[He laughs lightly at Hiro's eagerness. He's glad to hear it. He clears his throat as he thinks of how to start, and then he finally does. This is a big hill and they still have to wind their way up another one before he'll stop.]

Legends tell of a boy born to the Frostwolf clan who was very small and weak. It was thought he would not survive the harsh winter, and many other orc clans would have given him the mercy of a swift death.

But that went against the Frostwolf way. The clan is family, the chieftain said. A sickness spread through the camp that year and should have killed the runt-- but the boy lived on, small and resilient, while a few other infants died.

As he grew to maturity, it became clear that he would always be small for an orc. He was always the last to eat, the one who could not kill a beast by himself. He was often given the least desirable tasks. This frustrated him but it was the way of the clan; whenever he passed his Om'riggor, his rite of adulthood, he would be accepted as an equal to the others.

What the boy lacked in brute strength, he made up for in cleverness. He was smaller and able to travel by himself relatively unseen. He became the hunter then. He stalked the wolves as they tracked their prey. He watched the big cats and learned how they slid through the woods without disturbing a single branch.