The word hung in the air between them, thick and gravelly. Lost. It was a simple word, yet in Lian's rasping delivery, it carried the weight of a creature utterly displaced from its world, a stone pulled from the riverbed, still dripping with the wild water of its origin.
The two guards flinched. Their spears, which had been held with a trembling bravado, now seemed uncertain. They exchanged a look, a silent, frantic conversation passing between them in a single glance. Their training, whatever pathetic form it took, had likely prepared them for bandits or beasts—for aggression, for a clear threat. It had not prepared them for this: a giant of a man, built like a walking boulder, with the eyes of a predator but the demeanor of a frightened, confused child.
The taller guard, the one who seemed to be the leader by a sliver of confidence, lowered his spear a few inches. "Lost?" he repeated, his voice still tight, unable to fully shed its fearful edge. "Lost from where, wild man? There's nothing but beast-infested woods for a hundred miles in that direction."
Lian's mind worked with cold precision. His mask was that of a simpleton, and a simpleton would not understand complex questions or geography. He merely stared back, his luminous green eyes wide and vacant, and then slowly, clumsily, pointed back towards the deep, dark woods from which he had come. "Woods," he grunted, adding another layer to the persona, a second, carefully chosen word. "Deep."
It was enough. The seeds of pity began to sprout in the barren soil of their fear. "He's just a wild man, Finn," the shorter guard whispered, his relief palpable. He nudged his companion. "Probably got chased out by a Yaoguai or something and wandered onto the path. Look at him, he's harmless."
Finn, the taller guard, did not immediately relax. His eyes, however, shifted from assessing a threat to assessing an asset. He sized up Lian's immense, corded muscles, the sheer breadth of his shoulders. An idea was forming behind his simple gaze. "He's big," Finn stated, the observation hanging in the air. "Strong-looking. We lost two woodcutters to the fever last moon. The Elder is always complaining we don't have enough hands to work the north timberline."
The decision was made, not out of compassion, but out of crude opportunism. They flanked him, their movements shifting from the aggression of captors to the cautious herding of men guiding a large, unpredictable animal. "Come," Finn commanded, gesturing with his spear towards the village gate. "Elder Maeve will know what to do with you."
Lian obeyed without a word, his shoulders slumped, his steps heavy and slow. But as he passed through the crude wooden gate and into the "ant hill," his senses were assaulted, and the beast of his hatred, chained in the dungeon of his will, began to rattle its cage.
The smell hit him first. It was a thick, cloying miasma of unwashed bodies, animal waste, cooking smoke, stale grain, and fear. It was the smell of too many living things crammed too close together, a stench of stagnation that was the antithesis of the clean, wild air of his forest. He fought the urge to gag, his nostrils flaring as he forced himself to breathe the polluted air.
Then came the sounds. The incessant, high-pitched babble of human voices, the pathetic bleating of a goat tethered to a post, the sharp cry of a child who had fallen, the grating clang of a blacksmith's hammer. It was a chaotic, meaningless noise that scraped against his sharpened senses. In the forest, every sound had meaning—the snap of a twig was a warning, the call of a bird was a signal, the rustle of leaves was a story. Here, sound was just… refuse, discarded into the air with no purpose.
He saw them, the other ants, peering from the dark doorways of their mud-and-wattle huts. Their faces held a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity. They stared at his size, his dirt-caked skin, his wild hair. He was a spectacle. An intrusion. He felt their collective gaze like a physical weight, and the urge to unleash his power, to silence their whispers and shatter their fragile homes with a single thought, was a roaring inferno he had to actively suppress. He held onto his ambition like a shield, the image of the infinite, starry ocean pushing back against the black tide of his disgust.
The guards led him through the center of the village to the largest of the huts, which was only marginally bigger than the others. An old woman sat outside on a stool, her hands methodically weaving a basket from reeds. Her hair was a cloud of stark white, her face a roadmap of deep wrinkles, but her eyes, when they lifted to meet his, were sharp and startlingly intelligent. This was Elder Maeve.
She watched their approach without surprise, her gaze passing over the nervous guards and settling on Lian. She saw not a monster, not a simpleton, but a puzzle.
"Finn, what is this you've brought me?" she asked, her voice calm and steady, carrying an authority that the guards' lacked.
"We found him on the path, Elder," Finn said, puffing out his chest slightly. "Says he's lost. Came from the deep woods. Doesn't seem to have much in the way of wits, but... look at the size of him."
Elder Maeve's eyes raked over Lian's form. He felt her gaze not as a physical threat, but as an assessment. It was the look of a trader judging livestock, but with a deeper, more unnerving perception behind it. She saw the power in his frame, the raw strength that could be put to use. But she also saw the eerie green light in his eyes, a light that did not belong to a simple man of the woods.
"What is your name, son?" she asked, her voice unexpectedly gentle.
Lian met her gaze and held it for a moment before looking down at his feet, playing the part of the shy, simple creature. "Lian," he mumbled, the name still feeling foreign on his tongue.
"Lian," she repeated, tasting the word. "You are far from any known settlement. You have no weapon, no tools. How have you survived?"
He pointed a thick, dirt-caked finger to his mouth, then made a clumsy chewing motion. "Eat," he said. Then he pointed to a nearby stream. "Drink."
The simplicity of the answer was more convincing than any lie. The elder nodded slowly. He was what he appeared to be: a creature of pure survival, a child of the forest. Strong of body, but weak of mind. Useful.
"We have need of strong backs in this village, Lian," she said finally. "The forest provides, but it must be tamed. Trees need felling, water needs carrying. You will work for us. In return, we will give you food from our fire and a roof to keep the rain off your head. Do you understand?"
Lian looked at her, then at the huts, then at the villagers who were still staring. He gave a slow, ponderous nod.
And just like that, the tiger had walked into the ant hill. He was given a bowl of bland, warm porridge, which he ate with his hands, much to the disgust and amusement of the onlookers. He was shown a space in a communal storage hut to sleep, a pile of rough straw that smelled of mildew and rat droppings.
As night fell and the village settled into a quiet murmur, Lian lay on the straw, the strange sounds and smells pressing in on him. He could hear the soft breathing of other men sleeping nearby, feel the claustrophobic presence of the walls around him. His hatred was a living thing, coiling in his gut. But his ambition was a cold, sharp stone in his heart. He had done it. His infiltration was a success. From within the walls of their own pathetic cage, he would observe them, learn from them, and bleed them dry of the one resource they had that he needed: their knowledge. The ant hill was weak, but it was now his.