The Swords of Memory: Second Chances

Chapter 25

The group came out of the portal and saw the village in front of them. Hayden, who hadn't realized Zara was taking them to the village, rushed everyone to the side and held up his cloak in hopes of hiding them against the dark background. Luckily, there had been no guards at the portal so they were safe, for the moment. Zara waited for Hayden to take the lead. She felt like she had a decent idea of the layout of the village but Hayden's would inarguably be more accurate. He had grown up in the village.

"Where can we get water?" Zara prompted.

"In the water tower of course. But Zara, are we ready to do this? We haven't made a plan or anything."

"We don't really need one. You and Eli are suffering from dehydration already and need water now. Trying to come up with a complicated plan would just waste time. We are just going to sneak in, take the water, and sneak out."

"Fine, but Grant and Halcyon should go back to the portal on the central plains. They will stick out too much if we are spotted, especially Grant with his light." They agreed and went through the portal. IT was likely that there would be villagers at the portal on the plains but Halcyon and Grant would be more than capable of dealing with them.

Hayden grumpily lowered his cloak and started leading the small group towards the water tower. They had to hide in bushes a couple of times as patrols passed but they managed to reach the building at the base of the water tower without being caught. The village had been completely militarized while they had been away. There were archery targets and straw dummies set up all over the place for practice. The village was preparing for war.

Inside the water building Hayden distributed water containers and had everyone start to fill them from the gravity powered faucets. "We have to get the swords and stop this madness." Hayden said. "There is no way everyone will be ready to fight the other races in time. It will be a massacre, and all because those stupid shades are attacking everyone."

"I agree. The sooner we find the swords the better." Zara said. "I think we are getting close though. We know the location of the sword of knowledge and the other sword of despair is either with the cloud people or one of their ally's. We might be able to have the other swords in the next few days if we push ourselves." Zara finished filling her container and the others did too. They were preparing to leave when an alarm sounded. Hayden had everyone get down, there was no way it had been them that had set off the alarm. He went to the window and looked outside. The sky was filled with Shades. They were heading from the direction of the portal and heading towards the water tower.

"We have to get out of here. The Shades are attacking the village." They rushed out of the building and saw that most of the villagers had swarmed towards the portal to meet the threat of the shades head on. "What are they doing? They can't hurt the shades. Nothing we have can hurt them. They should be taking shelter."

"We are going to have to as well." Zara said. "I was able to hurt them, but I can't fight that many. But I know what we should do. We should go to the underground castle. With the power core I could heal Daniel and then he could take back control and keep everyone safe."

"I don't like that idea Zara." Eli said. "We got what we came for. Daniel told us to get the swords. There is no telling if you can even heal him. You have tried multiple times and it nearly killed you every time."

"But now we have the power core. Come on. It isn't safe to go to the portal now so we might as well give it a shot." Eli didn't like it but Zara took the lead and went towards the underground castle. Everyone followed her and within a few minutes they were at the castle. The door was locked but Eli used his power to open it. They went down the steep stairs and when they found the hallway empty, went to the sick bay. Zara was going to walk right in but Hayden stopped her and listened to make sure the room was empty. When he was convinced it was, he let Zara go in. They went into the room and saw Daniel in the same spot he had been when they left. He was looking worse than he had before.