Spirit Animals: The Stolen Crown

Chapter 1

7 Years Later

Nazeer was sitting on the dirt in a cluster of trees watching the fire as he prodded it with a stick with his back to a mountain. He was camped out in the plains of Amaya by himself. Even though 7 years has passed he still couldn't stop thinking about everything that had happened. His family splitting, his mom and brother going to Amaya while Nazeer and his dad stayed at their home in Nilo.

All of this happened 2 years after the day he watched his brother summon Tena, his cheetah spirit animal. One of Dad's brothers died from an illness. Of course his stupid relatives thought that someone from his moms side was the cause of it. Things had started to escalate and it started to get violent. To keep them from fighting Dad decided that Mom and Nazfir should go and stay in Amaya while Nazeer stayed with his dad in Nilo. There was a dock they would meet at every 3 months and then Nazeer would stay with his mom in Amaya while Nazfir stayed with their dad. It was like that for a few years and everything was fine, Nazeer even summoned his own spirit animal. At the thought of his spirit animal, his thoughts turned bitter.

"Of course I get the useless spirit animal that can't do anything" Nazeer said gritting his teeth. His spirit animal Maki started squeaking from the little pouch he was in. Nazeer sighed knowing he was being mean but he didn't know what to do. He held out his hand and watched as Maki scramble out of the bag and onto the palm of his hand. Nazeer still flinched whenever he saw his spirit animal because of how ugly it was. Nazeer guessed it was some kind of rat but everything about it wasn't. The animal didn't have any hair on its body, it was blind, and it had two teeth that stuck out like buck teeth. The skin was the worst part, it folded upon itself over and over. Even just having it out on his palm gave him shudders throughout his body. Maki started squeaking again pulling him from his thoughts.

"Ugh what do you want now you stupid rat! Can't you just leave me alone for a while!" Nazeer glared at him but Maki kept squeaking. Something about the way he was doing it was different. It sounded urgent or frantic, but before Nazeer could do anything he heard a stick snap. 

His head snapped up immediately as he stood up pulled out his knife while calling Maki into passive state. Once the mountain lion came into view, Nazeer ran abandoning any thought of fighting. He wasn't going to engage a mountain lion because he knew he couldn't win and it would be suicide. While he was running he heard another roar and two more mountain lions came into view from both of his sides.

"Great, just great. I don't get one mountain lion, I get three. As if my life isn't messed up already." Nazeer said muttering to himself. He slowly walked backwards while facing the lions as they slowly crawled towards him. Nazeer watched enough cats fight (Tena was the only cat he saw) and no time once he saw the hanuched legs. 

He turned and ran hard slashing his knife at the branches above him to bring them down and get in the way of the lions along with anything on the branches. That was when another mountain lion came into view and pounced at him. Nazeer didn't see it because he was to busy looking behind him so when he turned around and saw it he was barely able to get out of the way. The mountain lions were gaining and he was losing speed. Pretty soon he was going to be mauled by the lions and no one would know what happened to him. 

"For the love of Erdas can I please just be somewhere safe and not have some animals think I'm some lazy sloth that can be eaten." Nazeer kept running and stopped when he reached the end of the trees where it met the tall grass of the plains. He looked around and didn't see anything that could be of use. He was hoping he would catch sight of some light, or maybe a fire in a distance. That way he would know there would be people there who may or may not help him. There wasn't anything so he didn't have much choice but to keep running. 

The moment he heard growling he realized the mistake he had made. He stopped running which allowed the lions to catch up to him, not that they weren't having any problems keeping up with a lousy 15 year old boy. 

One of the lions pounced and he dropped and rolled underneath it and tried to run, but the other two lions pounced at the same time. He spun on his heel allowing him to dodge one of them, but the other lion's claw caught his chest and swiped it scoring a nasty hit on his chest. Nazeer clutched his chest where the wound trying to keep pressure on it as the grass fed on his blood.

He tried to run but his vision was starting to lose focus and getting blurry leading him to trip on a rock. Clutching his chest Nazeer got up be his legs were feeling like jelly and they threatened to fall. His vision was getting worse and he was going pass out any minute as the lions came closer, but then an arrow flew out of nowhere and hit one of the lions in the eye. The lion roared in pain as more arrows flew from the grass. 

One moment there was nobody and the next there were dozens of people coming from the tall grass. Arrows kept flying and the lions were forced to retreat. Nazeer dropped to the ground clutching his wound.

"What do we do with him?"

"Lets take him back. It looks like he was injured by those lions we just drove off. Use one of those poultices that we have and get a stretcher to put him on. The leader can decide what to do with him when he wakes up." The men dispersed except for the one that spoke. He went to Nazeer and looked him in the face. "Don't worry you'll be fine, we'll take good care of you." the man said. "You just rest and everything will be fine." Then Nazeer passed out knowing what dreams awaited him.