The Tale of Venolia:

CHAPTER 2: The Island.

The three entered on further through the land, into a forest. They continued to walk deeper into it, hoping to find civilisation somewhere.

“Hold on, stop.” said Kayfir, as he abruptly came to a halt. “Something’s wrong. This isn’t the way to town, I can feel it. We’re just going deeper into the forest.” The forest was very dark at this point, but Kayfir knew that if they continued to travel this way, then they’d just be going further away from any kind of civilisation. Jasire and Baron stopped, and looked at him.

“Hmm, well…if your instincts tell you that, then we’ll head in a different direction.” said Jasire. He didn’t really have much of a say in anything, because he doesn’t have as much talent and skill with nature as Kayfir and Baron do. All that he is good at is with a sword and shield.

“Wait…why don’t we split up?” said Baron, in a low tone. His voice was always low and rough. In fact, all the axemen and halberd men had the same type of voice, somehow.

“We could get lost…again.” said Jasire.

“Maybe.” said Baron. “But wouldn’t it be better for one man to find a village or town, than for all three of us to get lost?

“Well, actually” Kayfir replied. “Wouldn’t it be better for all three of us to find civilised land than one of us? Also, wouldn’t it be better for all three of us to get lost in the same place, than for all three of us to get lost in three different places?” The three men discussed and pondered on this, and eventually came to a decision. Their decision was to split up. Kayfir didn’t approve, but he went with it anyway. It’s better for him to agree than to disagree and cause conflict between them all.

Jasire went to the left, Kayfir went to the right, and Baron went forward. They were all still going forward anyway, but just in slight different directions, so that if one gets into trouble, then he could go and quickly find the other two.

As Jasire was walking, he stopped, and pulled out a piece of paper and a quill, along with a small bottle of ink. He wrote a short letter, saying that he was on a small island covered with trees, found in the middle of the ocean. He also wrote more in this letter, and then he turned completely around and headed back to shore, where they were all before.
He found the whereabouts of the small boat that he owned. It was tipped up sideways on the sandy grass, and he put the message he wrote in a bottle, swam out eleven metres into the ocean, and sat the bottle on the top of the water. He watched it sway further out, and he knew that soon it would reach Venolia. The wind was picking up the water with the bottle on it, and Jasire was slowly moving further away from the land, so he quickly swam back out the shore again. When he was back at the island, he looked out into the ocean. The bottle has been drifted so far out; he could barely see it anymore. He looked out and couldn’t see any other islands.

“Gee, I do hope it gets to Venolia quickly.” He said to himself. He then turned back around and went back in the forest, to catch up with the others.

Kayfir and Baron were walking further on into the forest. They were just metres away from each other. They couldn’t tell whether the sky was getting darker, or if it was just the tall canopy of trees covering the sun from them. The two met up at one point, and continued walking on. Then the forest began to get lighter. They thought that they were getting close to some sort of town, village or even a city.
They came to the place, but it wasn’t to their expectations. They came to a huge opening where the grass was brown and burned. Trees were burned down, houses were burned down, and they saw spears lying on the ground everywhere. They saw a peculiar looking headdress over near a burned down house. It looked like a giant bird’s head, with colourful feathers at the top.

“That looks like it’s from an islander tribe. Stay close, they could be dangerous.” said Kayfir as he ran his hand closer to the hilt of his sword. It was attached to his back, in a scabbard and he was prepared to take his sword out of it. Then, the islanders emerged out from behind the burned ruins.

The islanders saw Kayfir and Baron, and instantly recognised them as invaders.

“There they are…attack!” screamed the tribe. They ran towards the two knights with their spears raised high. They were yelling some sort of tribe chant. There were about three of the islanders in the tribe. Baron pulled out his axe, and Kayfir did the same with his sword. They were both holding their weapons with a tight grip.

“We don’t want to hurt you!” yelled Kayfir.

“But we will use self defence is we have to!” yelled Baron. Kayfir looked at him with his eyes lowered. A man from the tribe threw his spear at Kayfir. He used his sword and chopped it in half- right as it was about to hit him. The tribe gathered around the two and knocked them out with stones. Kayfir and Baron both fell to the ground, as the tribe closed in on them, picking them up and walking to another destination with the two unconscious men…

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