FREE USE in Primitive World

At the exact same second, his bone-knife drove straight through the soft membrane at the back of its neck.

The stalker went totally limp before it could even twitch its leg.

Right next to him, Bran executed his target with a clean, low strike.

He didn’t try to go for the chest. He drove his dagger upward from beneath the guard’s chin, piercing straight into the brain cavity with a dull crunch.

The two seven-foot carcasses were quickly dragged behind the large timber frames of the storage house.

Torin didn’t waste time.

He waved the rest of the forty warriors forward.

The fighters poured into the three storage houses like a sudden wave.

They didn’t grab any weapons or look for loot.

They grabbed the heavy clay and woven-fiber jars of beast-fat and dried pitch stacked along the racks, violently smashing them against the main support timber poles.

The thick, pungent oil splattered everywhere, soaking into the dry wood and the stitched hide roofs.

Torin pulled a dry flint-stone and a rough bone scrap from his belt and gave it one violent strike.

SPARK.

A tiny yellow flame caught a strand of oil-soaked hemp fiber. Within a heartbeat, the fire caught the pitch and exploded upward with a massive, hungry WHOOSH.

The dry hide structures lit up like tinder, orange and red flames ripping through the roofs and tearing into the grey morning sky.

Torin lifted a hollow bone-whistle to his lips and blew with everything his lungs had.

PHEW!

The sharp, high-pitched blasted through the silent sleepy settlements like a giant morning alarm.

”Go! Move!” Hargon’s deep voice roared from the western perimeter.

The moment the whistle died, Teams Six through Nine broke from the fern trenches.

Eighty elite spirit warriors exploded toward the main bone gates in a single, violent mass.

They didn’t try to hide anymore, as their main goal was to create confusion and taunt them.

Their internal cores burst into life, the warm essence lighting up their pathways as they sprinted across the open dirt road.

Hargon led the charge, his Great Tusk-Boar spirit making his muscles swell beneath his torn leather armor. He held a massive, five-foot timber log across his chest like a battering ram.

Three other heavy veterans ran right beside him, their boots tearing up chunks of wet mud as they gathered momentum.

”Smashed the gates!” Hargon barked.

The Zerith sentries confused by sudden fire, smoke and whistle on the high watch platforms finally realized what was happening.

Their bodies tensed up and sprang into action, they tried to grab their weapons and sound the alarm, but they were already too late.

BOOM! CRUNCH!

The heavy petrified ram hit the main bone gates at full speed. The sharpened mammoth bones and timber logs, bound together by old vines, violently fractured under the overwhelming strength of Hargon’s power.

The entire gate split down the middle, wood splinters and bone shards flying into the air as the wall collapsed inward.

But the momentum didn’t stop. Hargon’s squad drove straight through the broken gap, slamming into the first row of watch platforms.

Two veterans used their heavy stone-headed axes to hack through the support ropes and hemp bindings.

The high wooden towers groaned, tilting sideways before crashing heavily into the mud below, throwing the Zerith sentries flat onto the dirt where the oncoming Veynar warriors instantly trampled them.

”The gate is open! Kill them ALLLLL!” Mara shouted from the right flank, her Cheetah spirit making her movements a total blur as she bypassed the falling timber and entered the camp alleys.

The entire outpost exploded into a madhouse of screaming, half-awake alien warriors.

Dozens of Zerith scrambled out of their conical tents, their lanky limbs tangled in their sleeping furs, their eyes blinking blindly in the thick mix of white mist and heavy black smoke pouring from the eastern storage fires.

They didn’t have their weapons ready, and they didn’t have their boots strapped. They were coughing, spitting green fluid, and running in random circles trying to figure out where the attack was coming from.

The Veynar veterans didn’t give them a single breath to organize their lines. They moved through the alleys like a solid wall of bone-spears, driving their tips straight through the hide walls of the tents before the occupants could even stand up.

SHUCK! STAB! SCREECH!

For a while, the sounds of tearing leather and wet, high-pitched alien screams filled the whole Zerith tribe.

It wasn’t a glorious dual; it was a total tactical massacre.

Up on the western ridge, Sol stood up slowly from the dirt. He looked down at the burning camp, his face completely calm, his silver-crimson eyes reflecting the growing orange glow of the fires.

”They’re finally panicking, it’s time for these ambushing bastards to be ambushed” Sol said, a cold smirk pulling at his mouth. ”Look at the northern line. The young ones are already breaking toward the ravines.”

Kira pulled her bowstring to her ear, her eyes tracking a group of five stalkers trying to scramble over the rear root-fence. ”Teams Three, Four, and Five are already waiting for them at the mouth. They won’t make it to the grass.”

”Let’s go down and harvest the big meat,” Sol muttered, his body suddenly shifting forward. ”Zeyra, stay on my right. Kira, hold the high roots along the alley. Don’t let their leaders organize a center line.”

Before Kira could answer, Sol dropped from the lip of the ridge.

He didn’t use a flashy leap; he just ran down the steep dirt slope at a casual, heavy trot, his black Rockhorn carapace cutting through the grey mist without a sound.

Zeyra followed right behind his shadow, her dark leather gear rustling softly, her eyes fixed entirely on his back with that deep, quiet heat.

They broke into the center ring of the camp just as three high-tier Layer 2 Zerith captains/Packleaders rushed out of the main camps.

Unlike scouts and assassins, these captains were fully armed and held all sorts of weapons.