Post by Oakspirit on Jun 23, 2011 17:55:44 GMT -6
Guys, I wrote this based on a dream I had last night. Please critique it and tell me if I should expand on the topic.
“I looked at my classmates and teammates. We were about to play our biggest game ever, and I was their leader. Astra against Nyks, and we were aiming to win. Since Cole went to war, they looked to me to lead them but this was their battle. The rivalries between the two schools went back to the formation of out beautiful country, our founder being enemies with his brother. We caused all three of the civil wars in James’s Hollow, school against school.
“I ran my hands over my staff, thinking of my brother, how it was designed by him, hiding all sorts of surprises. It passed the weight requirement, the only limit on the weapons allowed in the gym. Most kids used regular sticks picked up from the ground at our school. The other team typically used swords. I ran my hands over the simple mahogany staff in a specific patter, the small, fin-like blades popping near the end of the staff, two about the size of my palm closest to the end and two smaller beneath that. It was a devious design, able to black Nyks’s swords and shatter the weaker blades. I silently thanks Cole for that, I would need this today.
“I looked at myself in the shiny surface of the hidden blades, gold-flecked green eyes staring back. I supposed I was pretty, a delicate nose and a heart shaped face, but appearance never mattered in the Game. It was a tough game, the winning team always won, or almost always. We managed to save this game. There were footsteps at the door to the Room, I set down my staff, sheathing the blades by touching a certain spot on the edge, and grabbed my branch from the ground, like I always started with. Maisy, my brother’s girlfriend and one of my good friends, walked in, her own staff from my brother in her hand. We always started the same way, leave the good stuff on the Room’s floor and appear like the normal Astra kids.
“I smiled at her, and she smiled back. We knew we wouldn’t start this game, we never did. I was blood related to the greatest Game player in the world, and she knew as much as I did, Cole’s only non-related student ever.
“‘Good luck, honey,’ Maisy smiled at me, brown eyes dancing.
“‘Luck has nothing to do with today,’ I always said this before a game, and she smiled.
“We walked out of the room, comfortable in our loose gray jerseys and white shorts, her dark hair in a ponytail, my own short brown hair in pigtails. It didn’t matter that she was seventeen and probably going to be sent to the front line of the war with Norland after her next birthday, and that I was only fifteen and just returning to school no matter what. With Cole at war, we were all we got. It affected us more than my family, my parents were only proud of their only son for making it into the military at such a young age. He’d been at the border for nearly a year now.
“Maisy and I walked into the arena, sharing high fives with our teammates. I guess I should describe the game to you, since you look confused. There was never more than eight players on the field, though no certain positions. We usually organized that as part of our team strategy though. There’s this magic on the field, where even if you’re run though with a blade, you’ll live, but you can feel the pain. If a killing blow is dealt to you, you must leave the field. The team has almost five hundred people in Astra, so a new person is always ready to take the place of those who’s fallen. It was a war game, one team trying to push a puck into the other’s goal. Each goal was five points. When the other team surpassed a hundred, they could summon a monster to the field to finish us off. If we could kill the monster, we get two hundred points. The game ends when the monster is dead, or we forfeit or lose all our people,
“I smiled at my teammates, the first eight already on the court in the Arena, the orange puck in the center of the wooden floor. The other team glare at us, and I stuck my tongue out at them, easing the tension on our team as the girls giggled and the guys smiled. We could do this. We had branches, they had swords, but finance issues aside, we had the better players. My stick has a ‘V’ shape at the end, stab this in someone’s gut and they’d be dead enough to count in this game. We glared at the gold and black uniforms, our own white and gray much more modest.
“The officials stepped onto the field. Nyks obviously started with their best players. What a dumb idea. With the blow of a whistle, the Game began. Four of my players immediately moved to get the puck first, while the others hung back to defend our goal. Nyks got it first, of course, pushing the puck with their swords, not chopping down my people quite yet.. They all were going for offence. Dodging around the defensive players, they scored their first goal. This wasn’t good. Morale dropped so quick, you could feel it’s breeze. I smiled encouragingly at my team, but it was forced.
“I winced as our first player was eliminated, run through with a blade was the smallest girl. There was no blood, but she was in obvious pain as she limped off the field, as I nodded to one of the guys to take her place. The coach of the other team was clapping and nodding in approval of his team. Now, two of them were cutting us down while the other six scored two more goals. I grimaced. This was not good. Three more kids came back, three more sent in. My quickest player managed to score a goal before being ‘killed’. I smiled encouragingly, even if it was fifteen to five.
“’Hey, Lynne?’ the girl who was just scored asked as I shook her hand.
“’What?’ I asked.
“’We can do it,’ I smiled, not forced this time. If she believed that, the while team could.
“They played really well, the best I’d ever seen them. The Nyks were better than us though, better weapons, better coach. Ours was drunk out of his mind in the corner. This why this was my team, not his. I gripped my branch, they had seventy-five points, while we had a mere thirty. Five more, and the monster would be out. I didn’t like their coach, he kept looking at me. During a break in the Games, he came over to me.
“’Hello, I’m Geoff Wright,’ he offered his hand to me.
“’Nice to meet you, Mr. Wright,’ I didn’t try to be friendly.
“’I was just going to tell you that you lose well. I’ll admit that you’re the first team to get more than one goal on us,”
“I think it was my glare that made him leave. I strongly disliked this man, there was something about him that screamed at me to stay away. Three goals on us later, and one on them, I sent Maisy in. She was really good, being the first to take down one of their players with nothing but a tree branch. I smiled again. The team played well with her on the field, she was a source of encouragement to them, always had been. When the Nyks reached one hundred points, I got Maisy’s staff, leaving my own. I only has three kids left unwounded not in the field, and I needed to get that to her before the next goal allowed them a monster. I ran to the Room, the only place you can go if you’re not on the field, and if you are on the field, you can go here anyhow.
“I ran back to the sidelines of the field, tossing Maisy her staff, she grinned as she broke her branch. She took out a good dozen of them before scoring a goal. We cheered. It was looking up. The last goal before the monster thankfully took forever, but I lost my last three backups, but I was grateful that I saved my best players for last. There were only a mere fifty players on the Nyks team, and they were dropping like flies now. They had their last eight when the monster came out.
“This was by far the most terrifying beast I’ve ever seen in the Games, two abhorrent human-like heads and a reptilian body that was as tall as a small house and about fifty yards long from tail to chest. On closer examination, I realized that the faces on the heads were familiar. It looked like the coach. Geoff Wright was the monster. That’s why I felt that natural repulsion to him! The last of his players were killed off, but it was okay, because they had the monster it wasn’t a forfeit.
“I watched one of my last eight players be eliminated by the beast’s claws, long as Nyk’s swords. I stepped in in their place, gripping my branch near the front and back. I stood next to Maisy, both of us grimacing. I made a sweeping motion with my branch, signaling that we try a move Cole taught us. She tried first, quickly moving the staff in a backward rowing sort of way, causing a sharp gust of air to crash against the scaly back of the monster as if a sword had. It roared in fury, scaled falling off to reveal soft skin. He turned and wiped out one of the last guys. It was seven players on one monster, hardly fair odds, though if we beat it, we’d win.
“I didn’t get my staff yet, trying the sweep-blade technique with a branch. It worked, kind of. It was much weaker and duller, hardly knocking off one scale. The rest of the team didn’t know how to do this, so I yelled at Maisy to keep slashing, and tried to defend the remaining teammates. I stopped short as a single step from an elephant-sized foot killed three more of my people. It was a massacre out here. Four of us left. Make that three, the only other girl had been impaled on a long claw. Teleported back to the sidelines, she rubbed her stomach where the claw was.
“Maisy, a guy called Lyle and I were the last Astra kids standing. Realizing the situation, I ran to the Room to grab my staff. They could kill me even in here, so I moved quick. The eye of one of the Geoff heads followed me, a claw smashing through the glass that separated our Room from the field, nearly impaling me as I grabbed my staff. Had I not bent down, I’d have been dead for sure. I vaulted over the claw, returning to the field to see Lyle in the monster’s mouth. I gnashed my teeth, sweep-striking the creature in syncopation with Maisy.
“What happened next you would never believe. One of the claws was about to impale Maisy when the door to the arena opened. Players are allowed to arrive late, and I looked to see who it was. Familiar dark red brown hair and green eyes surprised me. Back from the war was Cole. He technically was still in school, so this Game was one he could take part in. his staff in hand, he smiled as I shouted his name. The Geoff-monster paused, sharp claws above Maisy, ready to kill. Fear flashed in all four eyes as he realized who the newcomer was. Cole was famous, though my face was not, as well as Maisy’s. How could poor Coach Geoff have known that he was trying to kill the best Gamerplayer in the world’s girlfriend and little sister?
“Geoff stomped on Maisy, ending her turn in the Game. In sync, Cole and I both moved our hands over our staffs in the right pattern, the blade flicking out easily. Geoff’s four eyes blinked in surprise.
“’Who are you?’ his voice was booming and raspy, like how you would imagine an evil dragon’s.
“’I’m Lynne Hawthorne,’ I smiled in spite of myself when Cole reached my side, both of us in the fighting stance he taught me. ‘Don’t you see the resemblance?’
“’Hey, Coach,’ Cole snickered in a menacing way. ‘You just killed my girlfriend,’
“If Geoff looked scared before, he was terrified now. Cole and I moved in sync, the last of the hard scales plucked off by our sweeps. Cole and I circled Geoff, moving out hands over our staffs in another pattern so a thin, yet strong wire would connect the ends of our staffs. We tripped the monster with this technique. Large and powerful, but uncoordinated, monster Geoff lay on the ground long enough for Cole and I to pattern our hands over our staffs and reveal two more hidden features. I sent a thin blade as long as the staff, which was in reality a sword, out of the end into the air. My brother vaulted onto the creature’s back, patterning a similar code to the wire thing. Two claws attached to thicker wires shot out of each side as he held the staff horizontally, clamping into the wood floor and pinning Geoff. He caught the sword as he dropped the staff to seal the monster down.
“By now my team was crazy with their cheering. Sore from their defeats, they stood, clapping their hands, beating their chests, screaming loud enough to deafen me for a day afterwards. I vaulted up onto Geoff to stand behind Cole, and he grabbed my hand, putting in on the blade’s simple black hilt. Together, four hands on one sword, we drove the thing through the monster’s back stabbing the heart. Cheers went up from our sidelines, groans of defeat from Nyks’s. We defeated the undefeated. We broke their record. We were the winners,”
Finishing her story, Lynne Hawthorne looked at the crowd that had gathered around her. She shrugged at the wild eyes that surrounded her, fascinated by her tale.
“What?” she asked.
“Is that all true?” asked a young woman in the crowd.
“Where is this James’s Hollow? How far is it from here in the good ‘ole US of A?” cried an older, masculine voice.
Lynne just shrugged. “Believe what you want.”
The crowd dispersed slowly, murmuring about what a good story teller the young foreign woman was. They didn’t really believe it, but Lynne didn’t care. She smiled at the thought that some people had nearly believed her fantasy tale. It was crazy. Chuckling to herself, she got to her feet from her perch on the stone wall, and grabbed a mahogany staff, gently moving her fingers over it in a pattern so the blades flicked out, same fishtail shapes. She knew how much of the story to believe.
