§hard awoke to the warm and pleasant glow of sunrise, feeling quite rested after his amazingly peaceful and comfortable sleep in the woods. He crawled out of his little tent, stood up, and stretched, yawning. He loved the morning. The world always looked so much more pleasing, innocent, and colorful in the morning. Night was a horrible blackness with only the cold, monochrome glow of the moon, an unnatural quiet (or the annoying, incessant chirping of crickets), and filled with prowling beasts. And the ground was always so hard and uncomfortable to sleep on, but luckily §hard had recently bought a small blanket to sleep on that cushioned the ground a little.

§hard put the blanket in his backpack and strapped the small tent onto the backpack, then started to walk through the forest, still a little sleepy. He was pretty sure there was a village nearby, just a few hours' walk away, so started to go in its' general direction.

***************

After a few hours, he could hear the sounds of the village nearby, a little further north from the sound of it. He changed his course and walked towards the sounds of the village. Another five minutes later and he found it. There were people selling their wares in the marketplace and people going about, carrying their goods to and from the marketplace. Kids played on the grass, wrestling, playing tag, and other games. People sat on their porches and chatted, smiths began to hammer out their wares. It was a little larger and busier than he had thought; it must have grown over the past two or three years. A few people eyed him suspiciously as he entered the village, noticing the sheathed sword at his back.

He walked into the marketplace and looked around for some food vendors. He was tired of having to waste his sword's mana tossing little fireballs at game in order to eat. He found a vendor advertising his fresh apples, pears, and other fruits. §hard walked up to the booth and asked "Excuse me sir, but how much would it cost me for, say, half a dozen apples, and two pears?"

The vendor glanced at the sword on §hard's back, then replied "Three silver, sir...if you don't have a problem with that..."

§hard pulled a few coins from his tiny money pouch and handed them to the man, thinking that he would have to get some work soon if was going to be buying any more supplies after today. "Of course not sir... And I assure you, my blade is only for protection...travelling for days in the wilderness isn't safe, ya know..." he added.

The vendor handed him a small sack with his purchase in it, then §hard left the booth to look for another. He needed to refill his two waterskins, since there isn't a river or lake nearby. He looked around and found the town well, then set about filling his two canteens. After that he went back to the marketplace to get a few miscellaneous things. After restocking his supplies for another week of travel, he walked up to a man that looked to be a guard, and asked him where the nearest town to the north or east was. The guard told him that one of the nearest towns is a few days' walk to the east, and told him to be on his way; the townspeople apparently didn't like strangers with weapons walking about in their village. So §hard began to walk off in the direction of the town the guard mentioned.

As he got further and further from the village, he began to think, 'Dang, I really need to get a horse... I travel way too much, and my feet are starting to get sore after only an hour's worth of walking... I think I'll look into getting a steed when I reach the next village.'

The next day, just before continuing his walk to the village, he remembered his quest...he almost forgot about it over the past two weeks, being so focused on just getting the next village, resting and resupplying, then leaving again. He had to continue his quest soon, hunt down /\/ecronis, and kill the vile necromancer. He owed it to his friends and all the others who had died because of the necromancer, to those whose graves /\/ecronis had desicrated and pillaged for corpses to add to his undead army, and to himself, for his death at the hands of /\/ecronis. And his quest was the only reason the mysterious being called Myste had ressurected him, sent him to train with master warriors, and had given §hard his mystic blade.

However, he couldn't hunt down and slay /\/ecronis if he starved to death first, or if he tried to track /\/ecronis on foot....no, /\/ecronis surely uses magic to wisk him from location to location, so §hard could probably never reach him on foot... First, §hard would buy himself a horse, then, he'd go and earn enough money to last him for a few months, and then he would be able to continue his quest.

~ /\/\ist Phantom ~
§hard, Sword Mage
/\/ecronis, Lord of the Undead, 2nd-in-cmd, Many Shadows
Traug, Troll Mage