Chapter 1 The Lonely Blacksmith

It was a lonely night and the sky was clear , except for the full moon that beamed in it. The serenity and peacefulness of the forest was disturbed by some strange sounds. 

"Thump…Thump...Thump...", Thundering sounds came out of an old house in the top of the mountains. The sound from the building was keeping in bay all the wild animals around it. 

Inside the building an old man was hammering a piece of metal as it came hot out of the forge. Sparks flew each time he hammered the piece of metal, he didn't stop he swung the hammer and it hit the piece perfectly where he wanted it to hit. The fire was burning hot and the man was sweating crazily , but he didn't stop swinging his hammer , neither did his hands waver in exhaustion .

After hours of hammering and reforging , he created a sword which looked as if it could slice anything in the world. The sword glimmered in moonlight and looked as beautiful. But the face of the old man staring at the sword with no joy in his face took away all the joy in the atmosphere.

"Another piece of rubbish to add to the collection", he grabbed the sword by its hilt and swung it twice, gave out a small sigh and brought the sword into a huge room filled with swords and placed it in . 

The swords in there were magnificent and could supply and whole army with weapons , but except for the hundred swords at a certain corner all the others were not pleasing to the blacksmith, yet he kept them because he couldn't throw away his own creation and he loved them anyway.

The blacksmith 's face was wrenched in agony as if he had lost all his will to continue smithing. He looked at the swords and was filled with grief. He was not filled with grief because of the swords, he was filled with grief because he had no one to who he could pass this legacy. The legacy of blacksmithing , the legacy of making weapons and armours, the legacy he had received from his ancestors which was being passed on for more than a thousand years. 

"Jes , I wish you had taken me with you", the old man's eyes started getting teary.

Being in this modern world alone and not relying on technology was hard, but being in your seventy's and having to gather fruits and hunt in the middle of the forest was an extremely difficult situation. But he didn't hesitate to do it , it had been his routine for years. 

The world is not an easy place go live in and its cruelty knew know bounds. Children or the old everyone is the same under law of the nature. 

That day he had gone hunting a bit too deep and had reached a part of an abandoned trail for hikers.

He could feel the stench of blood in the air. The hunter's senses were sharp and he could feel that it was dangerous to go any further. He was about to turn from the path and go towards his home, on his back was a small bag which contained two rabbits which were clearly shot on the head by arrows , he had gained his food for the night and the morning .

But something made him turn back to the trail , he could hear a faint cry. He walked back and He could hear a small cry from the other side of the trail . He slowly made his way towards the noise carefully examining his surroundings . 

The huge paw marks of a bear were near the area and trees. The smell of blood in the air was getting heavier and heavier and finally he saw it and it was a massacre , someone had made their camp in the habitat of a grizzly bear. The camp was torn down, three dead bodies brutally slashed and massacred was found inside it and their bodies were missing parts. The scene was too horrid.

Among the back of these bodies was a small boy who had been slashed at his chest but was still breathing , and a small cry escaped his body every time he breathed , he looked barely alive. The blood on him and around him was dry but not too dry and looked as if the incident happened only this morning.

The old man had seen lots of deaths up close and he knew that the boy wouldn't survive , but he couldn't give up on a kid whom he knew was still breathing and it would haunt him for the remaining years of his life. 

He carefully picked the boy up and placed him on a small broken cover which was not covered with blood. He looked on his body for the wounds , luckily it had missed the vital parts except for a small gash at his chest , but he had lost a lot of blood.

"He can make it ", the old man's eyes lit up with a fire to save the kid. He had to take him to a hospital, if it was a small wound he would have mended it himself , but he knew he wouldn't live if he delayed time . 

He removed the bow which he carried in his back and ditched it along with food he had caught, he had a small sword by his waist he ditched it too , except for a small dagger at his belt , he ditched everything which was heavy and took the kid gently on his hands.

And he slowly rushed out to his house hoping and praying nothing would hinder him and he won't have to face the beast .He made it back without any incident. He had a rusty old bike which he rarely used. He laid the kid gently on the side car which he haphazardly filled with cushions . He started the bike and started moving it the path he very rarely used . The last time he used it was to get his wife some medicine in her death bed.

He tried starting his bike, he knew he had enough fuel, but he hadn't ridden it for the last 5 years. It bickered a bit , but suddenly started up , the old man didn't give it a chance to stop and rushed in full throttle to the nearest hospital which was twelve kilometres away. 

The old man parked it in front of the hospital and carried the kid inside . "Help this child", he cried and a nurse walked in and looked over and quickly ordered for the kid to be carried in a stretcher. 

Three days passed by and the Oldman had spent all that money he had and the boy had regained his consciousness finally after three long days, it was as if he had come back from the dead.