[Ry-san] Chetarren Caesar's Training

Chetarren walked down a passage in the mysterious Dome that he had found himself in, his eyes scanning the hall for any dangers or surprises the place may have in store for him. He knew it was irrational, but the aging centaur couldn't help feeling that all the things he had encountered since his arrival in the place five moons ago was a product of the Dome itself, a way to test his abilities against those things already there.

Despite his misgivings about the place, Chetarren was in far better spirits than he had been for a long time - almost since he had left the forest his people called home. He smiled ruefully when he thought of what had brought about the change - strange that something as simple and childish as a food-fight could make such a diofference to him, a veteran warrior of hundreds of battles.

Stopping suddenly, the centaur's smile faded as he turned his head to one side. Near his left flank, a door had seemingly materialised in the wall, just large enough for him to pass through without difficulty. Knowing from experience that he would likely pass through it no matter which way he turned, Chetarren backed up and reached for the handle.

However, before his calloused hand could close on the brass handle, the door opened of it's own accord, swinging inwards on silent hinges. Wary of what could lay beyond it, Chetarren gripped the haft of his spear tighter and unslung his hammer from the loop around his chest. Reassured by the feel of his weapons - both almost as old as he - the centaur passed through the doorway.

The aging warrior found himself in a garden that held all the plants and flowers he had ever seen, as well as many that he had not. The paths between the beds were easily wide enough to accomodate his large body, something that was often rare amongst such places. Warier than ever, he walked slowly towards what appeared to be the centre of the garden, refusing to let himself be distracted by the natural beauty of the place.

Hearing a rustling sound behind him, Chetarren reared up on his hind legs and span round to face it. A lovely woman with blonde hair piled up around her head stood amongst the flowers on one side of the path, watching him as he carefully lowered his forelegs back to the ground.

For a moment, neither spoke. Then, the woman broke the silence.

"I am Aurora the Ominae," she said, "and I have been expecting you."

OoC: Sorry if that's a bit long or tedious.

Not at all, welcome aboard, Tiroth. I hope you have fun and learn a lot in my intermediate class. :cool:

OoC: Intermediate Class - this link is just so I don't lose track of the thread.

Right. So I have to find my way into a snow-filled chamber in 500 words or less. No problem.

BiC: Chetarren walked through the paths amongst the fragrant flowers, for once relaxed in both body and mind. He felt as if he rested in one of his people's holy places. Familiar scents reached the aging warrior's nose - scents that he knew no plant in his world had ever produced while alive. He could almost hear the hymn of the Moon-Priests, carried on the air from the forest he had once protected.

Turning his head to one side, Chetarren saw a wrought-iron gate in the wall of the garden, connected to him by one of the place's many paths. Sighing deeply, the centaur moved towards the exit knowing the places call when he felt it. Still, he resolved to return to this place in the future - he had been without a place of peace to turn to for far too long. He would not give this one up now.

Outside, the retired general found himself in one of the long passages that was becoming so familiar since he had arrived in the Dome. It branched in numerous places that he could see, and likely in even more that he could not, giving the place a maze-like quality - yet Chetarren was certain that all of the passages would end in just two or three rooms. It was the way the place operated.

Selecting a passage at random, the centaur moved along it, his spear held at the ready.

No, not 500 words or less. AT LEAST 500 words. There's a biiiiiiig difference. Try it again, and remember to read the instructions THOROUGHLY from now on.

OoC: Whoops. My mistake. But just a side note: that first attempt up there was meant to be longer, but I was on a public comp and the timer hit 30 seconds. End result, I hit "post" so I didn't lose it, and you replied before I could come back and edit it.

Right. Enough excuses already...

BiC: Chetarren walked slowly down each the many paths in the fragrant, flower-filled garden, trailing one calloused hand in the soft blooms. He felt safe here; the place reminded him of the sacred places of his people, hidden glades deep in the heart of the forest where the flowers always bloomed and the scents always soothed the soul. The old warrior even fancied he could hear the eternal hymn of the Moon-Priests on the wind, unchanged through countless generations, linking every centaur who ever lived in a trail that stretched back to the beginning of time.

Breathing deeply, Chetarren returned to the centre of the garden and bent each of his four legs in turn, until he knelt upon the ground. He waited for a few moments, eyes staring ahead, and then bowed his body low over the ground, being careful not to damage any of the blooms before him. In this uncomfortable pose, the centaur warrior let his spear fall to the ground, and offered up a heartfelt prayer to the Moon-Gods, asking to be guided back to the garden in the future, that he may find himself at peace once again.

His prayer done, Chetarren retrieved his spear and stood, shaking his powerful body to remove any lasting discomfort from his aging frame. He took one last look around him, imprinting the place on his memory so he would not forget. Then Chetarren Caesar, once Lord of the centaurs, turned towards the door behind him and left.

Outside, the retired general found himself in a different passage to the one he had entered the garden from. Instead of the red brickwork he had been expecting, the walls of the passage were smooth and white, the only blemish on the pristine surface being the door he had just passed through. The incongruity swiftly dispelled the peaceful mood that he had gained while in the garden, replacing it with an uneasy watchfulness. Chetarren would not allow whatever was manipulating his fate to take him by surprise.

Removing his hammer from the strap of his bag, Chetarren simply held it in one hand for a moment, allowing himself to be reassured by the familiar weight of it. The weapon had seen him safe through many fights over the long years, often prevailing against creatures his spear could only scratch. Raising it to his forehead, the centaur offered a warrior's salute to whatever entity was watching his progress, and cantered down the length of the passage.

Chetarren had only been on the move for a few short minutes when he stopped abruptly. His hooves skidded for a moment on the polished floor, striking up sparks and leaving a series of dark marks on the surface. The brief, bright lights died almost instantly as he stared into the two gloomy passages ahead - a fork in the path where there had been none only moments before.

Reaching a decision, he turned down the left-hand passage and began to move cautiously along it. Even so, it was several moments before he realised the passage's decor had changed once again - this time, to a pale blue surface that seemed to waver slightly, never staying flat for more than a few inches before developing a recess or minor protrusion. Grunting, Chetarren slowed further and slung his hammer onto his bag again, so that he could run one rough hand along the wall. He could feel the difference in depths easily.

The centaur shook his head and picked up his pace slightly. He moved swiftly around a corner in the passage and found himself in a long straight. More to give himself a sense of release than anything else, he galloped down it at full speed, only slowing when a wooden door became visible at the far end. By the time he reached it, his pace had changed to a slow walk.

The air in front of the door seemed to be colder than elsewhere in the passage, and the door itself was almost freezing to the touch. Certain that he would have to pass through the door into whatever lay beyond no matter what he did, Chetarren shrugged off the feeling and pushed the door open.

OoC: There we go. That's just over 700 words. Should be long enough now. Plus, it's more in-character for Chetarren than the previous attempt was, so that's an added bonus. ^^

Very good. Move on. :cool:

OoC: Right. On to lesson two of four: fight the regenerating snowman in over 500 words. Chetarren is going to hate this...

BiC: Chetarren stared through the door and into the chamber beyond. Everything appeared to be covered in white, stretching for as far as the eye could see. The reflected glare from whatever it was that lit the place made his eyes hurt, forcing him to squint. The effect was disconcerting to the keen-eyed warrior, who was used to being able to rely on what his eyes showed him.

Doing his best to shrug the feeling off, Chetarren passed through the cold door, the ground crunching loudly beneath his hooves. Surprised by the sudden noise, he paused and looked down at the whiteness. Stooping, Chetarren brushed his free hand against the surface of the white material, and lifted some of it to his face. To the centaur's immense surprise, it melted almost instantly, running down his hand as fat drops of water.

The aging general stood slowly and looked around in horror. The place was covered in snow - the tracker's enemy that covered all signs of passage in moments and hid dangerous pitfalls beneath it's beguiling blanket of pure white. It was the first he'd seem of the dread substance in many years, and was sure to herald some new danger, just as it had every time he'd come across it before.

Moving forward carefully, Chetarren offered up a silent prayer to the Moon-Gods for safe passage through the treacherous landscape. He tested the ground thouroghly with each hoof before trusting it with his full weight. He knew it made his progress slow, but it was far preferable to falling down some hidden crevasse and dying of starvation.

He had gone no further than a dozen metres when the weather apparently took a turn for the worse. The previously calm breeze suddenly grew fierce, whipping up flurries of concealing snow seemingly from thin air. Chetarren felt the temperature around him drop as the howling wind tore into his flanks with the force of a hurricane, making him stagger to one side in a desperate attempt to stay on his feet. He stumbled blindly, eyes closed tightly against the sudden snowstorm.

A moment later, the centaur was knocked to the ground by a fierce blow to his flank. Feeling the wind suddenly die away, he struck out blindly with his spear as he surged back to his feet, hoping to catch his unknown assailent by surprise. Feeling the blade at the spear's tip bite into something, Chetarren used it as leverage to pull himself upright and swing round to face his foe.

Shocked by what he saw, the old warrior froze for a moment as a massive white fist sped towards his head before his reflexes took over. He ducked under the snowman's arm and let go of his spear, leaving it embedded in the thing's side. Dancing to one side to avoid a follow-up blow, Chetarren unlimbered his sledgehammer as his mind threw off it's shock - he was fighting a snowman!

Snarling, the old warrior met the thing's next attack with one of his own. The fist of snow met his sledgehammer with a muffled thump, and practically disintegrated under the impact. The ease with which he broke through the thing over-balanced Chetarren, preventing him from following through on the blow. Instead, the snowman simply looked at it's ruined arm, growled at the centaur, and leapt forward to bring it's impressive bodyweight into the fight.

In an atempt to buy himself some time, Chetarren swung his hammer at the snowman's body, leaving a snowy crater the size of his head in his foe. Heedless of the damage, the centaur's adversary kept coming. Leaping to one side to avoid being crushed by the mountain of snow bearing down on him, Chetarren instead collided with his spear, the weapon still embedded in the thing's torso. It slowed him just enough that he was knocked to the ground, and the impact buried his horse-body in snow.

Relieved to find himself relatively unhurt, the centaur grabbed his weaponry and hurriedly pulled himself from the snow. Spinning around to face his enemy, he was surprised to see it had both arms again. Even as he watched, the hole in it's chest was filling with more snow, until there was no sign of any of the damage Chetarren had dealt to the thing.

Snarling, the aging warrior charged at at his adversary, ducking under the twin blows of it's fists and ignoring the howling wind it sent at him. Moving inside it's guard, Chetarren used his momentum to plant his forelegs firmly into it's chest, allowing him to reach up and smash his hammer into the thing's head. The ball of snow exploded under the impact, and the rest of the body froze.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Chetarren pulled his forelegs free of the blocky snow, and spun round on his hind legs. Unluckily for him, this unbalanced the snow-thing behind him, and brought it crashing down onto his back.

The last thought he had before passing out from the pressure on his body was, I hate snow.

OoC: There we go - finally done. I hope that passes.

Good. *nod nod* Move along. You brought out a new facet of Chetarren's personality, using a situation he didn't like, and you did a good job of it. You even did a good job of explaining WHY he disliked the situation.

OoC: Okay. Here we go. First, the description.

Chetarren Caesar, Centaur Warrior
Centaur warrior.
Centaur stallion.
Retired general.
Ex-herd stallion.
Pious centaur.
Bay-furred stallion.
Aging warrior.
Implacable foe.
Undefeated leader.
Scarred veteran.
Devotee of the Moon Gods.
Aged stallion.

BiC: When Chetarren came to, the first thing he was aware of was the vast amount of snow piled up on top of him. Puzzled by this, he remained still for a moment, allowing his sluggish mind time to recall what had landed him in such an awkward situation. It was most certainly not a predicament he had encountered personally before.

The scarred veteran of a hundred battles groaned loudly as recent events rushed back to him. As he had expected when he entered the chamber, the snow had brought him mortal peril, disaster, and likely a whole load of other problems besides - not to mention the foe that had come close to crushing him to death even as he destroyed it.

Carefully lifting one arm free of the snow that encased it, Chetarren began to push himself free of his padded white prison. He found it easy enough to clear the areas around his upper body, but all four of his legs were encased in a solid block of snow that would not allow him to move a muscle. Grinding his teeth in frustration, the aged stallion picked up his fallen hammer and turned his head to consider the problem.

Before the aging warrior could begin to smash his way to freedom, he heard the door to the snow-filled chamber slide open. Whipping his head round to see what had entered the place, he was astonished to see the youthful-seeming woman that had greeted him in the gardens before he fought the snowman. His hazel eyes narrowed as she walked towards him, taking in his problem in a glance.

The blonde woman - Aurora? - stopped a few metres from the centaur stallion's trapped body and raised her hands towards him. The retired general continued to watch her warily, hoping that she wouldn't prove to be hostile. A look of intense concentration came across her face, and Chetarren began to wonder what kind of abilities an Ominae possessed.

Chetarren's legs almost buckled under his weight as the snow supporting him suddenly melted. Dropping down into a half-crouch to try and alleviate the unexpected pressure, the centaur dropped his hammer and spread both arms for balance. He maintained the position for a few moments, waiting until he was sure his legs could take it before standing at his full height.

The bay-furred stallion carefully stretched the muscles in his legs before stooping to retrieve his weaponry. Slinging his hammer across his chest, he then turned to the waiting woman and offered her a centaur-style bow, bending his forelegs for greater effect. "You have my thanks, my lady," he said. Gesturing at the pile of slush with his spear, he continued. "Freeing myself from that pile of snow was proving to be a most aggravating problem."

Chetarren heard a laughter-like hissing as Aurora replied. "It is no less than I would for any of the students here." She turned towards the door, gesturing for him to follow. "Although I rarely need to dig them out from beneath their foes."

Eyeing the blonde woman warily, Chetarren moved after her, taking care to place his hooves on the more solid pieces of ground. The old warrior grimaced at the pain he experienced as the feeling returned to his now-warm body, but he refused to let any of it on his face or in his stance. He had brought it on himself, and so he would face it the same way he always had.

"You mentioned students, my lady," he said. Aurora paused as she opened the door to look back at him. "Perhaps you could explain what you meant by that." The centaur glanced up at the chamber of snow. "And throw in an explanation of this place as well, if you have one." Aurora shook her head, smiling slightly, and Chetarren heard the strange hissing laughter again.

The two of them passed through the door into the strange white corridor as Aurora spoke. "This is the Dome. It travels between realities and gathers those warriors that may require instruction here to grow and progress. I am a teacher, and so provide that instruction. Those who stuimble across the Dome in their travels are the students here."

"So I am here because someone thinks I need additional instruction in the ways of a warrior?" Chetarren felt more amused than anything else by this idea, but he kept his voice flat and unemotional.

Choosing one of the side passages, Aurora shot a glance back at the centaur. "No, you are here because because the Dome itself knows you need such instruction. There is no other way you could have arrived."

The old warrior was silent for a few minutes as they passed down the corridors. He didn't entirely trust this human woman, and her explanation seemed almost ludicrous - but there wasn't even a hint of a lie in her voice or posture. Whether her words were true or not, she certainly believed them.

After a while, he ventured another question. "So the things I've done here and the places I've been were all...created...by this Dome? It's in control?"

Aurora stopped in front of an oak door and rested one delicate hand on the handle. "You could put it that way, yes." With that, she put her shoulder to the heavy door, and pushed it open.

OoC: There we go. Probably not as good as the last one, but it should do. I hope I haven't done too badly with Aurora.

Very nice, Tiroth. I can tell you know your char very well, and have put a lot of thought into him, and his personality. Always nice to see that.

Move on. :cool:

OoC: I'm sorry this took so long. The extended minimum word limit scared me off for a while, and then I suddenly didn't have time to do much in the BA. But enough excuses - and I'll get onto the other six lessons as soon approve this one.

Well...if you approve this one.

BiC: The knarled oak door swung inwards on silent hinges, it's heavy mass moving easily at Aurora's touch. She stepped into the room beyond and stood to one side, beckoning her new student to follow her inside.

Chetarren froze for a moment at what he saw inside the chamber, his lips parting slightly in surprise. He had seen some of what the Dome he had stumbled upon was capable of, and thought that he would be able to take any more startling revelations in his stride - but nothing had prepared him for this!

A thousand familiar scents assailed him. He could smell summer forest blooms, as beautiful as they were deadly; the smoke from a small fire, used for cooking and left to smolder in it's clearing; the heavy air that precedes a storm. All this was familiar, was welcome; but what he could see...

The old warrior abruptly reigned in his scattered thoughts and shook his head. Roughly pushing his astonishment to one side, the aging centaur who had once led his people stepped forwards into an exact replica of the place he had called home for decades.

Aurora watched for a moment as Chetarren took in his surroundings before slipping out, closing the heavy door behind her. The old centaur let her go, preferring to discover if his initial reaction to the large chamber had been right.

First, the stallion walked slowly around the chamber’s walls. Large leather sheets strung expertly between flexible trees to leave no gap in the coverage, they bore intricate patterns that the ex-general found familiar. Blue and green swirls mixed with red streaks, which ran alongside designs in the black and white scheme of the Moon-Gods. Backing it all was the deep brown of the leather itself, dark enough to almost be black in places and light enough to resemble freshly cut pine in others. The trees themselves remained undecorated, considered to be things of beauty in and of themselves by most centaurs, Chetarren included.

The centaur lingered near one spot in the leather wall, his hands seeking a small rent in the sheet that an overzealous youth had once put in it. A few moments later, he found it, making him wonder how much of his past had been pulled from his head by the Dome.

An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of the old stallion's stomach as he turned away from the leather walls. He could tell without looking up that the roof of the room was also made from leather, this time unadorned. It would be darker than any part of the walls, if he remembered correctly - so dark that most of those without the sight of a centaur would swear themselves blind that they were looking at a black abyss, rather than the cured hide of one of the larger forest creatures.

Crossing to the centre of the large area, Chetarren noted absently that it even had the earthen floor with sparse clumps of hardy forest grass dotted around it. No other plant had ever been known to grow in ground as packed as what lay beneath a centaur’s home could become, let alone in a dwelling as old as the herd-master’s.

Stopping in the exact centre, the centaur warrior grunted in annoyance. The Dome appeared to have pulled an exact replica of his home out of his mind and proceeded to recreate it apparently for his benefit – yet it had managed to leave out the one thing he had missed most since he left the forest; his personal library. There wasn’t a book or scroll in sight in the whole chamber. But apart from being annoying, this was perplexing, too – he failed to understand why the Dome would reproduce a weapons rack, and not a bunch of books.

Chetarren shook his head, banishing such thoughts from his mind, and began to turn slowly on the spot, taking in anything about the room that he had missed so far. There was little furniture in the chamber; only the weapons rack, a centaur-sized desk, and the wooden block he would rest his upper body against when sleeping just to one side of the weapons rack. The block had been worn smooth on one side by more than sixty years of use, molded into a shape that would better fit his body…

He stopped short as that thought ran through his head. This is not the same place. he reminded himself. The post – and this entire room – likely have only existed since I entered the Dome. It is not the same.

Yet no matter how much Chetarren reminded himself that this wasn’t his home, it still felt like it was. Everything was exactly as it had been left when he began his journey. Predictably, this made Chetarren feel even more uneasy than he already was.

Sighing wearily, the old stallion placed in the weapons in the rack, just as he had done so many times over his long life. Uneasy or not, home or not, he needed some rest, and this was as goods a place as any to take it. So he knelt down beside the block, leant his body against it, whispered a prayer to the Moon-Gods, and let himself drift off to sleep.

OoC: Sorry if I drifted a bit off-topic there. I'm not so good at lengthy environmental description.

But, you did an excellent job at it. Move right along, and don't let a little thing like having to write a bit longer get in your way! :cool:

Oh, and 'knarled' is actually spelled 'gnarled'.

OoC: Well, I'm glad that passed.

Originally Posted by Ryorinin-san

But, you did an excellent job at it. Move right along, and don't let a little thing like having to write a bit longer get in your way! :cool:

Especially as previous lessons ended up that long without needing to be - and so did this one. > <

Originally Posted by Ryorinin-san

Oh, and 'knarled' is actually spelled 'gnarled'.

Whoops. I'll remember that next time.

And now, on with lesson five - on to the (other) gardens!

BiC: It was several hours before Chetarren's hazel eyes opened again. When they did, the first thing the aging centaur registered was lying in his old home, leaning against the old post that had been made for him after the war with the vampires and their accursed minions. Familiar patterns stared at him from the walls, comforting in their complexity. The old centaur breathed deeply as he always did upon waking, and allowed recent events to seep into his mind as he pulled himself to his feet.

The ex-general frowned for a moment as he remembered that he was not, in fact, anywhere near his old forest home – that this “Dome” had created an exact replica from his mind to house him in, to make him feel comfortable.

Shaking his head over the situation, something that had been placed on the desk at one side of the chamber caught his eye. It was a piece of pearly-white parchment that had been folded several times, with a signature in flowing writing on the upper surface.

Mildly curious, the centaur picked the parchment up and opened it. The main bulk of the text was written in the same flowing hand as the signature, with almost an exact duplicate of it at the bottom. The letter contained details of how to reach a certain point in the Dome, along with an invitation to come by and speak with his new ‘teacher’, this ‘Aurora’ woman.

Grunting, Chetarren took a few minutes to commit the details of the letter to his memory before placing it back on the worn table and turning towards the chamber’s heavy oak door. It would be interesting to see what this human woman wanted, although he doubted very much that she could truly teach him anything he did not already know about the ways of a warrior. Other things, perhaps, but not that.

Stepping out into the corridor beyond, the old tracker turned down the passage that the letter had indicated and took a look around him. He noted with some surprise that the décor of the place had, for once, remained the same between uses – red bricks with rough edges and grey mortar between them. He had half expected it to change to the pale blue he had seen once, or even the strange orange colour one area had been covered in. It seemed his new home was determined to continually change the rules on him, always supplying the things he least expected.

Shaking his head ruefully, the centaur cantered down the passage. It wasn’t long before he had to slow down to turn a corner, and from there his mind was occupied more with remembering the letter’s directions than wondering about what he would encounter in the Dome in the days to come.

It wasn’t long before Cheatrren found himself slowing for the last time so that he could open and pass through the gate to wherever his destination was. And it was a gate, made of black iron and worked into plant-like shapes that served to almost completely hide the chamber beyond from view.

The gate opened easily, and Chetarren allowed a small smile to find it’s way onto his face as walked into the chamber. The place was an immense garden. He could see a field containing every wildflower he had ever seen and many others he hadn’t over to one side, with people of every race he knew and some he didn’t walking among them. Elsewhere were apparently bare patches of ground that showed signs of recent planting, alongside other patches that had the fruit of a gardener’s labours for all to see – sometimes literally. A glass object shaped like a human building stood beyond the individual plots, and he could see all manner of tropical species flourishing through the panes.

The old stallion started to move forwards again, still looking about him at the apparent paradise. He passed a tall hedge, almost too tall for him to see over. Other people were running or walking through the area beyond, some smiling and laughing as they reached dead ends or found extra routes. On the other side of him was a vast garden of flowers, all artfully arranged to form different shapes. Chetarren decided that this would be a good place to remember and visit sometime, whenever he had the time for such things.

Eventually, the aging warrior saw the centre of the garden – a magnificent fountain that had been crafted from marble by the hand of a master. A single figure sat at it’s base, her blonde hair coiled into a bun, apparently just enjoying being in the gardens as so many others were doing.

Chetarren expelled his breath an explosive snort, and moved towards the fountain and the figure at it’s base.

Good job. I see a promotion in the very near future, so keep up the good work!

OoC: You know, having to avoid using those words was a bit of a pain. I hope you have a good reason for it.

BiC: Chetarren hefted his spear thoughtfully as he stared around the ice maze that Aurora had just created. He could see the small, fiery fairy that she had asked him to capture flitting about in the distance, warming the ice walls around it so that miniscule drops of water formed on the surface. It seemed to stop in the air for a moment and look back at him, almost daring the centaur to give chase.

The aging centaur cautiously began to move forwards, carefully transferring his immense weight from one hoof to another. When his forelegs didn’t immediately slide out from under him and go skittering across the slippery ice, the warrior began to increase his pace, but still took care to avoid slipping on the smooth surface.

Satisfied that the ice wasn’t about to give way underneath him or send him crashing into one of the maze’s frozen walls, the tracker looked up and focussed his attention on the bright little fairy that flitted about the maze. He could see it’s glow through the icy cliffs that served as impediments to the centaur’s progress, although Chetarren didn’t know how much use that would be in a maze.

The scarred veteran of more than a hundred hard-fought battles spent the next hour slowly moving through the ice maze. Knowing that any attempt to catch the fairy with his bare hands would likely prove to be futile as well as painful, he instead built up a picture of the maze’s layout in his mind. The old general noted where the maze reached dead ends, where the fairy had begun to partially melt through the ice walls, and also the effect on his movements, speed, and agility the ice floor had. He now knew how fast he could go and still turn a corner, how little traction his four hooves had on the slippery surface, and even how much it hurt when a centaur used blocks of ice as a braking system.

Now, the aging warrior moved slowly down one of the ice passages, directly towards where he could see the fairy’s glow flitting about apparently at random. His body shook slightly from the effects of the sub-zero temperatures within the maze, reminding Chetarren that he had better get this over with soon or he’d need the fairy’s warmth just to stay conscious.

The bright flame that the old tracker had been stalking abruptly changed direction and shot off into a side passage. Bunching his muscles, the centaur swiftly moved to follow, using his momentum and the ice to turn the corner at some speed. But instead of accelerating again to chase the fairy further, the aging stallion allowed himself to skid across the ice as he took careful aim at a point past his quarry with his spear.

Putting all of his strength into the throw, Chetarren let fly and watched as the weapon buried it’s tempered steel blade in the sheer wall of another passage. The centaur had weakened the ice earlier, and looked on with immense satisfaction as the wall crumbled and rained cold ice down on the fairy. The old general gave chase again as the fairy darted away from the falling ice, shooting straight into the nearest passage – one that Chetarren knew was a dead end.

Going as fast as he dared, Chetarren skidded into the mouth of the white passage after the fairy. He could see it darting about at the other end, looking for a way out of the trap the centaur had set for it.

The bright, fiery fairy abandoned it’s search for an exit when Chetarren began to creep closer to it. Diving straight towards the centaur, the miniscule creature tried the only option left to it for escape – to leave the way it had come. But instead of allowing his quarry to get away, Chetarren raised his hammer and placed it directly in the fairy’s path. Moving too fast to dodge, the fairy flew straight into the solid steel head, knocked itself out, and fell to the ground.

Carefully bending down, the old centaur gently nudged the small fairy onto the sledgehammer’s head, deciding that it would take longer to burn through that than it would his hand. Then, he carefully made his way back to where Aurora still sat on top of one of the icy walls, stopping only to pick up his spear on the way.

OoC: Do I get that promotion now?

LOL! See, I told you you'd figure something out. Well, I'll offer you a choice. You can take the promotion and join my advancies in their group RPG now, OR, you can try to get through Lesson 10 first to get the equipment upgrade offered at the end of it. There also might be an upgrade offered at the end of Lesson 8... if I've been impressed. :cool:

OoC: So I get to choose between accepting the offered promotion and finishing off the last of the intermediate course, do I? There isn't really all that much of a contest, is there?

Wait a sec...what's that about upgrades?

*checks thread*

On second thoughts, I think I'd rather finish the course first. No offence to your advanced students, but lessons 8 and 10 look far too good to pass up. I even have an idea for what the item in 10 can be, but I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing you're looking for.

I'll edit this post with lesson 7 or just post it normally, depending on whether or not you've replied.

EDIT: Here it is - Lesson 7.

BiC: Chetarren idly span his spear with one hand as he slowly moved out of the ornate garden that had been the site of his latest ‘training’ exercise. The ground beneath his hooves was still damp from the melting of the ice maze that Aurora had created – damp enough that he left deep marks in the earth as he passed. He paused momentarily, wondering why the dirt beneath his hooves was merely damp and not flooded as it logically should have been., before wryly concluding that Aurora’s little fairy must have flash-boiled the melt water into vapour before it could properly soak into the soil.

Shaking his head, Chetarren continued on through the garden, idly wondering why the fairy had been unable to simply burn through the icy walls of the maze and elude him that way if it had such power at it’s disposal. If he ever got the chance, he would have to ask his self-elected teacher about it, as well as many other things that didn’t make sense to him. So deciding, the old warrior stepped up his pace and pushed the many mysteries of the Dome and Aurora to the back of his mind so that he could concentrate on the most recent task he had been given.

The centaur stallion passed through the rest of the ornate garden in a blur, stretching his warming muscles after the beating they had received from the cold. The aches and pains the numbing effects of the sub-zero temperatures had hidden from him began to encroach on his awareness, only to be sent to join his deliberations on the fairy at the back of his mind.

The warrior slowed as he approached the wrought iron gate, allowing his muscles to recover from the sudden exercise. Grunting, he pulled the ornate gate open and passed through, pausing to note that the walls had once again changed from his previous time there. The sloping, honey-coloured walls felt rough to his calloused hands, but they appeared to be smooth as perfectly spun silk when he looked at them. Chalking the glaring inconsistency down to the mysteries of the Dome, many of which he could not begin to understand, Chetarren began to canter along the passage in search of the chamber Aurora had sent him to find.

A few short minutes later, he instead found himself in front of a large oak door at an otherwise dead-end passage. The old tracker frowned as he slowly ran one hand down the door’s gnarled surface, eventually coming to rest on the simple handle set into it. He recognised it as the door to his room, but failed to understand why he had come here instead of to the place that Aurora had directed him to find. After a moment’s hesitation, he gripped the handle tighter and pushed inwards, deciding that it would be better to find out now than have it appear in front of him again.

The first thing the old stallion caught sight of upon opening the oak door was the bag he usually carried with him. Nodding thoughtfully, he decided to take it with him in search of the unicorn tail-hair, dragon scale and phoenix tears – he could use it to transport them back to his teacher if all else failed. He even kept a small glass phial in it that would be ideal for collecting the tears in, assuming he could find this ‘phoenix’ and convince it to shed some.

Chetarren collected the bag and galloped back down the passage he had come from, almost skidding to a stop when he came to a side corridor that had not existed when he passed that way before. He turned down it and noticed that the décor almost immediately began to change from the honey colour of before to a sickly, pus-like green, which again changed itself gradually into a far healthier forest green that was less likely top make the centaur throw up.

The retired tracker slowed his pace to a walk as the passage began to branch out, taking his time to select which route he would take at any point. He frequently offered brief, fervent prayers to the Moon-Gods that they would guide his steps to the chamber he sought, and trusted that they would influence his decisions to that goal.

An hour of this passed before Chetarren found the white birch door. He paused to send his thanks to the Moon-Gods for their guidance, and then approached the smooth carvings. Had he still been the herd-stallion of his people, he would have loved to meet the craftsman who had made the door – many of the carvings looked as if they would suddenly jump from the wood and race off into the distance. Chetarren reached out one hand to feel the door, and was instantly reminded of the fine silk that humans favoured.

Letting his hand slide to the silver ring set in place of a handle, the aging warrior pushed against the door and moved into the chamber beyond. He stopped abruptly as he looked about himself, amazed at what he saw. The inside of the chamber was close to being a mirror image of the door that led into it – a huge, ancient forest with animals living their lives in the undergrowth and canopy. A single mountain rose in the centre of the forest, it’s slopes covered in trees that were far younger than those at the base of it’s slopes. It was a place that his people could easily be at home in.

Entrusting his fate to the Moon-Gods, Chetarren Caesar moved into the forest in search of the first of the three creatures that he had been sent to find.

Good job. And, I look forward to seeing what you do with the remainder of these lessons. :cool:

Note: It isn't "Chetarren idly span the spear" but "Chetarren idly spun the spear". Other than that, and a few typos, things looked pretty good.

OoC: I normally catch mistakes as I type, so I don't proofread as much as I probably should. Time to break that habit, methinks. Starting with this post - which, btw, happens to be 1,248 words long - and you were only asking for 800. I think I may have overdone it slightly.

Anyway...

BiC: The old tracker paused for a moment as he passed beneath the shadow of the trees at the ancient forest’s outer edge. He held himself completely still and listened to the gentle breeze blowing from the heart of the forest. Chetarren’s many years of experience allowed him to understand what he heard, to hear the presence of the woodland animals and the network of paths through the trees carried through the air.

It felt good to be in the presence of a truly ancient forest again.

The tracker exhaled slowly before moving deeper into the shelter provided by the forest’s green canopy. His eyes watched everything about him, drinking in the signs of life and looking for clues to the whereabouts of the three legendary creatures that he sought – the mighty dragon, the mysterious phoenix, and the gentle unicorn. The signs of their whereabouts would be hard to find, he knew, but long experience had taught him that all creatures left tracks of some kind that he could follow – even those elusive enough to be labelled as legendary by a race that were themselves legends in many parts of the world.

Chetarren crept slowly through the forest’s sparse undergrowth, controlling his movements so that he made no sound beyond that of a small squirrel foraging for food. Many thought that making no sound at all was the perfect camouflage in a place such as this, but they were wrong – no sound at all in a forest during daytime was as conspicuous as Chetarren would have been amongst a flock of birds. And being conspicuous was the very last thing the centaur tracker wanted to be.

After close to an hour of careful searching, Chetarren finally caught sight of what he had been searching for – a single, shallow hoof print in the damp earth next to a shallow stream, obviously freshly made earlier that day. The tracker swiftly moved over to it, and bent down to examine it more closely. He considered the various forest creatures he knew of that could have made such a print, discarding them one by one. The print was of a single hoof, not several, so it could not have been any kind of cloven-footed creature. It was too shallow an impression to be that of a horse or centaur like himself – from the size of it, the hoof had belonged to an adult animal, and a fully-grown horse or centaur would have been far too heavy to leave such a shallow indent.

Chetarren felt his pulse quicken slightly as he narrowed the possibilities down to what he had hoped and expected from the start – that this print had been left by a unicorn. Now that he had found recent sign of the creature’s passage, he could truly begin his task – to find the legendary creature and obtain a few hairs from it’s tail.

Slowly raising himself from the ground, Chetarren looked around himself, trying to see if his quarry had left any other marks, whether they were on the ground, scratched into a tree, or even just a hint of a smell in the calm air. Once the aging tracker knew what he was looking for, it was far easier to discern the signs of a unicorn’s presence from the old forest – an idle scratch in the bark of a tree from a horn, some scuffed moss lying on a stone, disturbed by a hoof, a small oval of crushed grass in a clearing where the unicorn had paused to roll itself on the ground…he realised that the signs had been everywhere, such commonplace things that he had mistaken them for the marks of the forest’s more common inhabitants.

Chetarren spent the next few hours carefully working his way from track to track, keeping his movements careful and the sounds small. Several times he passed close enough to some of the animals that lived within the forest to touch them, yet none of them ever showed signs of having noticed him any more than they would a simple thrush. This was what it meant to be an expert forest tracker trained by the best the centaurs had, and Chetarren loved every moment of it.

As his excitement and anticipation grew, so did his caution and control – it would not do to fail because he startled the wrong creature at the last moment. The tracker found fresher and fresher signs as he went – a scratched tree who’s sap was still seeping out through the groove, plants that had been recently foraged from, even bruised grass stems that were still damp from the pressure of the unicorn’s body.

It was a few moments before he reached the bubbling stream when Chetarren realised he had come in a full circle. Like all creatures, it needed to drink occasionally, and had obviously chosen this spot as a favourite area for just that. The irony was, had the old warrior simply stayed where he had found the first signs of the unicorn, it would have probably come straight to him without the long hours of following it’s tracks.

When Chetarren passed the last few trees before the stream, he stopped short, frozen where he stood. A few short metres away stood the unicorn, it’s head lowered to the waters of the stream. What sunlight passed through the canopy overhead shone on it’s pure white coat, almost blinding in it’s brightness. The creature’s silvery mane and tail seemed to stir slightly in a light breeze that touched nothing else in the ancient forest, flowing softly, a cascade of quicksilver down the unicorn’s back.

This legend he had been sent to find was, beyond a doubt, the most beautiful thing that Chetarren had ever seen.

A smile tugged at the corners of the old centaur’s mouth as one of the unicorn’s white ears twitched. I know you’re here, it seemed to say. I know what you have come for.

Come, and it will be yours.

Unhesitating, Chetarren lowered his spear and hammer to the ground, letting them fall from his grasp with barely a sound. The lovely creature’s head rose and turned to regard him as he approached, it’s liquid brown eyes meeting the centaur’s own and staring into his soul. Chetarren tentatively reached out with one calloused hand, touching the snow-white horn that grew upon it’s head. It was warm to the touch, a sensation that he found surprising when centred upon what appeared to be bone. But the centaur had little chance to contemplate it, as the unicorn moved it’s body so that his hand ran down the silvery mane and to it’s silken tail.

Take it, herd-master of the centaurs. Accept my gift to you, as from one lord of the forest to another.

Breathing deeply, Chetarren wound a few strands of hair from the unicorn’s tail around one finger and swiftly pulled on them. They came away easily in his hand, as if they had only awaited his touch to be released.

The unicorn turned it’s head to regard him one last time, it’s sheer beauty taking the centaur’s breath away. Then, the living legend turned towards the heart of the ancient forest and galloped away, a bolt of white lightning that sped into the trees.

Chetarren stood where he was for a few moments, the unicorn’s coiled tail hair in his hands, before slowly moving to retrieve his two weapons and going in search of the second legend that he had been charged to find.

OoC: There. How did I do?

*sniffs* That was so beautiful! Can't wait to see what comes next!