Standing on the bank, they wrung out their damp clothes. Aris then crouched to scoop up a glob of wet clay, walking five meters to a thick, towering tree to smear a crude, circular target onto the bark. He returned to reclaim the bow and arrows from Lilly, who had been holding them with careful attention. He turned to her, his expression steady.
"Go stand over there," he said, gesturing well to the left of the tree, far enough to ensure no stray arrow could endanger her. "Bring me the shots I miss. Understood?"
She nodded, her eyes bright with a spark of purpose, and scurried to her post.
He gripped the riser, drew the string, and let fly. The arrow whistled through the air, sailing wide and passing harmlessly through the gap between Lilly and the target. For a long time, his shots were erratic, clattering into the brush or thudding aimlessly into the forest floor.
He forced himself to focus, battling the growing frustration, until, by the seventh attempt, he finally struck the trunk. By the tenth, he was grouping his shots near the clay.
Only then did he feel the time was right to invite Prime into the practice.
He felt a sudden sense of detachment and clarity as soon as the chip took the lead. While Prime could not perform miracles or bridge the gap in his raw physical strength, it translated his intent into pure efficiency. It smoothed his jittery motions into a continuous flow, optimized his aim, adjusted his anchor point by a fraction of a millimeter, and calibrated his breathing to the subtle sway of the trees.
He drew the string again. The arrow flew true, biting deep into the wood with a sharp thwack. Aris stood motionless, eyes closed, replaying the sensation in his mind. The release had been fluid, silent, and terrifyingly precise; he was desperately trying to map the feeling, to internalize the data Prime had provided.
Lilly darted from her cover, her expression shifting from cautious waiting to eager excitement. A grim satisfaction settled in Aris's gut as he opened his eyes. The transition from amateur to lethal was underway, but he couldn't afford to revel in it. Massive tasks lay ahead.
For the next few minutes, Prime acted as an unforgiving instructor. It forced him to widen his stance, locked his hips and torso into perfect alignment, and drove his bow-shoulder down. It demanded his head stay neutral, turned fully toward the target, refusing to let him settle until his form was absolute.
Only when the string blurred into a constant vibration in his vision did Prime signal that his posture was sufficient. It insisted he keep both eyes open, his instinct was to squint, but Prime was correct. Closing one eye narrowed his peripheral awareness, and in this forest, being found lacking was a death sentence.
With Prime's guidance, Aris found his rhythm; by the seventeenth shot, he was hitting the target consistently.
Lilly, fueled by the rare freedom of the outdoors, darted between the trees with quick, eager steps to retrieve the arrows. She would scurry back to his side, drop them silently, and race back to her station without a word.
He paused to scoop up another lump of clay, walking to a tree ten meters away to draw a fresh target. Before marking it, he gestured for Lilly to stand even further to the side—his caution increasing as the range grew—before returning to his mark to resume.
Within twenty minutes, the tree was riddled with holes centered on the clay. Yet, the grim reality of his situation set in: his muscles were the bottleneck. His strength was waning, his fingers raw and swollen from the friction of the bowstring, and his stamina, pushed to the limit by Prime's constant adjustments, was nearly drained.
After a few minutes of rest, he pushed the distance: fifteen meters, then seventeen, and finally twenty. At twenty meters, his vision strained as the range exceeded his current physical capability.
Furthermore, his arrows began to drift, caught by the forest's subtle, shifting drafts, a sobering reminder of how much more difficult these shots would be in open wind.
He signaled for Lilly to return. She approached, her small hands clutching the seventy-centimeter shafts. Aris offered her an encouraging smile, though his focus remained on his throbbing, swollen hands.
She waded into the nearby pool, sitting to cool her legs, her eyes tracking him with a quiet, observant intensity as he stood by the bank, measuring the distance once more.
Despite the fatigue and the throbbing pain in his fingers, his progress was undeniable, almost unsettling for a man who had never touched a bow until three hours ago. He had the form; he had the aim. Now, he only needed the stamina to sustain it, and he would be a precision lethal instrument.
Beyond twenty meters, however, the forest's density choked off every line of sight, rendering further practice impossible. That wasn't his only obstacle. His most pressing issue was his plummeting stamina. Five times in the last hour, he had been forced to deactivate Prime's guidance as his reserves hit zero, the resulting migraine scattering his focus like chaff in the wind.
Still, the results were phenomenal. At seventeen meters, with Prime humming at the base of his skull, he was lethal against a stationary target. He remained under no illusions, however; no competent enemy would stand still to be hit.
But then again, he was hunting orcs, not fencers. They were monstrous, fast, and arrogant. What gave him courage was the glaring lack of shields among them. Unless their hide was as thick as plate armor, a clean piercing was all he needed.
Once the tip broke the skin, the poison would do the rest. The only lingering doubt was the arrows themselves; they looked flimsy, and he wasn't certain they possessed the power or the sharpness to penetrate an orc's hide at all.
He pushed that concern aside for now. He had twenty hours until the toxins matured. The problem of sourcing better arrows could wait; he had a full day to refine the rough edges of his technique, and he wasn't going to waste a second of it.
After resting, he scoured the undergrowth for sturdy vines. Finding a length that was supple but held firm under tension, he lashed it to a wooden board scavenged from the forest floor and hung the makeshift target from a low-hanging branch.
He turned to Lilly, who was still distracted by the pool. "Lilly, come here. Help me with this."
She rose and hurried to his side, her brow furrowed with that familiar, nagging worry. "Brother, are you still continuing? What if those monsters come back? How long can we really stay out here?"
Aris offered a reassuring smile, though his eyes remained sharp, scanning the periphery instinctively. He gestured toward the dense tree line. "Don't worry. They don't patrol this deep; it's far from their walls. Just help me with the arrows. When I say, push the board so it starts to swing. It needs to move."
"Okay," she said, her anxiety momentarily eclipsed by the novelty of the task. She scampered to the side, positioning herself safely behind a thick trunk near the dangling target.
"Good." Aris nodded, satisfied. He paced out five meters, positioning himself with his back to the pool, his stance wide and grounded.
Gripping the riser, he nocked an arrow. Instinctively, he started to close one eye, but caught himself; he knew he couldn't afford the loss of depth perception on a moving target. He needed absolute, singular focus. Once he had tracked the board with the arrowhead, he called out, "Lilly, push the board and duck back!"
She did so instantly. Aris waited for the target to arc, exhaling as he released. The arrow hissed through the air, missing the board by a wide margin. He shot again, and again. It took several frustrating misses before he began to internalize the timing and the arc of the swing. Lilly scurried out to collect the spent shafts, sprinting them back before darting back to cover.
Aris didn't hesitate. This time, he allowed Prime to take full control of his form. He took a deep, steadying breath, and the world seemed to slow. Prime flooded his mind with a flurry of sensory data and micro-postural adjustments. He loosed.
Thud!
The arrow punched through the center of the wooden board. Excitement flared in his chest, but he stifled it, his hand already reaching for the next shaft. Thud! The second arrow bit into the wood just inches below the first. He fired three more in rapid succession; every single one found the board. With Prime calculating trajectory and velocity in real-time, missing was nearly impossible—provided his muscles held out.
I must improve my body next, he thought, his pulse hammering against his ribs. If he were to train properly, he would need real fuel—meat, specifically. Fruit had little to offer his metabolism. Should he venture deeper into the forest for game? The thought was tempting, but the memory of the entity held him back.
Perhaps its influence extended far into the woods, and meat alone wouldn't be enough to survive what was coming. Herbs were plentiful here, though; surely Prime could synthesize a body-strengthening concoction if it could manage a vitality restorative.
The clatter of arrows hitting the dirt beside him snapped him back to reality.
"Amazing, brother!" Lilly chirped, running up to him. She mimicked his draw with her small, dirt-streaked hands. "You hit them like whoosh, whoosh! Can you teach me?"
Aris looked down at her fragile frame. The smile that touched his lips was soft, though his eyes remained guarded, constantly scanning the periphery. He knelt to ruffle her hair. "Okay, okay. I will teach you. But not now." He pulled her slightly closer. "You first need to grow up. Eat as much as you can, sleep enough; only then can you begin."
"That's too long," she whispered, her small fingers tugging insistently at the hem of his vest.
The lingering intensity of his training faded, replaced by a tenderness he rarely allowed himself to show. "Okay, I promise. I'll figure it out. You saw how I was hitting that mark, right? I'll teach you everything I know in a matter of days. But we have to get out of this forest first. When we finally reach a better place, I'll find you a bow, one perfectly sized just for you."
He reached out, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. His heart stuttered when her smile faltered.
"Okay," she murmured, her voice thin. "Just… don't forget. Like last time. You said you'd buy that dress for me and Eris, and…"
She stopped. Her face turned solemn, the light in her eyes dimming under the weight of what they had lost. The silence that followed was crushing, filled with the name she hadn't finished and everything that name represented, echoing against the terrifying uncertainty of their future.
She caught him watching her and, with a fragile strength that broke his heart, forced that sad smile back onto her face. A lump formed in Aris's throat. She was far too smart, far too observant for a world this cruel. He couldn't bear the thought of her carrying those memories alone.
He stood, pulling her into a brief, firm embrace before drawing back. "Enough of that," he said, his voice filled with a warmth he hadn't realized he possessed. "Let's head back to the cave. It's time for you to eat, and well past time for your nap."
Inside the cave, as they wrung out their damp clothes, Aris shivered; the constant cycle of soaking in the cascade was a grueling chore and a persistent invitation to hypothermia. I have to find a better way, he thought, his jaw tight against the chill.
After helping Lilly into her dry clothes and ensuring she was fed and tucked away, he watched her drift into a restless sleep. Only then did he slip back out to resume his practice.
As the hours bled away, he pushed himself relentlessly, extending his range from five meters to fifteen, his accuracy against the swaying target improving with every pull of the string. It was only when dusk began to bleed purple across the forest canopy that he finally stopped, gathering his gear before retreating into the dark mouth of the cave.
Once inside, he sat in the gloom, analyzing his capabilities. Without Prime, he could land shots at five meters on the swaying board with a sixty percent success rate, but with Prime active, hitting his mark was as close to a guarantee as his body allowed.
At fifteen meters, he was lethal. While the jump to thirty or fifty meters introduced variables like topography and erratic wind drift, factors where equipment quality would eventually outpace his steady hand, he didn't need to be a long-range master. Not yet.
Fifteen meters was the kill zone, whether the target was stationary or moving. That was enough for the plan.
He looked east, toward the village, and a cold, dark resolve hardened in his chest. It's time I settle some debts, he thought, his voice barely a whisper in the gloom. And drain that chief of his usefulness. He glanced at the sealed containers; the poison was nearly ready.