Chapter 18: Attempted Escape

Pinta walked away from the tent in anger. He was completely raging, how could these children have matched him during the interrogation? He was a hardworking man and he was revered by many in Urvallay, and yet now he had been matched by children!? The whole idea of it was inconceivable to a man of his stature. Because of the hatred he felt towards Trip and Alex he had already decided that he would never let them go. Since they were that skilled in speaking and since they were not nervous answering the questions pretty much pointed in the direction that they were spies. He had already decided that he would start torturing them for information.

Meanwhile, Trip and Alex were talking about their situation. Trip had told Alex that he could not reach Grelin. This made both of them nervous. At this point they really needed someone with a lot of experience to help them get out of the situation. Trip did not know whether or not they would actually be let go. He did not know how wars worked so he had no idea what would be done with suspicious people. He also saw how angry Pinta had gotten so he feared the worst.

Alex then whispered to Trip “Hey! I can burn the tent; do you think we can get away then?”

Trip thought about it. Currently they were in a massive, well trained military camp. If they were to just run away then they would have no problem catching them. However, if they sent the tent on fire and used it as a distraction as they ran away then they would have a chance to escape. Alex should be fine in the fire, and Trip could use water in order to make sure that the fire didn’t touch him.

Having come to this conclusion Trip smiled at Alex and said “We strike during the night.”

Alex nodded in agreement, and they spent the rest of the time planning what exactly they would do. The only problem was that they did not know the area surrounding the direct area, since they were unconscious when they were abducted they did not know what was around. They imagined that it was close to the cave, and therefore there should be some trees around. Thus they decided to rush to the trees as fast as possible; this would make it difficult for them to be caught.

After they had thought of a full plan Trip had some questions for Alex. Trip did not know anything about warriors, but he imagined that most of the people were warriors incapable of using magic. Since he did not know much he decided to ask Alex, whom seemed to have a fairly good understanding of the topic.

“Say, Alex. We have several hours until night falls, so can you tell me everything you know about warriors?” Trip asked

Alex looked at Trip and asked “How much do you know already?”

“Nothing.” Trip said

Alex sighed, but he was not surprised. He only knew the things he did because he was rich. He could not expect Trip to know about anything, because Trip was poor and always had been so. After a while of collecting his thought Alex started to speak:

“Warriors are people that have graduated from a warrior school. People become warriors if they don’t have a good enough affinity for magic. This means that warriors cannot rely on talent and instead have to rely on hard work and a good body build. Of course a warrior will never become as strong as a mage, but some of the techniques they learn could match even some intermediate mages. While mages tend to be much stronger to warriors most warriors attempt to make up the strength disparity between mages and warriors by using weapons, the stronger the weapon the stronger the warrior. Most armies use warriors only and use mages as more of a backup force, so all the people here should be warriors. Overall warriors are just normal people who have trained their body to the extreme, so you should actually be able to take most of the people here one-on-one.”

Trip pondered all this information for a while, and then asked “Do you know any warrior techniques?”

Alex looked at Trip blankly. While it was true that he learned several warrior techniques when he was younger, but he barely remembered any of it, and why would Trip need to know any of them? Unwilling to have Trip continue pressing the matter Alex told him that he had no techniques.

The reason why Trip wanted a warrior technique was merely because he was interested in it. He was interested in the fact that someone could push themselves to reach the full limits of the human body. Trip was not afraid of hard work and he was intrigued by the concept of mixing techniques from mages and warriors.

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Time passed, and the sky turned black. Trip and Alex had waited patiently, and now that darkness had overtaken the tent their plan was ready to be put in place. Luckily to them there was no way that any of the soldiers outside could possibly know what was about to happen. Alex looked at Trip, and Trip nodded, signalling Alex to start the operation.

Alex focused and let out all the pent up frustration and emotion he had experienced over the past few weeks releasing a ball of fire. The flame expanded, consuming the entire tent. It looked like a massive bonfire in the middle of the camp. The soldiers could only look in shock at the destructive fire. The soldiers quickly regained their composure and they started to shout for water.

Pinta heard the commotion outside and went to see what was happening. When he saw the tent on fire his rage exploded. He had only just gotten over the rage that he felt from the interrogation, and now that he saw the tent on fire he simply couldn’t take it. 

The instant he saw the tent on fire he knew that the two children had done it, there was no doubt in his mind that those little bastards had done it. He ran towards the tent as quickly as he could. He ran into the tent with no fear of getting burnt. He was an experienced and powerful warrior and mere fire could not burn him. However when he looked inside Trip and Alex were already gone.

Pinta screamed at the scouts in rage “FIND THOSE BASTARD CHILDREN!”

With pure fear in their eyes the scouts immediately ran into the forest as quick as they could.

At this point Trip and Alex were already very far into the forest. Trip had been able to protect himself from the fire using some water to get rid of the fire in his way. Neither of them had been noticed when they ran away into the forest, this was because even though the tent had been in the middle of the camp all the soldiers had been too distracted to see two small children running around.

At this point Trip was running as fast as they could. Alex was exhausted due to his fire spell so Trip had to carry him. Trip only hoped that nobody had noticed that they had left yet, but he was prepared for combat. He had never fought anyone head on with magic, but Trip had been training water magic for years so if he wasn’t ready now he would never be ready.

As expected several scouts had managed to catch up to the pair. It was clear that their little legs could not outrun the strides of a trained warrior. The scouts sprinted in front of them and blocked them off. Alex was too tired to do anything at this point, meaning that Trip was the only one that could possibly try and fight off the oncoming scouts.

The scouts stood in front of the pair and said “Come on guys, just come back now. Let’s try and not make this any more difficult.”

Trip did not respond but instead decided to let his magic do the talking. He looked towards the 3 scouts in his way and shot several water bullets towards the scouts. The scouts were unprepared as they would never have expected that Trip could use magic, because of this all of the scouts were hit by the water bullets. Even though they were trained warriors it was difficult to compare to the strength of a mage who had already mastered elementary water magic. The scouts were also the weakest of all the warriors so they were completely unable to handle Trip’s attacks.

The scouts all passed out with a bloody nose. Trip quickly went to pick up Alex, but it seemed he had disappeared. Trip stayed calm as he looked around. Suddenly he heard a voice from a couple of meters away.

“Come with me or I’ll slit his throat.” A man’s voice said

Trip looked over and saw that this man was a scout that had been slightly later to arrive than the others, and now he saw an exhausted Alex having a knife held against his throat. Rage filled Trip, but he did not know what to do. Within a couple of seconds even more warriors had arrived, including Pinta.

Pinta then looked at Trip and said “What are you going to do now, Gregory?”