FREE USE in Primitive World

Unlike the commoners, their senses had registered the true nature of the night’s cataclysm. They had felt the astronomical, terrifying influx of essence tearing through the clearing like an unstoppable wave of beasts.

They had felt for the first time ever, the rules of the world groan, and they had felt an aura so impossibly powerful, so utterly sovereign, that their own spirit beasts were still shivering inside their cores like beaten low life.

Near the front of the platform stood the remaining clan elders... men and women leaning on polished wooden canes, their faces carved with deep, furious scowls.

”It came from the Warchief’s private pond!” an elder standing a bit distance from the others, hissed in a cracked, agitated whisper to his peers. ”The ambient essence was sucked dry! The spirits of the forest are screaming! If the Warchief has meddled with forbidden, ancient curses to secure our victory, the ancestors will strike down the entire clan!”

”Shhhhhh,” another elder hushed, looking around, wiping nervous sweat from his brow. ”Have you gone mad? Or has your brain really become muddled? Did you not know what happened to others?”

Before the argument could escalate, a murmur rippled through the back of the crowd.

The sea of warriors parted, making way as Sol strode into the square.

Flanked by Kira on his left and Zeyra on his right, he walked with slow, unhurried steps. His dark hair was still slightly damp, his clean tunic hugging the broad expanse of his shoulders.

He carried himself with complete, arrogant ease, his neon-crimson eyes sweeping over the crowd with lazy indifference.

Several elders frowned at his casual demeanor, especially the one at edge who was speaking vividly before, but now seeing him, none dared voice a complaint.

After seeing him decapitate the Layer 4 chiefs and butcher the Coalition’s elite vanguard, even the most stubborn traditionalists knew that crossing the outsider was a swift way to lose a head.

Scanning the sea of faces, Sol caught sight of Elder Harkan standing near the front of the inner circle.

Unlike the other greybeards whose mouths were usually pinched into sour, suspicious lines, but now were looking at him with submissive look, Harkan gave him a firm, approving nod accompanied by a brief flash of a grin.

As an elder who still spent half his moons out on active frontlines, his head hadn’t been rotted away by tribal politicking and squabbles over ancestral precedence.

Out on the frontier, dead enemies and unbroken battle lines were the only currency that mattered, and he respected Sol’s ungodly violence for exactly what it was.

Just a few paces to the side stood Commander Thauren. The towering leader of the Lion Vanguard looked visibly exhausted, fresh bandages still wrapped tight around his brawny forearms, but his posture was straight as an ironwood trunk.

The moment their eyes met, Thauren inclined his chin in a deep, remarkably cordial nod, treating Sol as an equal, and with immense respect for a man who had turned the tide of an entire war.

Tucked into a quiet corner near the forge lane stood Teshar, leaning against a few wooden boards with his signature look of complete, unbothered boredom, looking like he’d rather be chewing on scrap wood than standing in the morning sun listening to speeches.

Sol actually cracked a genuine grin and lifted a hand to greet him first. He had plenty of reasons to give the smith his dues.

The reinforced armor Teshar had hammered together had tanked strikes that would have gutted even an ox, saving his sorry ass more times than he cared to count, and of course, the sharp edge on his Dreadwing blade that had split warlords in half without notching once.

A good craftsman was worth ten loudmouth councilors any day of the week.

Behind the smith stood a small knot of familiar warriors from the early border runs.

Tala, the bat-spirit scout, was standing half-hidden in the shade of a pole. Sol remembered her sharp instincts well... her uncanny environmental awareness, the way she could map out enemy ambushes through pitch-black ravines just by reading the flutter of wind against her ears, and how her silent recon had kept their strike unit from walking into enemies countless times, if he didn’t had his cheat, he doubted he’d be able to match her sharp senses.

She looked considerably more reserved seeing him now, fidgeting with the leather grip of her dagger. After watching him single-handedly butcher literally thousands across the valley and tear apart legendary Layer 4 warlords with his bare hands, the casual outsider she once scouted with had turned into a walking apocalypse.

Still, catching Sol’s eye, she swallowed her hesitation and offered a timid, respectful salute with her fist over her chest.

Oh, and those other three guys were lingering right behind her too.... Bran, Kael, and Torin. The extra sets of hands that held torches and occasionally got in the way of a charging enemy, though they all snapped stiff, nervous salutes the second his crimson eyes drifted over them.

Sol returned their salutes with a smile and stopped near the base of the platform, leaning his weight casually on one heel, crossing his arms over his chest.

Suddenly, the heavy timber doors of the Great Lodge swung open.

The square fell into dead, breathless silence.

High Shaman Zephyra stepped out first. She had washed away the mud and blood, dressed in pristine, flowing white robes adorned with emerald prayer-beads.

She carried her staff of white birch, her milky-white eyes staring serenely out over the assembled thousands. She took three steps to the right of the platform and stopped, lowering her head in solemn reverence.

Then, Warchief Veylara stepped into the morning sun.

A collective gasp tore through the front ranks of the warriors.

She was not wearing her golden battle armor. She was clad in a simple, elegant tunic of deep crimson leather, trimmed with silver wolf-fur along the collar and fastened with an elegant leather cord.

Her deep ink-black hair fell over her shoulders in immaculate waves, and her chin was lifted with supreme, untouchable majesty.

But it was not her attire that made the breath catch in every warrior’s throat.