New chapter this one was fun to make and also a nightmare haha anyway we completed it so here ya go
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Growing up wasn’t easy. I never really fit in with my family I‘ve always been adventurous and loved to climb and move around my mother taught me how to hunt and use a bow. However the rest of my relatives aren’t the same. My father is a noble, living in the capital and while he tries his best to be a dad we can’t see eye to eye. He’s too traditional and he constantly says I should act more like a noble, like my older brother and sisters, of which I have two sisters one one brother. My oldest sister hailed as blessed by the gods and went to become a priestess; my second older sister acts entitled, everyone that's not either family or nobility are treated as if they all her personal slave. Due to my behaviour she also disrespects me a lot, she won’t go too far because we are still family but it’s still hurtful. My older brother is meant to inherit our father’s business and legacy. I have two younger siblings as well. A younger brother and sister they are both a bit adventurous like me; my younger sister more so. She loves hearing stories from mother about great adventurers, while my younger brother has dreams of being a knight.
Recently my father has been trying to restrict me from going out to hunt, even threatening to disown me if I keep going. The only reason he hasn’t already is because mother keeps talking him out of it. She was a hunter before father and her met, after a few years they eventually got married. Therefore she doesn’t hunt as much and thus passed down her hunting gear to me.
Currently our whole family is travelling to a temple near the village mother came from. It was recently reported that the village was burned down by bandits so all of us along with a good number or guards that are travelling to the temple visit the village to pay respects to the dead. We have been travelling for about two weeks and we’re finally entering the the village borders, from here we get down from the carriages and walk through the village looking at all the ruined houses, wondering how many people died or got kidnapped, on my way towards the temple. Leaving most of the guards outside the rest of us go in.
Looking around inside I see the statues of our gods there’s: Burtok; The god of animals and hunting who is seen as a pack of many different animals, Suran; who is represented as a giant dryad is the Goddess of nature and life, Coter; God of water and death is shown to have the upper body of a man and the lower of a giant sea serpent, Genon; the first life is seen as a figure of light and darkness is shown feature and gender-less and has one side painted white with the other painted black and finally Letri; the Goddess of the earth and prosperity is shown as a large Fairy. Walking past the monuments to our deities we head towards Coter’s alter to leave offerings as tribute to letting the dead pass on, we hear movement from behind.
“Looks like you were right Jack they did come here to leave stuff for their damned gods.” [Skinny Human Bandit]
A skinny human chuckled as he walked out from behind one of the altars followed by another smaller fatter human and a dwarf with more humans coming out from behind the other altars blocking our exit forcing us towards the altar of Burtok.
“Heh Heh… See boss I told you they’d come and pay respects, it was just a matter of time.”[Fat Human Bandit]
“Quit yer yappin’ let’s hurry up and get ‘em so we can get outa here.”[Dwarf Bandit]
“He’s right hurry and get them people the faster you go the faster we can sell them and go to the tavern.”[Muscular Bandit Boss 1]
With that said all the bandits slowly started moving forward.
Quickly looking around for some way to escape I spot a bow with a Direwolf head above its grip laying down on the altar. I dash towards it and grab it only to collapse in pain. My mother who sees me quickly runs over to check what’s wrong, she attempts to pull the bow from my hands but is unable to. When she releases my arm a black tattoo appears on my hand and I can only watch in horror as it starts to spiral up my arm behind my back and over my shoulder before morphing into a Direwolf’s head. As I blink through teary eyes and look around I see most of the guards who came in with us are dead, while those on the outside are being held back. My eldest brother is lying on the floor with a sword through his chest, while mother and father try to stand between the bandits and us. As I start to stand up I hear another voice “Hello… Can you hear me? Helllooooooo!”[Unknown Voice]
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Looking around to see who said something, I see no one else reacting to it, I quickly shout. “Where are you?” Now everyone is looking at me. Weird even the bandits have stopped attacking, just to stare at me.
“Hey boss I think she’s gone crazy.” [Fat Human Bandit]
“It doesn’t matter she probably wouldn’t stay sane in the place we’d be selling her too anyway.” [Bandit Boss]
My family seems to surprised too talk, maybe I am just hearing things. “You’re not going insane and don’t talk out loud I’m in your head just shoot at the bad guys.” [Voice In My Head]
“Shoot at them!? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I don’t have any arrow’s.”
“Sure you do. Just pull back on the string. The bow will make the arrow.”
[Voice In My Head]
Deciding to believe what the unknown voice says I pull back the string since the worst that can happen is nothing, and people think I’m crazy again, but in contrary to what I think the bow successfully makes an arrow, blue veins appear on the bow and pulsate before an arrow appears, and the veins fade away, noticing the look of shock on their faces I decide not to waste this chance, fire the arrow it streaks through the air before lodging itself in the Skinny Bandit’s neck. After which I quickly drew the string again which after seeing this, caused everyone to snap out of the stupor and start attacking each other again. I managed to shoot numerous arrows and each time I watched as the blue veins appeared and pulsated. The bandits were quickly running out of help I guessed that their plan was to grab us and use us as hostages to escape without losing many of their own. Suddenly I’m grabbed from behind and a knife placed at my throat.
“STOP!” [Unknown Female Bandit]
“Clear a path and let me leave or I’ll kill her.” [Female Bandit]
“Well done Ruby, with this we ca…” [Bandit Boss]
“SHUT UP! I’m leaving the rest of you can stay here and die for all I care.” [Female Bandit]
Suddenly everyone drops their weapons and is looking at us as if we were monsters. Some bandits even started slowly backing away
“Wh-What the hell are you guys looking at?” [Ruby]
“Ruby be quiet and slowly come towards us. Whatever you do, don’t look behind you.”[Bandit Boss]
“What do you mean don’t look behi… AAAAAHHHHHHH!” [Ruby]
Being pushed forward I look behind me to see what’s wrong, when I see a huge golden Direwolf with her halfway inside its mouth flailing and almost bitten in half looking forwards almost all the bandits are running away while the guards are ushering the rest of my family out as well. While all I could do was watch in horror as the Direwolf threw the body of the bandit to the side and started walking towards me; I closed my eyes and waited for death but nothing happened. After about 20 seconds of having my eyes closed I opened them to see the Direwolf’s face directly in front of mine just as I was about to back away the wolf started to go transparent before being pulled into the bow I still had gripped tightly in my hand.
Walking out from the temple my family rush to me asking if I’m ok and what happened with the Direwolf. I told them I was fine and that it ran off with the body of the bandit, After got some distance from everyone I tried talking to the person in my head again.” Hey thanks for helping me. Where are you really anyway”
“Me you’re holding me, I’m the bow.” [Talking Bow]
“WHAT!?” and now people are looking at me like I’m crazy again.”