Chapter 3: The first test

This is the third chapter of the Novel

Chapter 3: The first test

I could hear my name being called out by one of the male teachers. He had long, white hair and a pony tail. He wore what seemed to be reading glasses. He walked up to me and he greeted me with a, “Hello there young man. My name is Andréa Philix, but you may address me as Sir Philix.” “Hello there sir,” I replied. “Do you know which class I’m in?” He didn’t respond for a moment, but after checking the clipboard he was holding in his left hand, he replied, “Hmm, your first class is survival, with me.” I was a little bit upset: none of my friends were in my class, not even my brother. He soon called out more random names and some students had to go to different classes. He took the remaining students through a magic door, which he promised would lead us to the survival grounds. I didn’t know what the survival grounds looked like, but when we got there, all I could see was a vast, open space, inside a huge, purple, see-through dome. I was starting to get suspicious about the colour of the interior of this place. Sir Philix led our class inside the dome through a small metal gate, there we were welcomed by another class and to my surprise, Ominous was in that class. This time, he was standing alone; the twins must’ve been put in a different class to him and the funny thing was, he was the only boy in that class! Inside my head I was dying with laughter; my arch enemy was surrounded by girls. When I said that line in my head, my smile began to fade. He was surrounded by girls, hot girls, pretty girls, cute girls, girls that might find him attractive. I was now angrier than happy. “Ok, my class and Sir Demetrius’ class will combine for this first training exercise”, spoke sir Philix. “This is the very first level all newcomers must pass in order to receive their first ranks as new bloods. These are the instructions of the task, so all of you pay close attention; all students will enter the dome. The doors will close and thus trigger the beginning of the exercise. A background will be rezzed within the dome, including every single item in that background, including rocks, trees, bushes and even animals, so be careful where you go. All students must travel through the dome and find the exit within twenty four hours, in order to complete the task. Each student, for the first level, will have to race all the others to the exit, which is not revealed until you reach it. Fighting is allowed but killing is forbidden, for lower ranked students of course. Good luck.” Killing is forbidden for lower ranked students? What about higher ranked students!? This task will last a day!? Didn’t he say this is the first level, isn’t it supposed to be simple? Alas, Sir Philix and Sir Demetrius had left the dome and were spectating from a high-up ledge. All the students looked at each other in shock, for we all were not expecting such a long, dangerous task on the first day of school…

Suddenly, the whole area went dim: pitch black, darker than night. I couldn’t see a thing. I changed my human eyes into werewolf eyes in hopes than I could see using my night mode vision, but I still couldn’t see a thing. What was this? It was as if someone erased everything in the universe, leaving nothing but an empty void. For a second I began to think that this was only happening to me, but decided to test this to make sure. I called out, “Hey, can anyone else see what’s going on?” and soon enough, I heard a voice call back, “No, everything’s dark. I can’t even see with my vampire eye sight”. I was sure that voice was Ominous, but I was too concerned about getting my vision back to hate him. Before I knew it, my eye sight started coming back and I could see again. The background seemed to be a jungle, filled with lots of trees, flowers, vines, rocks and bugs. The task had already started. I looked around, but I couldn’t see any of the other students anymore. I was standing in the middle of a long track that seemed to have formed from someone or something walking along this path for a long time. I was alone, but wait, I could hear something. It was the voice of one of the girls, but which one? It was a scream, a scream for help. White, silver fur began to grow on my face, arms legs and my entire body. My ears grew a bit longer and my nails became large, sharp claws. Behind me, swayed a long, white tail and my mouth had turned into a snout, with razor sharp teeth built inside. My instinct told me to howl and that was exactly what I did, to send out a sign that said: help was on the way. I dropped to the ground on all fours, like a dog, and ran towards where I thought the noise was coming from.

I ran for few minutes, searching for the girl, but I couldn’t see anyone calling for help. I then decided to sniff for any sent of a creature nearby and immediately, I picked up a scent, not far from where I was. I followed that scent and after 2 minutes of sniffing, I could finally see someone in the distance. It was a girl. She had her back against a tree and looked like she had been startled; her eyes were wide open, but she didn’t blink at all. She was staring at something, but I couldn’t see what it was. I slowly approached her and looked in the direction she was looking at. I saw something, something odd and disturbing. I could see a lady, with snakes for hair and below her hip was the lower part of a snake. She was staring towards us. I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t move my body. ‘What has she done to me, to us?’ thought, too paralysed to speak. Before I lost all hope of ever passing this test, something or someone, landed in front of us. It was a boy, with purple coloured, spiked hair. Oh no, out of all the people to come to our rescue, why did it have to be him. It was Ominous. “Stuck already my friends?” he asked cheekily, as he stood there, staring at us. I could see that he was in his vampire form, for he had crimson-red eyes and vampire fangs. Why was he able to move and not us? I then got some of my feeling back; I could move my head a bit. I looked down at my body, and saw a huge python, wrapped around my body. I had also returned to my human form, but why? How? Who? I had a feeling it was that weird, snake lady who had done this to me.

Somehow, she had managed to change my form and wrap this snake around me, without me even realizing it. The thought of her made me shiver. Thankfully, I was back to my old self again, but I was still trapped by this python’s grip. “Need help there, Breticon?” asked Ominous. “Why, would you help me?” I replied, hoping that he would say it was part of his detention jobs. But he simply gave me a grin and took hold of the snake’s body and ripped it off of me. His strength was almost as good as mine, though maybe this was because I was already trapped and couldn’t really challenge him to find out for sure. I got up and looked at the girl; she was also trapped by one of that strange woman’s pythons. Maybe this is why I saw her motionless, but how come I couldn’t see the snake around her before? Ominous took the chance to be a hero and ripped the snake off of her as well. She got up and shook her head. We all looked at each other for a split second. The girl then said, “Thank you guys, for saving me.” Ominous replied, “My pleasure,” before he changed into a bat and flew off in the other direction. Typical Ominous; he always leaves at the wrong time, without even saying goodbye. I looked over at the girl and asked, “Are you alright?” “Yes, I’m fine,” she replied, and she looked at me strangely. I then took the opportunity to ask what creature she was. She told me that she was a pixie, a similar creature to an elf, though she could fly and could shrink herself to the size of a butterfly. Moments later, she changed into her pixie size, which was very small. She had also grown a pair of lovely, sparkly wings. She fluttered up and down, all around, before saying goodbye. “Wait, what was your name again?!” I called out to her, but she had flown away too far for her to hear by the time the words came out of my mouth. I changed back into my werewolf form and began searching for the exit.

A few hours had past and it was becoming dark inside this dome. The funny thing was that we couldn’t actually see the outside of the dome. For all we knew, we could be simply running around a small amount of flat ground. What if this whole background was just an illusion? I mean, my eyes had been tricked once by that strange lady, what if she was the one who made this dome? Now that I thought of it, I never did see he leave after Ominous saved us. Suddenly, a thought came rushing into my mind: what if she was the one who had kidnaped Siren and Ryuki? After all, when we saw them, they were in their human form, like I was. They could’ve been stuck in the grip of some of her snakes, or trapped inside her mirage. But then again, Siren said that their attacker was a shadow-like figure, of a man. She couldn’t have done it. I kept thinking about this over and over again, whilst I was searching for the exit. Soon enough, I came to a halt. Up ahead, were two students fighting. One was an elf and the other was a human, but they weren’t the reason why I stopped. Up, on top of them, was a puma, sitting on a branch of a tree. It looked like it was about to pounce and attack the both of them. I ran on all fours directly at the boys at full speed. One of the boys, the human one, saw me running towards them and warned the other one. They both stared at me with a frown on their faces. This didn’t stop me from saving them from the puma’s attack. When I was about a foot away from the boys, I took a huge leap at the branch the puma was sitting on. It made its move towards the boys, but I tackled it whilst in mid-air and knocked it back away from the boys. We both fell flat on the ground, but I was the first to get up. The puma lay still on the floor, for about four seconds, before getting up on its feet. The two boys were shocked from the alarming dance, the puma and I had performed. They just stood there in awe with their mouths wide open. The puma and I stared directly into each other’s eyes. It started to circle us, but I maintained eye-contact with it, tracing its every step.

It stopped and stared at the human boy, before slouching a bit. It launched itself at the boy but I leapt towards the puma and inflicted a huge bite on the side of the puma’s body. Its’ belly was between my upper and lower jaw. It was trapped in my deadly bite. It growled, wrestled and tried to escape from my bite, but that didn’t do much. Not wanting to eat it, I threw my head away from the boys and released the puma off of my teeth as I did so. The puma went flying out of my mouth and crashed against a large tree, there it laid still for a while, crippled by my defence move. “Thanks,” said the elf. I gave out a smile and turned to look at the sky. It was now night time and I didn’t think that anyone had found the exit yet. I decided to follow the two boys; together we had formed a small team of three. We had decided to work together to find the exit and I was prepared to defend the new friends I had made. They both told me their names as we walked together. The elf was called Oblivion, and the human boy was called Cody. A few minutes ago, they had been fighting each other, but now they had become the best of friends. We continued to walk, until we saw a small cave, in which we decided to sleep in for the night.

The next morning, we woke up and started searching for the exit again. We walked for about two hours, before we came to a cliff. I looked down, it looked bottomless. We decided to go around the cliff, instead of going across. We reached the other side and noticed a change in the temperature. It had risen to thirty four degrees, wait, forty degrees, no, forty five degrees. I began sweating like I’ve never sweated before, and the crazy thing was, it just got hotter and hotter. I decided to change back to my human form, for my wolf coat was taking in more heat into my body. We walked for a bit longer, before we came to a stop and just as we did, elves, vampires, wolves, pixies and humans all ran past us at full speed. The vampires ran faster than the rest. The pixies flew past, flapping their wings as fast as they could. The elves leapt from tree to tree and the humans simply ran as fast as they could, which wasn’t very fast compared to the other creatures. I didn’t know what had gotten into them all. I then turned the other way and I swear my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw a huge amount of fire, heading our way. Cody suddenly fainted, but Oblivion picked him up quickly and ran towards the others. I stood there for about three seconds, before turning into my wolf form and ran on all fours as fast as I could away from the fire. We were all there, running away from the hot, scorching flames. Ominous was running alongside his vampire friends, ahead of all the other creatures. The pixie we had earlier saved was there as well, flying alongside her pixie friends. It was a race that would determine whether you burned to death or survived.

A small hole began to form in the distance, everyone could see it. It grew bigger and bigger, till we could all see a gateway from here to the outside the dome. We had all stumbled upon the exit, but the big question still remained: who will get there first? I was coming in third place, in front of me was a female elf and in front of her was, yup, you guessed it, Ominous. His vampire speed gave him a great advantage against everyone else, but I wasn’t prepared to lose to him again. We werewolves were the only creatures capable of matching the speeds of vampires. I sped up a bit, I ran faster and faster. Everything in my way was but a blur of light. I was going at my top speed. I went past the female elf that was once in front of me only seconds after I sped up, but I still wasn’t fast enough to surpass Ominous. I closed my eyes, and when I re-opened them, they had turned from yellow, to blue. My eyes were now ocean blue. My fur was now shimmering, illuminating the rays from the dome’s purple lighting. Oh why did Lord Ketto’s favourite colour have to be purple? It seemed that this new transformation had given me a boost in speed, for I was now in front of Ominous. ‘Almost there, almost there…yes!!’ I thought, as I passed through the exit first and collapsed to the ground. I got up quickly and stood on my hind legs and turned around, only to see Ominous sitting at a table with Sir Philix and Sir Demetrius. I couldn’t believe it; he had beaten me again at something!! Moments later, all the other students rushed through the gateway and waited for the teachers to dismiss us. “Well done, all of you. You all have made it past the first, Five Arrows Academy test and none of you died,” said Mr Philix. Did he expect one of us to die? Then again, if it wasn’t for Ominous rescuing me from that strange woman, I probably would’ve died. Sir Philix continued on saying, “You may all head to your dormitories, where dinner has been already prepared for you. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

With that said, everyone was dismissed and the teachers returned to their ‘evening classes’. I went to the wolves’ dormitories, where I was met by Tarrynkora, Ezier, Siren and Ryuki, along with other werewolves who had also started their first year at F.A.A. We sat down at the table, which by the way could fit up to one hundred people, and dug into the food on the table. “Breticon how was the first test for you?” asked Tarrynkora. “It was a bit challenging, but I made it out in one piece and made two new friends along the way,” I replied. Ezier looked at me and said, “Heard you saved a pixie.” “Yeah, it was no big deal,” I replied, hiding the fact that it was Ominous who had saved her and me. The night went on and we soon went to bed, waiting for the next day to come.

Author's Note

This is my first Novel/book, so please go easy on the criticism