Grayson

The last challenge doesn't go as expected...

Chiron led me down the steps by the scruff of my shirt. “Just making sure you don’t run off again.” He said, striding forward so quickly that I had to jog at intervals to keep up with him. I groaned in pain every once in a while at the extreme weight my body seemed to be carrying.

            “We shouldn’t keep the crowd waiting.” Chiron muttered with an odd undertone of force. He paused for a moment at the door and let his pale hand waver over my eyes for a moment. I took in a sharp breath as my vision went black. I felt a tug on my shirt as Chiron continued out the front door and out onto the dew covered shrubbery.

As we walked, my feet skimmed across the familiar sharp twigs on the soft earth as the two of us made our way down to the boat by the river, while Chiron seemed to be floating over to it.

Chiron accompanied me into the boat, his hand resting securely upon the back of my neck. His skin was icy cold to the touch and as the boat pushed off from land with a precarious lurch, we were on our way.

There was a strange feeling in the air making me uneasy. I cast glances around the area outside the boat and even though I couldn’t see it, I had the distinct notion that I was surrounded. I’ve had this feeling before, I thought. This time though, it was even more profound.

Chiron craned his neck so his mouth was near my ear. “Can you sense them? Our viewers are everywhere, watching you . . . Don’t disappoint them.” He said darkly, in his new, remarkably scratchy voice. Somehow, I thought, it made him seem even more like a snake.

The boat made its way through the waters of the River with little more than a small wake from the boat to break the silence. I knew I was being watched now. Chiron had confirmed it, but now the thought was bursting in my head: who was watching us? I had little time to ponder this, as the boat made a sudden stop, causing me to lurch forward while Chiron kept his cold hand gripped around my neck.

“Off you go.” He said, lifting me to my feet and shoving me forward and off the boat, where I found my legs so weak that I nearly fell to the floor, which I discovered was made of stone.

The blindness was whipped away from in front of my eyes like a black bag. In front of me was a room. I had never seen a room like it, not even the twisted cathedral had been quite like this. Before me, the triangular room rose high up and ended in a flat ceiling. In the center of the ceiling, a massive hole hovered, spewing fire that bubbled out like from the inside of a cauldron. Occasionally, a large spout of the flame would shoot out into the room in small bursts. Level with me, pillars rose out from a ground that stretched so far below, it was nothing short of a black abyss.  The pillars were arranged in a grid-like pattern, all the same triangular shape, except for the pillar in the center, which was almost twice as large as the surrounding ones.

“Nic!”

I heard my name sound throughout the room. I looked over and realized that at each point in the triangle, one person stood. Avra had her hands cupped to her mouth like a megaphone to my right. To my left, the freckle faced boy stood, but there was something different about him. He stood up straight, arms slightly forward, knees bent and a fiercely determined look on his face.

I waved to Avra, signaling that I was aware of her presence, then let my arm fall like a dead weight at my side.

This is not looking good, I thought. If I could hardly move, there was no way I’d be able to fight off a monster.

            Suddenly, Chiron’s voice fell like ice upon the hot room. “Well folks! This . . . is a glorious day indeed!” His voice was back to normal, but there was something about the tone of greed that he hadn’t left behind. Like a banker hungrily looking over his tax collections.

 “Our three finalists have entered their last ordeal, before one of them will proceed to the title of champion!” at that, a roaring cheer from hundreds, maybe thousands of voices. “The last challenge of competition, being the most difficult and mind numbing task thus far . . .” Chiron paused for a moment, “The challengers must compete against each other, to the death!”  At this, the applause grew even louder and I was forced to cover my ears. “The winner will receive immortality, and will be returned to the world of the living.”

That sentence nearly stopped my heart.

“Now . . . Begin!” The voice called and that was it. The cheering ended abruptly, letting the sound of the roaring fire in the ceiling above fall down with the embers that exploded from its depths. My head was swimming, but I was brought brutally back to reality by the long spear that fell from the ceiling and landed with a clatter on the stone floor in front of me. The sound came from the three other points on the triangle as Avra and freckle face received their identical weapons.

I picked it up, feeling the unfamiliar and remarkably heavy weight of spear. It ended in a menacing point and intricate carvings decorated the shaft. I hated it immediately. I preferred the grace of the bow, but this was all I would have to fight with.

Fight . . . I was going to have to fight Avra . . . true, she had saved my life, I thought. Then again, if she killed me now it would’ve been pointless. And then there was the freckle faced kid. He picked up his spear and gripped it tightly, raising it to his chest like a battle-hardened warrior.

Avra clenched her spear the same way I did; unsurely. She glanced back and forth between the freckle faced kid and I, not sure what to do. I was dealing with the same ultimatum.

Suddenly, a fireball was launched from the pit in the ceiling straight at me. Though it took all of my strength to do so, I managed to avoid the ball as it blasted the floor where I had been to ashes, and leapt onto an adjacent pillar.

Then I realized there was another catch.

As I landed, the pillar beneath me began to shift and sway. I stood up, immediately trying to balance myself out. The pillar tilted forward dangerously and I wheeled my arms every which way trying to stay up.

The freckle faced kid leapt onto the pillar before him, but to my increasing horror, the pillar beneath him did not sway. It was as if he had overnight achieved perfect balance and transformed from the awkward child who couldn’t even hold up a shield, to a soldier worthy of the Spartans.

He leapt gracefully to the next pillar that again remained motionless beneath him, while I was teetering at the edge of mine.

I was starting to get exhausted. This slight exertion was becoming too much stress for my body. I began panting hard and my muscles felt like they were on fire and soon they began to fail me.

“God . . . damnit!” I yelled in frustration as I collapsed to the surface of the pillar.             My vision started to grow fuzzy, an experience I had gone through too many times. The pillar fell forward with a crash into the pillar in front of it, putting the ground at a steep angle. I rolled down the slope practically lifelessly onto the next pillar, where the freckle faced child stood, holding his spear high above his head, point down, ready to strike.

I realized that my spear had fallen from my hand into the dark pit below the pillars. The freckle faced child lowered his spear to my nose, then back up, his eyes gleaming red. Something was definitely wrong with him. Looks like Chiron had fixed the race for his prized horse, I thought grudgingly.

A cry came from somewhere to my right, suddenly, Avra leapt onto the pillar as well, causing the balance to tip precariously. I tried to move, but every time I did, my body seemed to get heavier and heavier. The stone pillar began to groan as freckle face turned to point his spear at Avra, who returned the favor with an equally determined look in her eye.

For some reason, seeing her there like that, defending me, made my heart skip a beat.

“Back off!” Freckle face yelled at her. Avra tensed at the ferocity in his voice, but didn’t back down. “What the hell is your problem?” She asked. Freckle face growled at her angrily, “None of your business . . . girl.”

Avra screamed at him, thrusting her spear at him. Freckle face jumped easily out of the way, then onto an adjacent pillar. He growled again, baring his teeth. I tried to get up, my arms shaking as I willed the muscles to move, but they failed me, and I collapsed once again to the ground, gasping for breath.

Avra and freckle face fought fiercely against each other, spear clashing on spear in a graceful dance of battle. I tried to look up as often as I could, but I felt like I had a sumo wrestler sitting on my neck. The pillars teetered dangerously as the two fighters stepped carefully over them and an occasional ball of fire reigned down from the ceiling, forcing the two to separate for a moment, but as soon as the embers cleared, the two were at it again.

“Die!” freckle face screamed, lunging in a final strike at Avra who wasn’t able to block the attack. It cut her on the left shoulder and sliced deeply into her flesh. Her spear dropped to the floor, bouncing and vibrating against the impact. Avra clutched at the wound as dark red blood gushed from between her fingers.

I tried to look up and yell to her, but it seemed my lungs were failing me as well. I started to pass out, getting one last glimpse at Avra as her eyes went glassy and her body went limp. She stumbled to her left, the pillar leaned over too far . . . and she fell. I uttered an inaudible cry as her body was lost in the deep void beneath the pillars.

My vision started to go fuzzy, then I became light headed and then my eyes rolled into the back of my head as I caught a fading image of freckle boy’s feet as they walked toward me, the tip of the spear practically snarling at me as it moved closer to my face . . . then, darkness.

 

--

 

I found myself coughing and gasping for breath as I woke up. I remember the first thing to hit me as I sat up in the dimly lit room was the fact that I was indeed waking up, I wasn’t dead after all.

“The winner will receive immortality, and return to the world of the living.”

 I thought the voice was just in my head at first and that I was recalling the words Chiron had spoken that had made me hesitate to call myself alive. Then I heard the voice again.

“What a joke.”

The voice was deep and nasally sounding. I jumped up off whatever it was that I had been laying on, realizing that I could move freely again, and also that what I had been laying on was soft, like bedding.

I opened my eyes and realized I was in a wooden shack. Dimly lit was an understatement, except for a single candle on a dirty table nearby, the place was pitch black. Muddy blades of straw littered the concrete floor and the mat I had been laying on was a musty red rug.

“Where the hell am I?” I muttered to myself. “Hey! Is anybody there!?” I called out to the empty shack.

No answer.

“Hello?” I called again, but nothing moved in the stillness of the room. I began to get a faint chill crawling up my spine. The shack groaned against wind that apparently blew rather hard against the outside of its walls.

Maybe it had all been a dream, I thought. Maybe, the entire competition had been a dream and for some reason, my body had been shipped to this place while I was asleep.

“Well . . . look who’s awake.” said the voice again, only this time it was clearer, but it sounded like it came from a teenager no older than I was. A ruffle in the straw roofing made my head snap upwards.

A figure dropped from above me and I was reminded of the way the demons had done so before. I backed against the wall as the figure landed lightly upon the floor. He rose up from a crouched position and I realized he was about as tall as me too. The figure was also wearing a cloak made of the same thick straw as the roof and also the skull of a bull for a mask that looked horrifyingly like the minotaur.

“W-who are you?” I stuttered.

The man looked at me, peering through the small holes in the eye sockets of the mask. He waved his hand through the air as Chiron had done. Instantly, a white door completely out of place formed in the wall next to me.

White?

I looked back to the man. “Who are you?” I said again, this time sounding more confident but even more confused.

“Open it.” The man said, his voice echoing strangely within his mask. I stared at him for a moment, the cautiously inched over to the white door  and pushed it open. I walked into the room and took a sharp breath.

It looked like a hospital room. The walls were stark white, a plastic carton of advertisements for cures of various ailments hung on the wall, a large window with the shades drawn against the darkness and the bright lights above buzzed eerily in the silence. However, what gave my heart a shock was in a bed against the wall, covered in clean white sheets, laid Avra. Her eyes were closed and various tubes of different sizes flowed under the bedsheets and into her body. I moved closer to her and noticed her eyes flickered open for a second revealing deep green eyes, then closed softly once again.

I turned as the man in the mask entered the room after me.

“What going on here? What is this place? And just who the hell are you!?” I yelled, getting in his masked face. The man put his hand up to silence me.

            “Sit down.” He said calmly, motioning to a chair that sat opposite the bed. I glared at him angrily, but I sat down.

            The masked man was silent for a moment, then sighed and removed his mask, the straw that was attached to it flowing over his dark hair and sharp facial features. He placed the minotaur mask on the ground, then sat cross-legged on the floor behind it. His eyes were bright green, the same color as Avra’s.

            “Well, I guess I should start from the beginning.” He started. “Name’s Grayson, and that,” he said, gesturing to Avra lying in the bed, “Is my sister.”

Author's Note

please point out any errors you see, and I apologize if it seems a little rough.

Reviews

[TL Boehm]

now we're getting somewhere.....the plot thickens. Well penned

[MediocreMemory]

Only one sentence was actually bothering me and that was "Maybe it was the skull of the minotaur, I thought ominously.". Seemed unnecessary to add 'I thought ominously' to the sentence. That's just a minor thing I see and overall it's very well written and easy to follow. I'm interested to read more.

[WriterSki7]

Okay. A little . . . unexpected. So far so good. Albeit I am curious as to what's gonig on with this grayson character. Nothing catches my eyes at the moment.
So far, so good.

[Star Wolf]

This is really good. I do like it quite a lot. A fantastic world you've created here.

[HorrorMaster]

i like it

[The Analog Kid]

This one is very intriguing. Nice.

[James Watts]

Well done. I saw no major errors. This was a good read and pretty impressive. Looking forward to your next installment.