FREE USE in Primitive World

I know you can hear me, Sol pressed, refusing to let it slide. He focused his will directly onto the central fissure, wrapping his thoughts around the relic. After eating all that power, you owe me some answers. So stop hiding... tell me what I need to know. When can I use you? When can I tear open the gate and go back to my original tribe?

For a long, agonizing moment, there was no reply. Sol continued to prod, pushing his will against the artifact’s smooth, dark surface, refusing to let it slip back into hibernation.

Sol was half a second away from trying to mentally shake the damn thing when a sudden, microscopic ripple traveled through the dark stone.

HUMMM.

A faint, ghostly resonance echoed up from the compass, bypassing words and translating directly into raw conceptual intent in his mind.

It was faint, sluggish, and steeped in ancient exhaustion.

The message was clear: Intervening against the decree of this domain extracted a heavy toll. Big amount of stolen vitality was burned to save your little lover. Time is required to recover the power, settle the resonance and align the spatial coordinates. Sleep. Recover. Then... the passage opens.

Then, the connection snapped shut like an iron door, and the compass went completely cold once more, drifting inertly in his spiritual sea.

Sol opened his eyes in the physical world, letting out a long, heavy breath that stirred the loose strands of hair hanging over his forehead.

He leaned back against the timber wall of the cot, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb.

The answer was clear. The compass was alive, it had recovered enough to eventually function, and the path back to the Ossari tribe was no longer an impossible, feverish dream. It was a tangible, approaching reality. With enough time and perhaps a bit more energy, he would be able to tear open the dimensional weave, cross the endless expanse, and return to the land where his journey in this world had first begun.

Thinking that he would be able to return soon, a strange, tangled knot of emotions tightened in his chest.

On one hand, a profound wave of relief and longing washed over him. Due to previous memories in his brain, it felt even more deep.

The memories of his past... the rugged plains of the Ossari tribe, the familiar smell of their smoke-houses, his aunt’s stern scolding, his cousins’ loud brawls... were still waiting for him. He missed them. He missed the simple, brutal honesty of his original home, the people who had taken in a strange soul from Earth and treated him like blood.

...But as his gaze drifted toward the closed door of the sleeping room where Kira lay resting, and then toward the room where Veylara was laying, a heavy ache settled over him.

By now, he had spent months here.

He had bled for the Veynar. He had carved through their enemies, broken their sieges, and stood side by side with them in the battlefield. And more than that... he had woven himself irrevocably into the lives of their women.

There was Kira, whose fierce loyalty and meticulous care had anchored him when he was an outsider.

There was Zeyra, whose sharp, guarded pride had slowly softened into quiet devotion.

There was High Shaman Zephyra, whose ancient, cryptic wisdom and shameless wit had seen right through him from day one.

And now... Veylara. The unyielding, untouchable Warchief who had surrendered her body, her pride, and her very soul to him beneath the willows.

He couldn’t just walk away and vanish like smoke. He was emotionally entangled with this tribe, whether he liked it or not.

Abandoning them was completely out of the question. Sol was a rough, possessive bastard who took what he wanted, but he wasn’t a coward, and he sure as hell wasn’t the kind of man who discarded his women the moment a door opened. If he went back to the Ossari....

Let nature take its course, Sol thought, a wry, resolute smirk finally touching his lips as he laced his fingers behind his head. The compass needs time to heal anyway. When the day comes that the gate opens... I’ll just find a way to bridge the two. If Orphos could open the path once, it could open it twice. I’ll figure out how to keep both sides of my world intact.

Sol doesn’t abandon what’s his.

With that thought firmly hammered into his skull, he closed his eyes and let the remaining hour of darkness pass in steady, meditative breathing, his body steadily knitting the remaining shallow cuts on his flesh.

The first pale, violet rays of dawn finally crested the canopies of the Great Orrath.

The morning light swept through the lingering mist, washing over the vast settlement of the Veynar. And with that light came the deep, resounding blare of the great war-horns echoing from the high ramparts of the Great Lodge.

HOOOOOOO-WAHHH!

The horn sounded three times... the universal summons of the clan.

Within minutes, the silent avenues filled with thousands of shuffling feet. Every warrior, elder, craftsman, and youth poured out from the timber longhouses, converging on the central square.

The air in the square was suffocatingly tense.

The crowd was split down the middle by the invisible line of cultivation. The ordinary clansmen, women, and young children who had not yet awakened their spirit beasts stood near the outer palisade, their faces pale, murmuring in frightened whispers about the unnatural wind and the bleeding purple sky that had terrified them in the night.

To them, it was an omen... a terrifying, apocalyptic display of nature that had threatened to blow their homes away.

But the awakened warriors... the Layer 1 footmen, the Layer 2 veterans, and the hardened Layer 3 line captains... were in an entirely different state of mind.

They stood near the front of the high wooden platform, their bodies rigid, their fists clenched around their spears, their eyes wide with profound, uncomprehending shock.