In the dead of night, Aris remained crouched within the narrow darkness of the alley. His nerves were coiled tight. One hand held the riser of his bow with deathly stillness, the other gripped the poisoned arrow. The rest of the poisoned arrows rested in the quiver at his back, their acrid scent hanging heavy in the stagnant air, the only thing he could smell.
His ears strained against the crushing silence of the sleeping village; the distant chirping of insects and the occasional soft rustle of leaves in the courtyards were the only sounds. His eyes remained locked onto the kill zone he had calculated, mapped, and obsessed over for the last five days.
Thud! Thud!
Footsteps sounded from the left—footsteps he had grown far too familiar with these last few days. He rose slowly, moving with agonizing care, inch by inch, toward the mouth of the alley. He didn't dare breathe, terrified that a single mistake might betray his position.
His mind was silent, purged of the gnawing, risky questions that had plagued him for days. What if you fail? What if he turns? Countless what-ifs. But the doubt was gone. His confidence in the poison's potency was absolute.
He drew the string, following the precise, optimized guidance Prime had drilled into him over the last few days. His muscles trembled under the strain, but he held the full draw for an agonizing thirty seconds, his vision narrowing until nothing existed but the angle of the shot.
One shot. I have to succeed in one shot. I can't give him a single heartbeat to react, to press me, or to escape.
The steps grew louder, closer. Each one thudded like a hammer against the dirt. Aris's breath hitched; he inhaled deeply and held it, activating Prime to strip away the frantic impulses of his own heart. His vision sharpened, the world around his target blurring into triviality.
The chief stepped into the moonlight, his silhouette heavy as usual. Prime locked onto the old man, and Aris released.
Whoosh!
The arrow split the night air.
Thuck!
The arrow buried itself deep into the chief's right deltoid. The man recoiled, his head snapping toward the dark mouth of the alley, his face a mask of sudden, searing shock. Aris didn't wait to see the expression, nor did he care. He stepped out of the shadows, his second arrow already drawn and notched—a precaution etched into his mind.
He knew the timing; the poison was designed for speed. And, as expected, the chief's legs buckled. "Who are—" The question died in a choked rasp as the old man pitched forward, collapsing into the dirt.
Aris stood over him, his gaze cold. A faster reaction than I expected. But the poison had brought him down in three seconds. He filed the data point away for future reference and crouched, hooking his arms under the chief's shoulders to hoist him. He grunted, the strain radiating through his spine. The man was heavy, easily one hundred and fifty kilograms of dense, hardened muscle and bone. But there was no time to dwell on the weight.
He adjusted his grip and began the trek toward the blacksmith's shop, moving through the shadows between the houses. He remained stealthy, counting every second as the village slept on, completely unaware that its leader had just been put down.
At the blacksmith's shop, he propped the chief against the stone wall and pried the locked door open with practiced ease; the last few days of breaking in had taught him well. He dragged the chief inside, slammed the door, and swept his gaze across the threshold until the entrance looked entirely untouched from the outside. Warmth radiated from the forge on the left, smelling of ash and scorched iron. Aris exhaled, stretching the lingering ache from his shoulders. Damn heavy for an old man.
He scanned the cluttered workshop, his eyes passing over tools, scrap, and half-finished blades until he found the chains. It took only minutes to bind the chief, anchoring him to the base of the forge, his back pressed against its radiating heat. Aris grabbed an iron rod, wrapped a rag around one end, and shoved the other into the coals.
He sat on a stool to the right, watching the flames lick the metal white-hot as he waited. In the meantime, Prime went to work; its scan washed over the chief's body, mapping every fiber and searching for the source of his unnatural strength. It found nothing out of the ordinary, except for the Gu worm lodged near the old man's heart.
Sixteen minutes later, the chief's eyelids twitched. He let out a low, guttural groan, then jerked against the chains. A surge of frantic energy flared through his limbs, and he roared, "Who are you! Do you—"
Aris was already moving. He slammed a rag into the chief's mouth, muffling the outburst into a wet, strangled sound. The chief thrashed, his muscles coiling and popping, but the chains bit into his skin and held fast. Slowly, oxygen deprivation and the poison's lingering haze forced the fight out of him.
Aris crouched low, his face painted in the flickering orange glow of the forge. The chief's eyes widened as they locked onto Aris, who reached up and ripped the rag from his mouth.
"You!" The chief spat the word, his voice a trembling bark. "You dare crawl back here? Do you have any idea what you've unleashed? Do you know how many villagers were killed because of your cowardice?"
Aris didn't blink and he didn't so much as flinch. "Save your energy, old man. You're lecturing the wrong person. Don't try to play the moral game with me. They didn't care when you were beating me; why should I care when it's their turn?"
He stood, shoved the rag back into the chief's mouth, and turned to the forge. The iron rod had deepened to a blinding, crimson glow. Hot enough. He pulled it from the fire, the metal hissing in the air as he turned back to the old man.
The chief watched the movement of the iron rod, his eyes wide, pupils dilated with a frantic mixture of fury and calculation. I'm in Morel's workshop. I'm still in the village, he realized, seeing the familiar forge. The proximity to his own people sparked a flame of hope. The young are indeed foolish. They lack the cruelty and wisdom of age. How could he do something like this in my own territory? If I scream the moment that rag is out, surely—
His gaze dropped to the glowing, heat-rippled tip of the rod. It can't be…
Aris didn't offer a warning, nor a monologue. He simply brought the iron down. The scent of searing flesh and the hiss of burning skin filled the cramped room.
The chief's body jolted in a desperate, gargantuan effort to tear himself away from the heat, but the chains held him fast. He slammed against the stone wall of the forge, eyes bulging as a strangled, wet grunt tore from his throat. Aris didn't flinch.
He waited for the hiss to subside before shifting the rod to the other thigh, pressing it deep into the muscle and holding it there for a full, torturous minute. The chief's face turned grey, agony etching deep lines into his skin, yet he remained conscious. He refused to faint.
Aris yanked the cloth from his mouth.
The chief didn't scream. He dragged in air, his chest heaving like a bellows, and leveled a gaze at Aris in a look of pure, concentrated hatred. How? The question burned in his mind. How could he hide this? The groveling, the whimpering, the way he kissed the dirt beneath my feet… The memory of Aris's submissive performance two weeks ago surfaced, and the chief finally saw the truth. This hadn't been a moment of weakness. It had been deception, a man biding his time.
Insidious… too insidious. Regret curdled in his gut. I should have followed my intuition and slaughtered them all.
But there was no antidote for the past. He was pinned, his fate like a coin balanced on the edge of a blade. He ran the calculations through his mind: Morel had soundproofed this shop with thick stone after the villagers complained about the noise, and his sons were likely asleep or with their wives at this late hour.
If he screamed, he'd be a corpse before a single neighbor woke. Survival demanded silence. He had to be the serpent, not the prey; he had to stall and look for a way out.
He looked at Aris, studied him, really studied him. He looked past the young man's weak physique, searching for a trace of hesitation, the boyish fear he remembered. He found nothing. Instead, he met a gaze as cold and stagnant as a deep-well pool: eyes that didn't just understand violence, but had long since made peace with it, eyes that had killed more than any boy his age should have been able to. But how? "What do you want from me?" the chief rasped, his voice thin and brittle, choosing not to dwell on the "how."
Aris smiled, though the expression never reached his eyes. Throughout the exchange, Prime had been running a ceaseless, microscopic analysis of the old man's involuntary twitches and pupil dilations. The fury had been evident, the least predictable emotion, but once the chief reined in his emotions, Aris let his guard drop just enough to engage.
"Information."
"Information?" The chief's face furrowed, his confusion genuine enough to be startling. "On what?"
"The orcs."
"The masters?" The chief's tone pivoted instantly; the pain in his legs was momentarily eclipsed by sheer, bewildered shock. "Why? What could you possibly want from them? Are you seeking an early grave?"
"I want to know their numbers. Their power divisions. Their capabilities. Everything." Aris crouched, his proximity forcing the chief to look up at him. He glanced pointedly at the iron rod resting in the coals, glowing with a malevolent heat. "Try to lie, and…" He let the sentence hang, the silence in the workshop far heavier than any threat he could have voiced.
The chief let out a rough, dry laugh. "Save the theatrics, boy. Threatening me with pain is like threatening a drowning man with a glass of water. That is the least of my fears."
Aris held his gaze, weighing the truth of the man's words. The chief wasn't posturing; he was speaking from experience, though the validity of that experience mattered little. People rarely feared short-term pain; it was the endless, calculated breakdown Prime could orchestrate, should he choose to abandon mercy, that truly broke them. For now, he offered a curt nod, signaling for the chief to continue.