Aris shot another arrow. It pierced the orc's chest, driving the creature to its knees as the poison finally took hold. Its face slackened, eyes glazing under a sudden, leaden stupor, but Aris didn't hesitate. He loosed a second arrow, burying it an inch from the first.
The orc lifted its head, tracking the puny human as he advanced, still firing. Its vision blurred, the human doubling, splitting into two, then three, then shapes that refused to hold still. Its massive body shuddered under the poison's grip.
Weakness spread through every limb. It tried to raise a hand, to rise, to put this insect in its place, but its arms had turned to stone, too heavy to lift. Aris caught the twitch of effort, stopped advancing, and fired a third arrow, burying it into the bloodied, brown-smeared muscle. Three shafts now stood in a precise line across the orc's pectorals, each placed to miss the vitals, each flooding the body with more concentrated paralytic.
Only when the orc's skull dropped onto its chest did Aris resume his approach. He stopped before it, scanning the giant. Even kneeling, the orc's head met his at eye level. Too close, he muttered, circling it, his gaze tracing the sheer, impossible mass of its body. He glanced at his own scrawny arms, trembling, and an ugly envy twisted in his gut, but he crushed it at once. Jealousy was the last thing he wanted in his mind, not with Prime in his possession.
He triggered Prime's scan, and data began flooding his mind. The orc had plunged into a deep, coma-like state. The poison, though an excessive dose, had done its work. As long as it wasn't dead, that was enough. Prime estimated twenty-plus hours of unconsciousness, more than enough time to prepare for what came next.
But as the full scan populated his vision, Aris's eyes widened. He'd scanned orcs before, but this time he had the leisure for a deep analysis. The bone showed reinforcement beyond anything he'd seen. The muscle—nearly four times human density. Fiber packed over fiber. Tissue this dense should have been brittle. Should have torn under its own weight the first time the orc swung a fist too hard..
He stood behind the slumped giant, contemplating. A simple truth settled over him. The gap between their species was so vast it felt almost like a violation to stand this close to it. His knowledge of orcs was still limited, yet Prime's analysis of the heart alone had been enough to leave a mark. It was monstrous—two, perhaps three times the size of a human's. Enough to make a man wonder whether nature had simply tried harder here than it ever had for his own kind.
But the body's differences were beside the point. In the end, only one question remained. Could that gap be closed? Could he ever claw his way up from this scrawny, trembling frame and become something capable of standing against a monster like this?
There was no time to marvel. A frail body had felled this titan, and that alone was proof enough: brute strength was not the arbiter of life and death. He filed the data into a new folder in his mind—Target: Orc Physiology—and slipped into the treeline to the left. Moments later, he emerged, dragging the five-meter-long cart he'd prepared that morning.
He positioned it before the orc, slanting it downward, and braced himself before nudging the giant from behind. The body toppled onto the wood with a heavy thud, though half its massive bulk still hung over the side.
For the next dozen minutes, Aris labored, hauling its thick, muscular limbs one by one, straining to heave the full body onto the cart. Finally he slumped to the ground, chest heaving, breath coming in fast gasps. Damn. Too heavy. I wonder how much he actually weighs.
He pushed himself up anyway, ignoring the scream of his burning muscles; rest was a luxury he couldn't afford. He walked to the pit and stepped inside. Several spears were embedded in the walls, smeared with orc blood, though most had snapped like twigs under the giant's weight.
He salvaged thirteen intact enough to be of use, climbed out, set them beside the giant with the bow and arrows, then turned his attention to the gaping mouth of the pit. For several minutes, he shoveled loose soil back into it, packing it down, smoothing the surface until the ground looked no different from its surroundings.
Only then did he return to the cart. He braced his shoulders against the frame, gripped the handle, and pushed. As expected, the cart resisted him, but he threw his full strength into it anyway.
The whole way back to the cave it groaned, wheels sinking deep into the damp soil, crawling forward agonizingly slowly. He rested in intervals when he had to, but each pause felt like standing still with a target painted on his back, a lure dangling in front of something patient enough to wait. He gritted his teeth, muscles screaming under the relentless strain, palms growing swollen and slick with sweat.
Although he'd studied this stretch of forest for days and found orc traffic on the lower end, the likelihood of another patrol coming through climbed with every grueling inch. Nothing was set in stone. And that alone kept his legs moving long after they wanted to stop.
After three grueling hours, he reached the waterfall, halted the cart before the bank, and collapsed beside it, pure exhaustion dragging him down, lungs burning, clothes soaked through with sweat. After resting just a few minutes, barely enough, he stood and, with a final surge of his remaining strengt overturned the cart.
The giant tumbled into the pool with a splash. Aris slid in right after, using the water's buoyancy to offset the creature's immense dead weight, and steered the mass toward the cascade with relative ease. Seizing one of its massive hands, he began dragging the body into the damp mouth of the cave.
Lilly, who had been sitting quietly by the iron spikes, toying with the chains, snapped her head around at the sound of his ragged huffs and grunts, distinct from the roar of the falls.
"Brother!"
She scrambled to her feet and sprinted toward the cascade, then froze dead in her tracks. Sheer shock paralyzed her as she stared at Aris, hauling a towering, three-meter-tall orc inch by agonizing inch into their cave.
Her whole body began to tremble violently. Old, buried memories clawed their way to the surface; orcs laughing as they tore through human limbs, painting their bodies crimson before her very eyes with the blood of people she'd known. She'd been an inch from becoming part of that blood herself.
Her small hands moved on their own, frantically touching her arms, her collarbone, her chest, desperately confirming that she was still whole, still alive, that this wasn't another one of those hallucinations from the days she'd spent fleeing them.
Then she clenched her small fists slowly, until her knuckles turned white, and forced herself forward, eyes never leaving Aris and the orc.
"Brother, why? Why is this thing here?" Her voice shook, tight with terror. "Did you—" She stopped herself. "Are there others? No—is he alive?"
Aris turned to look at her. His eyes swept over her small frame, then settled on her balled fists, her pale face carved with questions and dread.
"Come help me. He won't wake up."
He knew her physical contribution would be negligible, but that wasn't the point. She had to face the monster in the daylight, under their own roof. He couldn't afford to let her remain a prisoner to her past, freezing like a frightened animal every time an orc's shadow crossed her mind.
Lilly flinched, half a step back. She hesitated, the trauma screaming at her to run. But where to? How long could she run? How long could she hide? Brother was asking her to help. But—what if it woke? The thought of watching her brother be devoured, torn limb from limb, horrified her, and yet the sight of him dragging the thing in felt stranger still.
What was wrong with him? How could he do this? The questions raced through her mind as she looked at Aris, smiling toward her, waiting, as if beckoning her toward something good.
Then, jaw tightening, she walked forward, knelt beside him on the wet stone floor, and gripped the orc's massive arm, a single finger's width against a limb the size of her own torso.
Together, they began to pull. A faint, proud smile touched Aris's lips, though it vanished the moment he caught sight of her hands trembling violently, and the dread still pooling in her eyes, eyes too weary for a ten-year-old girl.
Even then, he offered no hollow encouragement, no comforting words. He didn't coddle her. He simply let her take the weight, knowing she had to be the one to tear her own fears down from the inside out.
Minutes of grueling work later, Aris had positioned the body firmly against the northern wall, wedged tightly between the three iron spikes, one at its head, two flanking its massive torso.
He grabbed one of the heavy chains tethered to the spikes and began winding it around the orc's chest, cinching it tight across its limbs, looping it again and again until the giant was cocooned in iron. He didn't stop until the chain bit deep into its hide, and he felt that fragile, elusive semblance of safety settle into his body.
"Brother, what will we do if it breaks the chains?" Lilly stood right beside him, her wide eyes locked anxiously onto the heavy bindings.
"My little Lilly is smart. What do you think I should do?" Aris smiled, though the question mirrored the exact problem racing through his own mind. He wasn't just wondering what to do if the beast broke free; he was calculating how to ensure it never got the chance.
Lilly fell silent, her small brow furrowing in deep thought. Then, as if unearthing an old, buried horror from the back of her mind, she reached out and tugged nervously at his sleeve. "Brother, I think you should cut its legs and arms. Just like they did to those uncles. Then it won't hurt us."
Aiy. She's getting a little darker than I was.
Aris glanced down, studying her closely. Beneath the lingering shadow of fear in her eyes, there was a cold, hard pragmatism taking root.
But I like it.
He turned her words over in his mind, weighing the utility against the risk. Did he need to sever its limbs to neutralize the threat? A terrifying variable hung over the idea: what if the orc, waking to find itself mutilated and utterly without hope, simply chose death, or silence? Unlike the chief, bound by the external leash of a Gu worm, this beast had no parasite to exploit, no master-servant dynamic Aris could manipulate through forced obedience.
Push it too far into despair, and he might lose his only living source of information—about the orcs, the mysteries of this forest, and whatever unnatural things were unfolding within the settlement.
Sigh. How stupid of me. How could I limit myself like that? I have Prime.
Ideas began blooming in his mind. What if he exploited its neural pathways, precise pressure-targeted shocks, phantom pain? Agony without damage. Break the mind while keeping the body intact. A double kill, in a sense. This might work.
Or—starve it. Push it to the absolute brink of collapse. With Prime monitoring its vital organ stress in real time, I'd know the exact moment its body starts to fail.
His eyes drifted toward the heap of loot, catching on the bamboo containers. Concoctions. How could I forget. Prime could likely synthesize something hallucinogenic, might be easier still, though I'd need to venture back into the forest to gather the ingredients. Fortunately, I already know where to find them, after this past week.
What if I used them all? Wouldn't I get more accurate information faster?
He turned to Lilly, snapping out of his thoughts, and tapped her shoulder. "You see those containers?" He pointed to a stack of spare bamboo tubes sitting near his straw bed. "Wash them for me. I'll be back shortly."
"No, I don't want to stay alone with this thing!" Lilly cried out, her sudden bravado fracturing as she cast a terrified glance at the chained giant. Despite her dark suggestion moments ago, she was still a child trapped in a nightmare.
"Okay, okay. Just follow me. You'll carry the gathering bundles for me," Aris relented, softening his tone. "But first, let's bring in the cart and the weapons, so nothing's left exposed outside."
He walked to the cascade, Lilly trailing close behind, already clutching empty bundles of cloth, her eyes darting nervously back toward the orc slumped against the wall, as if expecting the body to suddenly stir back to life.
Minutes later, after they'd hauled the cart, the remaining spears, and the bow inside the cave, Aris plunged back into the damp forest, Lilly in tow, carrying an empty bundled cloth. For the following hour he searched the undergrowth with Prime's help, though his headaches were growing more frequent by the minute.
He needed to find the specific herbs before his stamina ran out and Prime went dark on him, and nourishing roots too, to keep himself and Lilly in better condition. It wouldn't hurt to be prepared for cold or sickness. But more importantly, the poisonous herbs.
After half an hour of scouring the shadows, Prime chimed softly in his consciousness, highlighting a cluster of pale, shelf-like fungi growing on the rotting bark of a fallen log. A scan confirmed a concentrated hallucinogenic compound, potent enough to scramble a human mind into raving incoherence and potent enough, likely, to affect an orc as well, though its intelligence he'd judged lower than a human's, based on nothing more than weeks of distant observation.
As for why—and how—the orcs kept humans as captives at all, he'd chalked that up to the will of whatever entity they worshipped, not any particular cunning on their part. No. I can't let my past-life assumptions blind me. Humans aren't the masters here. Not like we were, back on Earth.
Then again, if the orc really were that unintelligent, would someone as careful as him have dared target it at all? A smarter predator would have known better than to corner a rat and expect it not to bite back.
Perhaps it wasn't that they lacked intelligence. Perhaps it was arrogance instead. Or perhaps it really was as simple as it looked. He couldn't say for certain, not yet. The arrogance, at least, wasn't hard to believe, given how thoroughly humans had been reduced to prey in its presence.
No. I'm derailing again. He turned back to the herb itself. It was small, no bigger than an index finger. But its size said nothing about its worth, or its danger—much like Aris himself.
He carefully plucked a few, then turned to Lilly, who was glancing around the darkening treeline with a deeply worried expression, two bundles hanging from her shoulders.
"Here. Place these with the poisonous ones," he instructed, handing her the new find. Lilly lowered the left bundle, her fingers nimble despite her lingering fear, opened it, and set the hallucinogenic fungi beside the other deadly herbs, careful and precise, exactly as instructed.