I watched the guards train on the rooftop for a few hours before they found me.
“Hey, kid! You can't be up there, get down!” the guard instructor yelled.
Seeing him waiting below and not wanting to get in trouble, I scrambled up higher to jump to the next roof and run away. But planting my foot in that spot proved to be a mistake as I lost my balance. I slid and tumbled my way off the roof, completely out of control.
“Aaahhh!” I couldn't help but let out a short shout as I plummeted through the air.
“Ooph” the guard let out a grunt as he caught me in a princess carry.
“And that is why you are not allowed to hop along the roofs young miss.”
Still a little stunned from the fall, I couldn't do anything but blink up at him. His salt and pepper beard was scruffy, a scar over his left eye, and an overall look of a hardened veteran. Yet his eyes showed more concern over my well being rather than anger.
“I noticed you snooping around during training the last week. While I admire your interest in becoming a soldier, you're too young to be hanging around the training ground. You should wait-”
“I don't want to be a soldier,” I said, cutting him off before his lecture could wind up.
Confused, he narrowed his eyes before asking “Then why do you watch our training so closely?”
Looking away from him, I feel my cheeks heating as I answer, “I wanted to see the crossbows.”
“The crossbows?”
I nodded.
“I've never heard of them before and I wanted to see how they work.”
Nonplussed, the guard took a few seconds before responding.
“You're not going to stop sneaking about until you see one up close, are you?”
Grinning, I shook my head. “Nope!”
Sighing audibly, he set me down.
“Come along then, I'd rather have my eye on you and get this over quickly. I'm Verdint, what's your name?”
“Lindra, and yesterday was my eighth turn!” I explained, smiling up at him as we walked.
“Hmm, you're older than you look. If you become an attendant to a soldier or adventurer then you can be allowed access to the training grounds with their supervision.”
“But everyone wants me to do booooring stuff like clean armor or sharpen their swords. I want to draw instead!”
At this point, we reached the crossbow station. As I rushed forward to look at one of them resting on the long table a hand on my shoulder suddenly held me still. I almost fell back due to the sudden lurch.
“You're not going anywhere or touching anything without my express permission, understand?”
The guard sternly told me with a glare.
I nodded my head enthusiastically, still trying to peak at the crossbows.
“Guards! Five spin break!” Verdint shouted.
Various guards put away their weapons, many of them panting and dripping sweat. The majority of them made their way over to the water bucket. More importantly, they walked away from the firing range, leaving the beautiful contraptions before me.
Walking up to the table together, I made sure to keep my hands at my side, lest the opportunity be taken away from me. Finally, Verdint picked up the crossbow.
“This is one of Parvik's newest inventions. A crossbow shoots arrows similar to a bow, but the biggest difference is not in the result, but who can use it. A bowman needs to train for years to be able to effective in battle. Yet with the crossbow, this training can be reduced to a few months. The key difference is that the crossbow locks the arrow in place and the archer can fire whenever he needs to, allowing him-.”
“Or her!”
“Yes, or her. Allowing her to more effectively aim or move without sacrificing accuracy. This holding mechanism also reduces muscle strain because the archer does not need to hold the arrow back. Now watch.”
Placing a bolt into the crossbow through the top, he pulled back on the string, and the arrow locked in place. He then pointed the crossbow towards the ground and even upside down.
“As you can see, I can manipulate and turn it however I want. Until I'm ready to fire.” Snapping it towards the hay target down the range, he pulled the trigger and the arrow raced straight into the bullseye.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“The only downside is the decreased fire rate compared to a well-trained bowman and the increased production time to make a crossbow.”
“That was awesome, can I try? Can I?”
Chuckling, he assented. Jumping forward, I picked up one of the crossbows and my arms strained under its weight. When I tried to load the arrow I couldn't stretch the string halfway back. I heard laughing behind me.
Stupid man with his grown-up muscles, I thought. Placing the crossbow tip on the ground, I braced my feet against it and pulled with my whole body. Straining as hard as I could, I almost closed the distance to the lock notch. Just a bit more…
There!
“Wait, I didn't think you could actually-”
Before he could stop me I imitated his action, snapping towards the target and firing. The recoil tried to jerk the crossbow out of my hands. Well, I almost hit the target. Instead, I hit the wall behind it. My disappointment only compounded with what Verdint said next.
“I told you not to do anything without my permission. Come along now, you saw the crossbow and even got a chance to fire it.” He took my shoulder and started walking me to the exit.
“But you said I could try it, I didn't do anything wrong.”
“I said that because I thought you couldn't pull it back. Once you managed to do so, I informed you to cease your actions and you did not. Now come back when you're older or as an attendant.”
With that final remark, the gate to the training grounds slammed in my face.
----------------------------------------
Two weeks later and I heard that the guards received another new device that supposedly launched giant nets. The next day I clambered back up my trusty roof, taking extra care to place my feet on secure spots. I won’t be made a fool of again!
“Kid, I thought I told you to stop climbing roofs!”
Oh no, Verdint stood below shouting up at me again. Where did he even come from? A moment ago no one was nearby.
“I want to draw the net throwers,” I told him with a smile. Maybe he’ll let me see them again?
“Well, I am not letting you see one this time since inspecting the crossbow obviously did not deter you from returning.”
“Hmph.” Frowning, I crossed my arms and ignored him. If he was going to be a meany like that I will just watch from up here then. Someone as big as he would fall through the roof if he tried to climb up.
As I watched the training area in front of me, suddenly his grinning face interrupted my view.
How?...
But then at the peak of his jump, he lifted me up and slung me over his shoulder. Then we fell to the ground before I realized what happened.
“You’re going to have to try harder than that to avoid capture against an ex-adventurer little miss.” He said as he gently set me down in front of him.
“How did you jump so high?!” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice or off my face.
“What do you know about energy?”
“Energy is why all the evil dungeons eat us right? They want our energy.”
“While that’s true, I meant to ask if you knew how humans and adventurers can use energy.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head.
“Well, in order to combat the horde of dungeons, adventurers discovered a way to use dungeon’s collection of energy against them. Using a dungeon core a normal person can begin the path to becoming a true adventurer, more powerful than any human or sentient race. They create an adventurer core. This allows them to absorb energy from dungeon constructs like a dungeon does to us. Then we can use that excess energy to make our bodies stronger, tougher, and even cast magic. As an ex-adventurer, my legs have increased strength allowing me to jump to the top of the roof you were on.”
“Wow! Why hasn’t anyone told me before?” This guard was so cool! Even though he kept shooing me away.
“Exactly because of the look in your eyes right now. There is a law against telling children who are too young, before age eight to be exact. Prior to the law, too many children grew up dreaming of becoming an adventurer and dying young on their very first dungeon dive. Dungeons are extremely dangerous and brutal places. We can’t afford to let so many youths throw away their lives in chase of glory.”
As he finished his warning his face grew dark with sorrow like I’ve never seen before. I could tell there must be a story behind that expression. He looked so sad, I wanted to cheer him up.
“Don’t worry mister, adventurers are cool but I want to draw instead!” I told him with a smile.
“Oh is that so? You keep mentioning drawing, do you have any that I could see?” He said with a still tense but significantly happier face.
“Yup.”
Reaching into my bag, I pulled out my drawings of the crossbows that I made in the past few weeks and handed them to him. As he began to look through them he started making all these funny looking faces.
“What’s wrong, are they bad?” I asked with disappointment in my voice. I worked so hard on them to make sure everything fit to scale and would work properly. Maybe I should have found a way to make a prototype, but no one wants to give a bunch of sharp carving tools to a little girl. They all tell me to go learn to sew or something.
“Did you really draw all of these? No one made them for you?” He asked quietly.
“Of course, they wouldn’t be my drawings if someone else made them,” I replied with annoyance. First, he insults my drawings, now he doesn’t think I made them. Stupid man.
“These aren’t drawings, these are blueprints that look exactly like the crossbow I showed you the other day, you realize this, correct?”
“Yeah, so? That’s how I like to draw. I made some different ones if you look towards the back of the pile.” Wow, could he get any ruder?
After looking at my drawings of better crossbows for a while and muttering to himself, he finally looked up again.
“What is this box and lever you put on the top of this one?”
“The box hold the arrows that fall into the slot to be shot next and the lever makes pulling back the string faster. Last time you said that crossbows fired too slow, right?”
I don’t understand why he’s acting so odd about my pictures. He looked at that last picture for extra time.
“Do you mind if I show these to Parvik?”
“Those are mine, you can’t take them!” I exclaim, no way am I letting him take my precious drawings away from me.
“I promise to give them back to you next week. In return, I will let you see the net throwers.” With a smile on his face, he knew I would agree.
For a full spin I pretended to consider his deal.
“You better not damage them.” I agreed. Of course I would, I could draw all kinds of new things after seeing how the net throwers worked.