The Anvil by I Heaton Page B

today is very different from the usual he thought . He started fighting the fire near the food storage and soon had that out . After the fire was out he looked around at the damage . The food storage hadn ' t been touched , but almost everywhere else was black , cracked or gone . He had lost about ten tree - men in the fire . He set about repairing his base , silently waiting for Alex . The day passed without anyone coming . Eventually he went to bed , but laid on his back wondering who would come . Finally he drifted off to sleep . He woke to a knock on the wooden frame of his door and saw the person he had been hoping would come , Bryn stood at the door with a note .

Chapter 14
                  Tom sat up and smiled . “ Morning , how are you ?” Tom asked with a yawn as Bryn said “ I ' m good , I ' m glad I can spend some time with someone my age . Samantha isn ' t very cheerful most the time . I have a note from Alex for you , he had to go . How are you ?” She finished and handed Tom the note . “ I ' m pretty good .” he replied as he read the note
    “ Tom , Samantha says you must help Bryn train and teach her some weapons skills and simple magic , - Alex .”
    It said . Tom looked up at Bryn . “ Well I guess I have to train you . So let ' s get started .” Bryn wanted to follow Tom ' s schedule as close as possible .
    They started the day by eating breakfast , today there was no attack . Then spent the rest of the day training and building the fort , with breaks for meals and when they were tired . The next day Tom woke to the usual fighting and ran out to help . Today it was some crantos and bears . As he was about to run out the gates with the most the guards behind him he noticed Bryn run out of her hut .
    She had her weapons but was looking very confused . Tom realized he hadn ' t said what to do in an attack he was so used to them . He beckoned a single guard over and told it to tell her to get on the walls and help those guards .
    As the wooden man ran off Tom nodded to the gate men and the gate opened . Tom set off at a fast jogging pace and soon was fighting . After the battle the day was like the day before and soon everyday followed the same schedule , fight , eat , train , eat , build , eat , sleep and repeat , sometimes with fights at other times .
    With only a week left , Tom and Bryn sat around the fire talking and eating some fish . Tom looked out at the stars and saw some sort of dense black cloud that didn ' t seem to be solid and was moving very swiftly .
    He heard the flapping of dozens of wings and realized something , vampires were coming . “ This must be the first of the final tasks .” Tom thought . Alex had warned him that during the final days of his assessment there would be some extremely hard tasks and battles . Tom jumped up and started yelling for light and guards . The tree - men came running out of their sleeping quarters confused .
    Tom simply pointed at the sky and they saw what was happening . The first vampire landed as Tom got his weapons . The two forces stood staring at each other for a moment , the vampires looked red in the fire light .
    Then a vampire leaped forward at Tom , who quickly sliced its head cleanly off with his axe . Soon the entire area above and inside the fort was in chaos . The griffins fought vampires in the air , the men on the ground and Tom both in the air and on the ground . As Tom hacked at a vampire near a wall it dodged the strike and the axe hit the wall , shattering the axe . Tom thought quickly he didn ' t have time to make a new one so he grabbed a torch off the wall . He swung it at vampires and many burned as he fought .
    But it didn ' t last , a vampire had ran over and grabbed a bucket of water and splashed it on him . The torch went out and he ran through the vampires back to the place his warriors were holding back the vampires . He created a new axe but put it in it ' s holding loops . He closed his eyes trusting his