For an entire year, Kegan was busy preparing. There were hundreds of minor tasks that he accomplished, but he was always working towards his major goals. The first goal he had was to keep Jot alive and out of the fighting. To that end he trained Jot to live at the cabin he’d built outside of the valley where he had learned copper smithing. Jot learned how to hunt on his own, how to enter the cabin through a specially made door to stay warm in the winter, and how to survive without Kegan around.

The second major goal was to learn how to mine, smelt, and work iron. It took Kegan two months just to find a good vein of iron ore. It was ironically where all of his troubles had started. The caves in the valley that unleashed the goblins at the start of each life contained rich iron deposits. Kegan hated going into the caves. They were damp, the darkness was absolute if you went deep enough, and they twisted and turned into small crevices that could trap you. He even found a few old goblin bones from where a goblin had gotten trapped and died of starvation.

Smelting the iron was more difficult than smelting copper. The heat had to be much higher, and even once he achieved the higher levels of heat he still had trouble getting the iron to pour into molds like he’d done with the copper. Instead he’d heat the iron to red hot temperatures and then he’d hammer it into the shape he needed. There was a bit of a chicken and egg problem, since he had no iron to start with he had to use a copper hammer at first. He spent months just building the tools he needed to work iron, but it was worth it in the end.

As his iron production ramped up he began making a multitude of iron weapons and implements. Dozens of all metal harpoons that he could throw as javelins. Both sides of the harpoons had barbed tips to stop the bone knights from easily pulling them out. He made different weapons to practice with, but he ultimately decided on two main weapons. A poleaxe if he could keep his distance, and a war hammer for closer fighting. The war hammer was only a foot and a half long with a hammer on one side, and a sharp spike on the opposite side.

The third and final major goal was to turn the entire valley into a trap. He would cover as much of the land as possible in deadly spike or pit traps. Weapon stashes were hidden everywhere for him. He built a few well concealed hideouts with food storage, a bed, and extra weapons. He also used his iron tools against the one easy way in and out of the valley. He smoothed the cliff face and made it nearly impossible to climb. In their place he built a set of wooden stairs. However, the stairs were just another part of the trap. The supports for the stairs had a few weak spots that he could hit to cause the structure to collapse. He also smeared parts of the stairs in flammable animal fats and tree sap. Getting in the valley would be easy, but getting out would be next to impossible. Kegan built a hidden backup route. The handholds were hard to see, and there were a few false holds that would give out once you put weight on them.

As spring arrived Kegan knew it was time to start the next phase of his plan. He had to lure the enemy to the valley. This would be the riskiest part. Would the sorceress still care to pursue him? Would he get caught outside of the valley? Would he even be able to find enemy troops? There were too many uncertainties.

Kegan took multiple trips outside of the valley. He weaved back and forth, just like the orc patrol to make sure that no one was getting behind him. After five trips of the careful approach, he realized no one was anywhere close to the valley. On the sixth trip he Instead just ran to the location where he had encountered the first village. A two day journey for Kegan, since he could run for most of the day, but a five day journey for anyone with a more reasonable pace.

The village was mostly comprised of goblins with only a few orcs last time he had seen it. He approached cautiously in the dawn hours, and camouflaged himself in some foliage near the village.

There were three bone knights standing in the village center. They moved very little. Occasionally a goblin would walk up to them with food and they’d eat it. There was no sign of any orcs in the village aside from the three bone knights.

As the sun went down Kegan slowly crept his way into the village using some of the blind spots of the bone knights, and using his camouflage perk the entire time. The goblins had all gone to sleep in their huts.

Kegan made it all the way to the closest hut without alerting the village or the bone knights. He took out a thick double sided iron harpoon, and a torch. He took a small running head start and came out from behind the hut, and hurled the harpoon at the group of bone knights. At twenty feet he couldn’t miss, and they weren’t ready to dodge anything either.

The harpoon crushed the bone armor of the nearest knight, and travelled through its body and into the body of another bone knight. It might have gone straight through both of them, but the back of the harpoon caught on the first bone knight’s armor.

He lit the torch with his fire starter perk and threw it at the two bone knights struggling to extricate themselves from the shared harpoon. The torch was meant to flare up and burn fast, and it did as soon as it hit the bone knights.

The third bone knight that had initially been trying to help the other two, leapt back as the flame engulfed his comrades.

Instead he charged at Kegan and began shouting in a language Kegan couldn’t understand. Kegan pulled out a warhammer and light hide shield to begin exchanging blows with the bone knight. His goal wasn’t to kill this bone knight, merely to wound him. The bone knight would run to get reinforcements, and Kegan would leave an obvious trail leading back to the valley for them to follow.

This bone knight was much worse at fighting than any of the previous bone knights Kegan had encountered. He was hammering his armor and bones to pieces with the war hammer, and the hide shield was almost unnecessary.

That was until the cabin behind him burst open and tribal goblins came screaming out of it. Kegan had luckily just finished caving in the head of the bone knight, which would keep him out of the fight for at least a dozen seconds.

The tribal goblins looked the same as the hostile goblins he had encountered closer to the bone sorcerer’s tower, and nothing like the goblin villagers.

The pair of burning bone knights tried to run into him from behind, but he rolled to the side. Their momentum carried them past him into the group of goblins and then falling down at the front of the hut. One unlucky goblin was caught underneath the burning pair and screamed in agony and fear as he was burned alive. But the hut itself also caught fire.

Kegan was vaguely aware of all this happening but was busy fending off the goblins now attacking him. His shield had become much more useful, but his war hammer was the wrong weapon for fighting unarmored opponents. Kegan was still winning handily despite being heavily outnumbered by a dozen goblins, and starting the fight with the wrong weapon. These were goblins after all, and Kegan had brought death to thousands of goblins.

There were a few tribal goblins that held back from combat. Once they saw Kegan slaughtering their fellow goblins, they took revenge on a weaker target, the village. They grabbed burning pieces of the hut and spread the fire to the other huts. As Kegan was finishing off the dying and wounded goblins the whole village was going up in flames around him.

This was not going according to plan. He took out some of his frustration on the remaining bone knight, carefully pummeling him until the bone armor was thin. But when he allowed the the bone knight to heal, he wouldn’t retreat. Instead he just kept mindlessly attacking Kegan. Kegan eventually gave up and ended the poor creature’s life.

There was sporadic fighting around the village. The villagers seem to have finally realized that most of the occupying force was dead, and they didn’t appreciate having their homes burned to the ground by the few survivors.

Kegan was making his way out of the village thinking of how to salvage the situation, when he heard his name.

“Kee-Gan!”

He turned to see the source was an old goblin walking with a cane and holding a piece of parchment. The old goblin was surrounded by two younger goblin warriors that were looking very nervously at him.

“Yes?”

“Kee-gan, this message is for Kee-gan. This one does not speak human. He repeats the words of Chief Tamogich.”

The goblin was messing up a bunch of the words and seemed to be having trouble reading the parchment.

“The bone sorceress searches for you. You were right, it was no male orc. She wages war more aggressively than in the past. She fears you and hates you. For the sake of my people, hand yourself over and end this war that you have brought upon us. If you do I will record your name as the last great human and ensure that you are remembered by orc-kind. Wave your hand to have the scholar repeat this message.”

Kegan smiled, his plan would work.

He stayed the rest of the night helping the villagers move some valuable items out of their burning homes, some furs and metal tools. They all sat outside the village and watched on sadly as it burned. Kegan knew that it must be hard for them to watch their homes destroyed, but their plight didn’t move him. Instead his heart was filled with excitement. That sorceress was finally going to pay for all the wrongs she had committed against others, but more importantly to Kegan, she was going to pay for the wrongs she had committed against him.

Kegan left a message for anyone that found the village using burn out logs and sticks. Kegan imitated the symbols that represented his name on the parchment that the goblin scholar had. Then he created a large arrow pointing towards his valley.

He went back to the valley and created three more symbols pointing to his home. Two of the symbols he created on either side of the mountain range, and another he made near the start of the river that fed into the plains.

Just three weeks later a group of five bone knights and twenty goblins showed up in the valley. Kegan used a bow and iron tipped arrows to kill the goblins from a distance. His accuracy at a distance was better with a bow, and the arrows didn’t have to be fatal. They just had to wound the goblins bad enough that bone knights would decide to kill the goblin and absorb the bones. After only an hour there were just two goblins left, both wearing bits of armor, and the five bone knights.

Kegan switched to harpoons. He had to get close enough to reveal himself when throwing the harpoons. His throw hit a bone knight and created a large dent in the bone armor, but didn’t pierce through. He was surprised when all of the bone knights and the two remaining goblins immediately fled once they saw him. He hadn’t seen fear on the goblins faces, and the bone knights had never fled in the past. The bone knights were shedding excess bone armor to move faster.

He let all but one of them leave the valley. They were probably only a scouting group sent to make sure he was here.

He slowed one of the bone knights with rope and fought a tug of war match until it was alone. Then Kegan went up and broke its legs.

The bone knight was still trying to crawl away. Kegan realized they must receive orders and have to obey them. Over the next day Kegan tested out various weapons and other traps on the bone knight.

Dismemberment was the most immediately effective way of causing the bone knight to use up bone mass in order to heal. Crushing flesh and bone seemed to be the next best option. Cutting was the least effective. Poking holes in the flesh was as ineffective as cutting, unless the weapon that caused the hole was left in the wound. The bone healing would try and push the object out of the wound. The harpoons worked so well because it took a lot of force to pull the harpoon back out, and the bone healing only lightly pushed things out.

Fire stopped the bone healing altogether since it would burn up the liquified bone. Burn wounds were a little less effective than crushed flesh and bone at using up bone mass. Drowning didn’t use up much bone mass, but it seemed to be a horrible experience for the bone knight.

Kegan had various kind of bones stored up. The bone knight was able to absorb most materials. Cartilage wasn’t absorbed, and if the bone was heavily damaged with by age, or fire then it also wasn’t absorbed. The process of absorption was slow. But it also didn’t require any conscious effort by the bone knight. As long as the bone was touching either the bone armor or the flesh of the bone knight it could be absorbed.

Once Kegan had learned everything he could think of he helped the bone knight get up the ledge to leave the valley. But rather than letting the bone knight leave, he chopped off its feet once again. It bled and crawled its way up the path. Each time the feet would regenerate enough he would chop them off again. Leaving a grizzly trail of blood and half formed feet on the path up the mountain. Eventually the bone knight ran out of bone material to regenerate. Kegan chopped off the head and put it on a stake. Kegan knew it wouldn’t dissuade his enemies from entering the valley, so it was not a warning. It was a promise.