Character Interview: Acules

 

As I mentioned in my last post, I know it’s been a while since many of you have read Orestes, so I wanted to provide a little catchup to prepare for the release of A Warrior’s Legacy: Jamie. To review the events of chapters 1-4, I pulled aside Acules after a few days after the events of chapter 4 to get his take on what’s been going on. Read on to hear his perspective.

SPOILER ALERT: The following contains major spoilers for Orestes chapters 1-4. If you’re planning on reading the book and don’t want spoilers, you won’t want to read this!

 

Character Interview: Acules (Orestes chapters 1-4)

Jennifer: Welcome, Acules!

Acules: Thanks, I guess. What am I doing here exactly?

Jennifer: You’re here for an interview. You’re going to answer some questions about what you’ve been up to lately.

Acules: Why would anyone care about that?

Jennifer: Well, just trust me that they do. Now, can you tell me where you are right now and a little bit about it?

Acules: You’re not a spy or something, are you?

Jennifer: No, I’m an interviewer.

Acules: Okay, whatever. Well, if you must know, I’m in Warrior Peak. It’s this big city on the southern face of a mountain. Their whole society is militarized. A guy they call the Elder runs the whole thing, but under him is the General, and everyone else has a military title and a job connected to the military. All the kids go through military school too. It’s a little weird because they haven’t actually been to war in generations, but I guess it works for them.

Jennifer: Are you from there originally? If not, what brings you here?

Acules: I’m from a country called Tyrclopia, which is north of this mountain range. Not many people here at Warrior Peak know much about it. I came here looking for some other Tyrclopians I knew when I was a kid. Their names were Aldis, Lexa, and Xander.

Jennifer: “Were”?

Acules: Well, when I got here, I found out Aldis just died a few days before, and Xander ran off to hunt down Morroks in the Gravel Lands—the desert just south of the mountain range. Lexa, Xander’s wife, is still alive, and I’ve been staying with her.

Jennifer: Morroks?

Acules: Wow, you don’t know anything, do you? Morroks are these seven- or eight-foot tall monsters. I mean, they look a lot like Humans, except they’re obviously a lot bigger, and they tend to get kind of disfigured—you know, they lose their hair or it becomes dried out, and their skin becomes discolored for some reason. Oh, and their eyes get real red and bloodshot, and their fingers sometimes end up looking like claws. They actually all used to be Humans; the sickest thing about them is that they kidnap Human babies and train them up—brutally—to get them ready to be in their army. Then when the trainees are thirteen, they give them this serum that makes them grow into full Morroks. It’s awful. I hate the bastards.

Jennifer: Are there Morroks in Tyrclopia too?

Acules: Oh yeah.

Jennifer: You sound like you have experience with them.

Acules: I’ve been fighting them my whole life. Well, at least since I was thirteen.

Jennifer: What happened when you were thirteen?

Acules: They killed Aldis’s husband, Zachaes, and kidnapped Xander and Lexa’s twin babies. Aldis, Xander, and Lexa thought I was captured too, so they fled to Warrior Peak. But I was actually going after the twins. The Morroks in Tyrclopia live in this tall, black tower in the middle of the desert. Dirth, their leader, is a sociopath; he used to let Zachaes and Xander come to the tower sometimes without attacking them, so I wondered if I could do the same thing. And I could. I walked in and got the twins and another boy, but when I got back home, everyone was gone. I’ve been looking for them ever since.

Jennifer: Did you raise the twins and the other boy?

Acules: I wouldn’t go that far. I made sure the twins were taken care of, but the other boy I gave away almost as soon as I got him—to the General of Warrior Peak, actually.

Jennifer: Really? Have you run into the boy again since you’ve been here?

Acules: More than that. When I first got here, I was climbing down the mountain and slipped, and I ended up knocking into him. Literally—we almost fell off a cliff. It turns out he was friends with Aldis right up until the day she died. He was snooping around the spot where she died because he thinks there was foul play involved.

Jennifer: What happened to her then? And what’s the boy’s name?

Acules: Orestes. He doesn’t know I’m the one who rescued him, though, so don’t say anything to him. He was only five when I got him from the Morrok tower, but he’s fifteen now. I guess the General adopted him out to a colonel here, and Orestes has been in military school ever since. I can tell it bothers him that he still remembers being a Morrok trainee. He thinks it makes him evil or something, but I don’t think that’s true. If anything, it’s given him a hell of a fighting arm.

Jennifer: And Aldis?

Acules: Oh yeah. So I guess when she moved here, she became a blacksmith at the military school, and Orestes became friends with her because he doesn’t have a lot of friends at school; he’s a good fighter, so he keeps getting pushed up into the better classes with older boys. She would tell him stories about Tyrclopia; he didn’t even think it was a real place until I came. But anyway, so one day after he visited her, he got called to talk to the General—I guess he keeps tabs on Orestes because he’s concerned about him being a former Morrok trainee too—and when he was leaving the General’s level, he found Aldis’s body. The official story is that she fell from a cliff, but Orestes saw some scratches and stuff on her arms, so he thinks she was pushed or something.

Jennifer: And what do you think?

Acules: I don’t know. I know Zachaes and Xander are important people to Dirth and the Morroks, so I guess their wives could be targets. But Warrior Peak is the most well-fortified city I’ve ever seen. There’s no way a Morrok could’ve made it all the way up to the Elder’s level without getting swarmed by all the guards up there. It doesn’t make sense. But I don’t think the kid’s too far off.

Jennifer: You and Orestes seem important to the Morroks too. Any idea why?

Acules: I have theories, but nothing I’d tell you.

Jennifer: Come on. Isn’t there anything you can share?

Acules: Okay, I’ll tell you one thing I can’t figure out. See, when I was a kid, Zachaes gave me this dagger. It’s nothing fancy—a foot and a half long with a leather handle. The only distinct thing about it is that there’s a capital L etched in the middle of the blade. Shortly after I showed up to Warrior Peak, Orestes found an identical dagger among a bunch of swords he’d practiced making with Aldis.

Jennifer: Really? So what do you think that means?

Acules: I have no idea. I’m not hiding anything from you; I really don’t know.

Jennifer: I believe you. So what’s next for you?

Acules: I think I’m going to stick around Warrior Peak for a while. I’ve been trying to train a militia back home, and I have a lot to learn from this place. Besides, I want to catch up with Lexa, and I’d like to train Orestes a little bit. The kid’s got a lot of promise.

Jennifer: Okay, that’s all. Thanks, Acules.

Acules: You’re welcome. No offense, but you should think about doing something more productive with your time.

Jennifer: Thank you.