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The Purging of the Great Thorns

The sun was not merely a ball of burning gas to the folk of the Sandleford Warren; it was Frith, the Great Eye, the golden source of all life and the witness to every twitch of a whisker. But on this day, the air felt heavy, tasting of ozone and the cold, sharp scent of worked iron. Fiver, the small, twitching seer of the rabbits, sat atop the Honeycomb, his ears flat against his back. "It’s coming, Hazel", he whispered, his voice trembling like a leaf in a gale. "A great white light. Not the light of Frith that warms the fur, but a light that eats the world. Man has grown too clever. He has stolen the fire from the center of the earth and pointed it at the sky". Hazel looked toward the horizon. He couldn’t see the, "Great Thorns"—the long, silver cylinders Man had hidden in the ground—but he felt the vibration in his paws. The world of men was screaming. They had built machines that could turn the grass to ash and the rivers to steam. They were ready ...
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Fletch the Oven Master

The fluorescent glow of the Pizza Hut kitchen had never been Fletch's preferred lighting. His natural habitat, the realm of the orcs, boasted the harsh, beautiful glare of volcanic ash and the flickering torchlight of cavernous halls. Here, it was the relentless hum of fryers and the clatter of pizza trays. Fletch, an ogre-type monster whose hulking frame barely fit beneath the low-slung ceilings, had endured another shift.

The final buzzer for the last delivery order echoed like a distant war drum. Fletch, whose official title was, "Oven Master & Dough Specialist", slammed a fresh Supreme into its thermal bag. "Done", he rumbled, a sound that made the teenage cashier jump. The red Pizza Hut polo, stretched taut across his broad, greenish chest, felt like a straightjacket. The smell of processed cheese and stale bread clung to him like a desperate limpet.

He didn't bother with the staff locker room. The polo was ripped off with a single, powerful tug, sailing through the air to land ignominiously near a stack of empty pizza boxes. The black uniform trousers followed, shucked expertly with a twist and a kick. Underneath, Fletch wore his true off-duty uniform, a pair of surprisingly well-fitting, if well-stretched, indigo shorts. They were a vivid, almost defiant splash of colour against his leathery hide.

With a final, guttural snort, Fletch stormed out. The main door, designed for human ingress and egress, would get stuck for some, but was no issue for Fletch. He didn't walk; he ran. His heavy, three-toed feet pounded the cracked concrete floor, a rhythmic, earth-shaking thud that vibrated up through the soles of any unfortunate late-night pedestrian.



The cool night air, blessedly devoid of tomato sauce and melting cheese, rushed over his exposed skin. It was a liberation. Shop windows reflected his bizarre progress: a monstrous, tusked figure, veins bulging, muscles rippling, thundering down Main Street in nothing but a pair of indigo shorts. Car alarms chirped in his wake, dogs barked frantically, and a few startled late-night shoppers dropped their bags, staring with wide, disbelieving eyes.

He didn't care. He was Fletch. An ogre-type from the valiant orcish horde, a fierce warrior, a skilled craftsman of bone and steel... and a surprisingly efficient pizza chef. But not tonight. Tonight, he was just Fletch, running home, away from the realm of the cheesy crust and into the quiet, starlit comfort of his unexpectedly quaint cottage on the outskirts of town. The snug indigo shorts carried him further and further from the fluorescent tyranny, towards the promise of a cold, well-earned ale and the sweet silence of a uniform-free evening.

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