Warrior 3.0

Once upon a time, far, far away, beyond the seven hills, across the seven seas, there lived an Inventor. He lived all by himself in a hut on his lands, surrounded by the Forest of Terrible Things. The Inventor guarded his lands with his inventions, which kept him and his home safe from the Terrible Things of the Forest.

As the years passed, the Inventor could sense that the Terrible Things in the Forest were getting better at doing terrible things. “These confounded creatures keep finding their way past my inventions faster than I can keep inventing. What I need is a Warrior who will do what these creatures do - learn from them and keep them back from my lands.”

He set about it the only way he knew how: Invention. “My Warrior, he will have the strength of this tree”, he said to himself as he cut down a branch from the largest oak tree on his land.

“He’ll be faster than the wind that blows through the Forest of Terrible Things”, muttered the Inventor, waving his Windcatching Sack around to catch gusts of the rushing East Wind.

For days, nay weeks, maybe months on end, the Inventor kept hard at work, building his Fantastic Warrior Machine. Hammering away, tightening gears, fixing pipes, the Inventor made his Warrior.

And so, one evening as the sun lingered on the horizon, the Inventor sent the Warrior out to the edges of his lands. He never returned. “This is not going to be so easy”, thought the Inventor. Though strong as an oak tree, and fast as the wind, his Warrior was still missing something. “Defence, maybe?”, he mused. Seemed plausible. Warrior 1.0 was all attack and no defence. And as the well-known saying went, offence wins glory, but defence is gory.

The Inventor went into his storeroom, digging through years of accumulated possessions and inventions. “Yes! That should do nicely”, he exclaimed, spotting the Shield of Dwarves. The shield had been a gift to the Inventor from Boburt, King of the Weisswald Dwarves. Boburt had inherited it from his father, Billiam, the legendary Dwarf king who had defeated the invasion of the Sky People. As the story went, Billiam shot down the Sky King’s ship with his Kinetic Crossbow and crafted a shield from its armored hull. It was so sturdy it could withstand a meteor strike.

The Inventor had high hopes for his New Warrior and even waved him an enthusiastic farewell as he sent him out to the Forest. But after a week and no news, it was quite clear that the New Warrior had met the same fate as his predecessor. The Inventor swore loudly and threw his saucepan at the window. The pane shattered into a million pieces, some of which flew back at him, nicking his forearm just deep enough to draw blood, but not big enough to hurt.

He stomped downstairs to his basement, where the Fantastic Warrior Machine sat, awaiting instructions. “Some machine you are”, he muttered, and aiming at its base, the Inventor delivered as hard a kick as he could. As he raged against the Machine, the drop of blood that was snaking its way down his elbow shook free and flew into the Warrior Mix. Seeing the massive dent on his Warrior Machine, the scattered parts left over from his previous Warriors, and the cold wind rushing in through his broken window upstairs, the Inventor could feel the exhaustion settling in. So many things to fix, so many Terrible Things to fight. As he walked back up the stairs, he cast a glance back at the Warrior Machine, making faint hissing and whirring noises. He’d have to fix that tomorrow. But for now, he just had to sleep.

The next morning, the Inventor woke up to the sounds of the Machine. “Wait, did I leave it running overnight?”, he thought as he jumped out of bed to run down to the basement. Hopefully, the damn thing had not set fire to his workshop. As he cautiously crept downstairs, he couldn’t see any flames. Instead, waiting for him was a new Warrior.

“What? Who are you? I don’t remember starting a new Warrior yesterday”, the Inventor asked him. “Your kick seems to have short-circuited the Machine into operation. I’m your new Warrior. The one you’ve been trying to make all this time.”

“Oh yeah? The last two said the same thing. And you’re actually just a copy of the last one”, the Inventor replied, wondering what he could do with this “extra” copy. Maybe this one could do the dishes.

“But I am different. Look at your arm.”, said the Warrior, pointing at the cut on the Inventor’s forearm. “Your blood makes me different. I am stronger than the strongest oak tree, faster than the East Wind, more invulnerable than the Shield of Dwarves. And with your blood, I learn faster than the Terrible Things that prowl the Forest.”

The Inventor watched as the Warrior nonchalantly pulled something gruesome out of his backpack. Something the Inventor had never seen in all his years. A Terrible Head, which at some point belonged to a Terrible Thing. A now dead Terrible Thing.

“I got this one last night after you went to sleep. He was sneaking onto your lands from the western border”, said the Warrior, speaking like he was describing a weekend trip to the village market. “I’ll go out again in a few hours, but I don’t think they’ll bother us, not for a while at least.”

The Inventor sat listening to the Warrior as he described the first of many Terrible Battles, and his mind went blank. And just like that, he realised that didn’t have to keep inventing. His Warrior would keep the Terrible Things at bay. That is if he didn’t just kill all of them. Just the thought of it was liberating. The Inventor, well he didn’t really need to be one any more, did he? He could paint, or become a chef. Or he could write a book, maybe two. The possibilities were endless.