V. Discovery
Wally
"Uhgnn…" Wally grumbled, rising out of bed.
"What the… where am I?" he asked, the shock noticeable in his voice.
Richard got up off of a chair in the corner of the small, dark, dingy room with only a small dirty window, grimy gray walls, and a wooden floor caked with dirt.
The room lacked furniture. There was only the small (uncomfortable) bed, and the chair that Richard must've slept in during the night.
"Well, last night you got drunk, hung out with prostitutes, and kept hugging me. The extreme physical contact was unnecessary, and I would've severely hurt you if you weren't the prince and my best friend. But didn't your parents ever tell you about not taking drinks from other people? By the way, I couldn't sleep last night until you suddenly crashed because you were really creeping me out by watching me and laughing at sudden intervals and rambling on about nonsensical things that you probably didn't even understand yourself. I recall you saying something about a bunny rabbit's whiskers and how they use them as ways of communication because they're really antennas that let them speak telepathically. You were being rather difficult last night," Richard explained, slightly irritated.
Wally got out of bed, but sat down again immediately, feeling a sudden throbbing in his head. He grabbed onto his hair in anguish and felt dizzy.
"Hangover?" Richard asked, amused.
"I was not drunk last night!" Wally exclaimed in defense.
"Then explain to me how it scientifically makes sense that rabbits use their whiskers to communicate telepathically again! I don't think I understood you the first time. Oh wait, I'll never understand you if you stand firmly on that side of the argument. Not that I believe anyone was arguing the use of a rabbit's whiskers," Richard mumbled.
He left the room to get water for Wally, who was kind of disappointed about the progress of their journey so far. All they'd managed was to find an inn… and other things that Wally didn't wish to think about. Maybe Richard was right. Maybe Wally really was irresponsible and the journey would've already been declared a complete failure last night. But it was a good thing he had his best friend with him. Otherwise there'd be no hope for their mission.
Wally looked out the window with its grease and grime and brown stains (who knew where these came from?) on it. The sun was just beginning to rise. Wally decided that his next step would be to decide what to do. Maybe if he ran into a random villager, he could talk to the random villager, and the random villager would have a quest for him because somehow the random villager would know that he was the chosen one! … He was totally the chosen one.
"I saddled the horses and got you some water. Ready to go?" Richard asked, walking back inside the room.
Wally turned to face his friend and grinned mischievously. Richard frowned, trying to decide whether Wally had somehow gotten himself into more trouble during the three minutes he was gone.
"I know what we're going to do! Let's find a random villager and see if they have any quests for us to go on!" Wally exclaimed excitedly.
Richard almost face palmed. But he decided that face palming was girly, therefore unmanly, and he only did manly things. For instance, he drank his coffee black. Because black coffee is manly.
Instead Richard crossed his arms, grimaced, and shook his head.
"Well come on, we don't have all day," Wally urged, leaving the room.
They left the inn (Richard stopped though, to check out, since Wally didn't know they were supposed to). Wally mounted his horse, and Richard did the same. The two steeds were beautiful horses really. Flash was a reddish-brown Throughbred, quick, agile, beautiful horse. Shadow was a dark black stallion that had a graceful gallop and was stunning when he cantered.
Although they were two very different horses, they seemed to get along. After all, they never said otherwise.
"Hey, let's go ask her!" Wally proposed when he saw a beautiful girl with large blue eyes and curly blonde hair.
"You just want to talk to her because you think she's pretty," Richard stated, rolling his eyes.
But they led their horses up to her, and to be gentlemanly, dismounted when approaching.
"Hello Miss, I-" Wally started.
"Tim! I didn't expect- oh. Wait. Nevermind, I- I um, confused you with someone else," the girl said, conversation directed towards Richard.
"Uh, I'm… not Tim. Obviously."
"It's just- you look like him."
"Thanks… I think."
"Anyway! I'm Wally, and he's Richard," Wally interrupted.
"I'm… Stephanie… why are you talking to me?" she asked.
"Well, we were wondering if you had any quests for us!"
"…Not that I know of. Am I supposed to have quests prepared to give to any strangers who ask me to send them on a mission?"
"Sorry for bothering you," Richard mumbled quickly before pulling his friend away and back to their horses.
They rode out of town, kind of embarrassed, but Wally mostly felt dejected. He didn't have a mission still. And that girl was probably very confused and thought that Wally and Richard were strange.
"New plan. Act like we know what we're doing and maybe something will come up," Richard suggested.
Actually, that wasn't such a bad plan. Wally was beginning to like it. Especially since that was what he did ninety percent of the time.
They looked at the dark woods ahead of them. There wasn't any going around them, it'd take too long. So Wally was prepared to go through them.
Artemis
Artemis had successfully braided her hair so that it was relatively not bothersome. She'd have liked it if there were any scissors in the tower, but unfortunately, her captors didn't provide scissors. They did, however, provide the stones that the tower was made out of. And Artemis kicked out a good chunk of the crumbling rock out of the wall. It was sad really, she felt like maybe the whole tower would fall down. But it seemed like that was the only weak point.
She took the wooden stool and unscrewed out the four legs. Then she set to work. She put a sharper piece of the rock to the wood and started to carve. This was going to take a while. If her captors came, she could hide everything inside the trunk. They probably weren't going through her stuff. And if they saw that the stool was missing they'd probably think she just tossed it out the window or something. In a fit of anger.
And so she would carve until the task was completed.
Wally
The forest was not a normal forest at all. The whole time Wally and Richard had been there, there hadn't been a sound. No animals scurrying across the forest floor, no birds singing songs or darting across treetops, no frightened deer looking up and getting startled by the noise of horses walking slowly through the thick wooded area.
Richard knew something was wrong. Wally did too, but they decided not to mention it. Instead they rode their horses in silence, wondering if bandits or something'd somehow kidnap them. It suddenly started raining, and lightning lit the sky in a bright light show while the thunder rolled and groaned in agony.
"Stop!" Richard suddenly hissed.
Wally stopped the horse and looked at his friend, puzzled. Richard put a finger to his lips and pointed the other hand through the trees. There was a fire. They'd really been riding for almost the whole day already. It was dark by the looks of what they could see of the sky. But there were… people gathered around the fire. They were dressed in strange clothing too. And they were chanting.
Wally's eyes widened when he saw something else. A person was being led up to the top of a rock, as if they were conducting some sick ceremony of execution or something. They forced him to look down at the ground. What were they doing? Then one of the main chanter guys got up and started chanting even louder and throwing strange powders into the fire and looked like he was about to do something to the poor, helpless man!
Wally, out of the goodness of his own heart, could not let anything happen to that man. Actually, he just wanted to have a good story to impress Linda with, and the opportunity had just seemed to arise out of nowhere. Well, out of the scary, suspicious forest where chanting people resided, but whatever. It was a quest!
He ran in between the helpless man and the main chanting man after leaping off his horse. And got struck by lightning. It was weird. He didn't feel any pain, he remembered seeing the chanting man throw something at him the second the lightning hit. Did it protect him? What had happened? Did he even think this through? If he died while saving the man, sure it'd impress Linda, but he'd be dead. That wasn't the point of this. Even if Richard somehow ran away and got back to the castle to tell everyone what happened, Wally would be dead, and then he couldn't be Linda's awesome quest-fulfilling husband, because no one marries corpses.
But Wally wasn't dead. He merely blacked out and woke up a couple hours later, staring into the eyes of one of the creepy chanting people.
"Good morning," the guy said in a monotone voice.
"Augh! I mean- good… morning…" Wally replied, startled, freaked out, and creeped out.
"You passed out last night after interrupting our ceremony. You… leapt into the middle of it and absorbed the powers of the Lightning King that we were transferring to Divaar. Divaar did not get the powers though, because we had used all the power juice on you on accident. And the creator of the power juice was an elder of our tribe who is not able to make any more after the last batch and has promised to take the secret of the power juice to the grave," the man explained.
"Well, thanks for your hospitality… and power juice. But I have a quest to go on for a princess. Um… tell Divaar that I'm sorry for… absorbing his power juice. I thought you guys were… well… never mind," Wally decided better than telling the stranger he thought the tribe was going to kill this "Divaar".
"I'm afraid you don't understand the power juice. It gives you the powers of the Lightning King."
"I think you already explained that."
"The reason why we live in this reclusive forest is because outsiders do not understand the true powers of the Lightning King! We can never put the powers in their hands for this reason! You don't understand what great power you are wielding!"
"Well that's because I'm not a tribesman and no one has explained who the Lightning King is and what his powers are!"
"…The Lightning King holds the powers of speed. The power juice combined with the lightning bolt…"
"Gives me the power of running really fast…" Wally completed with realization.
"Yes. I'm Hadiir, by the way," the man introduced himself.
"I'm… Wally."
"Your friend was looking for you. He spent the night at our camp," Hadiir said.
They were no longer talking in raised voices.
"You have just stolen the powers of the Lightning King. You may be the last one to have these powers."
"…What do you expect me to do?"
"I can't expect anything from an outsider. But the Lightning King did strike you… maybe he meant it to be that way. He has chosen you to pass his powers onto. Use them well," Hadiir decided with finality.
Artemis
It was complete. She'd just carved a set of four arrows with sharp wooden tips with just a rock. They weren't very aerodynamic due to their poor structure, but after throwing them around the tower as if they were javelins, she was pretty sure they were decent. Now if only she had a bow… Her plan was to try and undo the stitching on her gray and purple dress and see if she can make a strong rope with the string. Then she'd tie it to one end of an arrow and launch the arrow into the table so it'd stick in well and would be strong enough to support her weight. Then she'd drape the rope out the window, climb down, and have three extra arrows if there were any enemies she encountered along the way. Who knew what she'd do then? She just needed to get out first.
Of course, the dress seams didn't come apart and the arrow never seemed to stick into the table. All that was left were a bunch of marks showing that she'd stabbed something sharp in the wooden table multiple times.
Artemis wasn't sure what to do anymore. Everything seemed impossible. She collapsed in a corner and stuffed her face into her knees.
What you got if you ain't got love
the kind that you just want to give away
It's okay to open up
go ahead and let the light shine through
I know it's hard on a rainy day
you want to shut the world out and just be left alone
But don't run out on your faith
'Cause sometimes that mountain you've been climbing is just a grain of sand
What you've been up there searching for
forever is in your hands
When you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
seem so small
Wally
Wally and Richard left the tribe after saying sorry multiple times for interfering with tribal customs and things like that. Wally couldn't wait to try out his newfound powers (he did feel a little more energetic, but Richard said it was all in his head), but he didn't want to do it in front of Divaar, who turned out to be the tribe's new leader.
So Richard and Wally continued riding their horses through the woods, looking for a clearing where Wally could run around without the threat of running into trees. It'd be hard to control the new powers if he didn't know how fast exactly he could run.
It's so easy to get lost inside
a problem that seems so big at the time
it's like a river thats so wide
it swallows you whole
While you sit around thinking about what you can't change
and worrying about all the wrong things
time's flying by
moving so fast
you better make it count 'cause you can't get it back
"Do you hear that?" Wally asked.
"Singing…?" Richard replied.
Wally nodded. They started heading towards the voice. It was beautiful really. A girl's voice. It was enchanting and seemed almost sad.
But they weren't expected to see what they did see. Instead of seeing a town like they thought they'd arrived at, it was a tower. A massive, tall, random tower in the middle of the forest.
Characters: Wally, Richard, Stephanie (Batgirl III/Robin IV), Divaar (OC), Hadiir (OC)
Even though this was a really long chapter, it's not very believable.
Anyway the whole random villagers with quests was a reference to basically any RPG game. All you have to do it go up to them. And press 'A' or 'X' for them to give you a quest. Plus you get money from them and other items if you complete the quest usually. But too bad, Stephanie Brown can solve her own problems Wally. You should know that :P (she's Batgirl III/Robin IV for those of you who don't know that. And Tim is Robin III.)
The chanting tribespeople are all OC's. At least as far as I know. I mean, if you come across something that has Divaar and Hadiir in it, and they're both chanting tribespeople who believe in the powers of the Lightning King, then I seriously had no idea. Those names have little squiggly red lines under them anyway, but to me they sound like chanting tribespeople names.
The song that Artemis is singing is So Small by Carrie Underwood. I googled "songs about not giving up" and that was the first thing it came up with. So I used that. I am not about to go research songs from four thousand years ago about not giving up so pretend that somehow Carrie Underwood's song exists in this strange medieval universe where there are superheroes except they're princes and sons of ambassadors and dukes and trapped in towers and the medieval people talk like modern people. Yeah, this is totally an awesome universe :D
Back to the first thing I said- this chapter isn't exactly believable. I'm not really sure where I was going with the chanting tribespeople, but I guess it all worked out okay. And I promise the arrows that Artemis was making are not purely there just to fail and make her sad.
So on a final note- tell me what you thought of this chapter in a review :) and while you're at it, give me your opinion on whether I should bring the chanting tribespeople back, leave them out of this, or you don't really care. If I do bring them back though, it'll be brief, they are not going to become major characters in my story. Otherwise I could just go write myself a story about chanting tribespeople. I'm sure I could find a publisher for that :P
-Safirel