FREE USE in Primitive World

Prince Gorr took another shuddering breath, his broken ribs grinding painfully with the effort.

Blood-flecked spittle dripped from his split lips as he forced the words out.

”We... we didn’t know what to do,” he rasped, his voice thick with humiliation and lingering disbelief. ”Our tribute was taken right from under our noses by some alien witch.

Half our huts were reduced to smoldering ruins, many of our finest warriors lay scattered in the dirt, either dead or broken beyond recovery. The sacred ritual hut stood empty and desecrated, its bone wards shattered, the ceremonial blood circles useless.”

Gorr’s gaze dropped to the blood-soaked ground beneath him, unable to meet Sol’s piercing eyes any longer. His voice grew quieter, yet it burned with deep, bitter resentment that twisted every word.

”The shame was unbearable. Our tribe would had been humiliated in the whole region. As whispers would spread like poison... the mighty Zharun, cowed by a single girl. The Coalition would see us as weak. We would become a laughingstock. My father... Chief Vane... could not accept it. His pride wouldn’t allow it.”

He paused, as his bloodied lips curled into a pained sneer.

”That’s why... that’s why my father decided to use an ordinary girl as tribute instead.” His tone turned darker, laced with venom. ”He ordered one of our tribeswomen to be sacrificed and skinned alive. Her face... her scalp... turned into a trophy to be worn by Malphas.

It was done specifically to enrage and humiliate Veynar. My father wanted to provoke you into a blind, reckless rage.

He believed that if he could draw you out, make you charge in fury, we could crush you once and for all.”

The prince slowly raised his head, his swollen, bloodshot eyes finally locking onto Sol’s once more.

His expression was one of utter defeat and raw dread... the look of a man who knew his life now hung by a thread thinner than a spider’s silk.

”I swear... that’s the truth. All of it. Every word. Kill me if you want, but I’ve told you everything.”

...

The Zharun prince, Gorr sat on ground, his chest heaving up and down against the cracked clay.

Blood and sweat mixed with the white limestone dust on his face, turning his skin into a dirty, smeared mess.

He kept his eyes locked on the dripping tip of the Dreadwing Blade, his body trembling so violently that his bones seemed to rattle beneath his leather armor.

He had spilled every single secret, holding nothing back, entirely driven by the primitive instinct to survive the black reaper standing over him.

Sol stood over the groveling prince, the blood-dripping edge of the Dreadwing Blade resting inches from the youth’s throat.

An eerily heavy silence covered the whole battlefield, broken only by the ragged, wheezing gasps of the terrified Zharun Prince.

For a long moment, Sol didn’t move.

He simply stared down at the prince, his silver-crimson eyes unblinking, his mind absorbing the weight of the confession.

Lumi was alive. She hadn’t been turned into the grotesque leather hat Malphas had proudly displayed.

She had been taken by Elyndra, whisked away into the deeper, uncharted sectors of the great Orrath jungle under the protection of a creature that could make the primal predators of the jungle bow like scolded hounds.

Even though he was curious about the reason of Elyndra taking Lumi and their connection. Now was not the time for that.

But still knowing that Lumi was alive, a small, heavy nod escaped Sol’s chin.

His posture relaxed slightly, the rigid, block-like tension in his shoulders easing by a fraction.

To Prince Gorr, that simple movement of Sol’s head felt like the sun breaking through a storm.

It was the sign he had been praying for.

In his twisted, terrified mind, the nod meant his explanation had been accepted.

It meant his life had been spared.

The suffocating shadow of immediate death seemed to pull back, and his panicked mind could only process one magnificent thought: I’m alive. The black monster believed me. I’m pardoned.

The sheer, intoxicating rush of surviving the monster who had just pulled Malphas apart flooded his entire system, wiping out his pain and replacing it with a wild, ecstatic joy.

”Thank you! Oh, thank you, Lord Sol!” Gorr babbled, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, weeping shrill, a wet sob of absolute gratitude.

He didn’t care about his father, Chief Vane, who was watching from a distance. He didn’t care about his pride or his status as the next Chieftain of the Zharun, not even the thousands of people who were staring at his pathetic display.

He threw his upper body forward, slamming his forehead repeatedly into the hard-baked clay, groveling ecstatically at Sol’s feet, until his face was pressed straight against Sol’s bloody boot.

His hands clawing at the gravel as he kissed the bloody shoes, pouring out his intense gratitude in a frantic, uncoordinated rush.

”The Zharun will remember this! The Zharun will serve you wholhardtly! We will hunt for you, we will bring you the best hides, the strongest womenI will give you anything! Weapons, skins, territories... anything you want! Just let me crawl back!! Just let me live! You are a god of the mountain, a true master! I am just a worm beneath your heel, a useless insect!”

He kept thumping his head against the sharp limestone stones, his tears mixing with the loose white dust until his face was a muddy, pathetic mess of grease and red saliva.

He truly believed that his detailed confession had bought his ticket out of the slaughterhouse.

Sol watched the display with cold indifference. The smirk on his face returned, but it didn’t carry a single drop of human warmth.

”I said I satisfied with the explanation,” Sol whispered, his rough voice interrupting the prince’s frantic babbling. ” But I never said I would pardon you and didn’t you just say I could kill you if I want to.”

Before Gorr could even process the words or lift his head from the dirt, Sol’s left hand shot down like an eagle’s claw.