Aris opened his eyes to the cave's darkness and rose silently from his spot against the stone wall, careful not to wake Lilly. He turned toward her, watching her curled small on her makeshift bedding.
The steady, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest brought a faint smile to his face; she was holding up well, perhaps bolstered by the lingering traces of the vitality concoction. It seemed to be fortifying her against the cave's cold. Her well-being was one less weight on his mind.
Satisfied, he turned his attention to the bamboo containers nearby. The toxins were progressing as he expected; the maturation time had accelerated by seven hours. The window was closing fast, and the pressure in his chest shifted from anxiety to a cold, hard focus. It was time to move his plans forward
He reached for the dagger at his waist, his fingers curling hard around the hilt. Tonight, he would return to the village. Dangerous as it was, the necessity of the risk outweighed the danger itself. With his resolve set, he stepped into the freezing spray of the cascade.
Moments later, he stood alone on the darkened bank, the night wind biting through his damp clothes. He gritted his teeth, turned east, and glanced up at a sky dotted with small clouds drifting aimlessly. By this hour, the village would be in its usual deep, heavy sleep, the perfect covering for the work he had to do.
He'd left the bow and arrows behind as they had little use tonight. For this stealth run, only the dagger came with him, and only as a final resort. His purpose wasn't to shed blood, at least, not tonight. Moreover, he held no illusions about his chances in a direct confrontation with the chief; the old man was a human monster, and Aris needed to understand him, to map his habits, before he ever dared to strike.
With that, he stepped into the dark spaces between the trees, his silhouette swallowed by the forest, silent, eerie and by now familiar, though the unease never fully left him.
Half an hour later, Aris stood pressed against a tree at the forest's edge, the open stretch of land splayed out before him. His clothes were still damp, and the night cold struck more fiercely here, unshielded by the trees. But he endured it; the cold no longer threatened him with hypothermia, not with the vitality concoction recipe in his possession.
His eyes roved across the barren expanse between the forest and the village, dimly illuminated by the pale, washed-out moonlight. At the village gate, two yellow dots flickered atop the watchtowers—torches, or perhaps some lanterns. It mattered little as he had no intention of testing the gate's defenses.
He wasted no time, slipping along the perimeter to the path he had used to escape days prior. Minutes later, he stood before the village's three-meter log wall. He climbed the wall with ease but remained perched at the top, his hands gripping the tapered, weathered tips of the logs as he braced himself.
His eyes and ears strained against the silence, searching for the slightest shift in the shadows between the houses. After a tense, interminable wait, he dropped silently into the village and dissolved into the shadows of a row of houses that appeared abandoned.
Using his mental map, he navigated the village and as he moved, a profound, heavy sensation washed over him; he could almost taste the despair and hopelessness seeping from the houses, a lingering residue of the loss that permeated every corner. It was a suffocating, unnatural lifelessness, as if the village itself had long ago stopped breathing. Yet, the emptiness worked in his favor.
He slipped into the houses that stood silent and dark—houses of the "harvested," he realized—and began his work. He moved around, ransacking them for everything of value: spare clothing, candles, a modest supply of raw rice, and whatever other sundries he could carry.
He piled the loot in the center of one room, then spent the next full hour sweeping through the neighboring homes. Only when the heap looked substantial enough to sustain them did he pause, calculating the effort in his mind. A few trips to the cave, he muttered, already measuring the haul.
One goal complete. Now for the main one.
He made his way toward the village chief's courtyard, but held back, keeping his distance. He didn't approach the gates; instead, he scaled a neighboring roof, watching from the eaves.
The chief sat at a table in the center of the courtyard, his aged face etched with hard lines, partially illuminated by the flickering, dancing glow of a candle. His two sons sat opposite him. From the snatches of conversation that drifted up through the cool night air, they were busy preparing for the aftermath—debating how to stabilize the village once the harvest was complete.
The two sons offered their thoughts with competitiveness, each thinking they were masking their ambition as they vied for their father's approval.
Aris watched them from the shadows, his lips curving into a thin smile. If the bloodline was already fractured, his own plans might prove far more fruitful than he had initially dared to hope.
The chief stood, then turned toward the courtyard gate with a dismissive air."Father, let me do it today." The eldest son rose before the old man could take a step, his concern perfectly measured or so he wanted to believe."You've been overworking yourself these past few days. Let me take the patrol. Just rest tonight."
The younger brother began to rise as well, his mouth opening to interject, but he caught himself. He sank back down, his jaw tight, eyes flickering with unspoken resentment.
Aris, perched in the shadows like a vulture, smiled a humorless smile. Smart enough to know when to yield, he thought, his gaze locked on the shifting power dynamic below.
"Rest?" The chief didn't even bother to turn around. "You think a simple patrol is what's wearing me down?"
"I only meant—" The eldest son cut himself off."Father, even the Sacred Gu worms can only carry a body so far. Let me take this off your hands. It costs you nothing."
A long, heavy silence stretched across the courtyard, the only sound the chirping of the insects. Finally, the chief's rigid shoulders eased, just a fraction.
"Hmph. Do as you like, then." With that, the old man retreated into the darkness of the main house, the heavy wooden door clicking shut behind him. Aris studied the layout of the room, burning the vantage points and the heavy lock into his memory, then lingered on the two sons for a moment longer, gauging the tension still hanging between them.
Then turned away before their rivalry could boil over into something that might draw unwanted attention. He had to move; the night was thinning, and he needed to shuttle at least part of the loot back to the cave before the first light of dawn.
He slipped through the alleys, his path winding past the blacksmiths courtyard, his second objective. Aris circled the shop, his eyes tracing the shuttered front. It stood silent, locked tight against the night; whether the security was born of the villagers' general fear or a specific suspicion from the smith himself, it made no difference.
He didn't waste time trying to breach the shop. He simply committed the location to memory, noting the reinforced timber of the door, and allowed Prime to calculate the stress points and the force required to break it without making a sound. The theft would come later, the final move in his sequence after he strucks the chief. For now, he disappeared back into the darkness of the alleys.
Returning to the stash house, he gathered the essentials: food, rusted cooking utensils, spare clothing, and several empty bamboo containers for future brews. He slipped out of the village with the same ghost-like silence he had used to enter.
Hours later, back within the humid confines of the cave, Aris stripped off his damp garments, wrung them until his hands ached, and spread them out to dry near the loot. He crouched by his haul, discarding his sodden rags for the stolen attire: a simple gray robe that reached his thighs and loose black trousers cinched with a cloth belt.
He struck the flint, a sharp clack-hiss followed by the bloom of a steady flame. The candle's glow pushed back the oppressive black, dispelling a fraction of the damp chill. It wasn't enough, so he lit three more, spacing them along the walls until the cave finally began to take on the shape of a home. In the soft, flickering light, the outline of Lilly's sleeping form became visible, curled and peaceful. He settled amidst his haul, back against the cold stone, and fell asleep.
The next five days settled into a grueling, singular rhythm. Early mornings were reserved for hunting for information on the orcs. Perched high in his lookout tree, he tracked them, his gaze scanning for any straggler who dared to wander from the settlement. As expected, they were disciplined, but on the third day, he finally caught three moving alone.
Two drifted west together. Aris trailed them, only to freeze at the sight: the pair mating, entirely unhidden. It was a primal display that left him with a sour, disgusted feeling in his gut, and he abandoned the pursuit, leaving them to their business.
The third target, however, was an anomaly. This orc performed the standard exercises like the others, yet frequently broke his routine to sit in meditation, a practice reminding him of the thirteen orcs. Why doesn't he just join them? Aris wondered. As he watched, the meditation gave way to grueling sessions of lifting massive stones that would have turned a human to pulp.
The sight was demoralizing, reminding him of his own physical frailty. But Aris didn't let the doubt take root. He simply studied the orc's paths and habits, marking him as a high-level threat, but also the most vital target he had identified so far.
Afternoons were dedicated to the bow. Under Prime's guidance, his lethality increased with every passing hour, especially now that he had coated a handful of the arrows stolen from the village in his matured poison. He held the majority of the poison in reserve, waiting for higher-quality arrows. Perhaps the only place I can find them is the blacksmith's shop, he mused.
Evenings, he taught Lilly to cook; it was a way to keep her small hands busy, to prevent the crushing boredom of the cave from sinking into her spirit. Her cooking talent was charitably, worse than his own, but they ate the bland, unseasoned rice in silence. Whenever he sensed her spiraling into the belief that she was a burden, he offered encouragement.
Though he knew there was a thread of truth in her fears, he refused to let the thought take hold. She was his only family, and that bond, however complicated and strained by their circumstances, was the only thing keeping his sanity intact while the world demanded nothing but his survival.
At night, he returned to the village, methodically clearing the remaining loot. He eventually hauled back two straw beds; the unyielding rock floor was beginning to take a toll on their bodies. More importantly, in these final days, he refined his infiltration techniques and finally slipped into the blacksmith's shop.
He swiped a wooden box of superior, forged arrows, which he immediately tipped with his poison. A sword hung on the wall nearby, clearly the smith's finest work, but he left it where it lay. Stolen arrows might go unnoticed in the inventory of a busy shop. A missing masterpiece, however, would trigger an alarm.
For the following minutes, he scoured the workshop, hunting for heavy iron. Specifically, he sought massive, nail-like spikes, each the size of a human head. To his frustration, he found only three; it wasn't the count he had envisioned, but they would have to suffice. He pressed his search until he located two heavy chains, each roughly seven meters long.
Securing the iron spikes, the chains and several other tools in the shadows of the ransacked house, he resumed tracking the chief, watching from the periphery as the old man paced the empty, dimmed streets. Once the chief's silhouette faded into the distance, Aris stepped out into the open.
Over the last four days, he had mapped the chief's habits; thorough as the old man's patrol was, he never deviated from specific streets. Those recurring streets were the kill zones. Aris identified an obscure, narrow alley and stood within it, running through a dozen permutations of an ambush in his mind before finally turning toward the house.
Inside, the floor was full of supplies: four sturdy wooden wheels, the final components for his make shift wheelbarrow, along with a shovel and a bundle of spears and several other things.
Satisfied, he began the grueling process of hauling the collection back to the cave. It took three hours of back-breaking labor to move everything through the dark. Only then, with his stockpile complete, did he allow himself to retire.
Early the next morning, Aris was already perched high in a tree, hundreds of meters from the orc's secret training site. Over the last four days, he had studied the orc's movements: the exact time it slipped out of the settlement, the grueling duration of its training, and its preferred routes through the dense brush.
As the afternoon sun began to wane, he watched the orc retreat toward the settlement and immediately set his plan in motion. Standing at the centre of the route, his confidence was absolute. He had mapped every variable, every potential shift in the terrain; his certainty in defeating an orc hovered near eighty percent, a lifetime away from the desperate, blind guesses of days ago.
He began digging into the ground, laboring over a pitfall trap at the centre of the route, driving the stolen spears into its sides to form jagged, serrated teeth. He topped the five-meter hole with a layer of branches, weaving the forest floor back over it until the camouflage was seamless.
He spent dozens of minutes disguising the soil, brushing away every trace of intrusion until the ground looked as undisturbed as the rest of the forest floor. Only then did he exhale, his chest heaving, before trekking back to the cave to prepare for the night's assault on the village.
The orc would be dealt with tomorrow. Tonight, the chief was the main dish.
He took a final look at his weapons: the heavy chains, the four-meter makeshift wheelbarrow, and the quiver of poisoned arrows. He scanned his own body—he was at his peak.
He turned toward the back wall of the cave, where three iron spikes were hammered deep into the stone. It had taken three days of grueling labor, with Prime micro-analyzing the rock's fissures to find the perfect stress points to set them. Beside them, Lilly sat, rattling the chains playfully.
"I hope they're enough," he murmured, then caught himself. He wasn't relying on hope, and he certainly wasn't counting on luck. He was betting everything on his poison, and on the fact that they don't expect a human to hunt an orc.