The rusted dagger was inches from Pantheon's throat when the earth violently shuddered.
A roar tore through the trees—a sound so massive and laden with pure, animalistic fury that it rattled the teeth in Pantheon's jaw. The blacksmith's apprentice froze, his face draining of all color as the blade trembled in his hand.
From the treeline, trees snapped like twigs. A monstrous silhouette burst into the clearing. A towering mountain of gray-green muscle easily three times the size of a normal man, covered in crude iron plating and brandishing a notched club the size of a wagon axle. Its eyes burned with a frenzied, bloodshot madness as it tore toward the camp, its footsteps throwing up clods of dirt.
"Form up! Shield wall, now!" a guard commander shrieked.
The casual, mocking laughter of the vanguard vanished instantly. The guards snapped into a tight, professional military formation, spears leveled and shields locked, their training taking over in a heartbeat.
Silas's Command
Silas didn't panic. He stood by his desk, his small eyes narrowing as he watched the massive beast barrel toward them. His fat face twisted into a deep, calculating scowl.
Why the hell is a Titan Orc this close to my fort? Silas muttered to himself, his voice dropping its oily tone and turning deadly cold. They don't hunt this far south. Not unless something drove them out.
As the creature closed the distance, roaring a deafening battle cry that sprayed thick saliva into the air, Silas raised a heavy hand.
"Clear the center! Pull back!" Silas bellowed to his men. "Move further away from it! Don't let it break the line!"
The guards moved instantly, expanding the circle and backing away into the shadows of the wagons, leaving a wide, open path straight toward Pantheon, the apprentice, and Silas himself. The apprentice panicked, dropping the dagger and scrambling backward into the dirt, desperate to escape the path of the charging behemoth.
Pantheon couldn't move. He lay pinned by his own agony, a thick trail of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, his wide eyes locked on the gray-green mountain of muscle roaring toward him.
Silas stepped forward, crossing right in front of Pantheon. For a man who looked like a bloated sack of lard, his movement was suddenly, terrifyingly fluid. His hand gripped the hilt of a heavy, blackened blade sheathed at his hip—a weapon that looked entirely too large for a merchant.
He drew it in a single, blurring motion.
The air seemed to hiss. Silas dropped low, shifting his immense weight, and unleashed a specialized martial art technique. A violent arc of silver light cut through the dusk, screaming with compressed air.
The execution was instantaneous. The Orc didn't even have time to swing its club. Silas's blade passed entirely through the creature's midsection with a sickening, clean shhhk sound.
Momentum carried the top half of the Orc forward, crashing into the dirt in a spray of dark, foul-smelling blood, while its legs took two more heavy steps before collapsing into the grass. Split perfectly in two. One slash.
The clearing went dead silent, save for the crackle of the campfire and the heavy, wet thud of the Orc's severed torso.
Silas didn't even look back at his men. He calmly flicked the black blood off his blade with a sharp snap of his wrist and sheathed it, his face grim. He walked heavily over to the front half of the dead Orc, kicking its massive head over to inspect the neck and chest.
"Look at these markings," Silas growled to his captains, pointing to deep, jagged black brands burned into the Orc's dead flesh. "This wasn't a wild rogue. It was driven here. Something is hunting them."
Down in the dirt, Pantheon lay entirely still, his chest heaving with shallow, agonizing breaths. Fresh blood spilled past his lips, but his gaze was completely paralyzed, locked onto the massive back of the man who had just bought him for three gold pieces.
Pantheon had thought Silas was just a soft, greedy slave driver. Now, looking at the cleanly bisected corpse of a monster that could have wiped out his entire village, a cold, heavy dread sank into his gut. The man who owned his life wasn't just a man.
A faint, unnatural crimson glow flickered deep within Pantheon's eyes as he stared at the severed corpse. He didn't even realize it was happening, but the dark, cold fluid pooling where his heart used to be seemed to pulse, reflecting a strange light into his irises.
In his mind, the world had slowed to a crawl. He replayed the move over and over. Silas's bloated frame shifting with impossible weight distribution. The precise, lethal angle of the blade. The sound of compressed air tearing open the night. It had all happened in a literal blink of an eye, a terrifying display of absolute dominance that Pantheon couldn't tear his eyes away from. For a second, the agonizing pain in his ribs was drowned out by a raw, hollow fixation on that power.
Then, the illusion shattered.
"Pack it up! Now!" Silas's voice boomed through the clearing, sharp and devoid of its usual lazy grease. "Leave the cargo chained to the carts! We aren't setting up camp. We march straight through the night to the fort. Move, you worthless dogs, before whatever hunted that thing finds us!"
The sudden explosion of noise and movement snapped Pantheon out of his trance. The faint glow in his eyes died instantly, replaced by the harsh, gray reality of his own breaking body.
The Cost of Waking Up
The guards didn't hesitate. Terrified by the branded markings on the dead Orc, they flew into a frenzy, kicking the campfires apart and tearing down the makeshift tents.
A heavy boot slammed directly into Pantheon's hip, spinning him around in the dirt.
"Get up, three-gold! Back to the axle!" a guard screamed, his voice high with panicked adrenaline. He didn't just pull the lead chain this time; he violently yanked it backward, forcing the iron collar to crush Pantheon's windpipe.
Pantheon choked, a violent spasm racking his torso. The movement tore at the fresh scabs on his back and set the broken ribs grating against one another again. He forced his hands into the dirt, his muscles screaming and giving out twice before he managed to drag his knees under his chest. A fresh, hot wave of blood rushed up his throat, spilling past his lips in a thick, dark stream that soaked into the mud beneath him.
He didn't have time to recover. He didn't have time to breathe.
The heavy supply cart groaned as the driver lashed the horses, the massive wooden wheels immediately beginning to roll. The chain snapped taut with a vicious, metal-on-metal clang.
Pantheon was violently jerked forward, his face nearly plowing into the dirt before his raw survival instinct forced his legs to scramble upward. His feet found the rocky ground, his body bent completely double as he clutched the iron links to keep from being strangled to death.
With the terrifying image of Silas's silver slash still burned into the back of his mind, Pantheon choked down the remaining blood in his mouth, locked his jaw, and dragged his bleeding feet back into the choking dust of the march.