Seeing that Ghorbash was well and truly in a fighting mood, Torin didn't bother with further taunts. Words had done their job. He simply reached over his shoulder, his fingers closing around the familiar, comforting haft of his warhammer.
He hefted it and rested it casually on his shoulder, his posture relaxed, almost bored, as if they were discussing the weather.
He was completely unmindful of the growing crowd of curious Orcs who had stopped their morning tasks to watch the spectacle unfolding in the training yard.
This nonchalance, this utter lack of fear or even respect for the imminent violence, seemed to infuriate Ghorbash more than any insult. With a wordless snarl that was more beast than man, the Orc lunged forward. One axe came down in a vicious, skull-cleaving arc aimed directly at Torin's head.
Torin's body shimmered with a sudden, vibrant green light. A Haste spell surged through his veins. He didn't leap or duck; he simply took a smooth, almost lazy sidestep.
The axe whistled past his ear and slammed into the dirt with a heavy thud, throwing up a spray of soil.
Ghorbash had hit nothing but air.
The Orc warrior was undeterred. With a savage roar, he wrenched the axe free, corrected his stance in a blur of motion, and lashed out horizontally with his other axe, aiming to shear Torin in half at the waist.
This time, Torin didn't move to dodge.
His body flashed green again as another spell took hold. But this light was different—duller, heavier, with a faint metallic sheen. As the axe blade hissed toward his side, Torin did something insane. He raised his left arm, his unarmored wrist, and blocked the attack.
A collective gasp went up from the onlookers. The sound of the impact wasn't the meaty thwack of steel biting into flesh. It was a sharp, dissonant CLANG, like a hammer striking an anvil.
Ghorbash's axe didn't cut. It didn't even bite. It bounced away, deflected as if it had struck a solid bar of iron. The Orc's eyes widened in shock and confusion, his arm jarred by the unexpected rebound. The watching Orcs murmured in disbelief.
Torin, however, didn't share their surprise. A fierce, triumphant grin split his face. Ironflesh… it worked. Good.
He used the moment of Ghorbash's stunned hesitation to create some distance between them. He lowered his arm, flexing his hand, clenching and unclenching his fist experimentally.
It felt heavy, dense, but completely undamaged. The skin wasn't even bruised.
One of the reasons he'd provoked Ghorbash was that he'd really wanted to test the new spell he learned. However, 'learned' was too strong a word in this situation. He hadn't found a tome or been taught by a master.
Torin 'engineered' it.
After mastering Oakflesh and Stoneflesh, understanding their underlying principles—one weaving protective magicka like tough bark, the other like dense stone—he'd theorized the next step.
Using his knowledge of metallurgy from his tinkering and Eorlund's lessons, he'd spent weeks trying to conceptualize a spell that would mimic the properties of worked iron: hard, unyielding, and resonant. This fight was his first real-world trial.
And it had just saved his arm. From his own recklessness.
Ghorbash had a deep, confused frown etched into his features as he stared at his own axe, then at Torin's unmarked wrist. "What is this trickery?"
Torin shrugged, his grin still in place. "Magic. What, you think it's not fair? Wanna cry me a river about it?"
The Orc snorted, the sound full of contempt, but his eyes were calculating now, the blind rage cooling into something more dangerous: focused intent. "As if. It just means I should not hold back on my next swing."
Torin just grinned wider, not bothering to refute him. He knew Ghorbash hadn't been bluffing about holding back. The first attacks were telegraphed, brutal, but straightforward.
He'd sensed the Orc's restraint even in his fury, which was why he'd risked the untested Ironflesh spell. Now that he knew it worked, the calculus of the fight changed. He didn't need to fear every swing; he could use them.
"Prepare yourself, boy," Ghorbash growled, brandishing his axes with a new, predatory sneer. "You will lose that arm if you try the same trick again."
He lunged. This time, there was no roaring charge. It was a controlled, powerful advance. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged, corded with intent. The first axe came not in a downward chop, but in a devastating horizontal sweep aimed to cleave Torin at the ribs.
Torin didn't try to avoid it.
Once more, his left hand shot out—but this time, it wasn't a block. It was an open palm, meeting the blow head-on.
THWACK-CRUNCH.
The sound was sickeningly wet. The Ironflesh spell hardened his flesh, but it didn't make it impervious. Ghorbash's full strength, finally unleashed, was monstrous.
The axe blade bit deep, tearing through skin and muscle with a brutal efficiency. Blood instantly welled up and began to stream down Torin's forearm.
But it didn't cut to the bone. The spell held enough to stop the blade's momentum before it could sever tendons or shatter the underlying bone.
In that split-second of impact, before the pain could even fully register, Torin's fingers—still under his control—snapped shut like a bear trap.
He wrapped his bleeding hand around the axe blade itself, ignoring the sharp edges biting into his palm, and yanked.
The move was so unexpected, so utterly insane, that Ghorbash was pulled off-balance, stumbling a half-step forward, directly into Torin's range.
Torin's right arm, the one holding his warhammer, was already coiled back. As Ghorbash stumbled forward, Torin began to unleash a short, powerful bash aimed directly at the Orc's temple.
Ghorbash, however, was a veteran. He saw the counter coming. He didn't try to wrench his trapped axe free. Instead, he used his forward momentum, accepting it. His other axe, already raised high during his lunge, came down like a falling star.
He didn't aim for the hammer or the body. He aimed for the junction of Torin's neck and shoulder, a blow meant to cripple and kill a regular person.
The Orc's opponent, however, was no ordinary person. Torin had watched Ghorbash dismantle the training dummy. He knew he couldn't match the veteran's speed, fluidity, or decades of combat experience.
Torin's only advantages were his unnatural, magically-augmented brute strength and his newly-tested, grim willingness to endure pain.
To win, he needed two things: to trap the Orc in a way that nullified his speed, and to withstand whatever Ghorbash could throw at him in that trapped state long enough to land one decisive, fight-ending blow.
He had succeeded in the first part. Now came the test of the second.
He took the hit.
He didn't twist, didn't try to lessen it. Ghorbash's axe bit deep into the meat of his left shoulder with a wet, crunching impact. Blood sprayed in a hot arc. Agony, white-hot and screaming, lanced through his entire left side. Torin's vision swam for a terrifying second.
But he didn't flinch. He didn't cry out. His eyes, glinting with a feral, pain-fueled savagery, never left Ghorbash's. His right arm, muscles screaming, continued its interrupted arc.
The warhammer, a solid mass of steel, whipped through the air with lethal speed, aimed straight at the Orc's unprotected temple.
And stopped.
It froze dead in the air, less than an inch from Ghorbash's face. The displaced air from the halted blow ruffled the Orc's hair.
In that frozen, suspended moment of utter shock, before Ghorbash's brain could even process the mercy of the missed kill, Torin's other hand—the one that had been gripping the axe blade—let go. It shot forward, not as a claw or a grab, but as a tightly-wound fist.
It connected with a sickening crack squarely under Ghorbash's chin.
The Orc's head snapped back. His eyes rolled up into his skull. The sheer, concussive force of the punch lifted him off his feet and sent him flying backward.
He crashed into another training dummy with the sound of splintering wood, snapping the central post clean in half before collapsing in a heap on the ground, unmoving.
A collective, sharp intake of breath came from the gathered crowd, followed by stunned silence.
Dazed, his world spinning and ringing, Ghorbash struggled to push himself up onto his elbows. He blinked, trying to clear the stars from his vision, and saw Torin standing a dozen feet away. The boy's hand was glowing with a soft, warm yellow light as he held it pressed over the grievous axe wound in his shoulder.
The furious spray of blood was already slowing to a trickle, then stopping altogether as flesh began to knit with impossible speed under the Restoration magic.
After a minute, the glow faded. Torin rolled his shoulder experimentally, wincing only slightly, then flexed his sliced-up palm. It was still a mess, but it was a closed, healing mess.
He then walked over to where Ghorbash lay amidst the wreckage of the dummy. He looked down at the stunned Orc, a grin—this one lacking mockery, filled instead with a fierce, approving energy—spread across his face.
"You're too good to be rotting up here," Torin said, his voice a little rough from pain but clear in the silent yard. He extended his bloodied, but healing, hand not to strike, but in offering. "What do you think about joining the Companions of Jorrvaskr?"
The orc just stared at him for a moment before going limp, his vision darkening.
...
Two hours later, Torin sat on the simple pallet in his assigned house, a soft golden glow emanating from his hand as he pressed it against his shoulder.
The initial healing had sealed the wound and stopped the bleeding, but the real damage lay deeper—shredded muscle fibers and a hairline fracture in the clavicle where Ghorbash's axe had been halted by bone. Mending that required focus and patience.
The Ironflesh spell had saved his arm, but it hadn't made him invincible. Without it, he mused as the magic knit the final strands of tissue back together, that last blow would have severed the limb clean off.
Finished, he let out a long, weary breath. He'd need a day or two of rest, but he'd be functional, if sore. He turned his head to see Echo, who had taken shameless advantage of his distraction.
She'd nosed open his pack and was contentedly finishing off the last of his hardtack and dried meat reserve. He couldn't even muster the energy to get angry. The fight had drained him more than he'd let on.
I can always barter for more rations from the stronghold before I leave, he thought with a resigned sigh.
A knock sounded at the door, firm and direct.
Torin turned his attention toward it. "Come in. Door's not locked."
The door swung open, and none other than Ghorbash stood in the frame, filling it with his broad silhouette. He was still moving carefully, one hand braced against the doorjamb, and he looked decidedly pale under his greenish skin.
A spectacular bruise was already blooming along his jawline.
Torin couldn't help a faint, tired grin. The Orc was hardy. He'd figured the punch would have kept him unconscious until sunset at least.
Ghorbash just stood there for a long moment, his dark eyes studying Torin, taking in the closed but still livid wounds. The air was thick with unasked questions.
Finally, he spoke, his voice a bit rougher than usual.
"What you said to me… before my vision darkened and the ground came up to meet me." He trailed off, his brow furrowed as if trying to recall a dream. "What did you mean by that?"
Torin just gave him a blank look, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "What else could it mean? I'm asking you if you're interested in joining the Companions. You know, the warrior's guild. In Jorrvaskr, over in Whiterun."
...
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