Troy

Troy sat at the edge of his village that night, staring up at the moon and stars. His mind was lost in the beauty of the cosmos. Suddenly, a horde of demons raced past him towards the peaceful burg that Troy called home. There was a bell in the town square that the villagers could ring during emergencies to warn the rest if the village, but Troy was too far away from the warning bell and he could never outrun the Demons back to the village anyway.

Troy could only watch and listen to the screams in horror as his whole village went up in flames. Troy fell to his knees and sobbed into his hands.

Troy awoke from his sleep with a violent start. Too jarred from nightmare to go back to sleep, Troy got out of bed and looked out the window in the middle of the night. Troy looked at the landscape outside, illuminated from up above by the light of the stars and the moon. The light of the moon and the stars up above also exposed to Troy some distant silhouettes over the horizon. Silhouettes of a large beast. The Beast Silhouette had large wings, four legs, two heads, and a long, whip like tail....

"Monsters!!" Troy gasped silently.

Troy ran out if his family's cottage to the Alarm Bell in the town square and pushed on the rope with all of his might. The Emergency Bell rang out, it's knell successful in awakening all of the villagers from their peaceful slumber.

"A Monster is coming! A Monster is coming! We have to be ready!!" Troy yelled out at the top of his lungs.

Some of the Villagers grabbed their weapons and headed towards the large Beast headed for their village. The women, children, and the peasant men who didn't have any weapons fled into the woods. Troy ran towards his house and got a shovel from the house to use as a makeshift weapon just in case. He stood guard in front of his now temporarily abandoned home.

Meanwhile, the men with weapons who headed out to confront the Beast found the Impending threat standing menacingly before all of them.

The monster had the body and head of a male Lion, another head of a Ram sheep beside it, expansive wings like an Eagle, talons on it's hind legs, and a large snake for a tail, the snake bearing it's fangs menacingly.

"It's a Chimaera!!" Yelled the village Hunter.

"It can't kill all of us on it's own! We have to fight our hardest!!" Declared the blacksmith.

"You're right! If we can't slay the monster, then at least we'll die like men!!"

The Villagers surrounded the Chimaera and held the line as best they could. The Chimaera swiped it claws at a villager in front of it. The villager dashed out of the way and stuck the tip of his scythe into the animal's leg. The Snake tail lashed out at and clamped down on the abdomen of Troy's father behind the Chimaera. Troy's father drove a knife he was holding down on the top of the serpent's head. The serpent opened it's mouth and fell to the ground limp and lifeless. The Chimaera took to the air and flew off, it's blood from it's marred leg and tail leaving a trail for the men to follow after it.

Meanwhile, Troy saw the Chimaera fly away and ran to the scene to check it out. The villagers gathered around Troy's father and checked on his condition . The Village Blacksmith removed his smithing Apron and wrapped it around the site of the injury.

"It's no good, Barnes. Leon isn't going to live much longer, not with THOSE injuries!" Said a Butcher.

"Tell my family, I died fighting...for them..." Leon said to the group of villagers.

"....We will, Leon. We will." Said the Butcher.

When the villagers returned home, they delivered the bad news to Troy and his family. Leon's wife and daughter were crushed. Troy was enraged.

At Dawn the next morning, Troy took his father's knife and set out to find the Chimaera and kill it.

Troy followed the trail of blood left behind by the beast the night before. After traveling for miles and miles, Troy saw that the trail lead to a cave in a mountain by the sea.

Troy climbed up the mountain path. Upon entering the cave in the mountain, Troy discovered the wounded Chimaera huddled in a corner fast asleep, a farmers scythe still embedded in it's leg.

Troy came to a realization and closed his eyes. "This isn't right. Battling an Animal too injured to fight back against me. Besides, the Chimaera could potentially bleed out sooner or later anyway." Troy thought to himself.

Troy quietly left the cave in the mountain by the sea. He turned around and sighed. As he walked back to the village, he wondered what he was going to tell the villagers. If they knew he had taken pity on a monster that attacked and killed some of them, he'd be scorned and shunned by his community. So he thought of something. He'd simply tell the Villagers that he killed the Chimaera.

It was then that the Chimaera rushed to him, snarling in a rage. Troy grasped the knife and stared the beast down. The Chimaera lunged forward at Troy, Troy dived down and forward, rolled over onto his back, and jammed his father's knife into the Beasts' chest and ran it down his belly while the Chimaera was still directly above him.

The Chimaera shook. Troy crawled on his hands and knees out of the way, then got up and watched the Chimaera slump lifelessy to the ground on it's side.

Troy carried the carcass of the monster back to the village with him. The villagers processed the carcass, making clothes and blankets out of it's hide, roasting and feeding on the meat, and making tools out of it's bones, teeth and claws.

One night, in Troy's sleep. Troy dreamt that he was back at the path on the mountain by the sea leading to the Chimaera's cave. The clouds above shuddered, and the Gods convened to him.

"Troy, you are the chosen hero. There are more monsters terrorizing our people across the land, you must take this Sword and purge the land of these beasts."

It was then that a sword with a golden sheath and scabbard materialized before him. Troy then woke up in the middle of the night to find a sheathed sword in his lap in bed. Troy got out of bed, picked up the sword, unsheathed it and gasped silently he saw that the blade looked just like it did in his dream.

Troy had closed his eyes, for he knew what all this meant. That night, he crept out of his family's home and made off for other cities and towns plagued by monsters in the dead of night, refusing to look back.

As he traveled down a path, he saw a traveler's guidepost with two arrows pointing left and right, and a board where people could write on it for help with their troubles.

The arrow pointing to the left said "Birch Town." The arrow pointing to the right said "Petal Burg".

The Board said "A Minotaur is terrorizing Birch Town. Please help. You will be rewarded."

And so Troy took the path on the left to Birch Town.