| Subject: Chapter four |
Author:
Mike
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Date Posted: 02/21/05 3:00:34pm Mon
In reply to:
Mike
's message, "Chapter Three" on 02/21/05 2:58:22pm Mon
Two years passed, with Rethan doing his times of service as a guard during the summer, yet with no duties being offered to him in the meantime, all he could do was train under the instructor provided to him by House Andael’s generosity.
It was not until Lord Araym called for him that the strange lack of duties for him were called fully to his attention, though he had wondered about it almost from the beginning.
“I understand that you have performed no services for Andael,” Araym said, almost straight away after pouring a small goblet of red wine for Rethan, who, in spite of his dislike of the drink, took a polite sip.
“I would have, but every time I’ve gone to Emeril, he said that he had no services for me to perform,” Rethan explained, pretending to wipe his mouth with a cloth, though in reality, he spat the wine he had sipped into the cloth, and cleverly folded it so as to leave the red stain invisible to Araym.
There was a long pause as Araym seemed to roll this over again and again in his mind, then nodded, “Strange… it would seem then, that you have made an enemy of one of the lesser houses… you haven’t outright humiliated anyone in the sparring yards, have you?” he asked, strumming his fingers on the table.
This gave Rethan some cause for thought. At first, Rethan had been relatively clumsy with the back and then forward curving, slightly heavy sword he used, but he had seen vast enough improvements under the guidance of Emid, one of Andael’s weapon masters.
“I can’t say that I have, sir,” He said politely, at no point had he sparred with any nobles, at first, they had all disdained a common opponent who was so awkward with a sword, and lately, none had wanted to risk a common opponent defeating them in a match.
“The matter will have to rest for now, then,” Araym said, and opened up a fair bit of parchment to reveal a map, pointing to a spot, “I’ll need you to go to the ruins of Alvarais temple… we send men occasionally, to try and retrieve the lotuses that grow near the altar inside, but unfortunately, the temple was never a pleasant place to begin with, and the men that go often do not return… but I have confidence in your abilities” Araym explained, then handed Rethan the map.
“If you’ll pardon me then, sir, I’ll go now,” Rethan said, and stood up from the table, and seeing Araym’s nod, turned and walked from the room.
Rethan was overjoyed to be back on the road again, but he had to wonder as his feet found their way into a steady autopilot, why it was that Araym had such confidence in his unproven ability.
Several days of travel yielded no answer, and Rethan now had no time to consider the question, for before him stood the gate to the temple’s ruined courtyard, the archway’s crumbling stones and the broken fence making the wall look for all the world like the protruding lower jaw of some great beast.
Tense moments passed as the only noise that he could hear were his own footsteps on the time damaged flagstones of the courtyard, the place had an almost palpable sense of malice about it. Voices ran through Rethan’s mind, terrible, screaming voices, distracting from his observations of his surroundings.
Had he not been so tormented, so distracted, he might have seen the first signs of danger, the gentle shifting of flagstones about him, as it were, it caught him off guard when suddenly, sand erupted from between flagstones to thicken and blacken into what seemed tar before taking humanoid forms, each with a rippling set of muscles and deadly talons, each with jutting lower jaws and many rows of razor sharp teeth.
It was all Rethan could do to stay out of their path as his five assailants made their move, and even so, when all had passed in their lightning assaults, Rethan felt a dampness on his chest, looking down to discover that claws had pierced his rawhide armor as though it had been mere cloth.
The next one that assaulted him met Rethan’s sword, the weapon coming around at it’s neck in a vicious counter, sending the head flying from the body and dropping the body in its tracks, while the next one was literally split in half, the other three began to circle.
Rethan grinned, the odds were getting better… or so he thought at first. So he thought until the decapitated body stood, and the two halves of the one he had so cleanly sliced in half started crawling towards each other.
Very few people would have failed to grasp the gravity of the situation, and Rethan was no dullard. He couldn’t kill these creatures… what was worse, the two that seemed to have regenerated had joined their fellows in circling, yet none made any offensive moves. They didn’t have to, Rethan couldn’t keep his guard up forever, and there was no, nowhere to run.
Rethan didn’t flee, he had a job to do, and, having such a job had come to take on a certain importance in his mind over the last two years. Instead, he made the offensive move, and charged towards the entrance to the inner temple, his blade flashing, a diagonal streak of light appeared in the torso just before the upper section of torso literally fell from the body, the creature dropping long enough to clear Rethan’s path, even as more began to rise from the stones.
Claws whistled over his head as he ducked, his blade met flesh, and another was momentarily stunned, a set of teeth struck his shoulder, tearing his pauldrons and several strips of flesh from his body. Again, his blade met monster, and monster gave way.
And then, he was through the door, jumping over another, and grabbing for the now visible (but only just!) lotus near the altar, then turned in time to remove offending claws at the wrists, and rushed back out. By the time he leapt from the courtyard’s entry, his armor and flesh were tattered, shredded and torn… yet he had his prize, and the monstrous creatures were not following him.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t escaped yet. The ground beneath him… huffed. There was an intake of air as two slits seemed to open into the ground, as though it were a nose scenting something desirable.
“You’ve got to be joking…” Rethan said as he barely shifted his feet to avoid falling into a hole that opened at his feet, while the edges of the hole erupted upwards… it was a mouth, and he was standing on a set of jaws.
As swiftly as his sword had been out earlier, now, it was away as his bow came free of its place in the quiver on his back, suddenly rested on the very unstable jaw’s edge (he was practically dancing to the movement of the great wormlike creature to avoid falling into its maw), and his arm bent the bow down while with his left hand, he tossed on the bowstring, all in one almost instant movement.
Arrows flew from his quiver into a bow aimed downward, and promptly bounced off skin with the color and consistency of granite, one after another, until one bounced directly into the maw, finding tender flesh unguarded by a seemingly impenetrable skin.
The worm bucked, for lack of a better word, and Rethan discovered that humans can actually fly. Unfortunately, while humans can indeed fly, it is always a limited sort of flight, and the landings tend to be rough, and this was no exception, for though Rethan knew enough to bend his knees and land on his feet to absorb the impact, he still felt the searing agony of a hard impact on his joints.
The running that followed after was painful, and Rethan was swiftly growing weary, while the great worm that chased him steadily gained ground. There was only one thing to do. Rethan turned, and leveled his bow, firing one arrow after another into the beast’s gaping mouth… and then swore as it dove directly into the ground.
Everything was quiet for a moment, but Rethan breathed no sigh of relief. Then the jaws came up around him, and Rethan abandoned his bow, useless in these close quarters, letting it fall into the throat, even as his sword came out and plunged into the flesh before him, the forward curve of it and his relentless thrust preventing him from falling into the depths of the beast’s throat.
His foot came back against the other jaw, while the worm shook its head back and forth, trying to dislodge him, and, with this new leverage, he pushed the blade deeper, wincing with every movement as the creature’s saliva made his purchase less and less certain.
Finally, the worm’s shaking ceased as the hilt of his blade came flat with the flesh, nearly two and a half feet of the weapon buried in it, and, unbeknownst to Rethan, the tip protruding on the outside of the worm‘s body, the blade lodged in what passed for a brain.
Feeling the great beast stop moving encouraged Rethan, but feeling it start moving again, was rather discouraging to him, especially when the head slammed into the ground, clenching the jaws together, so that he was caught between tongue and top of the mouth.
For a long moment, nothing moved… and then Rethan managed to drag himself and his sword from the great beast’s maw, and stand, looking for all the world as though he had just been through hell.
An expression of complete rage crossed Rethan’s face as he yelled something nearly unintelligible, and began to hack at the seemingly impervious skin for a few moments, then eyed the hole he had punched through the tough hide from the inside.
“Bastard, give me my bow back,” He said, and plunged the tip of his sword into the hole, then began to push, slowly lengthening the opening until it began to fall open entirely, and he could walk in the cut he made.
Before he found his bow however, he practically tripped over something hard in the internals of the great beast, and stopped to pick it up. It looked like a deep red crystal, though not quite the same red as a ruby, and was large… the size of both his fists combined, although very light. Nodding, he placed that under his left arm, and put his right shoulder to the hilt of his sword, pushing on before his foot dragged across a bowstring.
There lay his bow, or what was left of it, as the creature’s throat had crushed it almost to the point where there could be no recognizing it, and the only reason Rethan knew it to be his was it was the same wood, and he doubted anyone else had dropped a bow into the beast’s gullet.
“Well then, guess that is done then,” He said, and wiped his sword on what remained of his armor before sheathing it, and stepping out of gore. “Ugh, that’s nasty,” He said with a wince, and, checking the lotus in his belt pouch, then firmly grasping that crystal he had found, set to tending his wounds, then began the long trek back to Nemos.
He never saw the man standing up on the ridge, nor the man’s satisfied nod, while he whispered to himself, “Better than anticipated, much better, Rethan.”
A few days later, Araym blinked as a very tired, and very bandaged Rethan found his way into his private quarters, and dropped a packet of lotus on the table in front of him.
“Rethan, you look like you’ve been through hell, what happened?” Araym asked, an expression of deep concern on his face as he looked over the youth in front of him before checking the lotus that had been delivered.
“Don’t ask,” Rethan said with a shrug, then turned to go, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. He turned, to see Araym’s smiling face, and felt a bag of money pressed into his hand.
“Very well then… Knight,” He said with a grin, causing Rethan to blink. In so far as Rethan knew, knight was two ranks above what he had been before this venture, and he hadn’t realized he could skip a rank.
“Rest up, there is a formal dinner in three days, and I’m hoping you’ll be part of my retainer… and what is that you’ve got there?” Araym said, looking at the crystal Rethan still held under his arm, before his eyes widened, and a look of sudden comprehension crossed his face.
“I see, take that to Flensing, the enchanter, right away, you’ve found a real treasure there… and it must have been hard won indeed,” He said, and let Rethan go, before picking up the packet that Rethan had delivered him.
“You’ve done very well, Rethan,” He said, and, packet in hand, walked out the other door to his chambers.
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