“Or worse,” said Geraldus.
Geraldus got on his horse and strolled over to Alaric. “Pick up what weapons you can carry back to the village. Tie what you can carry. I want no weapons left in these caves, in case there could be any other invading cells we don’t know about.”
“Yes, father, it shouldn’t take long.”
Geraldus singled his horse to trot away. Geraldus rode past the dragons and vanished under the shadows of the trees.
“Planning on going with him?” asked Alaric.
“No, I don’t plan on going with him, and I still don’t have a plan of where to travel as of yet, so I’ll stay and help,” said Vaeludar. He looked at the scabbard and saw it had two loose straps. Then Vaeludar placed the scabbard onto his back and tied the two straps on his chest, tying it around his back. “Let’s get some work done.”
It took them about half an hour to tie down all the weapons to the horses and ride back to the village.
TRAINING WITH A SWORD
I
n the following week after the village was attacked and the thieves and the Cyclopes had been dealt with, Geraldus sent hundreds of his scouts to the borders of the Western Region. Ever since his men started attacking the four Cyclopes planning to invade his hometown, he needed to make sure there weren’t any more invading factures of thieves and mountain giants coming to his doorstep.
Luckily no scouts had reported any other thieves or giant men thinking of invading Geraldus’s village. Geraldus had his duty to protect his people and his family from any outside threats.
He never heard of mankind being a friend of Cyclopes or Giants, and the two different giants were rivals as history was told. It was said those gigantic creatures lived in mountain regions. How they managed to be allies with thieving men and each other would largely be unknown to Geraldus; Vaeludar killed the thieves before Geraldus or Alaric could capture them.
So no answers would be coming to Geraldus’s ears of how three different rival species became allies. Geraldus could only gauss in many theories of how rivalries were quickly put aside and formed in one banner. He could only hope no more trouble would be coming from the Greenwood Forest or any other places around the borders of his home village.
And he also hoped Vaeludar wouldn’t cause any more trouble than what he already had done. Killing the Minotaur, the thieves, and turning the two Giants and the Cyclopes to stone was bad enough for Geraldus to handle. He saw the hybrid was becoming more violent in the past few weeks than in the past seventeen years combined.
Geraldus remembered how Vaeludar acted violently only a few times before. There was the one time he mentioned of Vaeludar saving a Siren, a humanlike fish thought to be monsters, from cold-hearted men and jaw-snapping dogs. Vaeludar defended the Siren and killed the men and the dogs on his own, saving the Siren from death and somehow winning her heart all of a sudden.
The second time Vaeludar had acted violently was when there was a strange music the village would never forget: witches chanting and a piper piping. It was a year later, after the Siren incident, Vaeludar acted violent again.
There was a time when the twin girls, Naìra and Andrei, were about four years old and nearly abducted by the witches and piper. One day, as a usual hard working day, there was a strange flute hissing in the air and voices spurring.
Every young little girl in Geraldus village had been hypnotized by this strange music. The adults didn’t pay it no heed, as none of them watched the girls being dragged by the music toward the Greenwood Forest.
Vaeludar took notice of the strange music and saw everyone seemed to be dazed and confused from the music the village was hearing, and he didn’t seem to be infected by it. After he saw the little girls being lured away, Vaeludar followed the strange echoing of the music and found the witches and the piper inside the dangerous forest.
He growled and snarled at the witches and the piper, and Vaeludar took note when they found out he didn’t seem affected of their music, they sung louder but no effect. Vaeludar puffed at this sight and clawed the piper’s eye. From Vaeludar’s eyes, he saw three old women and a tall man with strange skin color and texture.
After giving a clawing warning, the piper and the witches ceased their music and retreated deep into the forest. After the music had ceased, everyone went back into their normal states, muttering of what happened to them while they heard the music.
Vaeludar alarmed Geraldus of the witches and the piper, who retreated into the woods. He says he spared their lives, not wishing to become ruthless and cold-hearted like a tyrant. Vaeludar wanted to show of how much a true human he could be and not be an evildoer. Geraldus understood of what Vaeludar was trying to do and morals were important, even though the consequences of sparing the witches and the piper could be negative than would be influential.
From that day forward, Vaeludar showed no signs of violent behavior. He still acted as the outsider of the village, even if he shoved away the intruding witches and a scarred man with a fluting pipe.
For Vaeludar (at the current moment), he was back at the training grounds with the new sword. He was impressed he found it in the one cave. He had great power within that human skin of his but having a sword at his side would be a greater weapon to use if it ever came to a speedy creature.
The blade was blue as the blue ocean and thin as a leaf. The crossguard was curved of a backwards L, the pommel had a ruby attached between two horn-like curves, and the grip was reflecting sapphires and agate.
In the training
