A/N Hey all. My midterm exams start this week (Monday the 17th) so I might not be able to work much on the story. I'll try.
Also...
FullMoonFlygon reveiwed my story?
Mine? I mean, I talk with Melifluousness all the time, but not FMF reviews my only FanFic?
Yay! Thanks man, and everyone else. I do read all reviews so don't fret.
Chapter 9: Multiple paths.
The ravine was deep, dark, scary and cold.
And dark.
The water had left him standing, shivering, next to a large vein of coal. He ran his hand around the rich...
Then remembered. He had a torch! He set it down, and it burned. Then he looked around in the darkness, ice was all around excepting the running water he luckily fell in. Creepers and zombies lay stiff, frozen. Skeletons in chunks of frosted bone. He should be dead, yet the cold only felt but a chill. He also didn't feel tired, as he should.
He looked around, the ravine extended in two directions, both foggy. He noticed a cave in one direction, his right, and went to check it out, after picking up his torch. It looped back into the ravine, where it was considerably hotter now. Lava was every where. He crouched next to the lava, even held his hand a centimeter away from it. The heat left him unaffected. He followed a path left and faced a pitch black cavern. He sighed, this might take a while to get out of.
A spider raced out of the darkness, he grabbed an arrow from his quiver and stabbed it in the head just as it was on him. He threw it into the lava behind him. He cautiously followed into the cave, and ended at a dead end and a diamond ore. He shook his head gravely.
"I wonder what the others are doing..."
Little did he know, his voice was in perfect unison with Neth saying the same statement, some kilometers away.
"I wonder what the others are doing." Neth wispered.
The mysterious person, a girl presumably, didn't seem to notice what he'd said. The girl saved him, and he had no supplies on him. His only logical choice was to follow her. She was a desert dweller, apparently. The girl was also slightly, if at all, older than him.
"Who are you?"
"That's my business, though I could ask you the same."
British accent. First words that popped into Neth's head when she talked.
"I'm Nethaniel."
"No, you're too trusting."
"What?"
She sighed. "You just gave me your name without a reason."
"Oh..." He shrugged.
The woman was wearing a large, sandy brown cowl, robe, with a menacing-looking hood as it was pointed and curved slightly in the front top. As she walked ahead of him, she seemed to shimmer in and out of sight, her cowl acting as a form of camouflage.
"Is that heavy robe even comfortable in this hot desert?" He said, trying to strike a convorsation.
"It's hardly heavy, light in fact. Plus I'm wearing nothing under it."
Neth went totally poker-faced at this and her statement was followed by awkward silence.
Then... Time seemed t n...
Nethaniel punched sideways, involuntarily and was shocked as he hit an arrow at the shaft, breaking it and sending it tumbling off. His mind did millions of calculations a second, how fast were they walking? What was the speed, accuracy, angle and direction of the arrow? Where was it aimed? How did he stop the damn thing?
2 miles an hour, 90 miles an hour, amateurly accurate but still dangerous, about 100 degrees angle coming down from exactly six o' clock behind him... As for the last answer, he had no idea. He came up with all of this in a micro second, grabbed the throwing knife out of the girls dagger before she had time to protest, holding it by the end of the blade he spun around and threw it at about the same speed, direction, angle and sadly accuracy of that arrow. About a hundred blocks, meters, behind them a man fell onto his knees. A knife protruded from his head and he face planted into the hot sand.
He was a desert dweller. He looked at the girl uncertainty. She gave him the same look, then shock and finally fear flickered across her face.
"What's wrong with your eyes?" She almost yelped.
"What?"
"T-They're yellow."
Sure enough his eyes glowed golden.
Then they returned to their normal green and he fell over, exhausted, and finally passed out.
He woke up, some hours later, with a quiver on his back with sixty-three arrows in it, the same sandy-brown cowl as the person he killed, but it was patched and cleaned, he noticed the girl was fighting with about a dozen men.
"...see! He's awake, now. I be he could kill every one of you in five seconds."
The men started laughing that she propose this kid could kill them.
She smiled. "How about a duel? All of you versus the kid."
"What?!" Neth protested groggily.
The men paused, if she suggested twelve men against a kid, she could be serious. The leader shook his head.
"We'll take him to the archery range. If he's as good as you say, you both are welcome."
Neth came to notice two things; one he was on a mixture of cobblestone and stone, not sand. Two, this meant he was at Kinotcxutan, in the center of the desert. On the plateau. Their original destination.
"Hold up! You guys, you're part of the Krellian Army?" He pointed at the twelve and received nods. "Good. I was told you'd all recognize me." The girl eyed him curiously.
"Enough. Prove yourself with that bow, and you can talk."
And so at the archery rang he was to kill sixteen targets in thirty seconds.
He pulled out an arrow and studied it.
They were barbed leaf-shaped arrows, known as type 16s and could be used against horses and lightly-armoured men.
He strung his bow, pulled the arrow back in a nice draw. It wasn't a long bow, a recurve bow instead. A recurve bow has tips that curve away from the archer when the bow is strung. By definition, the difference between recurve and other bows is that the string touches a section of the limb when the bow is strung. A recurve bow stores more energy and delivers energy more efficiently than an equivalent straight-limbed bow, giving a greater amount of energy and speed to the arrow. A recurve will permit a shorter bow than the simple straight limb bow for a given arrow energy and this form was often preferred by archers in environments where long weapons could be cumbersome, such as in brush and forest terrain, or while on horseback. It would have to do. He nodded, signifying he was ready, then let go. The arrow hit home but in one fluid movement he had another arrow already in the second target's head. Third. Fourth. Fifth, eventually all of them.
With ten seconds to spare.
Every knight was gaping at him, what little archers were there shook their heads knowing this could only be achieved from years of discipline and training.
The knight nodded, allowing Neth to explain.
"I am Nethaniel."
"Last name?"
"Shade."
"That's no last name, at least not Krellian."
"No." He shook his head sadly. "I'm not from Kingdom Krell." He looked up at them. "I'm from Texas."
"Where?"
"America."
"Impossible! People from the first realm were like, five generations ago."
"Not all." The Desert Dweller girl chimed in. She pulled her hood down revealing red, no auburn hair. She had piercing amber eyes and a look in her eyes that seemed to say 'How ever bad you think you are, I'm worse.' "I'm from the first realm.
"Well, I used to live in England. But I was stricken down with a plague, like most of England, and recovered but not without consequences." She waved her hand dismissively. "I, however, no longer face them as I was healed by Lord Notch thine self." There was a collective gasp. "He healed me under the condition I come to the second realm, to help with some important quest."
Nethaniel then told his story. When they learned it was this Nethaniel, they were even more shocked. Everyone knew his story by now, and he agreed it dismissed a lot of passed around rumors. Most seemed disappointed that the rumored hero was only but a boy.
He rounded it off with the proposal about the fort.
The knight stepped forward. "I am the Battlemaster of this fief," and before Neth could ask, he explained: "A fief is an area ruled by a Lord. As Battlemaster, I train all of the knights and apprentices for this lands' army."
He continued, "Lord Nethaniel, you are granted these permissions. I'll tell Lord Gerard so he's aware. We'll send a party out for your other three friends, I'll train everyone to know green-eyed Endermen are good, I'll also get builders to take your orders."
"I have a request." Neth said.
"Anything to have your protection."
"First of all, sir. I'd like to see your blacksmith."
A small man with a grey apron stepped forward.
"Do you have the abilities to craft any weapons?"
"Yes sir."
"Even Emerald weapons?"
Everyone looked shocked. And so he pulled out his emerald sword, which he forgot that he hadn't lost from the floating island in the swamp.
"For anyone who wielded this, it'd break. But it's part of my... Powers, that I can ONLY," he stressed the word, "use emerald tools once I claim them. I haven't used this sword so it isn't officially claimed, but I plan to claim emerald."
The blacksmith nodded.
"First of all, I'd like sixty-four Long Bodkins arrows, the same amount of Short Bodkins and Type 16s, all with emerald tips. Cloth yard shafts."
Needle-shaped arrows known as long bodkins were used against mail armour. Short bodkins could also be used against mail and plate armour, which was becoming more common on the battlefields by the end of the 14th century.
Barbed leaf-shaped arrows, known as type 16s, could be used against horses and lightly-armoured men.
All these arrows were capable of inflicting savage wounds.
Arrow shafts were made from ash and aspen in the real world, but oak worked in the second realm. 32 inches long, with a thin slice of horn to protect the V-shaped groove at the end of the arrow. These arrows were known as clothyard shafts. The flights were made from flight feathers from chickens in the second realm, cut to shape and fastened on with spider thread for extra strength.
"I'd also like sixty-four Large, broad-headed arrows. Also emerald."
Large, broad-headed, swallow-tailed arrow-heads were normally used for hunting large game, such as deer and wild boar. The razor-sharp edges of the barbs gave a long cutting edge to kill or disable the animal, but they were also the 'traditional' and most famouse arrow shape.
He saw that a scribe was writing all of this down on some paper, with a feather he'd dipped in an ink sac.
"I want a recurve bow to fit on one side of a saddled horse, and a longbow to fit on the other."
The longbow and the men who used it were the most feared soldiers of their day. A good archer with a bow of around 100-150 lbs draw weight could shoot an arrow over 300 yards. At Agincourt 5,000 archers and roughly 1,000 men-at-arms defeated an army of between 20,000 and 30,000. If each archer shot 12 arrows a minute that would be 1,000 shafts a second leaving the bows. In 8 minutes it would be possible to shoot over half a million arrows. The chroniclers of the day said that men fell like leaves after the first frosts of winter, and the sky turned black with wooden shafts.
Neth also ordered an emerald axe and told the blacksmith he'd repay him for all of the resources.
He then requested a clothier take his cowl, and make it invertable. Shades of green on the inside, shades of sand-colors on the out and vise versa.
After all this Neth created a dagger out of emeralds and balanced it so it had more weight at the hilt and it came to a slender point-the perfect throwing knife and dagger combination.
Then Neth shaped his sword into a Falchion shape. The Falchion was a sword used for hacking and cleaving and could be easily used by a soldier inexperienced in sword play. The weapon combined the weight and power of an axe with the versatility of a sword. In some versions the falchion looks rather like the scramasax and later the sabre, and in some versions the form is irregular or like a machete with a crossguard, as is this case. His sword is flat on one side, curved on the other. It's also only his forearms' length. It's actually very resembling to a seax. He put the throwing knife in a perfectly con sealed pocked on his cowl, the exact shape of the knife. He put the sword in a leather scabbard on his waist, but because the sword was short he still moved easily and silently.
The days passed on into weeks. Neth had been practicing his techniques at moving with the shadows, blending in, keeping stock still. Seeing without being seen. He could move 100% silently. Hear without being heard.
Then one day the aurburn haired lady found him.
"Neth." She nodded.
"My Lady," He greeted in return. He was becoming used to medieval greetings.
"Neth, I'm one of you. I'm a chosen, I know it. That's what Notch's mission for me was."
"I know."
She was a bit taken aback. "What?"
"I've known for some time. I don't believe in coincidences."
She nodded.
"Sir Obsidian!" Called a voice. Obsidian had been Neth's new last name so he was Nethaniel Shade Obsidian of Krell.
"Yes?" He turned to a chamberlain who'd come to him. The man immediately grew uncomfortable, as many acted around him.
"Sir, there's someone you might want to see. He goes by the name Rasgar Marea. Sir, it's Spainish for Rip Tide."
