Kid and Crossbow

Lou has achieved unparalleled success this summer. In a season he rose through the ranks and was considered one of the best marksman there ever were. Many came before him, none had his combination of age and aim. Later, when firearms are introduced, people will reflect on how ahead of his time he was.

That day is afar off.

Right now, the young master prepares to step away from his acclaim. Not because he wants to, the heavens know he wants nothing more than to stay in the field and hone his skills. However, even Lou is subject to his parents.

Lou’s dad doesn’t quite mind his battle hardened son staying on the front lines, but his mom worries the life of an adventurer has only distracted her son at a crucial point in his life.

“Nonsense,” Lou squawked. Lou understood that war maketh man, brethren, and kingdom. As exhilarating as they were, it wasn’t the slaying of dragons, the culling of pesky goblins, or even the duels with the minotaur generals that he’d miss the most. It was the bonds he forged and the communities that formed in the wake of his heroics.

Before taking up the crossbow, Lou was a solitary creature. Aside from with his parents, there seemed to be no place for him on earth. Despite the wondrous adventures that awaited those bold enough to step outside their norms, no one seemed to care but Lou.

Most his age were content with hiding under their beds while others fought their demons, not Lou. Lou laughed at the dark, chased away his shadow, stared down the sun and howled at wolves. Lou still had some growing up to do until he was mature enough to pick up a weapon, until then he kept his mind in the clouds where beasts and birds flew.

Then, on his thirteenth birthday, the legend began.

The most popular heroes always carried melee weapons while their ‘sidekicks’ casted magic and shot arrows. The latter types were considered frail and lacking in initiative, some even called them ‘squishy.’ So on the day when all the other thirteen year olds were testing wooden swords in the barracks, it was a shock to see Lou racing through the outskirts of Libertas, his hometown, leaving ogre corpses and their looted treasure in his wake.

Lou didn’t just have great aim, he was elusive. There was truth to the stigma surrounding long ranged warriors and their weak frames, their training didn’t build a strong body, but Lou was swift and witty. He could speak the tongue of monsters and would taunt them into a frenzy as he dodged and skewered them with arrows.

Within a week, Lou was accepted into the adventurer’s guild. Within a month he raided his first dungeon alone.

Whispers of a marksman still smelling of his mother’s milk reached the ears of the veterans. Those who challenged Lou would fall and those who wanted to recruit him were denied. He fell in with a group of wunderkinds, young people as skilled and once as unappreciated as him.

Lou and his comrades gave themselves no name as others did, they were simply friends. Every day was a new adventure filled with challenge and bounty.

Then, when the final month of summer began, hordes of monsters banded together to attack Libertas. Cities crumbled as the horde marched toward their destination. Lou and his friends joined forces with the older heroes to form an army capable of withstanding the monster’s assault.

It would be an arduous battle and Lou’s mom wasn’t comfortable with how long her little boy would be gone. Lou's dad however, saluted him and said, “Knock ‘em dead, son.”

The heroes of Libertas met the monster army at the Great Lake, or what remained of it. The two sides were night and day. The heroes stood on green grass, armed with swords, shields, spears, scepters, staffs, etc.

The monster horde was composed of ghouls, goblins, gargoyles, draugr, dragons, imps, and ogres, with the minotaurs leading the charge. They stood on a wasteland created by their own malevolence, which also caused the Great Lake to dry into the deepest trench ever known to man.

The heroes decided not to let another blade of grass succumb to the monster's erosion, they wanted to fill the Great Lake to the brim with monster remains.

Both armies charged each other at once, but Lou took first blood. He fired several shots in rapid succession, piercing the gaps of a minotaur general’s brass armor, and one between the eyes for the finishing blow. The sight of one of the monsters’ strongest falling struck fear in their fiendish hearts and inspired the heroes.
It took all day and all night, but war was won by the heroes of Libertas. Though the heroes suffered some casualties, Lou’s friends survived the ordeal, with Lou alone unscathed in the end.

For the next couple of weeks, the entire continent knew peace. Libertas was elevated amongst all the other city states for their heroics and Lou’s name was carved on the Rock of Champions. He was the youngest to ever achieve the honor and the first to do so with a ranged weapon.

Each of Lou's friends departed and went to other city states to start their own guilds in an effort to raise the overall strength of the continent. Lou too began to oversee the development of others, especially those who wished to be marksmen.

Now, for the last time in what will be a while, Lou looks over all he has accomplished. “The world is so much bigger than Libertas,” he says to himself. There are more friends and foes to meet, more sights to see, more memories to be made.

His mom squeezes his small shoulder and kisses him on the forehead. “It’ll all be here when you get back, kiddo.”

What does she know? Time moves much faster than she could ever imagine in Libertas. By the time he returns his friends would have no doubt surpassed him, not to mention his enemies would have regrouped and grown even fiercer.

“You’ve already done so much, champ,” said Lou’s dad. “Think of how much of a challenge it’ll be to step away and climb your way back to king of the hill. Fun, eh?”

Lou sighed.

Mouse in hand, he hovered over the “reset your password” option. His dad took over from there, inputting a password of his choosing.

“You’ll get to play again during Christmas break, I promise. It’s time to focus on school again and these… what did you call them? MMOs?” his mom asked.

“They’re so time consuming. You’ll be fourteen next year, if you want to get into that specialized high school we’ll have to pick your grades up. In the meantime… you still have your console games for the weekends.”

It was of little comfort to the young master who spun his chair around and went downstairs for dinner. He sat and started carving into the table with his fork.

“Three months, I’ll be back in three months.”

He hoped things wouldn’t change much while he was on hiatus. Then again, if his dad was right, maybe a lot of change in the riveting world of the Saints and Savages game would give him something to look forward to.