Zephyr The West Wind (Chaos Chronicles, Book 1)

The Second Trial

"Who wishes to go first?" asked the Chief while offering a smile that did not extend to his eyes.

"I will," stated Nicholas.

Turning around, the Chief looked towards the crowd of people beyond the platform.

"Nicholas shall be the first to take the Second Trial of Adulthood," said the Chief sternly. "Let us wish him luck, as he fights for his life against the great demon, the Karkinos!"

As he finished, the Chief walked over and patted Nicholas on his shoulders. "Come with me," he said softly to Nicholas as they walked over to the large, empty space on the side opposite the monster-filled cages. After placing Nicholas on the side closest to the steps leading down towards the crowd, the Chief and his assistant Hovan walked over to a large cage. Standing on opposite sides of the cage, Hovan and the Chief unlocked the bars keeping the monster within the cage and moved aside to let it move about freely.

As the Karkinos pushed its head and slowly its whole body out of the cage, we all had a clear view of the demon. The Karkinos was a crab. Not just any crab, but a colossal red crab. The space allotted for the fight between Nicholas and the Karkinos could barely contain the full reach of the monster and its pincers.

Each pincer was twice as large and long as Nicholas himself, while the body of the crab gleamed bright red. Its eyes, blacker then the night sky, stared straight at Nicholas as though it did not notice the hundreds of people beyond him watching. As it moved farther outside of the cage and closer to Nicholas, the Karkinos stamped its four pairs of feet which seemed to create a loud crackle sound as each pair hit the platform floor.

Standing only a few feet away from Nicholas, the Karkinos opened its large pincers as it readied to attack. Nicholas, defenseless with no weapon or sword and only his crystal in hand, stood firm. In the few seconds after, the Karkinos lifted one of its pincers and jabbed at the point where Nicholas was standing. Nicholas quickly dropped to the ground on all fours and disappeared from the Karkinos's view. Moving its black, beady eyes, attached to branch-like eye stalks, the crab searched slowly and silently for its prey.

Finally, it moved its eyes around to look at its back and under the shell covering its belly. But as the colossal demon crab brought its eyes under its belly to search, Nicholas jumped from beneath the Karkinos's pincer to the audience side of the monster.

As he did so, the crab seemed to become alert, as it brought its eyes up to look at its pincer. Recognizing that the Karkinos had to see everything before acting, Nicholas jumped straight through the eye stalks of the demon and onto its upper shell, landing with a thud. Turning around so he had the same view as the monster, Nicholas clenched his fist tightly, drew back his right arm, and launched it at a lightning-fast pace towards a small crack in the Karkinos's shell.

As he did so, holding his Dream stone in his left hand, dark, wispy clouds began to encircle and cover Nicholas's whole body. As Nicholas became less and less visible, the Karkinos fell to the ground, and a crackling sound rose once again.

All around Nicholas and the Karkinos, the air seemed to become harder to breathe. It felt as if something was pushing down on me and seemingly everyone else in the area, as many people were brought to their knees. It took everything I had not to sit down, so I forced myself to breathe and keep calm as the clouds around Nicholas subsided.

Nicholas looked almost exactly the same, over six feet, with short black hair, tan skin, and a lanky figure, but this time his less prominent features seemed to glow more. His eyes were completely gray, and he held a large gray axe with black swirls running along the lines of the two blades at the top of the weapon. The axe was almost half his size and seemed heavy enough for him to need to hold with both hands.

After a few seconds of breathing, I realized that the air around us seemed to be back to normal. Apparently the Karkinos realized this too, and it started to use its legs to lift itself up after its abrupt fall. Without wasting a moment, Nicholas lifted up his axe, which seemed to shine, standing out from the background of the dark blue sky, and brought it down on the crack right between the eye stalks of the monster's shell where he had punched earlier with his bare fist.

As his axe collided with the crack, a bright light flowed out of the Karkinos as its soul left its current body to be reborn as another. The great Karkinos's eyes dropped towards the platform, and the rest of its body soon fell with them.

Staggering at first, most likely from the fall and the amount of energy it must have taken to awaken his Dream stone, Nicholas rose to his feet and turned toward the crowd. His axe slowly began to dissipate into a cloudy substance that encircled his neck, gradually taking form as a necklace with a small, gray, crescent-shaped moon that sat on top of his white t-shirt on the middle of his chest. Sighing in relief, Nicholas walked over towards the group of students while clearly forcing himself to smile at the crowd. As he did so, the crowd erupted in applause and shouts of joy. He had completed the Trial of Adulthood and was now looked upon as a true adult. Good for him, I thought to myself.

"Please quiet down!" screamed Hovan over the applause. "We will begin the next trial immediately!"

The crowd's noise quickly died out while Nicholas sat down beside me. As I was about to congratulate him, I heard my name called, much to my dismay.

"Zephyr, it is your turn. You will now face the Barghest! Good luck to you, my boy," the Chief said to me as he looked me in the eyes. "Good luck to you."

I smiled and laughed. I had never gotten this far within the Trial. Because I had not passed the First Trial, I was not able to witness the Second, and so this was my first time seeing and participating in it. And the worse thing about it was that I was being forced to fight the Barghest...a demon dog as large as the Karkinos, but smarter and more powerful. Within the village, the general order if you came in contact with one was to run—for every time it took a bite from you, it took a piece of your soul with it.