JAREK LORCAN: The Forge Master

Episode Six

Jarek did not stop moving.

He circled left, keeping the blade between himself and the Nortacuana, watching the way its six limbs redistributed its weight when it turned. The creature was slower than before, not by much, but enough that Jarek could feel the difference in the timing of its movements.

The system sat at the edge of his vision.

*Health: 48/100. Essence Reserve: 12/100.*

He drove forward and got under the left side of its body, driving the blade into the underbelly twice before one of its limbs caught him across the shoulder and sent him skidding back across the stone floor. He hit the far wall of the hollow and stayed against it for a second, breathing.

*Health: 31/100.*

“f**k!” He yelled.

The Nortacuana turned toward him and lowered its head. The jaw glands beneath its chin were dark and swollen. Jarek moved before it could release the vapor, cutting right and staying outside the three meter range.

He had been in this hollow for a long time now. His legs felt like they were filled with wet sand. Every breath pulled at something in his ribs that had not felt right since the fight with Rook the night before.

He thought about the juvenile they had killed during mining. The way it had gone down and stayed down and none of them had questioned it.

Then he looked at the creature in front of him.

The bone plates on its underbelly were closing.

Jarek stopped moving.

He looked at the wounds he had put into the soft tissue there over the course of the entire fight. They were smaller than they should have been. The tissue around them had been knitting back together the whole time.

It had not been recovered after he hurt it — It had been letting him hurt it.

The juvenile had done the same thing during mining. It laid still and let them believe it was finished. Then got up and came back larger.

This creature had never been close to dying. It had absorbed every strike he landed and used it.

Jarek processed that information while the Nortacuana closed the distance between them at a steady walk.

He raised the blade…

The Nortacuana's front limb came down fast, swiping the blade off Jarek’s hands and the blade was gone. It hit the stone floor fifteen feet away with a sharp clang and skidded into the base of the wall.

Jarek looked at his empty hand.

*Health: 3/100*

*Essence Reserve: 8/100*

Then he looked at the creature standing in front of him with its full height and its layered bone plates and its backward eyes already on him.

He raised both fists…

He knew exactly how this looked…

One person standing in a sealed hollow with nothing but his hands between himself and something that had just grown back wounds he had spent the last hour making. His health was at three percent of what it should be and his essence reserve was nearly empty and the veil behind him had not moved.

The Nortacuana pulled one of its front limbs back. But Jarek did not step back.

He did not open his eyes any wider or hold his breath or do any of the things his body was telling him to do. He just stood there and looked at the creature and felt the ring burning against his finger hotter than it had ever been and he pulled his fist back.

The limb came forward.

Jarek yelled and threw his fist straight at the point of it. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the impact.

One second… Two seconds… Three seconds later nothing happened.

He stood in the hollow with his fist extended and his eyes shut and his whole body braced for something that was not happening. The air around him was completely still. There was no sound, movement or pain.

He waited another second…

Then another…

The system made a sound and the board light came on.

He opened his eyes…

The Nortacuana was still in front of him. All four meters of it, all six limbs, all the bone plates and the backward eyes and the jaw glands — It had not moved, but its head was down.

It didn't collapse nor was it injured.

It just bowed down…

The board appeared.

[Task Complete]

Beast Neutralized — Method: Taming.

The Nortacuana submitted to the host's essence signature.

Reward granted:

Power Portion — Health Regeneration: Health will now restore naturally over time without system assistance.

*Note: The Nortacuana was never intended to be destroyed. It responds to dominant essence, not dominant force. The juvenile encountered during mining was a test of the host's awareness. The host passed.*

Jarek stood very still and read that last line twice.

The ring on his finger pulsed once with a soft light and then went back to its usual warmth. Across the hollow, the Nortacuana raised its head slightly, just enough to look at him with those backward eyes, and then lowered it again.

The board updated.

[New Option Available]

Store the Nortacuana in your treasury. The creature contains a significant volume of rare materials within its bone structure that will become accessible over time.

OR

Use the Nortacuana as a potential deadly weapon and let it serve you.

Warning: If stored and later summoned into combat, destruction of the creature during that fight will result in permanent loss of all stored materials.

Jarek looked at the creature. It had not moved again. It was waiting, completely patient, in a way that felt different from how it had moved during the fight. There was no tension in it anymore.

He thought about it for a moment. If its rare materials were gathered, it would serve us for months. But, as a weapon of mass destruction? It would be more needed since attention would be on him very soon.

He agreed to keep the beast whole and would be used for battle.

The Nortacuana dissolved slowly from the ground up quietly like the way a fire goes out when the last of the wood is spent. In a few seconds the hollow was empty.

The veil lifted.

The stone walls and the black-barked trees and the path back came back into view all at once.

The air felt lighter immediately. Jarek exhaled and started walking.

He was almost back when he noticed the light.

The sky above the trees had gone from the deep bruised color of near-darkness to something pale. Not full daylight, the Eternal Night had taken too much ground for that, but the closest thing to morning that the world managed anymore. It sat low across the tops of the trees and made everything look grey and clean.

Jarek looked up at it and felt the health regeneration immediately…

He came up the long rise toward the Spire and slowed down when he reached the top.

Below him, spread across the open ground in front of the Ruined Spire, was an army.

It was not a group nor a gang like the men who had come out of the trees with weapons a day ago.

It was an army and they were organized and equipped with supply lines visible at the back and scouts posted at the edges of the tree line.

Jarek looked at the banner…

He recognized it immediately… He had grown up watching it hang in the great hall his entire life.

House of Lorcan.

The one that had put him on the other side of its gates three days ago.

His mother's voice came back to him the way it always did when he least expected it. She had said it at a gathering when he was eleven years old, standing beside her at the back of a room full of lords and forge masters arguing about expanding territory.

*War to gain resources only creates the need for more war. You build an army to defend what you have, not to take what belongs to someone else.*

He had not understood it fully then. But, he understood it now.

He looked down at the Spire.

His newly recruited men were on their knees in a line in front of the entrance. All four of them, hands bound behind them. The three women who had joined yesterday were together to the left with two soldiers standing behind them.

Mira was at the end of the line and even from this distance Jarek could see that she had been hit. The way she was holding her head was too depressing to watch.

Standing in front of all of them, relaxed, with his hands behind his back and a small smile already in place, was Dorian.

Jarek fumed in anger and in one swift motion, he came down the slope…

Dorian watched him walk the entire way without moving. When Jarek got close enough, Dorian tilted his head slightly like he was looking at something mildly interesting.

"Long time no see, Jarek," he said. “I heard there was a new site that got enriched in just a few days. I thought I'd come check myself.”

Jarek looked at Mira. The cut from the night before had not been treated. There was a newer mark along her jaw that had not been there when he left this morning.

He looked back at Dorian. "Let them go."

Dorian smiled fully this time. "What if I don't?"