by Ryan Johnson
Alaric and Geraldus walked over to him and Vaeludar quickly showed them the weapons piled in the very back of the cave. What they were seeing was enough for a battalion of soldiers. Alaric picked a hand-and-a-half sword while Geraldus spear with the metal end eight inches long and curved like a strange shaped U.
Geraldus spun his spear in many circles and waved it around his fingers and hands and part of his arms. Then spun it around his neck a few times before drawing it to a halt. “This is a nicely crafted spear.”
“I wonder who made these,” said Alaric. He pulled out the sword he was holding and had it of blue color. The hilt was decorated with small emeralds and a big ruby at the hilt’s bottom. “These don’t seem to have been forged in the Western Region.”
“Well, whoever crafted these weapons, we’re better off with them than those invaders,” said Geraldus.
“Agreed, father.”
Vaeludar was looking at the swords in their feathered scabbards. His tail was brushing away what he felt he could use, if he was to battle again and wanted to fight as a human. He wanted to have a sword of his own, but he wasn’t feeling these swords piled on the ground were the right ones for him.
He picked several swords in his hands then toss them away. Instead of calling love at first sight, Vaeludar was unimpressed with each weapon he was putting in his hand.
“Looking for something?” asked Geraldus.
The hybrid sighed. “These aren’t suited for me,” said Vaeludar, before he walked away from the weapons he thought he could have found interest in.
Geraldus gave a whistle and waved an arm toward his men.
The men strode over and started taking the weapons. During this time, they passed Vaeludar, walking into him.
Vaeludar, who was having a difficult time finding a weapon to have and being shoved if he was invisible, jumped out of the way. From five yards away, he was frustrated at the men-at-arms were grabbing many weapons. Even among the soldiers, he was still an outsider.
The first step he took was a thud on his feet. Vaeludar stared down at a buried item beneath dried leaves. He brushed the leaves with his dragon feet.
A silver, sparkly emerald hilt shined before his eyes.
Vaeludar bent down and brushed more leaves with his bare hands. The hilt revealed to be in a scabbard buried inches in leaves. Suddenly, it felt like the hilt was calling out his name. Vaeludar grabbed the scabbard and pulled it out of the remaining leaves. Standing back up, Vaeludar placed a hand on the hilt. Feeling a little anxious, Vaeludar pulled the sword out of the scabbard.
The sword was very close to a broadsword design, and the blade had the shape of a linear leaf but slightly wider. The blade was forged from a fine, crystal metal. The blade itself had something amazing that caught Vaeludar’s attention right away; there was a cloud-like, pale beam of light sparkling and dazzling all around the blade as if there was a storm within the blade.
“Interesting looking blade if it has been forged from magic,” he stated, holding it straight forward.
Then he spun it forward once, went to spin it backwards, and finished by spinning a figure-eight four times before holding it straight up. It was lighter than a feather and he was happy with it.
“Well, I’m done here,” he said, exiting the cave.
Vaeludar released the holding of his breath and started sniffing the air. He managed to hold his breath for several minutes. After breathing again, he was able to sniff the freshness of nature instead of smelling the scent of dead corpses.
“That sword is very odd,” said the Unicorn King, exiting the cave with his unicorn guards, along with the men and the Griffins. “No blade can glow with a peculiar cloud inside.”
“I know that,” said Vaeludar. “I wonder if this was a magic sword by chance.”
“There are a few magic swords in this world,” said a dragon voice.
The Dragon King and five dragon bodyguards floated down from the sky softly.
“Let me see that sword you’re carrying. If what you say is true and the swords do contain some elements of magic, a Dragon could tell if there is something powerful lurking within the blade itself.”
Vaeludar couldn’t seem to argue with the Dragon King and pulled out the blade. The shimmering light immediately caught the eyes of both the Dragon King and his personal guards.
“By my own scales,” he said, in a very astonished look. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I wouldn’t know what kind of sword it is.”
“That is a shame then,” said Vaeludar. “I guess I’m going have to find out for myself to see if it is a magic sword or not.”
“Yes,” said the Unicorn King. “If you want to find out if it is such a thing, you yourself are going have to find out, if the weapon you’re carrying does hold magic. But seeing a cloud inside the blade makes me wonder if it is one.”
“But here is a question about it: how did they end up in the hands of two Giants and two Cyclopes?” asked Vaeludar.
“We’ll have time for theories later,” said the Dragon King. “I came here for another reason. The Merpeople seem to be having some problems on the beaches of your village, Geraldus. It seems something is going on near their borders.”
“Could it be another possible invading force?” asked Geraldus, walking up towards Vaeludar.
“The Sea Serpents are already scouting the region. As of right now, we don’t have any information of what is going on with the Mermaids and the Mermen. There shouldn’t be anything to worry about. Maybe just breeding problems.”
“Or worse,” said Geraldus.
Geraldus got on his horse and strolled over to Alaric. “Pick up what weapons you can carry back to the village. Tie what you can carry. I want no weapons left in these caves, in case there could be any other invading cells we don’t know about.”
“Yes, father, it shouldn’t take long.”
Geraldus singled his horse to trot away. Geraldus rode past the dragons and vanished under the shadows of the trees.
“Planning on going with him?” asked Alaric.
“No, I don’t plan on going with him, and I still don’t have a plan of where to travel as of yet, so I’ll stay and help,” said Vaeludar. He looked at the scabbard and saw it had two loose straps. Then Vaeludar placed the scabbard onto his back and tied the two straps on his chest, tying it around his back. “Let’s get some work done.”
It took them about half an hour to tie down all the weapons to the horses and ride back to the village.
TRAINING WITH A SWORD
I
n the following week after the village was attacked and the thieves and the Cyclopes had been dealt with, Geraldus sent hundreds of his scouts to the borders of the Western Region. Ever since his men started attacking the four Cyclopes planning to invade his hometown, he needed to make sure there weren’t any more invading factures of thieves and mountain giants coming to his doorstep.
Luckily no scouts had reported any other thieves or giant men thinking of invading Geraldus’s village. Geraldus had his duty to protect his people and his family from any outside threats.
He never heard of mankind being a friend of Cyclopes or Giants, and the two different giants were rivals as history was told. It was said those gigantic creatures lived in mountain regions. How they managed to be allies with thieving men and each other would largely be unknown to Geraldus; Vaeludar killed the thieves before Geraldus or Alaric could capture them.
So no answers would be coming to Geraldus’s ears of how three different rival species became allies. Geraldus could only gauss in many theories of how rivalries were quickly put aside and formed in one banner. He could only hope no more trouble would be coming from the Greenwood Forest or any other places around the borders of his home village.
And he also hoped Vaeludar wouldn’t cause any more trouble than what he already had done. Killing the Minotaur, the thieves, and turning the two Giants and the Cyclopes to stone was bad eno
ugh for Geraldus to handle. He saw the hybrid was becoming more violent in the past few weeks than in the past seventeen years combined.
Geraldus remembered how Vaeludar acted violently only a few times before. There was the one time he mentioned of Vaeludar saving a Siren, a humanlike fish thought to be monsters, from cold-hearted men and jaw-snapping dogs. Vaeludar defended the Siren and killed the men and the dogs on his own, saving the Siren from death and somehow winning her heart all of a sudden.
The second time Vaeludar had acted violently was when there was a strange music the village would never forget: witches chanting and a piper piping. It was a year later, after the Siren incident, Vaeludar acted violent again.
There was a time when the twin girls, Naìra and Andrei, were about four years old and nearly abducted by the witches and piper. One day, as a usual hard working day, there was a strange flute hissing in the air and voices spurring.
Every young little girl in Geraldus village had been hypnotized by this strange music. The adults didn’t pay it no heed, as none of them watched the girls being dragged by the music toward the Greenwood Forest.
Vaeludar took notice of the strange music and saw everyone seemed to be dazed and confused from the music the village was hearing, and he didn’t seem to be infected by it. After he saw the little girls being lured away, Vaeludar followed the strange echoing of the music and found the witches and the piper inside the dangerous forest.
He growled and snarled at the witches and the piper, and Vaeludar took note when they found out he didn’t seem affected of their music, they sung louder but no effect. Vaeludar puffed at this sight and clawed the piper’s eye. From Vaeludar’s eyes, he saw three old women and a tall man with strange skin color and texture.
After giving a clawing warning, the piper and the witches ceased their music and retreated deep into the forest. After the music had ceased, everyone went back into their normal states, muttering of what happened to them while they heard the music.
Vaeludar alarmed Geraldus of the witches and the piper, who retreated into the woods. He says he spared their lives, not wishing to become ruthless and cold-hearted like a tyrant. Vaeludar wanted to show of how much a true human he could be and not be an evildoer. Geraldus understood of what Vaeludar was trying to do and morals were important, even though the consequences of sparing the witches and the piper could be negative than would be influential.
From that day forward, Vaeludar showed no signs of violent behavior. He still acted as the outsider of the village, even if he shoved away the intruding witches and a scarred man with a fluting pipe.
For Vaeludar (at the current moment), he was back at the training grounds with the new sword. He was impressed he found it in the one cave. He had great power within that human skin of his but having a sword at his side would be a greater weapon to use if it ever came to a speedy creature.
The blade was blue as the blue ocean and thin as a leaf. The crossguard was curved of a backwards L, the pommel had a ruby attached between two horn-like curves, and the grip was reflecting sapphires and agate.
In the training grounds, Vaeludar was holding the sword by the hilt. The blade easy for him to hold and perfectly balanced between the hilt and the blade. He slowly moved his arms in unison with the blade. He could feel a powerful presence living within the blade, if a ghost was living within the blade. He never felt anything like this oddly presence he could feel within a strange manmade weapon.
He was slowly testing out its weight and was seeing if it could be the right weapon for him to use. He knew how to fight like a beast, but he never fought like a human. Having this sword would make him feel he was fighting like a human, but with wings and a tail.
After slowly waving the sword back and forth, Vaeludar then to a few practice dummies that were set up for sword training. He hacked and sliced a single dummy in half from one soft blow. Surprise by this, Vaeludar steps toward the next one and pointed his sword sky ward. Then he slashed the sword downward and sliced the dummy vertically as he did with the first one but horizontally.
All of a sudden, a dozen more rose around him. Vaeludar angled his wings slightly and spread his legs outward. He rested the blue blade on his left shoulder, as he held it by the hilt on his other hand. He breathed softly and listened closely as the dozen figures around him begin to move in a circle.
The one thing he didn’t want to do in the next phrase was to trip on his slivering tail. One fatal mistake could lead to a big loss for him, but he wouldn’t be worried. He had strong skin-armor and a breath of death.
As the dozen of wooden dummies magically rose from the ground, Vaeludar whipped his tail into the ground. This kind of reaction made the surrounding figures take charge.
Vaeludar moved away from at least five figures moving at once. He released his tail and swirled at the bottom of two figures. Those had tripped and jagged the point of the sword at two others. Then he shoved his free hand to hold one dummy and lift it off its legs. With one ease squeeze, Vaeludar snipped the dummy into smaller pieces.
Then one dummy swung one of its stick arms at Vaeludar’s arm. Vaeludar lost his grip on the sword and went flying. However, Vaeludar used his tail to coil the blade. After Vaeludar had coiled the sword in his tail, he pounded the dummy with the calm of his left hand, sending it to impact the other ones.
He rewrapped his hand by the hilt again and flung it to another dummy dead center of what-would-be-the-chest. Vaeludar flung himself from his feet and jumped at the dummy he flung the sword to and pulled it out.
The last three that were standing saw this opportunity of Vaeludar having his back turned and charged forward.
Vaeludar’s hear flickered of the sound of moving wood rumbling on the ground he feet could feel. With one swing of the sword and its sharp blade, Vaeludar beheaded the last three figures charging and fell before his feet.
Vaeludar smirked of how good he was. “Too easy for me,” he said. As quickly as he started, he finished the fight. He sheathed the sword and walked away from the downed figures he trained with. “These training things would be better off as firewood.”
“Do you think you’re overtraining?” asked Alaric. Geraldus’s eldest observed the hybrid swinging his new sword at many dummies and cutting those spinning, wooden, lifeless, human-sized dolls.
“Me? Overtraining? I’m just getting warmed up. The thing is the real training hadn’t started yet.” Vaeludar suddenly snap his tail into an unseen a dummy rolling him and plunged it to the ground. The dummy fell and its wooden head had been spilt in halves. Vaeludar saw a few more remaining dummies that seemed to have been in hiding, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Suddenly the figures, positioned on wheels, rolled toward and aimed spears at Vaeludar. Those wooden dummies slowly rolled near the hybrid, if they were being controlled by magic that’d brought the wooden figures to life.
Vaeludar smirked. He spun quickly and spat out small fireballs if he was coughing out hairballs. The little puffy, fiery, fireballs banged on the wooden figures.
The rolling figures themselves had been fired from their posts, but they were a long distance away and out of the reach of the hybrid’s sword. All of the training dolls around him had been burnt and fell.
“Well, they finally did their warm up,” said Vaeludar, looking at the burning dummies. He looked around him and many of the dummies had laid cut and burned before him. He finished his warmup before he could finish his sword training. “Better pick up tomorrow evening and finish what I have been training with.” Vaeludar started to walk away from the defeated figures that lie before his feet.
“Tomorrow? Whatever ever happened to departing?” Alaric joined Vaeludar in his walking. They both were walking away from the training grounds.
They both walked over to a small valley with a few small hills. They found themselves among lots of divided trees and many roaming hills blossoming with wild flowers and tall purple roses and orange sunflowers
.
“I gauss I could be staying a bit longer than I have anticipated. But I haven’t forgotten about leaving. Ever since the big bull incident, there seems to be a constant waves of attacks and I always seem to be there to end it. And every time this village comes under a raid, I end up finishing it before it starts a large chaotic fiesta.”
“Fiesta? You burned several magic training dummies,” said Alaric. “I wouldn’t call that a fiesta.”
“Then maybe call it ‘flames of confetti,’ from a hybrid that would be. I never knew I had such skill with a good blade.”
Alaric halted. ‘If I may,” he said as he held out his hand, if he wanted to do a handshake. “May I have a closer look at that sword?” asked Alaric.
Vaeludar also halted. He saw Alaric lending out his hand. Vaeludar didn’t mind Alaric seeing the sword he was training with. Vaeludar pulled out the sword he had sheathed. He pointed the sword downward, so the pommel of the sword’s hilt was pointing at Alaric.
Vaeludar handed the sword over to Alaric who ended up holding the sword with two hands. At first, the sword almost slipped from Alaric’s hand. Alaric’s face was lit was excitement and saw it was heavy for him to be holding.
“This is heavy,” said Alaric. The weight of the sword was too heavy for him keep holding. Alaric dropped the sword on purpose after holding it for some long seconds. “How could you hold that thing for so long?”
Vaeludar, with great ease, picked up with one hand. Unlike Alaric, the sword wasn’t heavy for Vaeludar to hold in two hands; he could hold the sword in one hand. “It had to be my muscles. Human muscles must be tangled with dragon muscle. That is how I must be able to carry a heavy item with ease.”
But Vaeludar couldn’t tell the difference between heavy weight and light weight of a single item. When he saw Alaric trying to hold the sword, he’d seen it was heavy for Alaric. And when Vaeludar would hold the sword, it was light to carry. Vaeludar had to conclude the only way for him to be holding the sword easily was his muscles.
