably solemn, as if he knew the tragedy handing over them. Beorn tucked the child to his chest again. Namir's cries having faded as he sucked his thumb. The man glanced around the mountain of their imprisonment one last time before striding away. His strides long and steady, stronger now that he had a purpose. Namir falling asleep to the steady pace.

Unedited