Meeting 23

"Hold the bow around the middle, not the bottom. This bow should have a little marking on the string to tell you where the middle is. Make sure the arrow goes through the arrow rest, that's the little groove there. Yup, and place your feet like this so that your body can aim it." she led him through the entire process and she taught him so well he was able to get consistent bullseye within half an hour.

Page walked over to the large pile of magnets with Tatio, remembering to put anything magnetic into his spatial pocket, and tried molding the metal. It was moving, but very slowly and he was quickly burnt out from trying to use so much force and mana.

"I don't think I can do this. This would take me way too long to mold these, and it would take years to get to the point where I can mold these quickly. Is there anyone who can help?"

"Leardio can. His skills are all about moving and molding these metals, but were still not sure when he'll wake up."

"Is there anything we can do to help?"

"Maybe help us hunt animals? All the foods we get are red mini cacti and gamey camels. They are hard to eat and the only good thing they make is their milk. The cactus actually tastes pretty good though. Just hard to prepare."

"Oh, you need food? My dad gave me a bunch, I can share." he pulled out the plate of meat his dad gave him, offering it to him.

"Are you sure? This-this looks...so amazing." Tatio kept staring at the plate of brown, red meat.

"Yeah, my dad said he and Zeeth over there cooked it together." they looked over at Zeeth trying to hold a bow at a target. The arrow slipped, flying to the left, and hit someone who was trying to escape from another arrow from a friend on their buttcheek. He kept apologizing and tried to help but the elf simply pulled the arrow out, had Leia heal his wound, and walked away with Zeeth still apologizing.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, unfortunate timing. Wait, what kind of metals can Leardio control?"

"All kinds. He has the easiest time moving his own magnets, but he can twist and bend many other kinds as well if he wants to. Nothing too hard though, he can't bend any Fluctu Pearls or anything."

"Even metals deep underground?"

"Yes, he has a skill that can pull metals to him. Why?"

"I know what happened now! Zeeth!! We need to talk in private."

"What's up?"

They walked over to another part near the magnets and once they knew no one could hear them, Page whispered, "I know why the town wasn't so destroyed in my past. Leardio went to Jarlon to stop the Tentacon from destroying it, that's why there was so much more destruction and that's why this place was fine back then. Whoever it was that fought this guy didn't just want to take over the place, I think they wanted to test out their abilities or just to fight someone strong. Or maybe they did want to take over and there was almost no destruction because there wasn't much of a fight. He was probably a lot stronger than everyone else here without Leardio. That makes this guy very strong, Leardio is an A rank hunter."

"I want to meet him."

"Yeah, we should. We can ask him what he wants, but we should get closer to everyone here first. I'll make those cannons with Tatio, the chief and you train with the bow."

"Don't you want to practice shooting arrows too?"

"Oh, I got plenty of practice back then. It wasn't from these guys since I never even knew they were elves, but from somewhere nonetheless. Okay, let's get back to our things and eventually ill talk him into letting us meet the culprit. I would expect tight security around the guy."

"Okay, I'll keep practicing. I'm getting the hang of the bow and arrow."

"Alright, just don't shoot someone in the butt again."

Zeeth felt his face turn a slight pink and said, "you saw that?! That was bad timing, I was getting consistent bullseyes earlier, I'm getting good at this!"

"I know, buddy."

They both went back to do their own things, Zeeth shooting arrows and Page talking with Tatio.

"Hey, how about we get those cannons made, huh?"

"Nah, let's do that later." the meat Page gifted them had clearly lifted his spirits and made him want to push the work back to later.

By late afternoon the entire plate of meat had been passed around and finished by all the elves. The elves brought out some white wine, a milky white drink that intoxicated them easily, and many of the elves were drunk within an hour.

Due to their elven genetics, they weren't drunk for long, just happy afterward.

"Hey, Tatio, you are like, sooo old and wrinkly, hehe." The same couldn't be said about Page and Zeeth. Although it didn't take long for them to sober up, the elves drew the alcohol away from their body and instantly cured it for them.

Night came around, Zeeth and Page ready to leave. Before they went Page asked, "Tatio, you know the guy who fought Leardio? Who is he? He's gotta be pretty strong to fight Leardio to this state."

"He said his name was 23. He's a little white boy. Skinny and a little short. Skin a lot like yours, his hair was white and spiky. We think he turned his hair and the tips of his nails steel. You can meet him if you like. We have him tied up near the walls. We're trying to make him turn the magnets back to steel, that way we can at least work with it but he's not budging no matter how hard we hit him against the wall. What a pain in the ass, he caused all this and won't even help."

"Sure, we would love to meet him. We wanna know what he's like."

They walked to the center of the village where 23 was tied to the tip of a large, wooden pole that was standing on a massive, curved boulder stuck in the ground. The wooden stick wasn't stuck into the boulder, it was simply sitting on top of it so it kept teetering over, swinging back and forth but never actually falling.

"23 is tied to the judgment stick. The stick will never actually fall off the boulder, but he doesn't know that so he is always fearing that we will drop him. We will take him down soon to use as bait when we go hunting. Do what you want with him, we don't care."

"That's harsh, using him as bait like that. Do you even feed him?"

"Feed him? HA, he tried to destroy us, why would we do him such an honor? At best the kids in the neighborhood toss him a few cows toes or pigs livers if they don't want it. This is one of our worst punishments, reserved only for people as terrible as him. Please don't think of us as such bad people, we don't do this very often."

Their eyes never left the swaying pole with the man on it. 23 tried looking over at them but he seemed too weak and nauseated to even turn his head. Only his pupils looked over as his cracked mouth tried to move and hoarsely mutter, "Liver? Help."

"Ugh, that's nasty. He wants a liver?"

"What else does he got? It's apparently the only food he's getting. And it's not even that often."

"Chief, you need to see this." Hesl rushed in with a red face, although that didn't mean much, it could've been the sand, and spoke hurriedly to Tatio, "It's serious."

Tatio noticed the urgent look in his eyes and knew it was something big and told Zeeth and Page, "this seems to be important, you two can stay here and watch him." he rushed to Hesl and whispered, "Hesl, what is it? Can you stay here and let someone else inform me? I need someone to watch these two."

"Yes, chief, I will watch them."

"Good. make sure they don't get to close or try to free him. If they do, shoot up the signal."

"Yes, sir. Leia outside can help."

Zeeth and Page were trying to predict where the stick would go next and they found they had a pretty good chance of getting it right. "I think it'll go left next. Oh, it did!"

"And then to the front. It worked again! Now to the back. Awe, man it went to the left."

Zeeth felt a little bad playing a game with someone suffering from it and wanted to help, "I feel bad for him, I kinda wanna feed him something. Look at his ribs, they're popping out so much."

"Yeah, I know it looks bad but we can't. He is a prisoner of Tatio and you heard him. He did some terrible stuff. We can't afford to piss him off either, he's a pretty powerful man."

"No… no." 23 kept muttering words from his wrinkly mouth. His face was pale and the ground seemed to be splattered with his throw up from swaying so much. Like Tatio had said, the tips of his fingernails were shining with a steely glint just like his hair. From what they could see, even some part of his teeth was steel.

"Hesl, what's the emergency? What's going on out there?"