A Note from the Real Author
John is the fictional father of two kids that would rather play video games than read the Bible. They think it’s boring, so John wrote them a story to convince them otherwise. They said they wanted a story of dragons, swords, magic, adventure, romance, and more. So John sat down to write . . .
Jared Dees
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The Adventurer: Part 6
Chapter 12
The Adventurer’s knights divided up into groups of two. The boy matched up with a tall, skinny knight named Ivan. Ivan was quiet and thoughtful. The boy looked forward to getting to know him more as they went out on their quest.
All the knights waved goodbye to each other and to the Adventurer and set out on their way.
“So, where should we go?” the boy asked Ivan.
Ivan just shrugged his shoulders. “You’ve been with him the longest. Where do you think we should go?”
The boy had no idea. “Let’s just walk and see who comes across our path. That seemed to be what the Adventurer did.”
They walked along the path for most of the day but there was no one in sight. It was strange not to see a single person along the road. Surely, there would be heroes setting out on quests, but they saw no one.
The boy was beginning to think he and Ivan would return to the Adventurer with nothing accomplished. They were supposed to be fighting fiends and healing the wounded.
“Let’s rest here,” said the boy pointing his staff to a shady spot under a tree.
They sat down and got out of the hot sun for a little while. It remained very quiet until the two of them heard a large boom echoing across the plain. They both stood up with a jolt.
“What was that?” said Ivan.
The boy smiled. “Our adventure!” he said. But as the booming sounds continued and got louder and louder, he felt less and less excited about what lay ahead.
They squinked as they looked in the direction of the sound. Smoke started to rise from the horizon.
“Let’s go,” said the boy.
Ivan gripped his staff tightly. “Do we have to?”
“We can’t go back. There’s nowhere to go back to. Let’s go and help if we can,” said the boy.
So the two knights set out towards the smoke up ahead. They held only their staffs in hand with no weapons and no armor. They hardly looked like knights at all.
The booming stopped as they went along the road. It wasn’t long before they saw the source of the smoke. A small city was tucked just below a mountain range. The buildings were on fire. People were running out of the gates.
The knights ran towards the burning city and started to piece together more of what had happened. The grounds were scorched. Heroes lay across the plain before the city. A great battle had been waged, but against what?
They ran up to the first wounded hero. He was still alive. The knights looked at each other. Together they raised their staff into the sky then down towards the man on the ground. Great light flashed from their staffs. The man coughed and looked up into the sky in terror.
“NO!” he shouted.
“It’s gone, don’t worry, ” said the boy trying to comfort him.
“It–it was just too big, too powerful. We couldn’t . . .” the hero trailed off and covered his face in shame.
“What was it?” asked Ivan.
The man looked up, fear still in his eyes. His voice was low, barely a whisper. “The Dragon.”
“Dragon? THE Dragon?” asked the boy.
“We thought there was enough of us. We thought we would be strong enough. Heroes from all over came to fight him, but he was too powerful.” The man looked out over the fields, seeing all the wounded.
“Go,” he said. “They need your healing power more than me.”
The man was right. The knights split up and ran from one wounded hero to the next. Each one recovered with the same fears and dread of the powerful Dragon.
The boy didn’t know much about the ancient creature, but he did know that it could not be defeated. Rumors were that the Dragon was the leader of all evil beast, though it had never been seen by human eyes.
They city continued to burn and the fields were full of people without a home. Some of the surviving heroes gathered them together and led them along the path. The knights had healed everyone they could save and then joined the group along the way.
Chapter 13
The boy judged that the group must have numbered in the hundreds at first, but as they went along more refugees joined them. There were burning cities and towns everywhere. There was nowhere left for them to go. By the next day there were thousands walking with them along the road.
The knights made their way to the front of the crowd to see where they were heading. There they were reunited with all of their fellow knights who had similar stories to share of the Dragon and healing of heroes.
The Adventurer was not there. They wished they could tell them what to do and where to go.
Off in the distance they could see a lake with freshwater. The crowds were in desperate need of water and stopping there made the most sense, so they left the road for the lake.
When they got there, the knights were overjoyed to see the Adventurer on the shore all alone. They ran to him to tell him about the events of their journey.
When they frantically told him about the Dragon, the Adventurer simply said to them, “Sit and rest awhile.”
“We would love to rest,” said the boy. “But look behind us. There are thousands of people. They have no food and no supplies. What should we do?”
He looked at the boy perplexed. “Give them something to eat,” he said.
“But we have no food. We have nowhere to buy food. How can we feed them?” asked one of the knights.
“Go and see how many loaves of bread you have,” the Adventurer said.
They went out to the crowd of people as they arrived near the lake and asked how much food there was among them. The knights gathered five loaves of bread and returned to their master.
“This is all we have,” said the knight Theodore.
The Adventurer nodded and then ordered them to gather the crowds into groups of hundreds and fifties, which they did.
The knights returned to see the Adventurer raising the bread up into the sky. Then he broke the bread and gave it to his knights to share with the crowds.
The boy looked down at the piece of bread he had been given then up at the many thousands of people they had to feed. It didn’t make sense, but he trusted the Adventurer and went from group to group breaking off a piece of the bread for them.
What happened next he could never quiet understand. Each time he broke the bread, it seemed to multiply. The bread never grew smaller. Each group he distributed the bread to had the same experience. They broke the bread and divided it among themselves until everyone was full.
When they were done, the knights gathered up the remaining pieces of bread. They couldn’t believe their eyes. Each knight filled up a basket full of the leftovers. They returned to the Adventurer.
He was looking out over the fields of many people. “They are like sheep without a shepherd,” he said to his knights.
“Where will you lead them?” asked the boy. “Will we fight the Dragon? Defeat the Emperor? Please tell us. What is our quest?”
“You grow impatient, but the quest is at hand. The many heroes here need our help, but we cannot stay here. We set out tomorrow morning for our final quest. You have done well, my knights, but there is still much more to do. ”
A Conversation about Part 6 of The Adventurer
“A new character, huh?” said the daughter to her father when he finished the story.
“You asked for dragons,” he replied.
“So, who is the Adventurer going to fight? The fiends? The Emperor? The Dragon?” asked the son.
“I’m beginning to think there are too many bad guys in this story,” said the daughter.
“Ha, well, maybe you are right. Is that so different from the opposition that Christians have faced? There is both an internal and external set of enemies that drive us towards sin,” said the dad.
“Dad, you are getting a little too theological here. What’s next in the story?” asked the daughter.
“I think we can skip ahead in the Bible to the end. Next time, let’s follow our Adventurers and his knights to the capital city. Sound good?” said the dad.
“Yeah, sounds good. Are all those people the Adventurer fed going with him?” asked the daughter.
“Yeah, is that like his army or something?” asked the son.
“You’ll see,” said the dad.
To Be Continued . . .
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