Aris knelt beside the orc's right leg on the cold, rough stone, leaning into the work. His right hand gripped the sword as the sharp edge bit deep into its thigh, a limb so thick with muscle he could barely wrap his free hand around it. The wet scrape of steel parting flesh echoed briefly in the cavern, only to be swallowed almost instantly by the cascade's roar.
Warm blood welled up at once, dyeing his fingers red, splashing his pants, pooling on the floor, but his eyes never left Prime's overlay, where weak points and tendon junctures glowed green and dense, resistant muscle fibers burned red.
To his left sat three bamboo containers in a neat row. The first, empty, waited to collect the orc's blood for his next batch of poison. The second, half-full of a vitality-nourishing concoction, had already sent its other half surging through his bloodstream, flooding his muscles with restorative warmth, clearing his mind, dulling the edge of exhaustion, its sharp, earthy scent mingling with the heavy stench of fresh blood.
The third held a thick cauterizing paste, meant to staunch the bleeding before the orc bled out.
Aris paused at calculated intervals, gulping down another deep swallow of the brew, feeling the warmth spread through his chest and outward into his limbs before resuming his work. He had known the orc's body was impossibly dense, but with Prime guiding each stroke, the task grew smoother and less physically demanding, cut by deliberate cut.
Lilly sat quietly by the bed watching, her eyes shifting between fear, a flicker of hope, and profound confusion at her brother's staggering transformation. She had seen men far older and stronger than him wailing and praying desperately to enemies that saw them only as food.
Yet here she was, watching the nightmare, the very monster that had haunted her every waking thought, the constant dread that it might slip past the cascade and find them, being dismantled by her brother, all on her own suggestion.
Lilly felt a swell of safety, a thread of fierce pride, and beneath both, the familiar weight of being a burden. She glanced at the three bamboo containers she'd already corked, exactly as Aris had instructed, their reek thick in the cavern's heavy air. I'm doing what I can. No. I must be more useful. I must lighten my brother's load. The urge to contribute gnawed at her, though Aris refused to let her do anything strenuous, a refusal she'd come to quietly appreciate.
Something unfamiliar stirred in her chest, fragile, half-formed as she felt the fog pressing on their future thinned, just a fraction. Survival wasn't a fool's hope any longer. Better days were coming, and she smiled, faintly. They only had to endure a little longer, before they left this place, before they esca—
The word slipped from her mind suddenly. Not forgotten, more like it had never finished forming. No, more like it had simply ceased inside her thoughts. No, more like she had never thought it at all. Her eyes glazed, becoming blank for the space of a breath, fixed on nothing. Then they cleared within the next two breaths, and the cave came back exactly as she'd left it, Aris still mutilating the corpse as if no time had passed at all.
She returned to watching in silence. If she noticed the gap, she gave no sign. Her thoughts settled on the sight before her, turning over ways she could help.
Aris swallowed another mouthful of the brew, glanced at the quarter remaining in the container, then flicked his gaze to the panel.
[Status Update: Strength: 1.5 | Agility: 1.4 | Vitality: 1.3]
Strength and Vitality had each ticked up by 0.1, the result of backbreaking labor, hours of bow training, and the concoction burning in his veins. The Vitality increase made sense on its own. But maybe the two fed each other, strength earned through effort, sustained by whatever kept the body running. Later, he decided and dismissed the panel.
He set the container aside and returned to the incision. The flesh had parted cleanly under Prime's guidance. Three more minutes, maybe less, before he struck the femur. He tightened his grip and resumed cutting.
Half an hour later, muscle and connective tissue tore free with a dull, wet sound, and the leg came away at the midthigh. Breaking through the dense bone had eaten most of that time.
He didn't pause to catch his breath. He hoisted the severed limb aside, shifted to the left leg, and drained the last of the concoction as residual heat flooded into his already worn thin muscles. Then he began again.
Another hour dragged by in the damp silence before the second leg tore free, blood fanning across the floor. Aris filled the last bamboo container to the brim with the warm spill, then snatched the third and packed the staunching paste deep into the stumps before the orc could bleed dry.
With both stumps sealed, he hoisted the severed limbs, each heavier than he'd estimated and hauled them toward the cascade. Behind him, Lilly picked up a cloth and began wiping blood from the floor. He caught it from the corner of his eye, and a small smile crossed his face. Once, the mere whiff of blood had left her trembling in the dark. Now she was on her knees, scrubbing it away.
He turned back to the cascade, his face hardening. Let's see if the orcs are affected by the accelerated decay too.
A good distance from the cave, he buried the limbs deep in the brush under soil and wet leaves, then erased every trace of his passage, meticulous as always. He turned toward the chief's corpse and strode forward.
The thick, cloying stench of decomposition struck him before he reached the spot. He frowned. Don't tell me.
He pulled aside the branches. The corpse had rotted far faster than the two men he'd killed before, barely two days, and already bone jutted through the decaying flesh. He stood over it a long moment, until something snagged his eye: the leg had sunk into the earth, clean up to the ankle.
He crouched, scanned with Prime. The ground is absorbing it. Drawing it down like—
Impossible!
He caught the word as it left him, and almost laughed at himself for using it. Prime's scan sat right there, confirming exactly what his eyes already saw. Impossible wasn't a category that meant anything anymore, not in this forest, not after everything else it had already shown him. He filed it away, the way he filed everything else he couldn't yet explain.
I have to leave. The thought arrived urgent and absolute as he clenched his fist. This forest is worse than I thought. I have to get out. Lilly, yes, I can't forget her. He turned from the corpse. The orc doesn't matter. Being alive comes first.
He took a step toward the cave before he realized he'd moved.
Then, mid-stride, the urgency simply died.
I wonder what it meant by aura masters.
He froze. No. I was thinking about escape half a breath ago. Wasn't I? Why am I thinking about aura masters now? I should be leav—
Minutes later, he stood at the bank. He dove into the cold water and surfaced, eyes drifting to the boulder submerged below. Already cut its legs off. I'll need another orc to move that.
At the cave mouth, he wrung his clothes dry, watching Lilly still scrubbing the floor. The air had cleared, close to what it had been before. He crossed to the bed, retrieved the hallucinogenic poison and the stick, and stood over the orc. He tipped a mouthful past its lips, then paused. One dose won't be enough. He fed it two more, until its legs would register nothing at all. Then he sat.
He turned inward. Prime had finished optimizing the Orcish recordings. He opened the folder, and the knowledge poured smoothly into his mind. When he opened his eyes, he faced the orc again.
Seventy percent fluency. Enough to understand most of what it said. The next round might push it to eighty. Beyond that, he doubted it would come easily, maybe only scholarly orcs, if such a thing even existed, could reach eighty or ninety. A hundred was impossible. Languages shifted too much for that. No one stayed still long enough to hold it, and no one had ever reached it to begin with.
He let the time pass, feeding the orc at intervals, waiting for the moment to wake it.