"OI WAKE UP!" At this shout I abruptly woke up and groggily raised my head with my eyes just opened and looked over towards where the shout had come from, Sky stood just out side the door to my bedroom with crossed arms. She wore a light blue shirt and grey trousers, her hair was loose and flowed down her back and no weapon could be seen on her. I quickly wipe my eyes and look out of the window to my left, it was only staring to get light outside and the sun had yet to have risen above the horizon, I turned back to Sky and asked in a tired and irritated voice. "What the hell is the time?"
"Errmm, something around half five in the morning." She answered in an faked innocent voice and with a smile. "I thought as we were going out today, might as well get up early to make sure everything is ready and so that we don't turn up late." She continued in a balanced tone but obviously still a bit smug about waking me up this early in the morning. "Well now that you're awake, somewhat awake, I'm going to get some breakfast started. So get up quickly or it will get cold and don't just go back to sleep you lazy sod." She said before disappearing from the doorway.
"Why this early though?!" I say to myself quietly, although I knew she did it to annoy me. But as I was now awake and it was getting lighter outside I decided I had might as well get up. I got out of my plain wooden bed and opened up my inventory as I walked across my dark brown painted room, from my inventory I equipped an orange shirt, grey trousers and heavy leather walking boots, I also equipped my sheathed dagger to the back of my belt and pulled my shirt over it, hiding it. from there I looked out the window to see the sleepy canopy of the waking pine forest and a small number of birds beginning their morningly flights. I turned back and walked down the wide hallway which had a few doors leading off of it into a variety of different rooms. Nearer to the staircase was an open section of the hallway which I could look downstairs towards the doorway, the entrance hallway and somewhat into the dining room.
As I walked down the spiral dark wood stairs to the ground floor I could heard Sky moving around in the kitchen and I could hear and smell bacon being fried. I walked through the dining room door into the dining room which had the kitchen directly connected to it. I walked past the cushioned oak chairs which stood under the large polished mahogany table and into the white tile wall kitchen lit by a large window above the cooking area.
"You should probably have more oil in that." I say to Sky as I look at the frying pan which held a number of sizzling pieces of bacon which had already cooked through any oil that Sky had placed into the pan.
"Why don't you do it then as you seem to know best when it comes to frying things." She says in an accusatory and defensive way before moving out of the way, letting me get to the frying pan. "I'm cooking the eggs though, you always split the yolks when cracking them into the pan." She continues as she takes out a box of eggs from the cupboard along with another, smaller pan from another cupboard which held all of the pans and pots.
"I never said I knew best it's just that I've cooked enough bacon on open flames as a scout to know how much oil is needed. Anyway how many pieces do you want?" I say trying not to sound too arrogant, although failing at it as I pour a measured amount of sunflower oil into the pan in front of me making it sizzle and spit with renewed effort.
"3 pieces would be nice, how many eggs do you want?"She answered ignoring my first comment
"Just the one please." I say my usual answer to the question as Sky moves up next to me with the other pan, adds oil to the pan and places it on the hob. We were cooking for the next couple of minutes before all of the food was finished and we both ended up with bacon and egg sandwiches which we sat down at the table to eat.
"So what are the plans for today then, as all I know so far is that we are going out and meeting Andrew and Aurora? I ask Sky after swallowing a large chunk of my sandwich.
"Well we might meet up with them, but I sort of messaged them about this about 11 O'clock last night, soooooo, I don't know what they are doing but I'm sure they will come. Apart from that I thought we could go out for a walk for a couple of hours as I haven't explored the place properly yet, go down by the lakes, maybe go shopping for a while." She laid out her plans with an excited tone. Suddenly as if hearing our conversation a panel appeared in front of Sky, a message from Aurora. "Okay well that's convenient. Anyway she says yes to going out and that we should meet up around twelvish down by the lakes, simple enough." She summarised the message.
"Okay, so cause you got us up so early we have about 6 hours to kill before we meet up, so what do we do?" I say in an inquiring voice, wondering what would follow.
"Well I suppose we could go for a walk in the forests for a couple of hours, this floor has enough of them." She says after a few seconds of thought.
"Okay might as well get going then, also if we go near to the forge I need to pop in and sort some things out." I say with a thought to the project which I had just finished and was now waiting on my workbench in the forge.
"Okay, just don't get distracted and start making something new while your in there." She says in a warning tone. We then, after finishing our breakfast, place the used pans in a small bucket within the sink to be washed up later and moved from the dining room to the door of the house. I opened the door, let Sky through the door then myself and then turning to close it and lock it using the silver key I had taken from my inventory.
We walked down the slightly declined dirt path from the house onto the main path where we turned left and began walking towards the rising pine forest. The ancient pine forest stood silently and motionless in the darkness of the morning, however the first signs of wildlife was showing itself in the form of scurrying squirrels and the occasional bird song high in the trees.
As we walked, we walked side by side with our steps in unison and quietly talked about our time within Aincrad while watching the forest slowly come to life with the sounds of hundreds of animals and the strong winds whistling through trees.
From our talk I had found out that Sky had come into the game, knowing that none of her friends would join her. When we were all kindly informed by Kayaba of our fate she broke down at the realisation of loosing her family and friends while in this world and had found it near impossible to adapt to this world. However a while into the game starting she was still stuck on floor one as the original front line had just broke through the third floor, this is when instead of despair she felt sheer rage and a need for revenge came over her. This is when she desired to become a front liner to contribute to the battle force, in a way doing her bit for the war. However in the time that the frontline had started moving forward she was still at level 1 and so was no where near to having the needed experience and skills to be up at the frontline. So like the front liners had done originally she began to power train practically all day every day, however the best training spots had been taken by guilds and higher leveled players so her progress was slow. However as more and more floors were opened up, more and more training areas opened up allowing her to speed up her training up to now where she had joined the main front line where she had met Aurora. After seeing our guild in a true fight, a boss battle on the 38th floor, she had asked Aurora for some training and she had sent her to me.
As she finished up her story we came to a piece of the forest which I recognised to be near to the forge, so I made a turn off of the path and through the thick of the woods. A few minutes of walking through the forest and we reached the edge of it and could see the forge silhouetted against the sun which hung just above the horizon. We walked over to the path and down to the forge which stood eerily silent and motionless. As we reached the door I opened it using a gold key from my inventory and pushed the heavy wooden door open with a creak.
I walked into the forge, closely followed by Sky, and walked over to the blast furnace which I started up a blazing fire, by pressing a button on a menu panel instead of taking ages to manually set a fire going, which lit the room with a soft orange glow and began to heat the room. Sky was walking around the room looking at all of my tools and figuring out what each of pieces of equipment was used for, as she did this I walked over to my workbench and covertly picked up a small green velvet box and placed it in a pocket without her seeing it.
"So welcome to my forge I suppose, as you haven't been in here before have you?" I ask her realising that her curiosity was probably down to the fact that she had yet to have a proper look around before now.
"It's not as dark and depressing as I thought it would be, a lot more sizes of hammer as well. Must be nice to work in a warm and safe place all on your own." She said slowly as she walked around slowly still looking at the tools and admiring the blades which hung on the stone wall.
"Yer, it's nice in here to get away from the battles and hammering metal is a good therapy in a way, also a good way to make some money as quality weapons are always in demand." I say in agreement as I moved over to my metals shelf and rearranged the heavy ingots into a more orderly way. "So didn't you say something about working down here for a bit?"
"Yer, as I don't have a proper job right now and having a good forge skill would be useful and generally it seems an interesting thing to do when away from the front line." She confirmed after a few seconds of thought. She opened her menu with practiced ease and checked the time. "Wow, it's still only 8, still got about 4 hours till noon."
"Really, still got about 3 and a half hours to do something, any ideas?" I ask honestly wondering how to spend the spare time which we had.
"Well we could go back for a walk but I don't think either of us want to do that right now." She remarked with a smile knwoing that we both prefered it in here, in the warm. "Hey why don't you teach me some stuff about forging?" She suggests in an excited voice as she pushes herself up onto the black anvil.
"Yeh, might aswell, but what about? 'don't get distracted and start making something new while your in there.'" I quote Sky's previous words.
"Oh well, we're here now with hours to spare so why not." She says disregarding her own words from before.
"So then, what do you want to do, Blades, shields, hammers, other weaponry, armours or jewelry?" I ask Sky going through the list of things which I knew how to make.
"Well thats a bit of big list. How about we do some jewelry, seems the easiest and it wont take too long." She decided as she looked around the intricate and complicated works of war which were on display around the walls compared to a small glass cabinet which held a number of shining rings and encrusted necklaces.
At that I turned on my main furnace and brought out the needed tools for the job, I then placed an ingot of silver in a large stone cauldron in the main furnace and a smaller amount in a smaller stone cup in the blast furnace both using metal tongs and got to work showing Sky how everything worked and teaching her techniques of forming metal I had learned from experience.