Battle for Misty Oak: Baelen vs. Bandit

The sword felt heavy in his hands. Baelen had watched his father fight bravely for the sake of the village, for his son's well being. His father had slain many of the bandits, several of them lay at his feet as more came on. He had raised his weapon to strike them down as they came, it was then that an arrow had taken him just below his heart. Baelen had watched his father fall too his knees from the mortal blow, then he had watched as the bandits around him closed in to finish the warrior. The sword felt heavy in his hands.

Fighting back the urge to run away, the urge to save himself so that his father's sacrifice would not have been in vain, Baelen ran through the chaos of the village. Fires were being lit, the smoke and smell of burning wood filled his nose with their acrid aroma. Even if the battle was somehow won, the village Baelen had called home all of his life would cease to be. Screams seemingly came from everywhere as the villagers tried to save themselves and their homes. Screams that were silenced forever upon the blades of their attackers.

Turning up a small, tree topped hill near the center of the village Baelen decided that he needed some kind of a vantage point if he was going to have any hope of defending himself. He crested the hill easily enough, but rather than finding safety, he came face to face with one of the bandits who had razed the small village. Drawing his blade, the bandit grinned lopsidedly at Baelen and began to advance.

Baelen held his ground as the bandit approched, holding his father's sword up infront of himself hoping for at least some semblance of a deffensive posture. Baelen tried to size up his opponent as best he could, but being a farmboy, without the military training his father had Baelen didn't really know how to fight, and it seemed as though the bandit knew that this farmboy would be an easy kill.

Lashing out with his shorter blade, the bandit, while still out of range of the farmboy, took pleasure in taunting his young, inexperienced opponent. Even though the bandit's blade was still too far away to have struck him, Baelen flinched and stumbled backwards, bringing a wicked smile to the bandit's face.

Baelen knew that he was about to be killed, like his father and the rest of the villagers, and he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. Then, as though sent by the gods themselves, a stray arrow whistled through the air and sank deep into the bandit's leg. The bandit growled at the pain and the sudden impact brought him down to one knee. With the bandit injured and visibly stunned by the arrow, Baelen came at his enemy.

With his father's sword held in front of him, Baelen charged forward, angling the tip of the blade in an attempt to impale his still stunned opponent. The bandit, realizing that the farmboy was about to run him through, began to roll away from the oncoming blade. With his injured leg hindering him, the pain searing with every small movement, and the sheer ferocity of the farmboy's charge, the bandit didn't quite make his move fast enough.

The farmboy's blade, the blade of his father, penetrated deep into the bandit's left shoulder. The blade cut through muscle and bone until it protruded several inches from the bandit's back. The bandit howled in a mixture of pain and rage. Bringing up his right hand as Baelen came on, still caught up in his charge, the bandit punched the farmboy hard in the side of his head.

From the momentum of his charge, coupled with the strength and anger behind the bandit's fist, the blow knocked Baelen sideways onto his back. Still gripping the sword that was now buried in the bandit's shoulder, Baelen tried to shake the dizziness from his head. He regained his wits just in time, as the bandit poised his blade to strike. Baelen, still holding onto the pommel of his father's sword, tried to roll away from his attacker. The bandit screamed in pain as the farmboy tried to roll away, ripping the blade out of his injured shoulder. Overcome by both pain and loss of blood, the bandit dropped his sword with a dull thud into the grass of the hill.

Baelen recovered his footing slowly. Although he wasn't truly injured, his head still ached from the punch he had received by the bandit. Quickly remembering his opponent, Baelen swung around, sword up and ready. The bandit had nearly lost consciousness, and didn't see nor hear the farmboy as he approached. Baelen stood before the bandit, who was still on his knees with his head hung low, blood running from his wounds, covering the grass around him.

Muttering a curse, the bandit looked up at Baelen, his eyes barely open. The blade of Baelen's sword, the sword of his father, cleanly ran through the bandit's midsection. The bandit slumped over as Baelen pulled the blade free of his opponent. He had survived. He had survived the first real fight of his life. But as he looked around himself Baelen began to question whether or not it would have been better if he had just let the bandit kill him. All around him, his home, his village, was burning.

Baelen gathered up what courage he could, courage he didn't know he possessed until his defeat of the bandit just moments before. He would have to fight again, that much was clear to him. He would have to fight again, to save what people he could from the chaos that had erupted into their, until now, peaceful lives. It was then that he heard it. A horn sounded through the smoke. Before he could see what had blown the horn or what it meant, Baelen felt a dull and painful thud on the back of his head. His father's sword fell free of his grasp, and the farmboy, Baelen, fell into darkness.