The stench of blood was suffocating. Seiko leaned against the corpse of the Alpha Krookodile, using his own impaled spear as a walking stick. Every muscle in his body sang a symphony of pain.
Iris's declaration echoed in the silence: '...you will show us how to make them.'
It wasn't a request. It was either a surrender or a recruitment. Seiko wasn't sure which was worse.
He raised a trembling hand, not toward Iris, but toward Acies. The Pawniard pressed against his leg, its red eyes now tightly shut, whining softly as the sand and gravel irritated it.
"First," Seiko gasped, his voice hoarse from smoke and exertion, "My companion."
Ignoring the dozen tribal warriors watching him with a mix of awe and suspicion, Seiko slid along the blood-soaked flank of the dead Krookodile until he knelt.
'Ching...'
Acies's sound was weak.
"Shh. I know. I know. Sand Attack. Dirt in the eyes." Seiko's mind, the engineer, the problem solver, focused on the immediate task. He pulled out his water skin. Little remained.
With a tenderness that brutally contrasted the carnage around him, Seiko used the corner of his water-soaked tunic to gently wipe Acies's eyes. The Pawniard hissed in pain but trusted the touch.
Iris watched this act silently. Her people didn't pamper their Pokémon. They were tools, hunting companions, but this display of care… was different. It was methodical.
"Your... metal thing". said Iris, "is it broken?"
"It's blind, temporarily". Seiko replied without looking up. "And injured. Your Excadrill is powerful".
Iris didn't understand half of those words, but she caught the meaning. "It fought with honor."
He continued cleaning Acies's eyes until the Pawniard could partially open them, though they remained red and inflamed. "It will need rest".
With Acies tended to, Seiko finally stood to face Iris. Now that the adrenaline was fading, exhaustion hit him like a tide. He wavered but forced himself upright.
"You will show me how to do this," Iris repeated, this time touching the iron knife at her belt. "Now."
Seiko shook his head. "Impossible."
The warriors behind her raised their obsidian spears.
"You refuse?" said Iris, her voice cold.
"I refuse to fail," Seiko said, choosing his words with extreme care. 'Think like a historian, Seiko. They're in the Iron Age. Control of metal is control of power. You cannot simply hand over a kingdom.'
"Look at you," she said, pointing at the knife on her belt. "I gave you a knife. And with it, you killed a Fanglacer."
"The tip held," she said, as if it were a miracle.
"Yes. Because I made it right. Because I understand fire, I understand metal, and I understand coal." He pointed to his smelting furnace. "If I give you a piece of iron, you will have a heavy rock. If you try it yourself, you will make my father's brittle iron, which breaks on the first strike."
He indicated the first spear he had made, the one that had broken against the Ursaring. "Like that one."
Iris frowned, following his gaze. She saw the broken spear tip on the ground. Then she saw the perfect spear embedded in the Alpha. She understood the difference.
"This," said Seiko, touching his own soot-covered forehead, "is knowledge. Not an object. I cannot give it to you in one night. I can teach you. And it takes time. It takes… work."
"We have time," said Iris.
"No, we don't," Seiko countered. "Your people," he pointed at the warriors, "are ready to hunt. The Fanglacers that fled will return, or something worse will, drawn to this blood. You must secure the perimeter. Secure the food."
Iris's gaze sharpened. He was right. The priority was the hunt.
"And I," Seiko continued, "must heal my companion. And sleep. Or I will die here, and my knowledge will die with me."
It was a beacon, but a faint one. He truly felt he could collapse at any moment.
Iris assessed him. She saw the truth in his exhaustion. She saw the logic in his words. A dead man cannot forge weapons.
"Fine," she said at last. She turned to her warriors. "Children of the Earth! The hunt is not over. Kael, Tama, Rorin, with me. We will follow the trail!"
Three of her warriors nodded and prepared themselves.
"The rest," she ordered, "will stay. You will help. We will butcher the beasts. The meat is ours. The hides are yours."
It was a fair trade. More than fair. Seiko had no way to process ten Krookodile corpses.
"And you will watch the scavengers," she added. "And Seiko."
The remaining warriors nodded. They weren't guards of honor. They were jailers.
Iris turned to Seiko one last time. "You will sleep. Heal your metal thing. At dawn, when the sun hits that ridge," she pointed east, "you will begin teaching. Or the People of the Earth will take what they need, and we will leave you and your broken forge for the next pack."
She didn't wait for a response. She and her hunting squad vanished into the darkness, moving with ghostly speed.
Seiko was left alone with eight silent, heavily armed warriors already beginning the brutal work of butchery with their obsidian knives, and an injured Pawniard.
He went into his cave, now opened to the world by the battle. Acies limped after him. Seiko collapsed into his Ursaring-skin sleeping bag, his body finally surrendering.
He looked at the Pawniard, curled against his chest, trembling from pain and the aftermath of the battle.
'Well,' thought Seiko, his mind fogging from sleep. 'We survived the siege.'
He hadn't founded a religion. But he had just found his first followers.
And they were exactly what he needed: strong, pragmatic, and desperate for the exact type of salvation he could provide.
Seiko closed his eyes, the CLANG of his hammer replaced by the rhythmic cut of obsidian knives in the night.
"Tomorrow," he whispered to the sleeping Acies. "Tomorrow, we build the future."