{"id":4583,"date":"2026-02-12T20:51:37","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/?p=4583"},"modified":"2026-02-12T20:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:51:37","slug":"the-half-orcs-true-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/?p=4583","title":{"rendered":"THE HALF-ORC&#8217;S TRUE IDENTITY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THE HALF-ORC&#8217;S TRUE IDENTITY, by Christian Emecheta<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>he pompously wears his injuries like blood on a battlefield,<\/p>\n<p>each scar extending like a city founded on agony and endurance.<\/p>\n<p>the sword remembers the violence his mind is fighting to forget,<\/p>\n<p>he acts like an angry viper, but his heart knows his true intention,<\/p>\n<p>his blade has no friend, it only obeys the hands that wield it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>they call him &#8220;half-orc&#8221; as though he was incomplete,<\/p>\n<p>when he is twice-forged, tempered in multiple fires.<\/p>\n<p>he has mastered his weapons and requires no grimoire\u2014<\/p>\n<p>only the intelligence of a sharpened instinct<\/p>\n<p>and eyes that have learned to see beyond darkness.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>honor lives in the battles he has conquered,<\/p>\n<p>those moment when mercy outweighed vengeance.<\/p>\n<p>he is not your regular mercenary<\/p>\n<p>his stallion sees him as a liberator,<\/p>\n<p>accomplishing the dreams of his dynasty.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #993300;\">________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #993300;\"><a style=\"color: #993300;\" href=\"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/chriswunderkind\">Christian Emecheta<\/a> is a Nigerian writer and computer scientist. His fiction and poetry grace prestigious publications including <em>Arts Lounge Magazine, Step Away Magazine, <\/em>and<em> The Decolonial Passage<\/em>. He is also a published contributor to <em>Cranked Anvil Press, Walden&#8217;s Poetry and Reviews, and Mocking Owl Roost<\/em>, among other publications too numerous to mention. Christian finds inspiration through reading, film, and the boundless landscapes of his imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE HALF-ORC&#8217;S TRUE IDENTITY, by Christian Emecheta &nbsp; he pompously wears his injuries like blood on a battlefield, each scar extending like a city founded on agony and endurance. the sword remembers the violence his mind is fighting to forget, he acts like an angry viper, but his heart knows his true intention, his blade [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-67-archive","category-main","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4607,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions\/4607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}