A Rainy Saturday's Target Practice

[DoS Archive]

From: novashayde@aol.com (NovaShayde)
Date: 24 Oct 1998 14:12:45 EDT

It was well past noon and the correspondence boards were already peppered with glittering red arrows. A rainy Saturday had reduced him to this: using the message boards in the basement of the Red Dragon Inn for target practice. He hates the rain, you know... he used to love it as a child, but ever since the siege of SuhnSong... he shudders to even think about it. The rain takes him back. In his mind's eye he could
see the spear plunge into Grey Shadow again... he could still smell the ozone that hung heavily in the air, feel the electricity. He never imagined he could use his powers like that.
He glanced down at his bow, a strong weapon to say the least. Mostly metal composite, crimson and black... his colors. The metal string, barbed and taut, still had a glittering red arrow notched to it. He lifted the bow up, examining the arrow, composed of sparkling red starlight... this, he had always thought, was the limits of his powers. Arrows. Deadly weapons, for sure... but nothing spectacular. Now he knew different and the prospect of
it scared the hell out of him.
Shaking off his somber thoughts, he looked back at the message boards, narrowing his flat and colorless eyes, he sought out a suitable target.
"Missed one from that Council argument," he mumbled to himself, obviously displeased at his lack of observance. He took two steps back before turning his back to the boards. With a quick movement, he spun on his heel, the starlight arrow leaping from his bow to punch home into the offending post, dotting an 'i' just perfectly. He smiled to himself, obviously pleased. As he stood there, smug and a bit more than happy with his work, another arrow
coalesced notched to the barbed bowstring.
With that, he turned again, leaping onto a table top, spinning unsteadily on the wobbly fixture and firing the newly formed arrow. The arrow sliced through the air to punch home just below an overly articulate signature. With an exasperated sigh, he threw his bow down to the ground and extended his arms toward the board in frustration, his palms up toward the ceiling as if he were pleading with Lady Luck to give him a break.
"Aw, come on! It moved!" he yelled to no one but himself as he jumped down from the table. "Re-do, re-do... you're not allowed to move," he told the lifeless piece of paper as he moved toward it, waving his finger at it in a chastising manner.
The sound of the door opening in the empty Arena made him jump. Immediately he moved to the boards, pulling the arrows out as quickly as he could. With the last of them removed, he crushed them in his hands, each and every one of them shattering in a small burst of twinkling red starlight. With that done, he kicked his bow under a table before turning to lean against the boards, assuming an "I didn't just punch a lot of holes in the messages,
making them practically unreadable because it's raining and I'm bored so I used them for target practice" stance and expression.
His eyes drifted up toward the doors, prepared to give a greeting to the newcomer. No one there. Must have been an acoustic trick... high ceilings will do that in old buildings. Too much structural settling.
He bent at the waist to retrieve his bow from under a table, as he lifted it, from his line of sight, upside down as it was, he saw two pairs of feet shuffling around inside the ring nearest to the boards. He blinked once and stood bolt upright to see two figures facing each other in the ring. One hefted their blade to strike out, the other smoothly blocking it and returning with a dizzying reposite that sent his opponent reeling back. Nova Red
Arrow blinked once, then twice. The figures continued their dance, blades flashing and slashing through the air... there was no sound when their blades met... no grunts of pain when thrusts found their marks. Everything was silent.
The eldritch figures continued on, their images were ephemeral... ghostly. His heart began beating a mile a minute... never before had he seen ghosts. The unknown had always frightened him. And he knew these were most certainly ghosts.
Voices from behind made him jump. It wasn't so much what they said, for he couldn't quite make it out, his brain was moving far too fast to comprehend, but it was just the sound that broke the silence. He spun on his heel to come face to face with... no one. The sounds of blades crashing spun him in the opposite direction, but the dueling spirits were gone. Happy laughter rang out to his right, his eyes were wide and disbelieving now, his heart
seeking to explode from him chest. A small group of people chattered to his left... he could make out four distinct voices and another that seemed to be a whispering murmur. He couldn't tell what they were saying. More laughter, light and lilting... from a woman this time. Blades rang out ahead of him.
Nova Red Arrow was never truly one to panic... but, faced with the prospect of the dead rising, the past haunting... he was several rungs above panic. Blades clashed again and again... one would think a war were occuring. But no, the laughter and busy conversations said otherwise. But there were no bodies to put to the voices. No swords to put to the ringing. He heard the whisper of metal sliding from leather to his left. An arrow immediately
appeared notched to his bow.
"Duel well," an unfamiliar voice said.
"Skill and honor," came another... this one he recognized. A voice from his past. From that rainy night in SuhnSong. A man that gave his life...
Something brushed across his back.
"Are you going to stay and watch?" a female voice said, if he didn't know better, he'd swear it was directed at him.
It was all he needed. Without a moment's pause, he ran toward the stairs, taking them three... four at a time as the swords clanged and the disembodied voices continued their casual conversations. He felt his right side collide with something heavy as he neared the landing, but it was of no concern to him. He burst through the basement door, practically taking it off its hinges and rolled into the Red Dragon Inn, the usual crowd of misfits and
godlike delusionals staring oddly at him.
With as much dignity as he could muster, he got to his feet and slung his bow over his shoulder, making his way up the stairs to his room above the Inn to collect his belongings. He'd rather stay the night under a tree than in a place such as this.

Down below... the Arena was dead silent once more.