The Rise of the Unbound Sovereign Sect Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Read chapter 4 of The Rise of the Unbound Sovereign Sect by Magic on NovelPedia.

"To survive the hammer, do not become the anvil; become the handle." The air in the clearing turned jagged. Karg didn't just want the rabbit for a meal; he wanted to see if it would break under his grip before it died. He wanted to watch it show the terror that defined the prey of this world. He reached out, his fingers coarse and thick as ironwood branches, trying to reach right past my shoulder to snatch the creature off my back. I didn't think about his rank as a Wall-Defender. I didn't care about the hierarchy. I just thought about the six hours of recovery the creature had saved me. I let my shoulder dip and dumped the rabbit. It hit the stone floor with a pathetic, wet thud , freeing my arms. I planted my boots into the slick rock, dropping my center of gravity, and drove my shoulder hard into Karg's massive forearm. It was like shoving a boulder, but the angle was enough to knock his reach wide. "Mine," I snarled, dropping my hand to the hilt of my carved bone blade. "Karg, stay back." The other hunters went dead silent. They weren't used to seeing blades bared over baggage. Karg slowly pulled his hand back, his eyes narrowing. He didn't look angry; he looked perplexed, like a man who had kicked a pile of leaves and hit a jagged rock. He took a heavy, deliberate step toward me, the smell of dried blood and old sweat rolling off him as his shadow swallowed the light. Before he could swing, a scraping sound came from the dirt behind my boots. Then, a raw, guttural noise that mimicked the harsh phonetics of our own dialect. The rabbit was trying to speak. Being dropped like a sack of wet cement onto solid rock did no favors for my bruised ribs. I scrambled backward, my palms scraping against the stone, until I was firmly planted behind the tree-trunk-sized legs of the Amazon—or Vora, if I was parsing the guttural syllables correctly. The tension in the clearing was a tangible thing, humming against my skin like static electricity. If these two titans threw hands, my fragile body was going to end up pulverized in the crossfire. That was not a fate I was interested in after surviving this hellscape for less than a day. I had to stop this. I forced myself to my feet, peering around Vora's hip. I was five-foot-seven of trembling, soft-handed, pale-skinned absurdity standing against a man who looked like he had been violently chiseled out of a mountain. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I could feel the cold, predatory gaze of every giant in the clearing lock onto me. I had to be careful. In any primitive social structure, an outsider who shows too much intelligence is seen as a rival—a direct threat to the shaman or the chief. But an outsider who shows no intelligence is just livestock. I needed to thread the needle. I stepped out slightly, holding my hands open, palms facing outward in a universal sign of submission. I focused on the root sounds I’d been cataloging for the last hour, forcing my brain to strip away the complex grammar of my world. "Not… threat," I rasped, the words tearing through my throat in a broken rhythm. I pointed a shaky finger at Vora, then mimed a snake biting my leg, then pointed at my own chest. "Pain… stop. I… fix. No meat. I… tool. I… help." I struggled to keep my posture small. Sound like a child. Be the tool, not the threat. "Tool," Karg spat the word out like it was a mouthful of ash. He turned his gaze toward Vora, his lip curling in a sneer. "You have picked up a broken thing that thinks it is a Weaver, Vora. If it cannot hunt, it is just another mouth to feed. And this tribe has no room for mouths that do not earn their place." "It does not eat much," Vora replied, her voice dead-level and cold. "And if it keeps the hunters on their feet when the venom strikes, it earns more than you ever have, Karg." Then, the mountain cliffside towering over us shifted. It was a subtle thing at first. Cracks in the glittering, gem-encrusted face slowly formed, outlining the shape of a humanoid figure