User blog:Frentiza the ferret/Fren's Quest

Well, here it is people, the better, longer, and...anyway, the rewrite of my previous story, Fren's Quest. It has the same title and characters, but I've revised the plot a little bit and actually decided to give it a timeline! Heh.

This takes place seasons after The Sable Quean.

Prologue
I never thought I would live to see the day when a vermin would step out of the shadows of evil and into the light of good. Ever since I was a babe, I always associated vermin as evil, treacherous scum with no greater desire than to vanquish all goodbeasts. After all, a popular saying here at Redwall Abbey goes: “The only good vermin is a dead one.” Seasons upon seasons before I was born, a vast vermin horde known as the Ravagers, led by a sable known as Vilaya, had kidnapped young’uns all across Mossflower, including my great-grandmum Tura, and later attacked the Abbey itself. Everytime I had heard the story of the great Battle of Redwall Abbey I became more and more convinced that vermin do not deserve the right to live, such vile, horrid beasts. Of course, I had never met one, until that fateful day all those seasons ago. All of my thoughts on vermin had changed entirely since then; not all vermin are cold-hearted wretches, but there are some who are bound on a path which is dappled by light and shadow, though they could ever truly belong in one side. Fren Kozdru was one such vermin.

=Book One:Banished=

Chapter 1
Night had long fallen on Mossflower country. Crickets were heard chirping their song throughout the woodlands, mingling with the warbling of night thrushes in a subdued symphony. Clouds scudded over the waning half moon, transforming the light-washed treetops into total darkness. A solitary cricket perched upon a fallen leaf, rubbing its wings together and producing chirruping noises in response to its neighbors. Scuttling across the woodland floor, the nocturnal insect was completely unaware of the dark presence looming behind it. A flash of steel, and the cricket lay severed in two clean halves, its wings still buzzing momentarily. The creature bent down and plucked the knife from the soil. Shrugging off his hood, the stoat sheathed the lethal blade in his belt and slunk back into the bushes he had just emerged from. Another hooded figure crouched behind the bushes, awaiting the stoat’s return. This time it was a weasel, slightly smaller than his comrade but no less deadly. The stoat reappeared next to his companion, whispering, “’Twas nothin’ but a cricketbug, mate. If’n that trechearous liddle whelp was out there, she wouldn’t’a stood a chance agin me.” The weasel snorted and took off his hood. Taking his own knife, he honed it against a stone on the ground. “No idier why we was sent out ta chase after the wretch. Deserved t’be exiled, dat un. She was nothin’ but a goody-two-paws, sorry excuse fer a vermin, if’n I do say so meself.” His companion, the stoat, put his hood back on and stood up, knife in paw. He scanned their surroundings, listening intently for any noise that was out of the ordinary. Sensing nothing wrong, he sat back down. “No chance of ‘er comin’ back. ‘Ow bout we’s head back ta camp an’ tell the chief?” The weasel nodded and slipped the hood back over his ears. Both figures silently retreated back to camp, until a rustling noise erupted behind them. Instinctively, the weasel whipped out his knife and, holding it by the tip of the blade, whipped it out in the direction of the sound. Rewarded by a thud and the abrupt silence, he turned around and ran to catch up with his companion, who had been pressing on ahead of him.

Deep in the undergrowth, the knife stood quivering, tip embedded in the trunk of an old beech just a hairsbreadth from a young ferret’s neck. She stood panting with her back to the tree, hoping that the two trackers had left. When she finally sensed that the danger had passed, she turned around and plucked the knife from the tree, then stowed it in the thin belt she wore about her waist, next to her sling. Thanks for the weapon, you cretins. She thought, before slinking off further into Mossflower. She had no idea how long she had been going; hours, she guessed, though that mattered little to her right now. What mattered was how much distance she put between herself and the vermin camp she had once called home. Banished. That’s what she was now, banished simply because she was different from all the others in that vermin horde. She allowed herself a tiny snarl. Her father’s horde, she reminded herself. She knew her father had resented her from the moment she was born, and, unsurprisingly, she returned the feelings of resentment. Her father, the vermin chieftain, was about the only creature she ever truly despised, and with a passion, at that. The truth was, she never allowed herself any true negative feeling for any other living creature, which is unusual to vermin. She never took any liking to the activities vermin were so infamous for, such as killing and plundering, and she would often refer to them as “unjust” and “intolerable”. Everybeast in the horde thought of her as a good-for-nothing softie, though none of them dared raise a stink about the chief’s daughter, despite the fact that they all knew about his hatred for her.

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