Good morning all and welcome to Friday. I hope you are preparing for a lovely weekend. But before we can get there, we have the last day of the work week to go through. So shall we get it started with a good prompt? Excellent, let’s begin.
Oh this was a fun one! Poor Gavin. I am so going to have to work this into a story. Probably not a full book, but just a fun little short story. maybe this weekend I’ll have a go at that, because I really like this. What a great way to start a Friday.
Friday, April 8th: There was no turning back now.
There was no turning back now. The gate clanged shut. Even though he knew it was bolted on the other side, he couldn’t help but grab the handle on his side and shake it. The gate barely shifted in it’as frame.
‘Nope,’ he thought glumly. ‘No going back now.’
He turned away and saw the others had already started to move off. They didn’t have any of the apprehensions he floating through his head.
‘But why would they,’ he thought. ‘They signed up for this.’
As little as he wanted to leave his nice safe world, he didn’t want to leave it by himself. He turned from the barred gate and hurried after the others. They paid him no attention. Galen tagged along a few steps behind, keeping his distance. They looked like any other band of questers to him. In the past year and a half he had seen many such bands come and go and they all seemed to contain the same types of people in them.
There was the hero of course. He was always easy to spot. Most of them had nothing heroic about them, but they were all tall and thought highly of their looks, regardless of anyone else’s opinion. Most of them seemed to spend as much time primping as any of the court ladies.
‘As they are hoping to woo one of the court ladies with their daring deeds I suppose it is to be expected,’ Gavin thought.
The second person always in the band was a warrior. Usually that warrior was from one of the conquered peoples; dwarves and Elves were the most common but many of the other races were present too. Each seemed to have joined the band because they had something to prove. Sometimes it was to prove they were as good as the humans if not better and sometimes it was to prove that they were worthy of some ancient lineage. Dwarves and elves tended to go for the as good as their ancestors angle and from what Gavin could see Finn the Dwarf was no exception.
Gavin remembered how in the hall he listed a long litany of his ancestral heritage. To Gavin he seemed to be related to all of the dwarves kings recorded in the history books. He wasn’t entirely certain how as those kings weren’t related to each other and often had blood feuds that would prevent peaceful family building. Their fractured clans helped aid in their conquering by the humans.
Gavin wasn’t about to point that out. Finn the Dwarf carried a fierce looking double bladed axe that Gavin wanted no part of. The rest of the party was made up of the usual mix. The loyal squire to th brave knight, the young studious cousin who wanted to see more of the world. And of course the cloaked magician.
‘And me,’ Gavin thought glumly. The others were eager for the quest but Gavin had been sent. For a little over a year The king had been calling for those who wanted to go on a noble quest to rescue his daughter from the evil curse the mad sorcerer placed upon her. All of the questers came, promised success and then departed never to be seen again. Gavin was being sent to see where it was the ended up and report back to the king. Gavin was pretty sure they ended up dead and suspected he soon would be as well.
Ten til Midnight 