The afternoon sun pierced the waterfall in rays of gold, warming Lilly's shoulders as she stood at the cave mouth, though she barely felt the heat. Her gaze stayed locked entirely on Aris, standing before the chained orc, bow in hand, arrow nocked, unmoving and waiting.
About time, Aris breathed inwardly, his grip tightening on the riser. His eyes stayed on the orc's face, cold, as his mind sorted through the questions he'd prepared for the hallucinogen's narrow window. Slowly, the orc's eyes opened, its gaze dragging sluggishly before finding him bleary, unmoored. Aris studied its face, watching for pain, bracing for the moment agony might override the poison and return its clarity. He found none and his grip loosened slightly.
The orc blinked, slow with confusion, the dimly lit cave swimming around it, walls bending, the unknown figure before it stuttering in and out of reality. "Ahh… whe…re is this…?" Its voice was guttural and thin. But it spoke.
Aris inched forward, weight balanced, ready to recoil at any moment. "Do you remember me?" He studied its face, examining every twitch, every flicker of expression.
"Who are you?" the orc replied, trying to focus on the figure before it. No matter how hard it strained, the shape wouldn't hold, its mind too chaotic to grasp anything for more than a moment.
Good. A clean start. He smiled slightly, his grip on the riser easing further as his mind raced to find a fitting identity from what he'd gathered in the last interrogation. "It's me. Uzul."
"Ch… chief." The orc's eyes widened as the poison bent its perception, its mind straining to reconcile the warping figure into the chief. "Chief's face… swimming."
Aris didn't let the moment breathe. His mind was already on the one question that mattered: the so-called Aura Masters. Out there, at the settlement, the thirteen he suspected to be these Aura Masters were training by now, same as always. If even one of them tracked him here, he let the thought finish, felt his gut clench at it, but he clenched and buried the dread.
"You said you wanted to become an Aura Master. So you stole the sacred art from us." He let the accusation sink its teeth, pacing left and right. "What should we do with you?"
The orc shrank into itself, chains rattling as its torso strained to kneel, though the poison left its legs dead and unfeeling beneath it. "Please… Chief, this one… this one only wanted… wanted to be more." Aris studied its terrified face. Didn't think Uzul commanded this much dread. "Not worthless like father. Wanted to give something to Mighty Volrag, this one wanted to—"
There it is. Aris leaned in, his tone dropping from harsh accusation into something gentler, warmer. "No need. Mighty Volrag can feel your heart. Your ambition burns like mine." He let the words settle, easing its fear before terror swallowed it entirely, though part of him wondered if acting like this might itself crack the chief's image in the orc's mind, might read as wrong in a way even a drugged creature could sense. "But Valrog is merciful, and your devotion pleases him. Before he forgives you, you must be tested. The truer your answers, the greater your reward. Understand?"
The orc's breath shuddered out. "This one understands. This one will not lie to the Chief. Not to Mighty Volrag. Ask! Ask! This one will answer everything."
"Good." Aris resumed pacing, left and right, every step coiled with the readiness to recoil should the orc regain a fraction of clarity. He trusted his poison, but he trusted contingency more. "Since you want so badly to become an aura master—first question. What are Aura Masters?"
The orc fell silent. Aris stopped pacing, his hand instinctively twitching toward his bowstring as he scanned the orc's face, searching for any flicker of understanding, any hint of cunning, any sign that the stupor had passed. He saw only genuine, profound confusion. Lowering his hand from the bow, silence settled between them, yet Aris couldn't shake the question of why the change had been so abrupt.
"Aura Masters, they… they are powerful," the orc said at last, the words dragging themselves loose, as if it had weighed the answer carefully—though its dazed face told a different story. "The finest warriors. Slaughter several men with ease. Loved by Volrag. Get any women, any food they want."
Aris said nothing for a moment. Then he exhaled unimpressed. "That tells me what they have. Not what they are." He stepped closer. "I don't care what a man gets for his devotion. I care what it buys him. What is aura? What actually changes in the body?"
The orc blinked, confusion flickering across its drugged features. "Aura Masters… are those who have woken the aura," it said at last, as if repeating the question with different words might satisfy him.
Woken the aura. Aris murmured the phrase, irritation creeping onto his face. "That much is clear from the name." He faced the orc. "Are you testing my intelligence? Is this how you seek Mighty Valrog's blessing?" He let the silence stretch, then pressed on. If it doesn't know, then I'll have to change my approach. Or maybe the poison is robbing it of reason. Guess I shot myself in the foot by giving a larger dose. "Next question: What is aura? And how does one wake it?"
"Yes. That, this one knows. Urul taught us."
"Good." Aris let the word settle in its unstable mind. "If it fails to satisfy me, you know what follows."
"Yes, yes. This one will answer. This one will speak true." The orc's voice steadied, clinging to the promise of mercy and the potential reward. "To wake aura… one must reach the limits."
Limits? "What kind of limits?"
The orc fell still, and this time a faint gleam surfaced in its dull eyes. Pride. Even joy, enough to make Aris puzzled for a moment. "The four limits. Strength. Speed. Endurance." It paused, as if savoring the weight of the final word. "And the last is reflexes. With the sacred body-forging art, this one is reaching into the third."
"Where is the sacred body-forging art you stole?" Aris demanded, eyes narrowing as he tracked the subtle hesitation rippling across the orc's face.
"I… I buried it." The orc swallowed hard, its voice trembling as if its fears had finally arrived. "I buried it where I train. Please, Chief. At least give me a lower version. I will become an Aura Master only after Urul's death."
"He is too old. Let me take his place. He has no potential to advance past the Dusk stage."
Dusk stage. Based on everything gathered so far, it was likely a measure of bodily transformation after reaching the four limits. Without doubt orcs at this stage would crush him into paste. Underhanded tactics might swing the odds—but the margin for failure was razor thin.
At worst, they might be immune to poison and if not, might move faster than he could track if this one could dodge an arrow.
Without complete data, facing one was suicide. He didn't want to, but fate didn't care what one wanted. Better to prepare his mind than let it collapse when death stared him in the face. Without enough data, he would never dare confront them. But what options did he have left? Waiting for death? No, I have to leave. I have to escap—
The thought died the instant it formed. Aris stood frozen for five breaths before the orc, eyes dazed, staring into nothing, then finally snapped back. "I should go and retrieve that art," he mumbled, then froze again, a chilling hollowness blooming in his chest.
He frowned, focus turning sharply inward. What was that? Why do I feel like— He couldn't finish the thought. No matter how hard he searched his own racing mind, he couldn't put a finger on the sudden emptiness within his chest.
He turned back to the orc, and his thoughts circled to the Aura Masters, as if picking up exactly where he'd left off. The earlier urgency to leave the forest returned, unbidden, as if it had never left. He glanced toward Lilly by the cascade, sitting on the floor, watching him.
To her, he probably just looked like a man lost in thought, not a man who'd zoned out.
His head snapped left and right, scanning the loot. Dried meat. Spears. Poison-smeared arrows, barely useful against an Aura Master, if what he'd just learned held. But beyond this "slave encampment," there could be hostile humans out there too, other hostile races. Surely not everyone in this world was one of these so-called aura masters. Once I esca—
The thought snuffed out like a candle extinguished. But a candle left smoke as evidence it had burned, this thought left nothing, like the first time. It simply… faded.
His eyes glazed for five breaths. Then he turned back to the orc and scanned of habit. The poison's window, the one Prime had been timing had shortened. But how? He wondered for a moment, then let it go. A few seconds didn't matter. The thirteen Aura Masters were the real threat now, the only force likely to be sent looking for this orc.
"No. I have to leave." A sense of deja vu struck him, sharper than any true deja vu had ever felt, and the world around him shifted, the orc's grunts growing weaker and weaker, as if he were drifting further and further away. No. It can't be. That's impossible.
He caught himself, a wild idea forming. That's impossible.
He realized, with cold clarity, that he'd developed a habit of denying whatever evidence stood right in front of him as if he were changing. No, my mind seems to be growing duller… more sluggish. But when did this start? He looked at the orc, and the thought of leaving formed in his mind the third time, but this time he cut the thought short and turned his focus inward.
He formed a new folder in Prime, named it Escape, poured every fragment of realization into it, and gave Prime several commands. I hope I'm wrong about this, he thought, his hand trembling slightly, but he clenched then refocused on the orc, and then on Lilly, still near the cave mouth.
"Wrap yourself in something against the cold!"
She nodded and rose to search through the stolen loot. He watched her a moment longer than he needed to, afraid of what his own trepidations might mean if they were true.
His mind returned to the interrogation, to the thirteen, the dread they carried, the urgency blooming in his chest all over again. The thought of esc— formed the fourth time, the deja vu thickening this time, pressing hard against his head as his eyes began to daze again.
[Detected similar train of thought. Would you like to open the main folder?]
Prime's voice tore him out of the daze before the second breath finished. Aris opened the folder at once. His body shook at the content. Sweat beaded down his forehead in the cold of the cave. He stumbled backward and collapsed onto his bed, head bowed, trembling hands raking through his hair, mind in freefall.
He looked up as Lilly came to stand near him now, wrapped in a gray tunic, chewing dried meat, her face creasing with worry by the second, as she watched his fake smile at her.
He tried to speak. The words wouldn't come, too heavy to risk saying aloud. Hopelessness settled over his face. Despair sank into his bones. The thought of losing the only person he still called family churned through his mind, again and again, and no matter how many times he turned it over, he found no way out.
Had all of it been for nothing? Killing the chief. Risking his life to capture this orc. Had he been dancing in the palm of the entity this entire time? Was the reason he was still alive simply its confidence—its certainty that no matter how he schemed, struggled, survived, and hoped, it wouldn't matter in the end?
When had it begun tinkering with my mind? When i spied on the statue's awakening? When i looked at those iron poles? When i entered this forest? Or from the very moment i awakened in this body?
The more he thought, the deeper despair crept. How could anyone deal with an enemy that could warp the mind itself? He truly realized now—this was the reason humans couldn't leave. Humans were defiant by nature. If the majority followed the orcs' rule, there would always be a few who rebelled.
Perhaps this was why maps didn't exist in the village. Yet Aris was certain there was a world outside. People from the outside had been here, at some point. A more peaceful, civilized world, he hoped. The copper currency proved it. But it didn't matter if the outside world was real if no one could leave.
This truly was a ranch. Just as he'd so arrogantly declared when he first awoke in this world. He had called the villagers sheep, and he was just a self-deluded sheep who thought himself better. Now he understood: they'd never had a choice. He was just as weak as them.
No. Not powerless.
Had anyone ever realized the truth? Had those who escaped, the ones the chief said were never heard from again realized? Or was everything the chief knew simply implanted? Remembering the Gu worm, the notion of implanted memories no longer seemed far-fetched. Perhaps he was so shaken that everything was becoming possible.
And what made the despair cut deeper was knowing the truth and being unable to act on it. He realized that if he focused on anything other than the thought of escaping, the thought simply vanished. Perhaps he had thought it more times than he could remember, and each time it was stifled—no, redirected. Redirected to useless things like studying the orcs. And where had that brought him? Nothing of use, just closer to their demise.
To truly leave this place, assuming no orcs guarded the exit, if it even existed, he would need to hold the thought of escape while simultaneously controlling his body. A task that felt impossible for someone with a single consciousness.