Adventures in the Dragons Realm  
                               chapter four
                         "Off to the Forest I Go"
                              by Lord Dizzy           
                             edited by Eric42
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     With my choice registered at Chance's bar for the guilds to know,
  Barak told me that he had shown me all he was going to till I went out
  the forest to collect some heads for the record books, to show how well I
  was using the training I had learned so far. 

     I ventured out into the forest just after midday.  The forest had rain
  fall on it eariler that day and mud was everywhere.  By the time I ran
  into a old Senile Senior Citizen, about an hours walk from town, his lost
  look in his eyes seemed to ask for help.  I asked if he needed my help to
  guide him back to town. 
        
     He said that would be great and I told him to follow me and I would
  show him the way back.  He followed behind me for about five minutes when
  I got a sharp pain in my neck.  I turned to see if the old man was
  allright, when I saw his face and learned that I had been tricked by this
  old timer.  His eyes glowed red as fire and his face grimaced at me as he
  lunged at me for a second hit.  I blocked his attack with a move that
  Barak had shown me eariler today.  With one angry hit, he crumpiled in to
  a pile of bones and blood.

     With the old man's head in my bag and his dragon pendent in my pocket,
  I set of for parts deeper in to the woods.  It hadn't been long, maybe an
  hour later, that I thought I saw someone I had known when I was a child,
  he had been one of our better warriors the tribe had, but he had gone off
  to fight for our king and had never came back, as I got closer I saw he
  was cutting open some poor magi's gut.  He stoped what he was doing and
  turned to look at me.  When I got close enough to see if it was him,
  a sliver of light broke thru the clouds to shed some light on his face,
  it was him, Gart, my older brother's best friend who had gone to fight for
  the king.  I was about to go running towards him to say hello and ask why
  he had never returned to the tribe and what he had been up to lately, when
  I saw why.

     The gold around his neck shined as bright as the sun itself.  It was
  the same size and shape as the object that was in my pocket at this very
  moment.  I nearly froze with horror when my brain put the pieces of this
  puzzle, here in this area of the world the dragon was turning good people
  and creatures into his slaves to do his bidding, and all of them proudly
  wore his meadlion around their necks, just like the one I got off the old
  man and the one that was around Gart's neck right now.

     As he started to come closer towards me, his eyes glazed and was as red
  as the old man's.  I heard a low growl come forth from his gut as if his
  midsection was connected to pits of the dragon own vile lungs.  I hated to
  do what I knew must be done here in these woods so far from home, and to
  have to do it to someone that at one time I had looked up to as a source
  of pride and admiration over the years.  He had been my brother's best
  friend and now I had to kill him before he did the same to me.

     I readied myself for his first blow that was quickly comming towards
  me, at a rate that I had never seen him move.  His first blow against my
  short sword was harder then I thought it would be.  Reclasping my hands on
  my sword, I turned to match blows with him.  Gart's second swing connected
  with my upper arm, while mine hit his ribs.  Pain was shooting up and down
  my arm as if it was on fire and coals were imbedded in the cut.  Gart
  stumbled back from the deep cut I had put in him just above his waist.

     Seeing that he was not going to stay stunned for long, I gathered all
  the strength I could muster and slashed at his neck.  Gart fell to the
  ground and breathed his last breath, I heard him say in a voice I had not
  heard in a long time, and I'm sure I will never forget.

     "THANK YOU."

     The End of Chapter Four            
        
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     Look for
     Adventures in the Dragons Realm  
     Chapter five - "The Full Moon Rises"
     by Lord Dizzy