Once they were out of sight, he climbed down slowly, praying no orcs would appear. His feet hit the ground with a jolt that stabbed through his knees, but he didn't falter. He bolted instantly into the nearby undergrowth. A low branch whipped across his cheek, drawing blood, but he didn't look back.
He just ran, the biochip's mapping function casting a phantom blue trail across the forest floor, his eyes locked on the glow, his breath sawing in his throat.
He ran back to the cave the Biochip's mapping function guiding him with a phantom blue trail layered over the forest floor, his eyes locked on the glow, breath sawing in his throat.
Minutes later, he skidded to a halt in a small, shadowed clearing, head swiveling, eyes raking the trees. Three minutes. No more. He held himself to it.
He chose a tree with brittle, peeling bark and stripped away the wet outer layers, binding them into a crude but sturdy box frame. Near a patch of deadfall, he scavenged a thick, sun-bleached plank, unnaturally gray despite the surrounding decay, and wedged it into the bottom.
He reinforced the sides with three more scraps of wood, but the box remained loose, the gaps wide enough that the hot stones might slip through.
He hesitated. Then he remembered the corpse. He turned and bolted toward it without a second of hesitation.
Minutes later, he reached the remains. The body lay exactly as he had left it, ignored by the forest's scavengers, not that any were around, with the orcs so near. The clothing had stiffened, bonded to the skin by dried blood. Without hesitation, Aris knelt, tore the fabric free, and ripped it into long ribbons.
He wrapped these around the joints of his makeshift box, binding the frame until it held tight. His hands moved with a stranger's efficiency, his heart steady, his mind detached from the grisly task. He did not allow himself to dwell on the texture of the cloth, or the life that had once filled it. With the final ribbon, he fashioned a crude, knotted handle at the top.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached out, gently closed the man's vacant eyes, and stood up.
Half an hour later, he arrived at the Dakota pit. The biochip confirmed what the heat against his face already told him: the basalt had breached five hundred degrees. The air above the pit shimmered, forcing him to recoil. He kicked soil into the holes, smothering the flames until the last ember died. Even buried, the stones glowed a deep, volcanic orange, their heat radiating against his shins like the breath of an open furnace.
Using makeshift tongs of green, water-heavy wood, he hauled the stones from the pit one by one. The wood hissed violently as it clamped around each scorching rock, curling with white steam, but Aris didn't falter. He laid them out in a smoking row and rushed back to the waterfall, returning with hands cupped around thick clay.
He crouched and began to coat the stones. The mud bubbled and hissed on contact, baking rapidly into a crude, vitrified shell. Steam scalded his knuckles. He snatched his hands back for only a heartbeat before diving in again—faster, then faster. Within minutes, each of the seven stones was encased in its own insulating ceramic crust.
The blistering heat was now blunted, pulled back to a manageable simmer, enough that the box wouldn't ignite. Not for ten minutes, anyway. And ten minutes was more than enough. He jammed the stones into the box and braced himself. The failure he had feared, the combustion of his transport, never came.
He sprinted back to the waterfall and plunged into the pool. One arm raised, he held the box high like a holy relic, shielding it from the spray as he waded forward. His legs churned against the weight of his sodden clothes, but he didn't let his arm waver.
The cascade thundered ahead. He lowered the box, angled toward the precise weak point the biochip had mapped, and lunged. The falls battered his shoulders for one violent, crushing second, then released him. He stumbled into the cave, gasping, momentarily blinded by the abrupt plunge into darkness.
Slowly, his vision adjusted. The roar of the water faded to a muffled hush behind him, replaced by the sound of his own breathing, echoing far too loudly in the hollow silence.
Then he froze at the sight of Lilly's small silhouette laying curled on the stone floor, unmoving, her hands still locked around the bamboo container of orc blood.
He dropped the box and ran to her. He knelt, pressed a palm to her forehead, and the heat there turned his blood cold. She was shivering—but it could barely be called a shiver at all. A faint tremor rippled across her shoulders, dying, then rippling again, each wave weaker than the last beneath his hand.
"Shit. Lilly. Not now." His voice echoed in the cavern.
He lifted her, and the biochip flickered with her vitals.
[Core Temp: 39.4°C and climbing | Pulse: 122 bpm | Early-stage systemic infection detected]
He didn't need the confirmation. Her skin burned against his. Her head lolled against his shoulder as he carried her toward the warmth of the box. He laid her down gently and stripped two outer layers from his damp cloak, spreading them over the stone floor.
It was a pathetic mattress, foolish maybe, but it was a barrier against the cold rock nonetheless.
He laid her down with aching gentleness and turned to the stones. Using his knives as makeshift tongs, he nested the clay-wrapped heat around her; one at her feet, one to her left, one to her right. He placed the remaining four with obsessive care, adjusting them inch by inch until they formed a precise, warm cocoon within the cold dark. Then he crouched, his gaze tethered to the biochip's projection, watching her vitals.
Minutes bled into a haze. Slowly, the violent tremors subsided into low, rhythmic shudders. Finally, her breathing smoothed into a shallow but steady rhythm. Aris exhaled, a breath that felt as though it had been trapped in his lungs since the moment he had left her.
"One crisis delayed," he murmured, his eyes still fixed on her sleeping form. But his mind was already calculating the deterioration rate. The hypothermia wasn't gone, but merely suppressed, waiting to surge back the moment the stones went cold.
Four to five hours. That was his entire window. He turned to the bundle of herbs—a dark shape barely discernible in the cave's gloom—then rose and walked toward the waterfall.
At the threshold, he glanced back. Lilly's eyes were open, just a thin sliver of consciousness fixed on his silhouette against the silver light of the cascade. Then her lids slid shut again, exhaustion claiming her before he could even turn away.
Without a second thought, Aris plunged through the waterfall, swam to the bank, and slipped into the undergrowth like a ghost. He stayed low, his gaze raking the canopy for threats. A bowl-shaped piece of deadwood caught his eye; he grabbed it on the move, lashing it to his waist with a scrap of fabric as he vanished deeper into the trees.
Snap.
Footsteps. Aris dropped to the ground instantly, pressing his body into the decaying leaves, ears straining against the distant roar of the falls. He listened. The gait was off—too light for an orc, too intentional for an animal. Something familiar.
He peered through the leaves, muscles coiling like a spring. Two figures emerged, navigating the uneven ground with casual ease. As they stepped into a patch of sunlight, their faces came into focus.
Aris's breath hitched. He knew them. Two of the men who had participated in beating Rill to death.
For one heartbeat, an overwhelming rage flared in his chest, an inheritance of this body's grief threatening to override his reason. But he didn't indulge it. He crushed the fury down, burying it deep, locking it away beside everything else he refused to feel. He was already developing a familial affection for Lilly because of this body's hormones—he couldn't let it dictate him further. Or so he wanted to justify his foolish actions.