For he had studied every battle tactics book he could get his hands on; and he didn't want to be put under the command of some incompetent general and get killed before he had even got a chance at a promotion. So when he was seventeen he went down to the wharf, hired a few of the men hanging around the tavern, borrowed one of his fathers fishing vessels and set out into the harbor. Now at that time there was a serpent the bay that the people had named Withertooth. This enormous serpent hindered trade and was a threat to al who ventured into the bay. The beast soon found them, but got caught in a ghost net they were pulling giving Cedric and his crew enoughtime to make it to a large mass of floating ice cakes. No sooner than Cedric had jumped off on to one of the ice cakes than did Withertooth burst through flipping him underwater. The beast not seeing him plunged back into the sea, but the pulling force of the eel-like creature disrupted the ice and gave Cedric an opening in the ice to crawl through. When he had made it back on top of the ice cake he saw the tail end of Withertooth slipping underwater He got to his feet, raised his sword above his head, and was about to bring it down with al his force onto the beast when the slipperiness of the ice combined with its rocking back and forth caused him to