The sun was high and hot when Kael, the scarred warrior, returned. He dropped a huge pile of logs at Seiko's feet with a loud CRASH that kicked up dust.
"One hundred logs," he grunted, wiping sweat from his forehead with a forearm. "Just like you asked, Seiko."
The other two warriors, Rorin and Tama, dropped their own loads. It was an impressive pile of wood. It was also completely useless.
Seiko looked at the pile. The logs were cut with stone axes, which meant they were splintered and uneven. Some were as thick as his waist, others as thin as his wrist. None were the length of his arm.
Kael watched him with a smirk, as if expecting Seiko to be impressed by the speed of his work.
Seiko remained silent for a moment, gathering his patience. Acies, who was at his feet with eyes still narrowed but much cleaner, seemed to sense his partner's tension and let out a low warning ching.
Slowly, Seiko crouched down. He picked up a short, gnarled log. Then a long, thin one. He held them side by side.
"This," he said, his voice dangerously calm, "Is firewood. It serves for a campfire. To roast Krookodile meat."
He dropped the logs.
"I asked for fuel."
Kael's smirk vanished. "What trick is this? It's wood. You said you wanted wood."
"I said I wanted wood the size of my arm. I said precision," Seiko replied. "My God, the pact I offer... does not tolerate sloppy work."
"Wood is wood!" shouted Kael, stepping forward. "We worked while you played with your pet! Now give us the iron!"
"No," said Seiko. He stood firm, even though Kael was two heads taller than him. "The iron you will get from this wood will be the same brittle iron that broke against the Ursaring. Is that what you want? Weapons that fail in your hand when an Alpha is charging you?"
He pointed to the broken spear he still kept. "This is what you get from rushing. This is what you get without precision."
Kael raised a hand, his face red with anger. "Little..."
"Enough!" Iris's voice rang out. She had been watching from the cave entrance, sharpening her iron knife on a whetstone. She stood up and walked over, her gaze evaluating the pile of wood and then Kael.
"Kael," she said. "You did what I asked. You brought wood."
Then she turned to Seiko. "And you, Seiko. You say this wood won't do."
"It won't do," Seiko confirmed. "The heat must be uniform. If the logs are different sizes, they will burn at different speeds. Some will turn to ash while others are barely hot. The fire will be weak. The iron will be weak. The process fails."
Iris stared at him, weighing her options. On one hand, her best warrior, humiliated. On the other, the man who had killed an Alpha Krookodile with a spear that hadn't broken.
Pragmatism won out.
"He is right," she declared. "His spear didn't break. Ours do."
She turned to Kael. "You, Rorin, Tama. Do what he says. Exactly as he says. Use your arm as a measure." She pulled out her own iron knife, Seiko's gift. "And use this. It will be faster."
She tossed the knife to Kael.
Kael caught it in the air, surprised. He looked at the iron weapon, then at Seiko, and finally at Iris. His humiliation was palpable, but the order was absolute. He grunted, but nodded. "As you command."
They gathered their stone axes and the iron knife and marched back into the forest, this time with a silent anger.
Seiko took a deep breath, relieved. It was the first challenge to his authority, and he had won. Barely.
"You lost half a day of work," Iris told him, her voice flat. "This better work."
"I didn't lose anything," Seiko said. "I gave them their first lesson on the price of iron: obedience to the process."
Iris just nodded dryly. "The meat is almost ready. What's next?"
"While they bring the right wood, we prepare its grave."
"Grave?"
"To cook it," Seiko said. "We have to burn the wood, but we can't let the air touch it."
Iris's eyebrows raised. "Burn... without air? You're crazy."
"I'm right," Seiko said. "I need a shovel. And I need help."
Iris called the young warrior who had asked about the boiling water. "Tyla. Help him. Do what he says."
Tyla nodded, her gaze curious.
Seiko didn't have a real shovel. He had a makeshift one: a flat piece of Krookodile plating tied to a sturdy stick. He gave it to Tyla.
"Here," he said, marking a circle on the ground about 30 feet (10 meters) from the cave, in a clearing. "Dig. A circle, as wide as you are tall. And as deep as your knee."
While Tyla, a strong and efficient worker, began to dig into the soft earth, Seiko went to his own scrap pile. He had been saving the largest pieces of the Krookodile armor. He couldn't melt them, not yet, but they were tough.
He passed the next hour working with Acies by his side. The Pawniard, though wounded, was alert. He sat and watched the other warriors processing the meat, issuing a low growl if anyone got too close to the forge. He was a guardian.
When Kael and the others returned, their faces were grim, but the wood they brought was perfect. One hundred logs, all the same size, cut cleanly with the iron knife and their own stone tools.
"Good," Seiko said, nodding. "Now, lesson two."
He showed them how to stack the wood. It wasn't a simple pile. It was an engineering structure. They stacked it vertically in the pit Tyla had dug, leaving a small channel in the center for the fire. They continued stacking the wood up and out, like a large cone.
Kael did it with resentment, but he did it with precision. He watched the pile grow to be taller than him.
"It's a funeral pyre," Rorin muttered.
"It's a hole," Seiko said. "Where wood is reborn as fuel."
When the pile was complete, Seiko brought hot coals from his forge and dropped them down the central chimney. The dry wood inside caught quickly.
"Now," Seiko shouted, "Cover it! Fast!"
Using the dirt Tyla had dug up, and large pieces of sod he made them cut, they began to cover the whole pile of wood. It was frantic, dirty work.
"You've smothered the fire!" Kael shouted, confused and angry. "Idiot! All that work!"
The smoke was starting to come out not from the top, but from the sides of the earthen base.
"I didn't smother it!" Seiko yelled, working alongside them, covered in mud and sweat. "I cooked it! Without air, the wood can't burst into flames! It can only smolder. The heat drives out the water, the sap, the tar... all the poison. It leaves only pure carbon."
They finished sealing the mound, which was now a smoking dome of dirt and sod. Seiko used his spear to make a few small ventilation holes near the base. Thick white smoke began to drift out slowly.
The warriors backed away, coughing, staring at the strange smoking structure.
"What is it now?" Iris asked.
"Now, we wait," Seiko said.
"Wait? How long?"
"Two days. Maybe three," Seiko said. "The smoke will change color (colour). First white, then blue, then clear. When it's clear, the pact will be complete. The wood will be dead and reborn as charcoal."
Kael looked like he was going to explode. "Two days? We could have hunted!"
"In two days," Seiko said, "We will have the fuel to make ten spears that won't break. That's more than you would hunt in a moon. That is the power you want so much."
He turned, leaving the Earth People to watch the smoking mound, his first real investment in technology.
"And what will you do while you wait?" Iris shouted at him.
Seiko didn't stop. He walked toward his forge, picked up his hammer, and looked at the broken wall of his cave.
"The work never stops," he said. "I have to repair my wall. And this time, I'll do it with stone."
[N/A: I'm currently working ahead on the Patreon chapters. For now, I'm staying more chapters ahead, but I'm planning to expand that to ten so the workflow feels smoother. I hope you're enjoying the story so far. I'll be posting chapters on Patreon more regularly now that I'm officially on vacation. That means I finally have more time to write than I did while I was in classes. patreon.com/Nemryz]