Blood Lines

Lessons

Marco:

Geography was my first lesson, I am at a school to learn about monster killing and gods and I have geography as my first lesson. Jono is giving me a one on one lesson because he said surge students need more attention, but I think it has something to do with the conversation I heard the other night.

"Now" Jono began, "this map here shows the area of the school and surrounding area, these are couture lines......” I started to day dream, I hate geography. I started to dream about me with super powers, running around with a super sword in my hand. I had the strength of a hundred men, with one swing of my sword I could cut through the thick steel. No monster could beat me; I was the best I was...

"Marco are you paying attention", the sound of Jono's voice snapped me out of my dream. "Yes Jono I’m listening", "good, this could save your live" he states.

"How can geography save my life?" I ask. He looks at me and frowns, "let’s take the alleyway we found you in, I bet that if you looked up the the alleyway on a street directory or a map, it would only be a single alleyway. No left turns or right turns just a little stretch of alleyway, can you explain this?”

I tried to think of it. He was right, I had never heard of an alleyway that big in the city, and it was like a big maze. "Places like that are monster zones, places that monster gather to live, they make the zone magical so that they can hide. A monster zone can hold up to a thousand monsters".

I let that sink in. "do we have any zones near the school?" I ask him.

"Yes we do, three of them. There in the school grounds actually, right here". He points on the map in front of him. First one is a large forest, and then a swampy area and lastly, what looks like a cave. Next to each picture are letters, the park and the swamp have E.A.D.S, while the cave has E.F.E.D.

"What do those letters mean"? Jono looks down at the letters. “‘E A D S' mean Explored And Deemed Safe, while 'E F E D' mean Explorations Failed Extremely Dangerous". He looks at me as if expecting a question but I don’t say anything, so he continues talking. "Monster zones all have a centre, if you can get to the centre and out again, then the Zone has been explored, if you can’t get to the centre because your lost, well then you might not ever make it out."

That sent a shiver up my spine, the fact that even in the school with all these bloodlings they still couldn't explore one cave. "What’s so dangerous about the cave"?

"the cave is the oldest monster Zone in a thousands of miles, it’s very old, it was already here when we set up the school, it’s also pitch black no matter what time of day it is outside, so once your source of light goes out, you become a monsters dinner, we have tried to explore it many of times but we have only managed to every get halfway, the only possible way to do it would be if you could see in the dark but..."

I interrupt with a question "how do you know you have reached haft way"?

"Good question, in most monster Zones you cannot tell, but in this one you can because there is a marker. A stone that marks halfway, that’s how we know." he looks down at his watch, "go on Marco, go to the barracks, our lesson is up, Zethos has a surprise for you". And with that he packs up his stuff and walks out of the room.

                                                                    *

“Pick whatever you what”, Zethos was waving his hand at a wall of weapons. “Whatever is here you can pick, swords, javelins, knives, axes or hammers” he said.

I was standing awe struck, weapons of every size, colours and metals were hanging on the wall. Swords every size, axes with depicted engravings of ancient Greek soldiers fighting. Every weapon looked cooler than the rest.