Wednesday, August 31, 2005

   Chapter 3: The Dragon (part 1)
Outside, while he was walking along the busy streets, Pen stripped off his belt and slid the new scabbard and sword on top of the one he already had by a metal ring. When he put the belt back on, with both swords on his left side, he felt rather strange. It was nice knowing that he finally had a real, great sword to work with. But there was another weight on him: Danesan.
Why did he do that? Pen asked himself, resting his left hand on the comfortable wooden pommel, so that the other end of the too-long weapon wouldn’t drag on the ground. Why did he just give me the best sword in the house? I never did anything for him! How did I deserve it? What does he want from me?
“Excuse me—“ started a lovely elf selling red jam from a basket.
“Leave me alone,” he retorted, walking right past her. She looked rejected, but did not try again.
According to his watch—a mixture of magic and wheels that he still could not comprehend—he still had a little more than two hours to spend in the city. But with his new sword at his side, he wanted to do nothing more but go back to the Archives and try it out in the training yard. After pacing through another alley, deep in thought, he decided that he would go look for one of the wisepeople and ask for permission to head home. He didn’t know if he would be allowed to, but it was worth the try.
From what he had heard from the kids on the way to the city, they were going swimming in the Anster. The water from the lake was always warm, thanks to the power of the two suns on the shallow pool, which made it a very popular resort. Many people also took advantage of the high crystal cliffs, using them as natural slides or—farther away from the city, where the water was deeper—for cliff diving.
The beach was on the south side of Quont-Ein, just below the port and extending past the city’s crystal bounds, where the cliffs turned to face the water. It was a long walk away from where the weapon stores were.
Sighing, Pen decided that it would be quickest to cut directly through the middle of the city, even if it meant facing the bustle of the castle. It was a far enough walk without taking any side alleys to try to avoid people.
The closer he got to the high, golden walls, the closer the crowds got, until Pen found it very difficult to move at all. Discarding his initial plan, he struggled out of the river of people and cut through a bookstore to the nearly empty alley on the other side.
But the reason it was so empty was because it was a dead-end against the castle wall. Gritting his teeth in frustration, Pen turned to go in the opposite direction. But just as he turned his back, he heard a little voice behind him.
“Help!” it squeaked; the sound made quiet by something in the way. Pen turned back to wall, where he noticed a stack of book-crates in the corner. “Sir, help me out!”
Pen considered ignoring it, like he usually did for everything else, but it wasn’t normal for something in a crate to talk. After a moment of hesitation, he spoke up. “Where are you?”
“The second from the top on the right!” the voice told him urgently. Checking that there was nobody else in the alley, Pen went to the stack and knocked on the rightmost boxes. From the sound of it, the top one was still full of books, but the one beneath sounded hollow. Making sure a second time that he wasn’t being watched, he quietly lifted the heavy box off the stack. When he lifted the hollow one, the little voice exclaimed a quiet “Yes!”
The box was nailed shut, but the nails on the bottom side were rusted. Pen turned it on its side, to some squeaks by the inhabitant, and drew both of his swords. “Watch out,” he told whoever was inside, and started to slowly push his old sword inside the gap between the side and the bottom planks of the box. The nails squealed as if in pain as the gap grew wider.
“Almost there,” Pen grumbled to himself. He drove the new sword in beside his old one, then pushed both of them in opposite directions. The wood screamed again as the bottom peeled and broke away.
Out flew a pseudodragon. She was still young, big enough to fit in Pen’s hand, and she was still only a rust color, instead of the brown-red pattern of an adult. Stretching her little wings out, she landed on Pen’s shoulder.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing!” yelled the voice of the bookstore’s owner, a blue-haired elf. He looked enraged.
Pen did not waste a second; he ran for it, sheathing his swords as he went. He slid into the nearest branching alley, elbowing aside a group of teen-aged angels. Trying to dodge as many people as possible, he ran through the maze of streets until he had lost track of where he was.
But he wasn’t paying attention to where he running, anyway. His mind was on the little dragon that was hanging on to his shoulder. Pseudodragons were some of the only dragons that lived in Anatol’s forests; he had seen them before. However, the only time you saw the mini-dragons in cities, in close association to angels and elves, was when they were with Havoc groups or others close to the king. Their telecommunication skills were used for communicating over distance. So why was a pseudodragon being kept in a box? They were creatures honored for their skill, and nearly everyone respected them because of it. They were not pets.
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   It's before school...
I didn't want to leave anyone waiting so I posted the end of chapter 2 now before I leave for school. I will probably be adding the beginning of chapter 3 when I get back home. Look forward to it!
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   Chapter 2: Future (part 5)
“So, what about you?” Danesan asked. Normally, Pen wouldn’t answer such a question, but the angel was an exception. He respected the wise smith, so it was one of the few things he could do to show his gratitude.
“I’m going to University this year,” he said, tossing the sword back and forth between his hands.
“You got invited early, huh?” Danesan commented, bent over his work and only looking up briefly to meet Pen’s gaze. “I had suspected you would. Talent like yours is in high demand. I take it you’re going to Havoc after?”
“Yes.”
The angel sighed, remembering his own past. “Yeah, I wanted to do Havoc when I was your age, too. But I was never selected, and so I went through University Accelerated instead, where I got hooked on making swords.” He shrugged. “I guess I was never a real fighter anyway. It was the swords I loved.”
“Is it really that hard to get chosen to be tested for Havoc?”
“Oh yeah,” Danesan’s tone became more serious. “It’s very hard, and it’s even harder to actually get picked to be in it. I hear that there’s only about two or three new warriors that can take students every year, which means there’s twelve kids that will get picked. And, rumor has it; only half of the people who get picked actually end up graduating. The rest fail or even die. Havoc is for the seriously elite.”
“I’ll make it!” Pen exclaimed, releasing all of his pent-up, angry energy into the sword, driving it into the wooden floor. More softly, he added, “I have to.”
Danesan paused from his work, put down his tools again, and came over to Pen so he was facing him. Pen had let go of the sword, and was staring with so much concentration at the blade that he hadn’t even noticed that the angel had moved. I have to make it, he thought over and over. I have to make it. It’s the only thing I’ve got. I have to make it!
“You’ll never make it to Havoc without a good sword,” Danesan said, breaking the silence. He pulled it out of floor, took the scabbard from the shelf where he had left it, and put the sword back in. Then, he held it out to Pen.
“What?”
“Here. It’s yours.”
Pen’s empty eyes met Danesan’s smiling ones. Suddenly, they were filled with something other than darkness.
“But… but I have nothing to trade. The Archives swords…”
“No. I want you to have it. It’s a gift from me to you.”
Pen took the sword. “Why are you doing this? This is a seriously good sword. You shouldn’t just give it away because I’ve known you for a couple of years.”
Danesan had returned to his workshop and had his back to Pen.
“The caravan to Goswen Port for the boats to University leaves in a week. I don’t reckon I’ll be seeing you again before then. This is good-bye for now.” The angel flicked his wings.
Pen hesitated, wanting to say something, but he couldn’t find the right words. After a moment of silence, he strode over to door and pulled back the curtain, intending to leave. But just before he stepped out of the smithy, he heard Danesan speak.
“Boy, you’ll be going places I could never have dreamed of.”

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Tuesday, August 30, 2005

   Chapter 2: Future (part 4)
The room into which he had entered was the store room. It was not a small space, but it felt small due to the many high racks of swords that lined the walls. There was a sword of nearly every shape and color imaginable, and each was sharp and kept spotlessly clean.
There were four angels in the shop. One, with black and blue wings, was browsing through the racks in the left corner. Two brunette angel boys who looked to be in their late teens were marveling over a dagger on the display table in the center of the room. Pen navigated silently around them and went to the counter.
“Is Danesan in the back?” he asked the aging lady angel at the counter. She looked at him over the newspaper with brown, bespectacled eyes.
“Oh Pen, it’s you!” said a familiar voice from behind a curtain-covered doorway. “Come right in!”
The woman disappeared behind the news again. Pen stepped past the counter and went through the door.
He found himself in a smithy. To his left was a huge, steaming oven made of crystal that sent a flickering light throughout the whole room. On the wall opposite were still more swords; the newer or more valuable ones, or old swords that needed to be fixed.
“I just traded a new sword from a merchant coming from Goswen Port,” Danesan told him. Pen found him standing, as usual, among tools of the trade near the oven. He was a very muscular, brown-haired angel who never wore a shirt, but who never needed one because he spent the majority of his time in the smithy. “He said that a weaver had given it to him just before he left Murneske. Apparently she didn’t have a clue what to do with the thing. It needed a bit of fixing up, but it’s a very good blade.”
Danesan put down his hammer and went to the sword rack. He perused for only a second before he found the one he was looking for, lifting the sheathed sword down from one of the higher shelves.
“It didn’t even have a scabbard when I got it,” he said, pulling the sword out and letting his eyes run over the silver blade lovingly. “Come have a look.”
Pen came to the angel’s side and took the sword from him. “It’s very light,” he noted, feeling its balance in his hand.
“Yes,” Danesan agreed. “The blade is a work of art. It seems to be mostly platinum and nickel-iron in the center, so it’s very durable, but it also has some gold and silver in the skin, so it’ll be good with the use of magic. And thanks to that gold, it’s more likely to bend than scatter. It was a bit of a pain to work with, though.”
“The handle is really comfortable, too,” Pen said. He held it closer to the light so he could see it better. “Is that dragon wood?”
“Yes. Only the dragons have that kind of tough pine. I have to say, though, the handle is a bit on the small side for most adult hands.”
“Hmm.” Danesan could tell that he was impressed, even though it didn’t show on his face. The angel smiled knowledgably down at him for a moment, before returning to his workshop. Pen started to swing the sword, getting a feel for the power that only a good weapon could emit.

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Monday, August 29, 2005

   Chapter 2: Future (part 3)
The city of Quont-Ein was the capital of Anatol.
It was a huge clearing in the forest, cut cleanly out of the woods by gigantic, sloping, pale blue crystal cliffs that descended down to the city. Standing on the top, Pen could see all across the expansive blue-crystal buildings, over the sparkling golden castle, and out to the Anster Sea.
“Isn’t it a lovely view?” he heard the wisewoman say. “No matter how often I go, I am always impressed.”
“Yes,” the old wiseman replied in a quiet, croaky voice. “We are very lucky that the war did not reach it. I don’t believe that there would have been any way to replace it had it been destroyed.”
“Will we be descending now?” Pen asked roughly. Some of Tory’s folks were so scared by his tone of voice that they were silenced. Pleased, he shot them a dark look with his even darker eyes.
Usually he wouldn’t be so impatient, but there was something about looking out over Quont-Ein that made him very uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the brightness of the mirror-like crystal reflecting up to them that made him hate light even more.
“We will meet up here in three hours,” the wisewoman told him. “Until then, go where you please. We will be with the group unless we decide to split up.”
Pen nodded, stepped off the cliff, and slid straight down the blue crystal. Most people preferred to sit for this, but Pen had practice and his soft leather shoes made for a smooth ride. All he had to do watch his balance and stay in control of his feet.
It was a fun way to get into the city, but Pen did not enjoy it. The crystal was blindingly bright from the suns, without any shade until the bottom. He felt his anger growing.
After what seemed like forever, the crystal started to slope straight, and finally up slightly. Pen slowed himself with a hand just before he reached the stretch of green that divided the cliffs and the city, jumping to a full stop on the grass.
Above him, he could hear the joyful screeches of the rest of the group as they, too, slid down. It stirred his anger even more, leaving him feeling like a bomb about to explode. He trotted away into the nearest alley, where the rolling, continuous sound of many voices covered up everything else.
The city was the busiest this time of day. Even in these small alleys, farthest away from the castle, the streets were bustling with people. Elves and angels from all over Nydia came here to trade, to meet people, or to learn new skills or information. Pen liked it best in the smitheries and weapon stores, where many warriors and angels came. He stood out less among other short- and dark-haired people.
The alley he had stumbled into was dedicated mostly to healing. Staring through the clear shop windows—carved from the same crystal as the rest of the city—were mostly middle-aged elves. Some of them noticed him as he passed, even pointing him out to their friends. Pen hurried on to the North Side, where his favorite sword shop was located.
A little bell tinkled as he entered into the musky darkness of the store.

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Sunday, August 28, 2005

   Thank you again!
Here's the characters I have so far, in the order I recieved them: Lucifer (Frgt10one), Tari (dream wings), Yatii (Duck P. Chimera), Jalena (Kirei Akumu), Edward (EdwardElricThe2nd), Gerrit (Kirbysdouble), and Deon (babydensity). If I missed you or if you still want to participate, please pm me and I'll make sure to fit you in! Thank you all!!
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   Chapter 2: Future (part 2)
It took a moment for Pen to find himself again, and to lock his mind away. He got to his feet and drew his beloved sword, watching the light play around on its smooth silver surface. Then he threw the envelope up in the air and broke the seal on his blade. Not bothering to sheath it, he bend down and picked up the paper with his free hand. He sat back down, balancing the sword across his knees.
Dear Penumbra of the Archives,
You have been invited to University, Center of Learning for Arts and Knowledge. Our school supports up to nine years of continuous education. By attending our school, you will be able to continue to the following places depending on your abilities and interests:
· Havoc, School of Combative Arts. Students must be invited to the auditions to attend, and the King assesses who will enter. Students travel alongside an authorized warrior for four years, and will be involved in mandatory quests to test their skill. Grades consist of Passing or Failing. Passing students will gain the attention of the public and are entrusted to dangerous missions on the order of the King. Failing students can be excluded from the program at any time and cannot re-enter.
The rest of the paper had been blanked out by magic, save for a curly elvish signature at the very bottom. It seemed that someone had already guessed that Havoc was the only thing Pen wanted to do when he grew up, and that he would get in. He was pleased.
The normal age for attending University was ten—Tory’s age. Pen had sought a way to get in one year early; a feat accomplished only one time before, by an angel named Predicus. The first time the dark-haired boy had heard of him was a year ago when he had eavesdropped on a pair of elvish travelers from Perol. They had gone to the Archives’ library to read up on dragons. Sitting in the shadows between the shelves as he liked to do, he heard them converse quietly if anyone would ever be able to save a certain city from the siege of a brass dragon. The man sent to settle the problem had been Predicus, fresh out of Havoc at the age of eighteen. Only two days later, the newspaper displayed a large painting of a fierce-looking angel, with the headlines “Havoc Graduate saves City from Siege.”
In the article was everything about Predicus. He was an orphan who was found by Havoc, wandering the mountains just off the coast of the northern city of Senlae. He spent a year growing up in the angelic version of the Archives, called Crypt. The only thing he said about his past before he was discovered was that his parents had died protecting the town from a raid. Despite his unknown history, he was a popular and highly skilled kid in ways nobody had seen before. At age 8, Predicus proved himself by protecting a girl from being murdered by an angry gaerfalcon. His popularity only grew after that, and the story got around until University decided to let him enter a year early. He did well and joined Havoc afterwards.
From the moment he first read that article, Predicus became Pen’s idol. The dark-haired boy had cut it out, stopped the magic that made it change day by day, and kept it in his special hiding spot in the library.
He had spent a lot of time looking at the painting of his hero, wishing deeply that he could follow in his footsteps. In the picture, Predicus had determined-looking, shining gray eyes framed by yellow-green bangs. The muscles in his arms looked like the kind that was much stronger than they appeared at first glance.
Pen got to his feet again, with sword in hand, and made his way over to a small wooden bookshelf just behind the chair. He stuck the letter into the crack between the wall and the shelf, beside the old article, with the rest of his precious papers.
Now what? Should he follow the wisewoman’s request to go to the city with Tory? He held the sword up and watched the light play on it. Something in him pleaded that he wouldn’t ruin her birthday because of his future. It was already planned out now anyway.
He didn’t want to go with Tory and her friends, but he did want to leave the Archives. In the end, Pen sheathed his sword and strode out of the high-domed library with the intention of going to the city.
The wisewoman was just outside the doors, along with an aged, white-haired wiseman. Tory and her stupid, giggly friends were gathered around them. When they saw Pen, the girls squeaked and scampered away; the boys froze. The wisewoman gave him a questioning but harsh look.
“I’ll go to the city,” Pen told her, “as long as I can go my own way when we get there.” The elf-woman exchanged a glance with her white-haired colleague.
“Alright,” she said, “but you must join up with us before we leave.” Pen nodded. She yelled to the girls to go ahead along the forest path, which they did with a great deal of noise and stumbling, pursued by the boys. Pen followed them, and behind him were the two wisepeople. He couldn’t help but sigh at the children’s silliness.
The forest was an untamed and magical place. It stretched across all of Anatol, and much of it was unexplored. Before the war, it was said that much more of the land had been inhabited, but many of the villages were never recovered from the wilderness. There were plenty of elvish allies in the woods, like the unicorns, pegasus, and several smaller kinds of dragons. It was a place were pests could easily become uncontrolled—dribs among them.
And then there was the least pleasant side of the story. Raiding parties were widespread, as were groups of criminals, mercenaries, and the similar. There was much talk about Gypsy-elves; the survivors of lost villages turned wild. Wizard-elves gone crazy was also a large threat. To top it off, there were the dangerous monsters—chimera, sphinxes, and griffins, among others. The beautiful Buto were also said to exist in the deepest parts of the forest, although they were rarely seen by elves or angels alike.
Pen walked along, staying in the shadow of the path in the attempt to stay out of the sight of Tory and her group of friends. Even if he could not see them, he could hear them clearly. Noisy idiots, Pen thought. It ought to kill them some day.

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Friday, August 26, 2005

   Thank you!!!
Many thanks to those who are participating in The Idea. I already have three new angels, including Tari by dream wings and Yatii by Duck P. Chimera. Your ideas are all great! My biggest thanks goes to Frgt10one, who made Lucifer, the first character to be created who has already found a special place in my heart and imagination. Thank you, Frgt10one!! ^_^
Oh, before I forget, below is the beginning of the next chapter... if you participate in The Idea, I will make sure to pm you when your character shows up!!
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   Chapter 2: Future (part 1)
“It’s Tory’s birthday.”
“Happy birthday to her,” nine-year-old Pen remembered saying. The wisewoman pulled the book out of his hand and sat down in front of him.
“When’s your birthday, anyway? You’ve never celebrated it—why?”
“I don’t want to have people do things for me,” he answered. “It makes me feel—I don’t know... strange.”
“You’re weird.”
“Do I look normal?” he asked sadly.
The women sighed and fingered her golden hair that was draped loosely across her shoulders. “No, but I don’t think that’s why people stay away from you.”
“Why, then?”
She pulled up a chair and sat down. Pen waited without looking up. When he was younger, the wisepeople would act sweet to him and try to tickle some reaction out of him. It had embarrassed him before, in front of the other, normal boys. Now, he hated them deeply for it. Very, very deeply, for wanting to make him stupid like the other kids. He hoped that this wasn’t another of those lectures—he wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep his temper in check.
“First, you have to tell me why you don’t hang out and play like the other kids,” the elf-woman said gently. He hated that tone.
“Because they’re stupid,” he spat. “Dumb, ignorant, foolish, and stupid. I don’t want to be like them.”
“But you do,” she said. That hadn’t been what he had expected. When she didn’t say anything else, he looked up and met her eyes.
“No.”
“Yes. You see, the reason that you hate them is because they have friends and friendships that you don’t have. You want to be like them, but you didn’t know how. I don’t know why, but you never knew how to make friends.”
Pen thought for a minute, letting the words wash up against the coast of his stubborn mind. He knew that couldn’t be true... but her words still echoed in his ears. He refused to let her be right.
“The reason I’m telling you about Tory’s birthday,” the wisewoman continued, “is because she used to like you. She used to respect and admire you, but you never returned the favor...”
“She never liked me,” he said, making sure to keep his voice strong. “Now, she’s only afraid of me.”
“Tory still likes you,” she replied, nearly interrupting him. There was anger in her voice that Pen had never detected before in the wisepeople. It seemed to tug on him, deep inside. “She likes you but you won’t let her in. You are a stubborn soul.”
“I don’t care. I care about me and my future—it is Tory’s own fault if she wishes to mess up hers.”
“Being a child doesn’t mess up your future!” the wisewoman had worked herself up to a fury. She jumped to her feet. “The other reason I’ve come to see you is because of this,” she threw an envelope at him. “I hope it makes you happy.” She took a deep breath to try and calm herself. “I worry about you.”
“Don’t waste your energy on me. I’m nobody to you—I can feel it.”
The wisewoman looked down on him with anger and pity-filled eyes. “I let Tory and her friends visit the city for her birthday. You can go if you want.”
“I don’t.”
“Please. Tory wants you to be there. Don’t ruin her birthday, Penumbra.” With the whisper of her white gown across the polished wood floors of the library, the elf left the dark-natured boy alone.

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Thursday, August 25, 2005

   Chapter 1: First Memories
(I left out a foreshadowing here in the beginning and also at the end of the chapter. If you are interested in reading them, please pm me and I'll send it to you.)
“It’s time to practice archery,” a small, gentle voice twittered in Pen’s ear. The small boy closed the picture book with a slam and got to his feet. In the process, he came face-to-face with an elf-girl a year older than himself. She had golden hair that went to her waist, tied back with a red ribbon, and big, dark pink eyes. She was dressed in short, baggy pants and a t-shirt, over which a light armor vest covering her chest was pulled tight. Her feet were bare. In her hands she held two bows, the longer that she handed him once he had put the book back into the shelf he had been sitting against.
“Thanks,” he said. The girl smiled and ran out of the huge library of the Archives. Pen took a moment to adjust his own practicing armor before he followed.
The library was the oldest building of the Archives’ campus, and the most well known. What many of the elves living in Nydia did not know about the Archives was the system built behind it. Not only was it a historical archive as the name said, but it had become, over many generations, a hospital, a gathering place, a school, and an orphanage. Pen had lived all of his short life—seven years—in the care of the elvish wisemen and wisewomen of the Archives. The elf girl, who everyone called her Tory, was also one of the few kids who didn’t have a real home and had to live in the orphanage.
Archery and swordsmanship was taught in large field in front of the library. The rest of the class, consisting both of orphans and kids of the nearby village, was already gathered between the large-leafed trees. Pen took a place beside Tory.
In the group of young, pale-featured, longhaired elf-children, he stood out like red on gray.
Pen was not like the other kids. Basically all elves had light colored eyes and hair; both got lighter with age. Hair was always grown long since it was painful for them to cut it off. But Pen had black hair that got slightly lighter gray in the dark, and it was cut short by his own hand. His ears were barely pointed and he liked swords over bows, the opposite of most elves’ opinions.
As if his hair wasn’t already enough to set him apart from the others, his most strange feature was his eyes. They looked like black pits, and even the white was missing in them. Nearly invisible eyebrows did not help the fact that it didn’t look like he had eyes at all. They didn’t sparkle when light hit them—the darkness absorbed it.
The elves believed that his strange eyes were the cause of magic of some sort. Pen no longer let it bother him. He accepted that he was different.
“We’re going to practice shooting in the forest,” explained the archery wiseman who taught them. Instead of the practice armor of the children, he wore a plain cream-colored surcoat that covered chain mail. His bow was sleek and nearly as tall as himself.
It made Pen take a moment to look at his own little bow. All the elf-children were taught how to make theirs. He had searched for weeks in the forest until he had found wood of a quality that met his standards. He did his best to carve it, and he succeeded in smoothing out all the knots. In his opinion, his bow was the best over all of the class.
“Will you be my partner?” Tory asked him suddenly. Pen noticed that the wiseman had stopped talking and pinched his leg as punishment for not paying attention.
“Huh?”
“We’ve got to shoot as many dribs as we can with five arrows each. We can’t use an arrow again after it’s been shot. We need partners to go in the forest, so will you be my partner?”
“I’ll be your partner,” squawked a cocky nine-year-old from the village. He took Tory by the arm and dragged her away. Pen looked on until they disappeared in the nearby greenery that was the forest. There was no one left to partner up to.
“I guess you’re all alone, kiddo,” said the wiseman. He handed Pen five arrows and went off to the forest after his students.
The dark-haired boy ran between the trees as quickly as a rabbit. It felt good to be out of the sunlight and in the shadow where he belonged. The woods were full of the voices of the students as they went around, looking for signs of dribs. They were to Nydia what mice were to Earth—pests that were very numerous. They looked very much like birds with fur instead of feathers; their wings were like a bat’s. He knew a good place to find dribs.
Pen fitted his first arrow when he saw the leaves twitch above. Once the long rat’s tail of a drib dangled under the perch, he aimed and shot. With a squeal, the ugly creature fell to the ground a few feet from where Pen was standing. He picked it up and continued on to the place where he had last seen a colony of dribs.
It seemed that he was not the only one who knew of the colony. Tory and the village boy were there, too, looking up into the sky hopefully. When the older boy spotted Pen between the trees, he started laughing.
“The early bird gets the worm!” he bragged, holding up two dead dribs with arrows sticking out of them. Tory didn’t have any kills yet.
“Don’t be that way,” she whined at him, looking at Pen hopefully. He felt nothing from her pitiful gaze. Instead, he notched another arrow and aimed for a drib high up over her head. His arrow was sent flying with so much force behind it that it went all the way through the worthless life. But before he could pick it up, the village boy did.
“Thanks for the help,” he said, smiling an evil smile.
“Give it back. I shot it,” Pen ordered calmly. There was impatience stirring in him.
“You want it back? You’ll have to take it from my cold dead hands!”
Pen, who was short-tempered, dropped his bow, arrows, and drib to the ground. Fights between boys were common in Nydia, but Pen had never been in one. Here was his chance.
The village boy was slow and clumsy, but strong. Pen was strong too, but his waist and upper body was skinny and he lacked height. But Pen had the advantage of a sword at his side—the Archives supplied it to all of their kids. The other boy had only a dagger to keep him company. And Pen knew his swords; practicing with them was one of his favorite pastimes.
Pen drew the sword and the village boy his dagger. There was a time where Pen thought he remembered Tory’s voice begging him not to fight, but the feel of the blade drove him into auto-mode. He ran up to the older boy and knocked the dagger out of his hand by spinning around with his sword vertically before him. In mid-turn, when his back was to the boy, he flipped his sword horizontally. The next moment, the older boy lay on the ground in his own blood. Pen’s sword, having driven through both weak armor and flesh, stuck out of his chest.
He felt only a spark of pride as he pulled the blade out of the older boy, the life meaning nothing to him. Tory was screaming her lungs out, her face ruined by tears and fear. He didn’t seem to hear her; his mind was still on the great feeling of the sword as he turned away.
But even before he could put the sword back in its sheath, the archery wiseman came running to Tory’s side. When he saw the dead boy and Pen with the bloody blade in his hands, he reached for a red stone that hung from a chain around his neck. He stared into its depth for a minute—calling home for more wisepeople, Pen knew.
“Did you do this?” he asked with a shaky voice.
“Yes,” Pen answered, without regrets. The man then knelt down beside Tory and forced her to look into his eyes. He was using elvish magic to watch what the girl had just seen. After a minute, he straightened up again.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.
“I taught myself.”
“I see. Well, you seem to have some skill, but you can’t just kill people because you don’t like them...”
“He took my kill and said that I would have to get it back from his cold dead hands.”
“Now, is that a good reason to kill someone?”
“What is a good reason then?”
“That’s not the point...”
The poor wiseman did not know what to say to the seven-year-old murderer.
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