Attack of the Dragons Attack of the Dragons

If the Viking raids from the north and the Briton raids from the south weren’t bad enough, now we have a new challenge to our castle walls: dragons.

Here in Northumberland, summers are full of war. We are used to fighting in the summer. That’s when the lands to our north thaw enough for the Vikings to venture south to our lands hoping to steal our livestock and crops. Our walls, however, protect our farms. As the Norsemen try to come ashore, we fight them back with ease. Our arrows, bolts, and rock are more than enough to fend them off as they attempt to land on our beaches. They may not have what is ours, and soon they turn toward other coasts and other forts as ours are too strong for them.

Then come the Britons from the south. The Britons‘ claim to this land is admittedly greater than ours. They were here before the Romans and will probably outlast our Saxon rule, but that does not matter today. Today this land belongs to Ida the Saxon king, and we will hold it for him and his heirs. Their numbers cannot stand against our fortifications. Our steel is superior to theirs, as our swords and spears cut through their armor with ease. We have the higher ground, for Bamburg stands on a dolerite outcrop. Not only do we use the rock as our foundation, we have cut into the earth and used it to build our walls, and we launch our rocks toward our enemy as they attempt to storm the hill. With these rocks and our arrows and bolts, we cut half their army down before they even reach our battlements. Their spirit weakens as their forces are cut down, as we easily strike down those foolish enough not to break ranks and run. No man can defeat us once we lock ourselves behind these walls. We have plenty of land and cattle here. We can outlast any siege. Thanks to Lord Ida of Bernecia, we are protected.

Lord Ida had us build this stronghold high above the shore, and we are invincible from attacks by land and sea, but now we must deal with airborne enemies as well.

The dragons have come out of the East somewhere and bring with them fire. They attack when the sun is high. They know our bows and crossbows are worthless against them, as our arrows and bolts bounce off their thick hide. They swoop down and take our sheep in their claws and maws, returning to whereever they came from before dusk with a fifth of our provisions. The fire drives our bravest men inside as we cower with the women and children, hoping to avoid the death that the dragons bring.

Aston, the ironsmith, and his fisherman brother, Aethel, claim to have a solution. They have combined their tools and designed a contraption that might bring the winged monsters out of the sky. Fishing nets with iron barbs launched from paired ballistae. The ballista is a giant crossbow left from the Roman invasions. The contraptions take three men to crank, and aiming the ballistae pairs has proven difficult, but we hope to fight when they return tomorrow.

Nets are weighted down with iron spikes. As we launch the projectiles at the dragons, we hope to drop them into the sea, or at least pin them to the ground where our swords and spears can do harm. Aethel believes that dragons falling into the water will surely drown, and Aston believes that we should attack the wings of the grounded dragons so that they cannot escape our mighty warriors. But that lesson is for tomorrow when the dragons return at high noon. Tonight we plan our attack and hope our weapons prove their design.

Based on the information found in the passage, which invaders attack the Saxons by land?

A
the Vikings

B
the dragons

C
the Britons

D
the Romans

Hurry 100 points consider the speakers in "the raven" and the speaker in "the song of wandering aengus."write two paragraphs to compare and contrast the voice in these two poems. how does the poet give the speaker in each poem a distinctive voice? what effect does this voice have in each poem?

Monsters of the deep the ocean is full of mysteries and amazing creatures. since the first sailors left their home shores and set off for adventure, stories have been told of the strange and wondrous beasts encountered on the open ocean. with only glimpses and imagination-enhanced stories to go on, humans have made many an interesting creature into a monster. the truth is, the ocean's scariest creatures inhabit such extreme depths that humans are rarely, if ever, threatened by them. that does not mean they are not the stuff of nightmares. consider, if you will, the following frightful fiends. atlantic hagfish part eel, part sea snake, this sea serpent may have inspired many stories. lacking the scales that most fish have, the hagfish secretes the most amazing slime to protect itself. this slime may be used to suffocate predators. the slime includes small fibers that make it almost impossible to remove. but the hagfish's truly horrific nature lies in what it does to its prey, not its predators. with an excellent sense of smell that compensates for almost total blindness, the hagfish will locate and latch on to a victim. with a circle of razor sharp teeth, the hagfish bores a hole into the side of its now-doomed prey. once the hole is complete, the hagfish just welcomes itself inside for a meal of fish innards. it essentially eats its prey from the inside out. like other deep-sea monsters, however, hagfish are seldom a nuisance to humans. they live most of their lives at depths of up to 5,600 feet. in fact, they prefer a soft sea bottom so they can quickly bury themselves to hide from threats. gulper eel another, more hideous, fiend of the deep is the gulper eel. this creepy critter is part eel and part giant pouch. like a pelican's enormous pouch-shaped mouth, the mouth of the gulper eel can open quite wide to gulp prey. it has a long tail tipped with a glowing organ that is used to lure in prey. in part to its tail, the gulper can reach up to six feet in length. because its tail is so thin, it is not able to pursue prey with any speed, but it can scoop up hundreds of small crustaceans or shrimp in one bite. often swimming through these prey groups with its mouth wide open, its large jaws allow it to feed on squid and other creatures much larger than itself. gulper eels have only been studied because they sometimes get caught in the nets of fishermen. the depths they inhabit make it quite difficult for scientists to study them. they can go as deep as 6,000 feet, well beyond the abilities of humans to pursue them. vampire squid perhaps the most frightening of the deep-sea monsters is also the smallest. the vampire squid reaches lengths of only six inches. it is also one of the most ancient of the deep-sea monsters. scientists believe it to be the last surviving member of its order. to see the vampire squid is to wonder how many kinds of sea creatures have been mashed into this one odd-looking spook. part squid, part octopus, and part fish, the vampire squid has features of all of these. first, it has large fins at the top of its head that look like ears. flapping like dumbo, the squid uses these fins to get around. it also has tentacles and a large bulbous head like an octopus. its arms, however, are connected by webbing that allows it to form a cloak around itself when frightened. like the octopus, it can change its colors, even making its cloak so dark that it appears invisible. remarkably, it has the largest eyes compared to its body size of any creature on earth. despite its mere six-inch length, its eyes are as big as those of a large dog. with its glowing orbs of eyes and its disappearing tricks, it's no wonder it's named after one of the most feared creatures of legends and folklore: the vampire. these creatures make one wonder not just about the odd members of the deep-sea community, but also what mysterious things inhabit the regions never visited by humans. what may be lurking in the deepest, darkest corners of the deep blue seas? one thing we know for certain, much like the outrageous monsters we conjure in our worst nightmares, the deep ocean is an equally imaginative source of shock, awe, and outright fright. what are the key differences between the atlantic hagfish and the gulper eel? use details and quotations from the text to support your answer.

Read the passage from animal farm. as clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. if she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. these scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old major first stirred them to rebellion. if she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of major's speech. instead—she did not know why—they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. there was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. she knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of napoleon. but still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. it was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of jones's gun. such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them. what was most likely orwell’s purpose for writing this passage? to show that clover is more sensitive to violence than the others to remind readers of major's speech and the original rebellion to present napoleon as a cruel leader unworthy of the animals’ support to represent misled followers and their dashed hopes for better lives