FREE USE in Primitive World

Sol deactivated his field. The molten golden-silver liquid inside his chest settled back into a steady, hot crawl beneath his ribs, and the invisible weight that had been pinning the dead marauders vanished into the morning air.

He walked over to where Hargon was lying in the dirt. The boar-spirit veteran was clutching his caked chest armor, a deep, jagged gash leaking dark red blood across his fingers, but his teeth were still bared in a rough grin.

Sol reached down with one bare hand, hooked his fingers into Hargon’s leather shoulder bindings, and hauled the massive warrior straight up onto his feet in one smooth motion.

Hargon winced, his breath catching in his throat from the sudden torque on his ribs, but he managed to stand stable.

"Don’t just stand here bleeding," Sol said roughly, his voice casual but flat. "The outer ring is dead, but the core chieftains inside those thick mud structures are already opening their eyes. We have less than five minutes before their main force gathers their weapons and realizes their entire perimeter has been turned into cold meat."

Joran sprinted up from the side lane, his Leopard speed pathways still pulsing with warm essence. "The eastern weapon racks are completely smashed, Sol! Teams One and Two dumped their food jars and broke their backup spears. The ridge is blind and hungry."

"Good. Torin, finish the carvings and get your ass in line," Sol growled, turning his back on the burning thatch huts. "All hunting packs, execute the retreat now. We will move through the rock clefts at a full sprint."

Torin’s bone-chisel hacked the final sharp angle of the Veynar war crest straight into the timber doors of the sub-commander’s stone longhouse. He spat a mouthful of dust, shoved the tool into his fiber belt, and sprinted after the group.

The one hundred and eighty spirit warriors didn’t waste a single heartbeat. They turned from the random sprawl of mud mounds and melted back into the dry clay trenches of the plateau’s edge.

They moved with absolute velocity, their bare feet and leather boots leaping over the rough ridges and sliding down the rocky clefts, disappearing into the dense undergrowth of the Great Orrath before the first major alarm roar could echo from the center of the Marauder camp.

While the raiding squads were navigating the dark, tangled paths of the deep jungle on their return march, the atmosphere back inside the Veynar tribe was heavy enough to choke a forest beast.

The sun had fully broken over the high horizon, casting long, sharp beams of yellow light through the ancient canopy, but no one inside the wooden walls was looking at the sky. The central clearing of the tribe had been turned into a standalone scene of urgent, gloomy labor.

Every single member of the Veynar who could still lift a hand was working in absolute, tense silence. Near the primary weapon racks, old hunters with graying fur traits and stiff, scarred knee joints sat cross-legged on the dirt, using rough river stones to sharpen the tips of hundreds of heavy bone-spears. The dry, scraping sound of stone against bone filled the air with a constant, irritating rhythm.

Further down the perimeter line, groups of unawakened youth and young girls were hauling massive baskets of wet river muck and woven vine-fiber. They were frantically plastering the lower gaps of the outer wooden walls, reinforcing the timber supports to face the oncoming horde.

Nearby, older women were boiling massive clay pots of bitter iron-root paste and smoked boar fat over open trenches, the thick, pungent steam mixing with the freezing morning dew. It was high-nutrient food, meant to keep a warrior’s pathways warm through days of continuous clashing, but the hands stirring the wooden paddles were shaking.

The worry was a physical weight in the clearing. Every spirit warrior and tribal worker knew exactly what was sitting in the low valley miles away. A four-thousand-man horde of Marauders and Zerith stalkers wasn’t just an army... it was a mountain of muscle and strength that could flatten their entire Veynar tribe in a single afternoon.

The tribal elders had already taken their positions near the inner circles, their low, rhythmic chants echoing through the secondary lines like the hum of nocturnal insects.

Mothers sat on the thresholds of their mud huts, holding their infants tight against their plant-fiber tunics, their eyes completely fixed on the southern gates.

They knew their sons, husbands, and daughters were out there in the dark brush, trying to execute a desperate dawn strike under the command of an outsider.

In traditional tribal warfare, launching a raid into an enemy nest usually meant half the hunting packs came back as cold carcasses on hide stretchers. It was a cost the tribe was prepared to pay for survival, but the waiting was a slow, agonizing torture that ground down their spirits.

High up in the forks of the outermost ironwood watchtowers, a young scout with the keen, wide pupils of a hawk-spirit suddenly stiffened. He leaned his torso far over the woven branch platform, his hand shading his eyes as he stared through the shifting grey mist of the horizon path.

The thick ferns at the edge of the jungle path violently parted. A human figure clad in pitch-black, fluid-stained Rockhorn armor stepped out into the open clearing. Right behind him came two lean female silhouettes, followed by a long, rapid group of broad-shouldered fighters.

The scout’s chest expanded, and he lifted a hollow bone horn to his lips, blowing two short, ear-splitting blasts that echoed straight into the heart of the spire.

HOOO-HOOO!

The signal horn cut through the gloomy clearing like a stone axe shattering a dry branch.

Inside the walls, the urgent labor stopped instantly. An old hunter dropped his river stone into the dirt with a loud clatter. The women left the boiling pots, the paddles floating in the grease.

Chieftains, young kids, and worried mothers dropped their baskets and rushed toward the main wooden gates, their boots trampling the loose grass as they crowded the perimeter walls in a frantic, disorganized mass.

The excitement and the terror in the air were so thick it made the breath stick in their throats.

"THE WARRIORS! THEY ARE BACK!" someone screamed from the high platforms.

The crowd pressed their faces against the narrow gaps between the ironwood logs, their eyes wide and bloodshot from the tension.

They were fully prepared for the horror of war.

They were looking for the stretchers. Every family member scanned the approaching line, their hearts thumping against their ribs as they looked for specific hair braids, leather tunics, or familiar spirit auras, praying to the ancestors that their loved ones wouldn’t be the ones lying dead under a bloody mammoth pelt.

The group grew larger as it cleared the outer thorn-barricades, their rapid, steady stride bringing them right to the foot of the wooden gate.

Sol walked at the very front of the line, his body completely untouched, his silver-crimson eyes scanning the inner camp with a detached, calmness.

The Dreadwing Blade rested quietly at his hip, its sapphire hilt clean, without any stain. Right behind his flanks came Kira and Zeyra.