Archery

"That was dangerous."

"Wait, I have a new plan. Use this north magnetic metal and create a smallholder in the back so you can put the ball there and when the back is closed shut, the south will connect with the north, the ball will enter through and shoot out."

"Thanks, Tatio."

The entire thing took about an hour to make a fully working, magnet powered cannon.

"Great! This kills two birds with one stone, we can replenish our defenses while using these things!. We just can't use spears with it."

"We can, they just gotta use same poled spears and you can use the magnetic fields to speed it up."

"You're right, a true genius. Let us get this to my people, I'm sure they will be delighted at this plan."

"But we have just one problem. It took all this time just to make one tiny model and I only know of myself who can mold this, how long will this take? I'm not even that strong, it will take ages and we don't have that kind of time."

"Oh, don't worry my child. My daughter and my other son can help with that, they are the main fixers of the village right now, they have moved most of the magnets out of the village and to the walls."

"Why, what are their skills?"

"Oh, not skills. They both got talents, one to harness the lava and one that can motivate workers."

"What do you mean motivation?"

"She can make anyone she touches motivated to work for hours. It's like an adrenaline rush.

"That is so impressive! Control of lava and motivation. And one to make magnets, what luck."

"Thank you. Well, let's start, shall we? My children should be right behind this building, let's go." he led them to the back of the darkroom, back out into the world, where the sun was still setting. The sky was turning a light purple, the wide sun just over the horizon. He walked a bit and waved his hands in the air. The front of him waved a bit and revealed a small tent covered in strange red markings. He opened the front flap, allowing Zeeth and Page to look inside and see a buff man laying on the bed, a girl and a boy on either side and an old lady near his head, holding a small orb to his forehead.

"These are my children, Leia and Loren. The one on the bed is Leardio. And the one tending to him is our village healer and our psychic and my beautiful wife, Alba. She doesn't talk much, but her healing and predictions are the blood and veins of this village. she is so much more incredible than me, without her we would be dead long ago. "

"Nice to meet you, Leia, Loren, Alba. I'm Page and this is Zeeth." Page shook Leia and Loren's rough hands, but he didn't bother Alba, she seemed too focused on her healing.

"Oh, you guys are the people we met at the front."

"Yes, they are our daytime village guards. Please, let us all leave Alba to allow her to focus. She is starting another treatment session, she says in another three days, he should be up. Follow us, we can show you our village, I think you would be surprised." He had all of them, Leia and Loren included, leave the tent for Alba to focus on healing him.

They walked around the tent, even further in and Leia seemed to have some concerns, "father, this part of the village is our part. Are you sure travelers should be here?"

"Yes, don't worry, Leia. It is alright to show them. Page is the son of Tarud, lets show him some hospitality." he said 'hospitality' with a hiss and a gleam in his eye as he looked into the eye sockets of the masks that his daughter and son were wearing.

Leia gulped and said, "Yes, father."

Although, neither Zeeth nor Page noticed as they were staring at the people all around, firing arrows and swinging bows around. One of them jumped, made a full summersault midair, and shot an arrow at Zeeth. His slime caught it just in time and he replaced it with water and dropped the arrow so they wouldn't notice a slime had caught it for him.

"Oh, I am terribly sorry, this is considered a free-fire zone, anyone that comes in here should know that they are giving consent to be attacked at any time, this is how we train our people and have fun." he then turned to everyone there and shouted, "THESE ARE VISITORS, SHOW HOSPITALITY!" his voice seemed to be magically enhanced since it had echoed through the large space as if speakers were placed everywhere. But that wasn't it, there was a kind of dominance in it that made everyone want to focus on him.

Everyone looked over and it was when they stopped moving that Zeeth noticed their long ears and buff arms. They looked just like the elves in the book his mom read but just a bit meatier and he just blurted out, "Elves!"

Everyone went back to jumping around, careful not to fire at Zeeth and

"Why yes, we are elves. We are a tribe of elves living by the volcanoes."

"You don't have long ears like them."

"When we are not concealed, we like to hide our ears. Humans tend to dislike things from other races when they don't have some kind of cute complexion. We have had a history of discrimination with humans and like to hide our true selves, but we know we can trust you guys. Son of Tarud and friend of the son of Tarud, after all. Come, come, how about we teach you the art of archery? Meanwhile, you can tell me all about the outside world, what is it like? I haven't gone to human places in so long, so much must've changed."

"Yeah, a lot did."

"I get to shoot an arrow?! It seems so fun, thanks!"

"Ah, of course. Our free bows and arrows are over there, the old bows of now retired or amazing archers of our tribe. After surpassing a certain level, many of our elves simply use bows and arrows made of magic. They can be invisible, stronger, faster, and lightweight. Or they could be the old tools of now dead elves. Please, pick your tool. Now, about the outside world, what is it like? I haven't been since the age of self-driving cars, where are you now?"

Zeeth ran ahead to grab a bow and a few arrows. He tried shooting a couple of targets and missed sorely. The first one went up, two feet away from the target. His second went and hit the ground, nowhere near the target, his third shot went a little to the left and narrowly missed an elf jumping by, who seemed to be going into the trajectory of the arrow, but bent out of its way at the last second. He looked at Zeeth excitedly, lifting his bow to fire a friendly shot, but realized it was the foreigner he was warned not to shoot and lowered the bow.

"Sorry, I did not know you were the traveler," he spoke with an accent even deeper than the village chief.

"It's no problem, it was my fault. I just missed, I have no control over this thing."

Zeeth calling the bow a 'thing' seemed to cause a physical twitch in his face as he walked away. 'What's with him?'

He continued to try and shoot arrows at his target, slowly getting the feel of archery as he shot while Page talked to the village chief. "Chief, how do you think we should make these cannons? Round up the metal, or work with what's there?"

"Just call me Tatio. Don't worry, we already have a whole land of these metals, they are actually right over there." he pointed to a massive pile of strange metal chunks and pieces of wood in a corner with a bunch of arrows stuck to them. Many of the sticks had been broken off, evident of their owners trying to pry them off the metal. The elves were staying away from the magnets, afraid to lose more arrows to it.

Loren said to them, "they are a serious pain in the hind for all of us here, we can't even get too close or the magnets pull the arrows away and get stuck so we just leave all that area around it empty. It takes up about a third of the field, how do you humans train out there?"

Zeeth tried studying the elves jumping around, realizing just how bad he was. He thought if he could watch the pros, he could pick up some cool tricks, but the elves constantly jumping around and shooting arrows like the bullets from the magnetic cannon made it really hard to see.

"Would you like some help?" Leia had been watching Zeeth from the corner of her eye, and everything that Zeeth tried to do with his bow and arrows hurt her to watch, it was like a train wreck. His placing was totally wrong and simply seeing him holding the bow like that was hard to watch. How did he even think to hold it like that?

Within this village where bows and arrows had been the main weapon of choice for almost everyone, even children had a ton of experience watching their parents handle bows and arrows, so she was just naturally tuned into this like everyone else around unlike Zeeth, who had no memory of being more than a two-year-old.