Episode Five
1982 Words
Jarek heard Mira before he saw her.
With the squeals and screams and kicks, Jarek knew Mira was fighting for her life.
He pushed through the last stretch of trees and saw her in the open space outside the Spire with her blade out, moving between two men while three others circled her from different angles.
"Stop!" Jarek yelled at the top of his voice.
Every person in that clearing stopped moving…
Mira used the half second to step back and put the wall of the Spire behind her. Her chest was heaving and there was a cut above her eyebrow but she was still standing.
Jarek walked toward her.
Two of the men stepped sideways and blocked his path. They were big and they were confident about it.
Jarek looked at them. Then he reached into the warmth of the ring and pulled the blade out of thin air.
The blade formed in his hand with a sound like a breath being released.
The two men in front of him went completely still. The ones behind them took a step back without deciding to. The three women who had come with Kael pressed themselves together and stared.
Nobody made a sound.
"Move," Jarek said.
They moved without saying a word.
He walked through to Mira and put his free hand on her shoulder. She was still breathing hard. The cut above her eyebrow was dripping slowly down the side of her face.
"I'm fine," she said before he could ask.
"I know," he said.
He turned around to tell the men to back further off and stopped.
Every single one of them, the gang Kael had brought, the men from the first night, everyone in the clearing, was on one knee with their heads down.
"Master," one of them said. Then the others repeated it, not together but one after another like a wave moving through the group.
Jarek stood very still.
The board appeared.
[Title Offered: Master]
Your ability to forge from essence without visible materials has been witnessed by multiple individuals. This act matches descriptions found in old records of Legacy Forge holders.
‘People have owned this before?’ Jarek asked himself, but he was cut short immediately.
Those present have chosen to submit.
Accept this title?
YES / NO
Reward upon acceptance:
Ability Unlock — Crew Assessment
In addition to loyalty scores, you may now view each crew member's natural abilities and optimal work assignments.
Jarek looked at the word YES for a moment. Then he selected it.
The board updated immediately. Every person in the clearing got a small tag beneath their name when he looked at them.
Digger.
Scout.
Blade carrier.
Tracker.
Builder.
The information sat cleanly next to their loyalty scores like a second column.
He already knew how useful that was going to be.
He looked at the group still kneeling in the dirt and felt something uncomfortable sitting within him alongside the satisfaction.
He thought about the great hall, his father on the high seat saying nothing, and the guards pulling him across the cold floor.
He thought about Seraphine and Dorian alongside the way he had looked at him when the gates closed.
At this rate he was going to be ready for them. He did not know when. But he was going to be ready.
"Get up," he told the group. "All of you."
They stood.
He looked at the man who had led Kael's group, the one who had been in the clearing when he arrived. "Where is the beast we killed during mining?"
The man shook his head. "I did not take it. When they alerted me to come here I ran. I left everything where it was."
“And how did they do that?”
“The green flares.”
Jarek had seen it, but paid no attention to it…
Jarek looked at the spot where they had dragged the beast after killing it. The ground there was disturbed.
He was still looking at it when the board appeared again. This time it came in without any warning sound.
[Task Assigned: Dungeon Entry Required – Neutralize the Target]
The beast you killed during mining was a juvenile Nortacuana. Its death has triggered a territorial response from the origin creature.
Current location of origin creature: The Hollow of Drevak, 800 meters northeast.
The Nortacuana — Adult Form:
Height when standing: 6.2 meters.
Body covered in layered bone plates grown from the inside out. Each plate overlaps the next and cannot be cut from the front. Underbelly is the only exposed tissue. Eyes are located on the back of the skull, giving full rear vision. Moves on six limbs. Produces a paralytic vapor from glands located beneath the jaw when threatened. Vapor range: 3 meters. Do not breathe within that range.
Threat Level: Severe.
Reward upon completion:
Power Portion — Health Regeneration: Permanently increases natural health recovery rate. Health will restore over time without system intervention.
Note: This task must be completed alone.
Jarek read the description twice. He looked at the crew around him. Bren and Cael had the highest loyalty scores and both had Blade Carrier listed under their abilities. Having either of them in that hollow would have made the fight manageable.
But the system had been clear…
"I need to go somewhere," he said.
Mira turned to look at him immediately. "No."
"Mira —"
"You just watched me get worked over by six people and your response is to go somewhere alone?" She pointed at the cut on her face. "I am not done bleeding yet."
"I know. And I would not go if I did not have to."
"Then don't."
"It is not optional."
Mira stared at him. She looked at the crew around them, then back at Jarek. She pressed her lips together and exhaled hard through her nose. "How long?"
"I do not know."
The silence became deafening and Jarek knew exactly what she wanted to say.
"If you are not back before the sky changes color, I am coming regardless of what you say."
"If you are not back before the sky changes color, I am coming regardless of what you say." Jarek repeated her words. “I know… I'll be back before then. Keep this place in check until I arrive.”
"Understood," Mira said and Jarek nodded his head and left.
***
The Hollow of Drevak sat at the bottom of a natural dip in the terrain, ringed by old stone that had been pushed up from the ground in uneven slabs over many years. The trees around it were larger than the ones near the Spire and darker, with bark that had gone almost black.
Jarek stepped down into the hollow and felt the air change. The warmth from the ring dropped slightly like it was conserving itself.
Then a veil came down…
It happened fast…
A thin layer of distorted air dropped from above like a curtain being pulled and the world outside the hollow disappeared behind it. He could not see the trees anymore. He could not see the path he had come down. Just the hollow, the black-barked walls of stone around it, and the still air.
Then the ground shook once.
Then the screech came from the far end of the hollow. Jarek raised the blade and waited.
The Nortacuana came through the far wall of stone like the stone was not there.
It was the same creature they had killed during mining in the same way that a fully grown tree is the same as the seed it came from.
The bone plates across its back and shoulders were layered thick and pale, each one overlapping the next in tight rows. Its six limbs hit the ground in a pattern that should not have been able to move that fast but did.
While its head sat low on a neck that was wider than Jarek's entire body and the eyes, both of them, were on the back of its skull, facing behind it.
It could see him without looking at him.
Jarek moved left immediately, staying outside the three meter range the system had marked for the jaw vapor. The creature turned its body without hurrying, tracking him with those backward eyes, and then it charged.
Jarek dropped flat and the first limb came over him close enough that he felt the air move against the back of his neck. He rolled right and came up and drove the blade hard at the underbelly as it passed over him.
The blade caught but it wasn't deep enough.
The Nortacuana turned and its tail came around downwards and it hit him across the legs. Jarek went sideways and hit the stone wall of the hollow. He stayed on his feet but his legs were numb from the knee down for a full three seconds.
He shook them out and kept moving.
The system ticked at the edge of his vision.
*Health: 61/100. Keep distance from the jaw. The underbelly is the target.*
He knew that…
But the problem was getting under it without getting hit on the way in. Every time he moved toward its underside it turned its body and gave him a limb or a tail instead of a clear angle.
He waited.
The Nortacuana charged again and this time Jarek did not move sideways. He moved straight at it and dropped to his knees at the last possible second, sliding across the floor of the hollow directly under the creature's chest as it passed over him.
He drove the blade up with both hands into the exposed underbelly and dragged it forward as the creature's momentum carried it past him.
The sound the Nortacuana made was not a roar. It was lower than that. A vibration more than a sound, something Jarek felt in his back teeth and his chest.
It stumbled. Two of its six limbs gave out and it hit the ground on one side, scraping the bone plates against the stone floor of the hollow with a grinding noise that made Jarek's eyes water.
Jarek stood up and realized his arms were shaking. He checked his health immediately.
*Health: 49/100.*
The Nortacuana was still there…
Jarek exhaled. He looked at the veil still hanging across the entrance of the hollow. Surprisingly, it had not lifted.
He turned toward the far end and started walking back to where he had come in, checking the veil as he went, looking for the point where it would release him.
He had taken seven steps when he heard a sound behind him. It was the same low vibration as before and this made him turn around.
The Nortacuana was standing…
It had not just recovered, it was larger now — Visibly and undeniably larger.
The bone plates across its back had spread wider and the new ones were still forming at the edges. It stood a full head taller than it had at the start of the fight and every one of its six limbs was planted steadily on the floor.
Jarek stared at it.
"s**t," he whispered.
He pulled the board up. His hands were not fully steady but his eyes found the numbers.
*Health: 49/100.*
He stood in the hollow with a blade in one hand and fifty-one points of health missing from his body and a creature in front of him that had just grown larger after he killed it once.
The system did not offer a new instruction. It did not give him a plan. It just sat there in the corner of his vision with the task still listed as incomplete and the timer still running.
Jarek tightened his grip on the blade and looked at the underbelly again.
He was going to have to do it one more time…
But for how long would he last?
- Writer
