Ready for Adventure?

Exploration

I am destined for greatness. It's just that nobody else knows it yet. The adults are always telling me that I'm too young to be worrying about grand adventures. But that's nonsense! Twelve is plenty old to quest to save the world! I've got a sword and armor and everything!

At least I have Jade. She thinks I'm up to adventuring, and even wants to come with me! Heroes don't work alone, so of course I'll bring her along when I have the chance. She's better with bows than I am anyway."Nym, I'm leaving! Come say goodbye one more time?"

That's my sister. Alice. She's dumb. She gets to go on adventures all the time. She says they're boring and mostly just leading people places, but she comes back with emeralds. Emeralds! Those are super rare!

But I know she's not just leading people places this time. There have been more zombies and skeletons appearing every night, here and at the capital. I know Alice is going to be finding out what's happening. That's what adventurers do!

I hop down the stairs one at a time and give her a hug. She's still my sister."Tell me what you're doing again!"

She laughs. "I'm going to the capital. They need more people to help defend against the monsters."

"Why don't you try to find who's behind this? Someone has to be making more monsters appear!"

"It could just be a wave, the new moon and the clouds giving more of them the chance to spawn."

"Or it could be a bad guy trying to destroy the castle. Someone needs to find him before he gets the chance to!"

Alice gives me another squeeze before leaving the hug and taking my hands in hers. "If this goes on for another week or two, the kingdom can decide what to do."

I pout, but stop trying. She obviously won't listen to me, even though it's clear. It's been cloudy around the new moon before and this many have never spawned!

"Stay safe while I'm away, okay Nym?" Alice smiles at me and picks her adventuring bag up.

"Okay Alice."

"I love you."

"I love you too." She turns and leaves the house, calling out to everyone else that she's leaving.

I run to the stairs and break a hole in the side, pushing the old leather aside to get out my own adventuring bag. Okay, it's not really an adventuring bag. It's an old wool sack with Alice's hand-me-down armor and weapons. I shouldn't even have it, but someone threw it away! Stupid idea, so I found it and I'm going to use it. It also has some torches, some wheat, and a bit of gold for trading.

I pull the bag out from my sneaky place, cover the hole again, and slip out the back. Jade lives right behind Alice and me, which is cool when it means we can sneak into the woods to do our own patrols without having to deal with adults.

I climb up the vines on the back of her house and knock on her window, waving my bag at her.

She pokes her head from wherever she was over to the window. She gives me a thumbs up before running off to meet me. I jump down and bounce by the back door. Jade opens the door and nods.

"Alice left, let's go clear out the woods!"

I pull some stuff out of the bag for her - a set of armor, a bow and a stack of arrows, and a sword just in case - and shove it at her. I get my own armor out and my trusty sword. I've been spending most of my iron on keeping it repaired, even though the only enchantment it has is Bane of Arthropods.

"What is she fighting now?" Jade isn't quite as interested in what Alice does as I am, but she listens.

"Nothing special apparently. She's just been called to the capital to defend them."

Jade wrinkles her nose. "I thought you said she was going to investigate."

"I did. I thought she was going to." I pull the bag onto my shoulder and grin. "We shoud go investigate!"

Jade looks up from putting her sword on her belt. "Won't the adults worry about us?"

"Who cares? If we find what's causing so many monsters to appear and stop it, we can finally be heroes! Like Alex and Steve!"

"Only if I can be Steve." Jade grins and I grin back.

We sprint off into the woods. We're going to be heroes by the end of the week!