FREE USE in Primitive World

“You called her a ’little flower,’” Sol said quietly, just loud enough for Garrick to hear. “Said she’d get crushed in a real fight. Look around you, Garrick. Eight of Veynar’s best. And not one of you has touched me beyond what I allowed. Who’s the weak one now?”

With a casual shove, Sol sent the big man stumbling backward. Before Garrick could regain balance, Sol closed the distance in a blur and delivered a single, perfectly measured strike to the solar plexus. Garrick’s eyes bulged. He dropped to his knees, then collapsed sideways, unconscious but breathing.

Exactly forty-five seconds.

Sol stood alone in the center of the ring, completely untouched. Dust barely clung to his tunic. He brushed it off with a few casual swipes, as if he had simply taken a pleasant walk through the training grounds rather than dismantled eight elite warriors.

The entire yard was frozen. Recruits who had been training moments ago stood like statues. Civilians watching from the fences had their mouths open. Even the elders who had permitted the spar… expecting perhaps a good showing from their warrior… looked pale with disbelief.

Kira and Zeyra still stood by the fence, the Dreadwing Blade held carefully in Zeyra’s hands.

Kira’s eyes were wide, but a small, fierce smile had begun to tug at her lips. Pride and relief warred on her face.

While Zeyra’s heart swelled until she thought it might burst. She watched Sol dust off his tunic with casual swipes, that dark, satisfied smirk on his lips, and felt a rush of love so strong it made her dizzy. He had dismantled their pride without shedding blood, all because they had hurt her.

Sol walked calmly over to the fence. Zeyra handed him the Dreadwing Blade’s scabbard, their fingers brushing. For a brief second, the world narrowed to just the two of them. She looked up at him with shining eyes, her voice barely audible.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For me…”

He gave her a soft, private smile before turning to the crowd.

“Well,” he announced, voice loud and clear, carrying to every corner of the training ground, “that was a decent warmup.”

He turned slowly, surveying the eight groaning, battered warriors scattered across the dirt like broken dolls. None were seriously injured. He had been precise… punishing their arrogance without destroying their bodies or their potential. They were good warriors, after all. Just foolish ones.

“Anyone else?” Sol asked, raising an eyebrow.

No one moved. Not a single soul. The silence stretched, heavy and absolute.

After a long moment, Sol nodded once, satisfied. He turned back to Kira, his expression softening noticeably. “You okay?”

he nodded, swallowing. “I am.”

“Good.” He offered her his arm. “Let’s go. I think they’ve learned their lesson.”

As they began to walk away, one of the fallen warriors… Garrick…. managed to push himself up on shaking arms. His voice came out hoarse and broken.

“Wait… young master…”

Sol paused, glancing back.

Garrick lowered his head, breathing hard. “We… were wrong. About her. About you.” The big man’s pride cracked visibly as he forced the words out. “Won’t happen again.”

Sol studied him for a moment, then gave a single nod. “See that it doesn’t. Mock the weak if it makes you feel strong but be prepared when the strong answer for them.”

With that, he, Kira and Zeyra left the training ground. Behind them, the silence finally broke into frantic whispers and the sounds of warriors helping their comrades up. The Veynar warriors would remember this day… not as a defeat that broke them, but as a beating that humbled them.

…

They hadn’t even made it twenty paces from the edge of the training grounds when the world decided it was done being a background character and started acting like the end of days.

It didn’t happen slowly. It was an instantaneous, suffocating drop in atmospheric pressure that made the air feel as thick as mud.

One second, the Great Orrath was its usual, lung-clogging soup of humidity and rotting vegetation; the next, the atmospheric pressure just dropped.

It was a violent, sickening void, as if some cosmic giant had leaned down and sucked every molecule of oxygen out of the clearing. Sol’s ears felt like they were being driven into his skull by rusted iron spikes.

His lungs burned, grasping for a breath that had simply vanished.

Then came the sound.

It wasn’t some roar. It was a physical, seismic event. A deep, apocalyptic bellow erupted from the absolute darkest depths of the Great Orrath, miles and miles away in the deep rot, yet it sounded like it was happening inside Sol’s own ribcage.

It was a sound so incomprehensibly massive, so utterly saturated with ancient, suffocating malice, that it bypassed the ears entirely, vibrating directly against their teeth and vibrating the marrow inside their bones.

The ground shuddered violently. Several nearby recruits cried out, dropping to their knees and clutching their heads as the sheer, overwhelming killing intent of a waking calamity washed over the settlement. The timber walls of the Veynar tribe groaned under the invisible shockwave.

Kira’s eyes dilated in pure terror. She instantly dropped into a defensive stance, her hand flying to the hilt of her bone-sword, but before long she couldn’t help clamping her hands over her ears.

Zeyra stumbled, grabbing Sol’s arm to keep her balance, before bucking down to cover her ears.

“Gods above…” Kira breathed, her voice trembling. “What is that? The beast tide… it didn’t sound anything like that.”

All across the Veynar settlement, it was pure, unrefined chaos. Repair crews dropped their heavy bone-saws into the muck. Civilians screamed, running blindly for the safety of the longhouses. The alarm horns on the damaged watchtowers began to wail… long, desperate, ugly notes that sounded like a funeral march for the entire tribe.

Sol stood perfectly still, his Layer 2 foundation easily anchoring him against the tremor. He stared out toward the deep rot, his silver-crimson eyes narrowed dangerously.