The stones

Chapter 11

I see Nathan sitting on a log by the campfire, right where he promised he'd be.  Rushing over to him, I feel relieved-Sage's cooking hut was stuffy.  When I reach Nathan he asks me how meeting Sage was to which I give a short reply to, "fine."  "Okay miss untalkative.  Since you've been sleeping all day I suppose you have enough energy to start your training.  It is to be taken seriously as it may determine whether you live or die."

With that last comment in mind I take a deep breath and nod, "I'm ready."  "Good," Nathan replies simply.  Nathan heads towards a long wooden building, one of the few permanent structures in this encampment.  There is a cheaply carved sign that says "armory" sticking out of the ground in front of two large wooden doors.  Nathan opens one of these doors and gestures for me to enter.

Following Mr. not-so-evil-intruder into the armory I feel a rush of Adrenaline.  I have never seen such a collection of weapons.  Hanging on the left wall there are bows of every length and made up of many different materials; arrows are cluttering the ground below them in sorted piles.  Half the back wall holds beautifully crafted swords while the other half holds spears.  Daggers cover the right-side wall, some meant for throwing and others for hand-to-hand combat.  Directly to my right are more throwing knives as well as combat knives and several tridents.  On my left are long white guns with a gentle blue glow to them, which Nathan explains shoot plasma beams; I don't quite understand but I don't bother to ask for a further explanation.

"First things first, we need to find your weapon of choice.  I'll train you in everything briefly so you know how to use it in case you are in a situation where your weapon of choice is taken but you recover someone else's weapon," Nathan quickly informed me.  "So where do I start?"  I ask dragging out the "o" in "so."

"Well, I'll show you how to properly hold each weapon and we'll see which one you're most comfortable holding then we'll go from there."  I walk to the wall directly in front of me and pick up a silver sword the length of my arm; I can barely lift it.  Nathan demonstrates how to hold a swords correctly- I drop the exquisite weapon three times before acquiring the proper grip. Obviously a sword is not the weapon for me so I put the sword back on the wall and pick up a long, wooden spear.  This I managed to lift and hold with the proper grip, so Nathan led me back outside and around the building where there were a set of targets.  Nate, as Fila called him earlier, grabbed a few spears from me and threw them rapidly at the targets, first puling his hand with the spear back, straighten his opposite hand, then thrusting the first towards the target.  One spear hit the Bull's eye and the other two hit the second ring of the target.

Nathan steps aside, handing me a spear giving me a chance to try for myself.  I pull back my arm and throw with all my might only to miss the target... and hit a tree fifteen feet to the right of the furthest target.  "Try again, that was your first shot."  I throw another-the spear landed closer to the target, but flew way over the target.  I attempted several more times, only to procure similar results.

Nathan rubs his forehead and stretches backwards, "let's continue this tomorrow, I need to get some shut eye now."  "Alright, see ya in the morning," I respond while walking back to the girls' tent.  I look back to see Nathan carrying the spears back into the weaponry as I enter the tent, making my way to the cot which Fila had earlier told me would be mine.  I stretch out on my new "bed" and try to fall asleep.