Skuggi later asked how they would cook up the boar with all that skin. Torsten and Egil looked at each other with a hidden grin in their faces. Jurgen went to load a table he had made for the most of the meat as he had experience butchering . Skuggi was taken to a further place where he could do all the damage he wanted in case any knife would go flying. Materlyn showed him the piece he was going to skin. The boar's leg lay on a flat stone in front of Skuggi. Blood had pooled in the depressions of the rock's surface, dark and congealing at the edges. He held the knife Hilde had given him, a blade she'd sharpened that morning until it could split a hair with the slightest passing cut.

  The skin needed to come off intact. Materlyn had explained this three times already, her voice patient but firm. Intact skin could be treated, scraped and turned into leather for repairs in the best-case scenario. Damaged skin was a waste.

  Skuggi pressed the blade against the hide just above the hock. Applied what he thought was light pressure. The knife sank through skin, through the fat layer beneath, straight into muscle. A gash opened, ragged and too deep.

  He pulled the knife back. Tried again on a different section. This time he barely touched the surface of the leg with the blade, but his hand betrayed him. The knife skipped, caught an edge, and tore through the hide in a diagonal slash.

  Blood welled up from the cut. Not the steady flow from arteries, just the slow seep from capillaries he'd severed in the muscle beneath.

  "Damn it."

  He'd been at this for an hour. The boar's leg looked like something had attacked it… violently. Strips of hide hung loose where they should have stayed connected to the carcass. The fat layer showed through in patches, yellowed and glistening.

  Materlyn had stopped checking on him after the first thirty minutes. Just shook her head and went to help Hilde with the other sections.

  Skuggi adjusted his grip. Held the knife looser, trying to find the balance between control and restraint. The blade was sharp enough that it should do the work itself… That's what Egil had said. Let the edge cut; don't force it.

  He tried a third time. The knife went through the skin but caught on something underneath. He pulled to free it, and the hide ripped, a sound like tearing cloth.

  A hand landed on his shoulder.

  Skuggi looked up. Jurgen stood beside him, head tilted, examining the mangled leg. His expression wasn't judgmental, just observant. Assessing.

  Jurgen gestured palm down, pushing toward the ground slowly. Easy. Then he held out his hand for the knife.

  Skuggi gave it to him.

  Jurgen crouched beside the stone. He pointed at a section of hide Skuggi hadn't ruined yet, then at his own eyes. “Watch…” His hands moved through a series of signs Skuggi was starting to recognize: slow, careful, follow carefully…

  He positioned the knife against the hide at an angle so shallow it almost lay flat against the skin. Then he drew it toward himself in one smooth motion. The blade separated the hide from the membrane beneath without cutting through either. A perfect line appeared, clean and precise.

  Jurgen handed the knife back. Pointed at the next section. Your turn.

  Skuggi mimicked the angle. He placed the blade flat and drew it toward himself. The knife slipped and bounced off the hide without cutting anything.

  Jurgen's hand covered his. Not grabbing, just resting on top. He guided Skuggi's hand through the motion again, slower this time. Applied the barest amount of downward pressure at the beginning of the cut, released it as the blade moved.

  The hide separated. A clean line, maybe three inches long.

  Jurgen removed his hand. Gestured for Skuggi to continue guiding it with his finger now.

  Skuggi tried the next section alone. The angle was wrong, he felt it the moment the blade touched down. The knife started to dig too deep. He stopped to adjust it and decided to start over. This time the cut worked. Not as clean as Jurgen's, but intact.

  Jurgen nodded. Signed something Skuggi didn't know yet.

  He tried to work it out from context. The signs involved touching fingers together, then pulling them apart slowly. Separation? Division?

  Jurgen seemed to understand Skuggi's confusion. He pointed at the hide, at the membrane beneath it, at the muscle under that. Made the sign again… fingers together, pulled apart in distinct layers.

  Layers. The sign meant layers.

  Skuggi filed it away… He repeated the sign himself to confirm... Jurgen nodded.

  They worked together for the next hour. Jurgen would demonstrate a cut, hand the knife back, watch while Skuggi attempted it. When Skuggi made mistakes… and he made many. Jurgen would stop him, show him where the angle had gone wrong or where he'd applied too much force.

  There was patience in the way Jurgen taught. Showing no frustration when Skuggi tore through a section they'd have to work around. No impatience when Skuggi had to attempt the same cut four times before getting it right.

  After they'd removed most of the hide from the leg, Jurgen stood and stretched. His back cracked. He signed something that involved pointing at himself, then at young, then at mistakes repeated.

  Skuggi thought he understood. "You made these mistakes when you were learning?"

  Jurgen nodded. Signed again: teaching, hitting, pain. He pointed at his own scarred knuckles, then made a striking motion.

  "Someone hit you when you got it wrong."

  Another nod. Jurgen's face remained neutral, but something in his posture suggested old anger, old hurt. He'd been punished for learning. Beaten for the same struggles Skuggi was having now.

  "Who taught you?" Skuggi asked.

  Jurgen finger-spelled a name: F-A-T-H-E-R.

  Skuggi looked at the ruined sections of hide around them. At his hands, which had caused the damage not through carelessness but through strength he hadn't learned to control yet.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I have no idea what a F-A-T-H-E-R is… but thank you,” he said. “For teaching me a different way.”

  Jurgen's expression softened. He clapped Skuggi on the shoulder once, then gestured toward the other butchering stations where Torsten and Egil were working on the boar's hindquarters, showing to Kalf how the cuts were made.

  They joined them. Egil was explaining something to Torsten about organ placement, how the liver sat just behind the diaphragm, how the intestines coiled in a specific pattern, and how cutting carelessly through the stomach would spoil the meat with digestive acids.

  Skuggi listened. Watched Egil's hands move inside the body cavity, pointing out structures.

  "See this?" Egil held up a section of intestine. "This is full of waste. You cut through it, everything near it becomes inedible. So you remove it whole, tie off both ends first."

  He demonstrated using a thin cord to bind the intestine closed before severing it from the rest of the digestive tract.

  "And these…" He pointed at a network of vessels running along the spine. "Major blood vessels. The animals are already dead, so they're empty, but you need to know where they are. On a live animal, cutting one of these means they bleed out in minutes."

  Skuggi moved closer. Studied the anatomy laid bare in front of him.

  In the lab, they'd taught from what seemed from his perspective, to the clueless younger alchemists about different animals and human anatomy. Where to cut to disable rather than kill. Where to strike to cause maximum damage with minimum effort. Which nerves controlled which muscle groups. Which organs could sustain damage and which ones couldn't.

  This was similar but different. The shape of the rib cage, the placement of organs, the way muscle groups attached to bone… all variations on the same basic design.

  "Here." Egil pointed at the heart, already removed and set aside. "Four chambers. Blood flows in one direction through valves. If you're hunting something and your arrow hits here" He indicated a spot on the boar's chest, roughly where the heart would have sat. "It drops fast. Anywhere else, you might have to track it for miles."

  Torsten picked up one of the lungs. "Same with these. Arrow through the lungs, the animal drowns in its blood. It takes longer than the heart, but it's a bigger target."

  They spent the rest of the afternoon working through the boar's anatomy. Jurgen joined the teaching, using signs to indicate different cutting techniques. Skuggi learned the sign for "careful cut", blade held at an angle, fingers pinched together. The sign for "strong cut" is a vertical blade with a clenched fist. The sign for "following the muscle" is fingers tracing an invisible line through the air.

  By the time the sun started to drop, Skuggi's hands were covered in blood and fat up to his wrists. The stone in front of him held neat sections of butchered meat, organized by cut and quality. The hide lay stretched out nearby, damaged in places but mostly intact.

  Not perfect. But better.

  Materlyn inspected his work. She ran her fingers along the edges of the hide, checking for tears. Examined the meat portions, looking for bone fragments or ragged cuts.

  "Better," she said finally. "Still rough, but better. Keep practicing, and you might be useful at this."

  Skuggi nodded. His shoulders ached from holding tension he hadn't needed. His hands felt strange, he'd spent hours trying to make them do less than they were capable of. It was like trying to whisper when his body wanted to shout.

  But he'd learned. That was the point.

  Jurgen appeared beside him with a bucket of water he had gathered from a nearby river. Gestured for Skuggi to wash his hands. While Skuggi scrubbed blood from under his fingernails, Jurgen signed a question: tomorrow, continue?

  "Yes."

  Jurgen smiled. It changed his whole face, made him look younger despite the weathering and scars. He signed something else, a longer sequence Skuggi didn't fully catch. But he understood the general meaning.

  Just remember: patience… practice… progress…

  They walked back toward camp together. The others had started the evening fire. Smoke rose in a thin column against the darkening sky. Voices carried through the trees. Aionel telling some story that had people laughing, Kalf asking questions faster than anyone could answer them.

  Freia sat apart from the group as usual. She looked up when Skuggi approached, her eyes tracking to his hands.

  "Learn anything useful?"

  "How to cut without destroying everything I touch."

  "That'll come in handy."

  She almost smiled. Skuggi sat beside her, close enough to talk quietly without being overheard.

  "Jurgen's a good teacher."

  "He's patient. That's rare." She pulled her knees up, rested her chin on them. "Most people who know things want you to know they know them. They teach by showing off, not by actually helping you learn."

  Skuggi thought about his father in Jurgen's past. About being beaten for mistakes while learning. About the difference between teaching through pain and teaching through patience.

  "I think he understands what it's like to struggle."

  "We all do, in this group." Freia looked at the fire, at the people gathered around it. "That's why we're here instead of in a city with walls and full bellies. We struggled, we failed, we lost everything… Now we're just trying not to lose anything else."

  She was quiet for a moment. Then: "How much did you ruin today?"

  "Most of a boar leg. Some hide. My pride."

  "Pride's overrated."

  "Says the noble one."

  "Says the person who used to be noble." She corrected him without heat. "Now I'm just someone who knows which fork to use at a dinner I'll never attend again."

  Skuggi watched her profile. The way she held herself, straight-backed even in exhaustion. The way she never quite relaxed, even here.

  "You could teach me that too. Which fork to use."

  "Why would you need to know?"

  "Because I don't know what I'm going to become. Maybe I'll need to sit at tables with people who care about forks."

  She looked at him then. Really looked, like she was trying to see past his words to whatever he meant underneath.

  "You're not planning to stay a refugee forever."

  "Are you?"

  "No." The word came out flat, certain. "But I don't know what else to be yet."

  "Then we'll figure it out together."

  She didn't respond to that. Just turned back toward the fire, toward the group that had become their temporary family through necessity rather than choice.

  After a while, she stood. "I'm going to help Materlyn with the meal. You should eat something. You've been working all day."

  She walked away before he could respond.

  Skuggi stayed where he was for a few more minutes. Let the night settle around him. Let his body process the day's learning… the weight of the knife, the resistance of hide and muscle, and the precise angles needed to separate one thing from another without destroying both.

  His hands still felt strange. Too strong, too capable of damage. But maybe that was something he could learn to control too.

  One careful cut at a time.

  “???????? ??? ???????... ?????? ???? ?? ???????? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ?????????...”

  “Monsters are mirrors... showing only the darkness we refuse to see in ourselves...”

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