Ark Lore Part 1: The Goal

That Night

The fire was roaring and Kaitlyn was starting to skin the deer. Her hand shook as she cut at the deer's hide. She cringed as the knife slid through the hide separating it from the rest of the body. She lifted the hide off the body and hung it on the drying rack. She looked down at her bloody hands. "This... this... can't be true." Thought Kaitlyn.

"All hands on deck!!!!!" Screamed a voice over an old intercom. People were running to arm themselves. It was a panic. The walls were being bombarded with magical energy.

"Quickly! We have to destroy these golems before they destroy the entire city!" Another voice yelled. A young Kaitlyn was atop an archer tower with a small team manning a ballista. They loaded the first bolt into the ballista.

"Fire!" Someone yelled. Kaitlyn pulled the lever and the ballista fired. The bolt flew over the wall, and grazed the head of the golem. A metal panel fell off revealing its inward workings. The team scrambled to load another bolt.

"Duck!" Kaitlyn yelled as a beam of magical energy came plummeting at the tower. The tower rocked back and forth until it fell, along with it a small segment of steel wall fell.

"Hey Kaitlyn what's wrong? You look like you have seen a ghost," Zac said, fumbling with his tome while wiping the dust off of it.

"Huh?" Kaitlyn gasped.

"Oh, sorry Zac. The blood reminded me of when the m-magical golems that were being tested went haywire. I was the only survivor of my f-firing team. There was blood everywhere."

"Yeah I remember a lot of the archer towers were destroyed, it took us a while, and every mage in Steelville to completely drain the golems of all of the magic energy that power them," Zac said.

"What happened to all of the e-energy?" Kaitlyn asked.

"Well a small portion of it was absorbed into our bodies and tomes, but the other portion we redirected it to the ground in hope it would be absorbed, and it was," Zac said, pointing to his temple.

"Oh.....so that's what happened, a-after the tower fell, I blacked out, and woke up in the hospital,"

"Kaitlyn, why don't you wash up while I take care of the deer because you clearly don't know how to skin one."

"Fine," Kaitlyn turned around to the tent while looking down at her hands. Her eyes began to puff as the blood dried on her hands. Zac looked down at the carcass with a blank stare.

"How am I supposed to do this? I know nothing about carcass harvesting! Whatever," Zac placed his tome on a clear patch on the ground and made sure his coat never made contact with the soil. He tried his best to skin it.