Convent of The Monster Nuns

“You want to do what now?” The gatekeeper looked at this anemic young man with incredulity. He was trying not to laugh.

“Well you know, kill some things, maybe rescue a damsel-in-stress…” A meek reply.

“You mean a damsel-in-distress?” The guard corrected him. “Yeah that!” The youth replied, obliviously.

He remembers when he was his age. Not too different, really. The guard thought the matter over for a few moments but conceded. “Hmm. Fine. Let me see your sword then.” The guard said.

Without hesitating, the young man unsheathes the sword and holds it out on his two palms for the guard to examine. The guard takes one of his gloves off to feel the blade with his bare skin - checking for any possible burrs or imperfections in the steel.

“Hmm…” The guard changed his mind a bit now, but was not yet entirely convinced. Perhaps the boy just liked sharpening swords as a hobby.

Putting his glove back on his hand, the guard looks around for something. Seeing an odd piece of processed lumber that had fallen from a cart nearby, he motions the young man to follow him.

After standing it upright he said “If you can cut this in half, I’ll –”

The wood cut apart at a perfectly parallel angle with the ground. The sword was sheathed before the gatekeeper could say anything else.

“Hm.” The guard said, his eyebrows raised. He didn’t really have anything else to troll the kid with now at this point. He picked the severed piece of wood up and lined it up with his eyes. Tossing it aside he said,

“Well I’m sure you already know the procedure. Come back during daytime, or wait until the next morning.”

“Wait, I can go?” The youth said.

“There’s only two other men in the keep that can do that as easily as you did. Or well… actually it’s just one now but in any case…”

Without any further words the gatekeeper hollers an oral command to the gate winch operator, and the sounds of creaking rusty iron break the peaceful silence.

A well worn dirt path slithers its way deep into the distant trees, and upon setting foot out of the gate the deep horizon of the forest revealed itself – stretching in either direction for as far as the eye could see. The young man could remember earlier days in which he saw the swaying tops of the trees from the warm comforts of the town, but this was entirely different.

He seriously thought about turning right back around and just going back to his parents’ house, but the guard was probably expecting exactly that.

And so the guard was.

As soon as he started walking away he heard the gatekeeper yelling again, and by the time he heard the gates slamming shut, he didn’t bother to look back.

So this was it. He hadn’t really quite thought about food, shelter, or any other of those important things needed for survival, and how he would be obtaining any of them out here in the forest. One thing that he had promised to himself however, was that he refused to return within the same day. He would either last one entire night in the wilderness or die trying. For some inexplicable reason or other, this was simply the urge that he had felt to finally leave the safety of his town. He had friends, folks, and all that back at home, but as abrupt as this was he had planned it for some time now. Walking at a decent pace towards the forest, he felt as if everything happening now was very… natural to say the least. Allowing his eyes to wander across the beautiful clear skies while his body automatically continued forward, he felt quite peaceful.

After a half hour of walking he stopped at the “entrance” to the forest. The dirt path continued onward but mixed with undergrowth. There was a sign warning about certain ahead for unskilled travellers.

He looked up, and the thick trunks of the ancient trees stretched “as far as a man could be thrown by a catapult – vertically of course” as one of his quirkier friends had once said. He was certainly right though, because even when he tilted his hips forward to bend even further back, the full length of the tree still seemed to escape his field of view.

It was a bit comical – as if by design, there wasn’t any transition from the clear skies and grassy fields to the dark, shielded canopy of the forest. A nearly straight line separated the two contrasting elements.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he places his palm on the base of the giant tree as if to signal his entry as a foreigner into this new, alien land. As he opened his eyes, he withdrew it and at last set foot into the forest.

From one step to the next, the ground beneath him became bumpier and more uneven, and the traces of light squeezing in from the opening of the forest grew dimmer and dimmer. There was plenty of room outside of the path to walk because the trees, as massive as they were, weren’t that crowded together. Yet as he progressed further in, it would have seemed as if night had fallen over were one not aware of the fact that the canopy escaped one’s view while looking forward – such was the height of these trees.

Where to go next? What happens now? He really had no idea but kept walking nevertheless.