Recruits: the Valiem

Prologue

"MOVE FASTER!" yelled the instructor, as Vast moved through the obstacle course. "Move faster, or I will make you sweat blood!"

Vast already knew that he could do it, so instead of pushing his luck with the instructor, he ran harder than ever before. As he arrived at the rope bridge he saw that a man, clearly of dwarven descent, was having a hard time attempting to cross it. Vast ,being half-elf and not wanting to anger the instructor by waiting for the dwarf to finish, jumped onto the rope handles and ran across as fast as possible, running right over the dwarf. "Hey!" the stout man shouted at Vast, but he had already finished the obstacle and was moving on.

Vast held the lead for a long time afterward, and didn't see anyone until he got to the last obstacle, the tunnel maze. These tunnels were small enough that Vast had to crawl in some places, and they were so dark that only a few species could make out anything in the dark at all, fortunately for Vast, elves were among those that could. As Vast was crawling through a particularly short area he heard something coming from behind him, he turned to see the dwarf sprinting as though his life depended on it. Behind him was the reason, a mass as large as the tunnel was wide was chasing him.  It was too dark to make out details, but it sounded bad.

Vast managed to get into a crouching position an ran as fast as he could in the small space. Ahead Vast saw daylight, and out of the corner of his eye to the right he saw the dwarf. As they ran out of the cave, they turned almost in unison to face this new threat, together they watched as one, then two, then four, and finally eight hairy legs pulled a massive body from the darkness, it was a cave spider. The one thing working in their favor was the fact that there was never more than one cave spider per cave system. The downside was the reason behind this, they were larger than an average tree, they would raid dragon nests to eat eggs and baby dragons alike, and when two males fought over anything, it caused anyone nearby to think there was an earthquake, and this one was massive.

Vast pulled his training bow from his back and nocked two arrows, looking to his left he saw the dwarf draw his war-ax and look back at him. They nodded at each other. Vast let his arrows go flying, one missed completely while the other was a direct hit. The spider reeled back, then shot forward, with an arrow protruding from one of the eyes. Vast fired again as the dwarf sprinted for the trees.

'Coward' Vast thought in the back of his mind, then he saw something he never thought possible. The dwarf ran up the side of a tree and pushed off sending him flying right towards the spider, as he neared he brought his ax down on the midsection. The spider squealed in agony. Vast, seeing his opportunity, shot two more arrows into the back of the spiders throat. The spider crumpled to the ground in a ball of hairy legs.

Vast ran to the corpse, and began to survey the scene. He noticed that the dwarf was nowhere to be seen. As he was looking around the spider began to move slightly, Vast nocked another arrow just in time to see the dwarfs ax emerge from the abdomen the dwarf following closely behind not only covered in what Vast assumed was the spiders intestines, but also was carrying two bags that looked like, until recently, they were part of the spider.

"What're those?" Vast asked

"'Venom-sacs', I call 'em." the dwarf replied, "say that was some pretty good fighting, for an elf anyhow. The name is Mason." he said offering his gore covered hand to shake.

"Vast," Vast said taking the hand cautiously. "And not too bad yourself." if there was one thing that elves did, they gave credit where credit was due. "So, why do you have these 'venom-sacs'?"

"How about I tell ya over a pint of ale?" Vast started to nod, "On you?" Mason added in slyly.

Vast smiled at his newfound friend, "This time, next time it's your turn." Vast and Mason laughed together for a time, then they decided that they would finish the course the same way they had the spider. As a team.