Rastlin was searching for some place to sleep for the night. His parents had died when he was five, but they had been poor so he had already knew how to survive. He was now eight.

He crawled into a old and amazingly unused chest. It didn't even have a lock, so he could close it on top of himself in case it rained, but he discovered that there was something — two things — in it after all. He grabbed the two things and ran to his just-in-case cave and looked around to make sure no one was following him.

The cave wasn't finished — he was actually making it himself with a old pick he had found. It had just enough room to shade him in the day, but not to protect him from storms, so he just used it for storage right now.

He looked at the two things. They were dusty, grimy sheaths. He wiped one and it suddenly started sparkling with zitheyn; it was wonderful. He saw there was a sword hilt — he pulled it out and there was the most amazing sword his eyes had ever seen. It was a complete zitheyn sword, yet both colours of it, the black and the grey-white. He had even made black zitheyn once when his father was alive. You would melt the low-quality zitheyn left over and make it bubble and steam so much that all bad materials would be burnt, but this was better. This was very high-quality. Somehow, both zitheyns were pure, which hadn't been done for many generations. He kept this a deep secret, although he constantly trained with them.

Three years to the day after his birthday, he was training. He was 11 now. Suddenly, the worst thing possible happened.

Some rich, well-trained 18-year-olds from the city came along on a walk to a great training spot that they had discovered the day before, but this was Rastlin's training spot that he had chosen those three years ago on his birthday, when he found the swords. He was training, sheaths polished and on his back and everything.

But when the city boys came up, all they saw was a poor ratty orphan with swords that were worth all the money in the city in their training area. They came up.

'What's a ratty old orphan doing with things that should belong to us, playing with swords in our training area?' they said together.

He stared at them and got into a fighting stance. He beat them up good, but then got outnumbered by their dozens of friends.

Three days later, he woke up in jail. He looked around and suddenly he realised that something in the room was different. Then he realises that the cell door was open, and in a corner were his swords — and not only that, but it was night.

He made it out of the city and silently thanked his mysterious friend.

The Tale of Three Weapons Archive

Josh_Master_of_the_Staff

14.06.07 Front Page

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