Plans for the future and the condition of the present

It’s been 3 months since the start of the New Year and since I adopted Lynn (the kitten) and first used order, since then I have spent the majority of my free time figuring out how to pronounce words for the desired effect. After a lot of testing I have come to understand 3 things, the word must be pronounced correctly in its entirety otherwise the it produces barely any effect, doesn’t matter if it’s just 1 syllable that’s right or if it’s just one wrong; its power is weaker than dragon words, like a lot weaker i.e. at least 8 times weaker, it’s probably more than that but my current testing gives this result; and last but not the least I can use 3 orders for every one use of dragon words.

The current me can use dragon words 3 times in consecutive, my theory is that there is something in dragon blood that stores the energy for the use of dragon words and currently I can store about 3 charges after which I to wait till it recharges (1 charge every 8 hours). By the way incorrect pronunciation does not use charges.

Finishing this morning’s experiments I went about my daily chores, after which I went about watching over the younger kids till breakfast time. At breakfast Jill and one of her friends where trying to get me to let them play with Lynn, one curious thing about that I found about Lynn is she is incredibly well behaved but only to me; to the rest of the people she doesn’t even give the time of day, if not outright ignoring them; another odd thing about her is that she always understands what I want her to do even if it is for the first time, like the last time I asked her to bring some parchment she went and bought parchment despite me or anyone else telling her what parchment really is.

“Tom, come to my office after breakfast.”(Dolson)

*nods*(Tom)

After breakfast me and Henry were waiting for Tom besides the stairs

“What do you think Mr Dolson wants from Tom?”(Henry)

“No clue.”(Alfred)

As we 2 were waiting Jill and her friend Sally came chasing after Lynn who ran up to me and jumped into my arms. Seeing Lynn in my arms they both turned their attention towards me.

“Alfred, hand over the cat.” Said Jill in a surprisingly serious tone, beside her Sally also chimed in “If ya don’t, we’ll have to resort to drastic measures”

Feeling a bit bemused I asked “yeah, like what?” Jill suddenly came close to me and whispered loud enough that only me and Henry could hear “like tattle on the 3 of you asking Harold to teach you how to fight.” Seeing me and Henry look at each other in shock, as Jill and Sally both looked at us with a smug grin on their face and eyes that seemed to say ‘ I got you now’.

‘Guess I got no choice’ “Lynn” hearing her name the black kitten perked up her ears, “you gotta take one for the team.”

Hearing my words the little cat turned her head and looked at me disbelief; giving a few angry meows she bit one of my fingers and then jumped on top of Sally’s head. Sally on her part was ecstatic and tried to pet the little kitten; however Lynn swiped at her hands with her neatly trimmed claws. Sally paying no mind to Lynn’s behaviour ran off with Jill to play.

Watching the sight of the 2 girls leaving I could only mutter under my breath “sorry Lynn”, about 15 min after the whole debacle Tom emerged from Mr Dolson’s office and made his way over to us.

Gesturing to me and Henry, Tom took the both of us to a small and rustic inn about 3 a min walk from the city gate, upon entering a young girl about Tom’s age (about 14-15) came up to us and took us to a seat, gave us the menu and left telling us to call her when we are ready to order.

“Why did Mr Dolson ask you to come to his office?”(Alfred)

“He just wanted to ask me about my plans for the future.”(Tom)

The orphanage, can house children till the age of 15 (the age at which you are considered an adult in this world) after that you are on your own.

“So, what did you decide?”(Henry)

“I’m going to be a chef; I mean I already got an apprenticeship lined up.”(Tom)

“Where?”(Alfred)

“At this inn, starting from next week; but enough about me do you guy know why I called you 2 here?”

Henry and I look at each other and reply simultaneously “for a fight”, seeing both of understand the reason Tom nods and continues explaining the details, apparently this inn is being harassed by a bunch of thugs every other day, so Tom wants to repay their favour for taking him in by solving this problem of theirs.

“How many?”(Alfred)

“Usually 5 but sometimes 4.”(Tom)

Thinking about this for a second I replied to him it would be difficult to know right now for sure but I’ll know after seeing them.

“I’ll respond in code when I see them?”(Alfred) 

“Got it, and thanks both of you.”(Tom)

After discussing this in a quiet little corner of the inn, we 3 gave the waitress our order. While waiting around for the food I looked around the inn to gauge its atmosphere, while looking around I seemed to notice the waitress kept glancing at our table 'maybe she just wants to see who Tom’s friends were?’.

About 10 min later the food arrived and after eating we paid and left, about 10 min from the inn us 3 entered into a small toy store and bought 3 monster masks, a yo-yo like contraption and some other toys; leaving the store we went to another store about 5 min from the 1^st there we bought cloths for Tom as well as 3 raincoats for us three.

Now that the preparations were complete Tom took us to the south west side of the town, Wellrest’s south side is known to be a place filled with illicit activities, however the these things generate a lot of revenue for the local lord that is why the authorities turn a blind eye to them, while the west side is a considerable less shady area it was the place the less fortunate lived, the part of town at the intersection of those 2 was the slums.

Before entering the slums us 3 had not only put on our rain coats and masks but also had covered ourselves with mud making it seem we had just came from playing, we circled around the alley way which connected the leading to a part of the slums those thugs lived at and the west of Wellrest.

About 2 hrs. later the 5 thugs (about 25y or so) appeared in the alley way, looking at the 5 of them I realised that this was gonna be easy, looking at my 2 accomplices and nodding we put the plan into motion.

“And I said to that little shit there is only 1 of you and 4 of us, are you sure you wanna fight?”

Turning my head towards the 5 goons I hid my right hand and muttered under my breath “rock” with that a pebble similar to one used to skip stones appeared in my hand, I playfully gestured to the other 2 as I continued the made up story and went a little forward than them, and muttered “haste, accelerate” and finally in low voice said “ḀḎṑṈḮ(POWER)”, with that it was show time.

I quickly hurled the stone at the thug on the far left but not before muttering “accuracy”, as I threw the stone I felt a gentle force guiding my movement and making my aim strike true.

The stone hit the thug on the head near his eye, after which a small stream of blood spurted out as he fell, at the same time I had charged towards the one that was to the right of the previous one, covering a distance of 20 metres in less than a second and delivered a straight kick to his stomach as he went flying about 15-20 metres.

By the time it was the turn of the next guy the 3^rd thug had already punched at me, ducking underneath his punch I delivered a sidekick to his knee, but missed and insisted hit his shin which to his horror turned 90 degrees sideways; not paying attention to his screams I pushed the guy knocking him off balance and causing him to fall. Looking at the remaining 2 guys they seemed to shocked, a second later one of the guys gained a little courage and threw a punch at me which was easily dodged, while the last guy was shaking in his boots. Deciding to leave him to the others; I charged at the brave soul dodging his feeble kick as he tried to distance himself from me, I grabbed him by the waist and lifted him and ran about 10 metres and slammed him into the ground. Climbing on top of him I tried to punch but as he kept clawing at me it became difficult, grabbing both of his arms I twisted them till I heard a *pop* followed by a *crack*.

Still writhing beneath me the bastard seemed to be getting more annoying by the second, having enough I pinned his hands with one of mine and slammed his against the ground with other, because of the awkward position I couldn’t generate enough force but it still seemed to make his resistance a lot more passive, with the other hand I closed his nose and mouth and used my thumb to keep his jaw closed, after another 50 seconds of his writhing he seemed to fell silent, but just too sure kept my hand over his mouth for over 1 more min.

Looking over at the last guy I happened to see Henry on top of him pummelling the dude in the face as Tom was off to the side kicking him in the head. I stood up checked the damage I had caused, “sight”

The stone had pierced the guy’s eye, rendering him completely blind in that one, the guy I kicked had a shattered pelvis, the other guy had his leg completely mutilated, maybe he won’t walk  properly again on the other hand the other 2 only had minor injuries comparatively speaking (2 broken arms along with a concussion and a broken nose a long with a concussion).

I told the other 2 to move in a low voice, we moved to nearby alley way and threw away our masks, moving towards the central square while taking of our raincoats while chatting nonsense, we slowly blended into the crowds split up and went to different shops bought different cloths, changed into them and headed back to the church.

Upon reaching the church we went over the whole operation as Harold (he is a knights Templar candidate) had taught us, at one point we realised something “we forgot to tell them why we were doing this.”

fin