DO YOU FEEL LUCKY PUNK!?

On the double sleeve area was dark gray. He was wearing his extremely dark blue extremely baggy pants with a chain wrapped and tied around his left leg. The pants covered most of his huge boots.
I started on my French toast, when my mom said “Hurry you’re late for school!” I choked the rest of it down in a few bites and got my backpack. Saff and I started towards the door, ready to walk to school. “Wait” said my mom. “I’ll drive you two.
“Shotgun!” called Saff. He dashed out to the car and got in the passenger seat. I got in the back and buckled my seatbelt. My mom got in, buckled, and started the car.
We live in a small town in Michigan called Tecumseh. It’s May 2004, almost the end of the school year, and Saff and I are in our sophomore year at Tecumseh High. We both have the same classes, and our lockers are right next to each other.
“Ok, we’re here!” announced our mom. We got out, said our goodbyes, and snuck into class right at attendance. The day was a bad one. In language arts, the teacher yelled at me for not having a pencil. In biology, we had to watch a boring video, and then take a test on it. At lunch, the meat smelled like dog crap. In algebra, the teacher fell asleep, and we had extra homework. In art, I got covered in paper mache glue. In world cultures, someone kept throwing paper at me. Finally, only one class was left. Oh, snap, I thought to myself. It was reading. The only class I had to sit next to that vile boy…. Nyar Karami.
The most evil, selfish, violent, smelly kid I ever had the displeasure of meeting. The filthy scum had shoulder length blonde hair, with bits of dirt and who knows what else in it. He had a horribly dark tan, which looked horrible next to that disgusting hair. He had green eyes, which leered at everyone as they passed him. He’s rich, and he lives in a mansion. He smelled like he hadn’t showered in months. Maybe he hadn’t. I personally didn’t want to know.
The reading teacher was late for class. As I sat down, I made a mental note to ask the teacher for a different seat. Nyar smugly sat down next to me. He was wearing a black hooded jacket with flames on it. On the back of it, it said “PYROMANIAC”. Under the jacket he was wearing a dark red shirt with the same design on it. He was wearing cargo jeans that had flames coming from the bottom. He kept muttering insults at me. I told him to shut up. He grinned and continued. I told him to shut up again, louder this time. He continued, increasing the swear words in the insults. I jumped up and threw my books at him.
“I said, shut the hell up, you…” I called him a name that made the rest of the class ooh. Nyar stood up.
“Are you trying to start something?” He yelled. I was so furious, I couldn’t think, hear, or care. I built up the strength in my fist and slammed it into his face. He stumbled backwards in shock. I looked around the room for a weapon of some sort. I saw a teacher’s stick leaning on the whiteboard. I took it and whacked him in the face with it. He fell down and bled at the mouth. Saff got up.
“No Saff!” I yelled. “He’s mine!” While I was talking to Saff, Nyar took two sharpened pencils out of his desk. He took a rubber band and tied them together in a cross. I turned to him and he threw it at me like a Frisbee. It stuck in my arm, with blood spurting out steadily. I wrenched it out, screaming in pain. I then took the teacher stick and jabbed him in the stomach. He grabbed it and took it himself. He repeatedly smacked me with it, over and over. I took the pencil-cross off the ground as he hit me, and thrust it into his leg. He screamed and collapsed. I took the stick from him and shoved it into his eye. I lifted the stick to see a bloody pulp where his eye was. The class gasped. I looked at it and threw up. The class glared at me. I shuddered. Was Nyar dead? Apparently not. He jumped up and took the stick, slamming it on my head, breaking it in half. I felt my head. It was bleeding. I took a half of the stick. The broken end was sharp. I slashed it down wards on his face, leaving a diagonal scar across, spurting blood. He fell to the ground, out cold. I collapsed, coughing blood. Saff got up and walked towards me. I blacked out as something came into the room, and heard screams.

CHAPTER
II
ENTER THE DEMON

“Ekim, get up!” yelled Saff’s voice. I opened my eyes to a dark sky. I realized I was lying down. I slowly sat up. I was in the street outside what was left of Tecumseh High. Instead there where a few smoldering walls. I saw bloody corpses and flaming carcasses of my classmates and teachers. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see Nyar’s anywhere.
“What the hell happened?!” I shouted.
“A huge snake thing with a sword came and destroyed the school and killed everyone except you, me, and Nyar, who escaped. As he came in I dragged you to the back exit and out here. When the school was gone, he flew off towards downtown.” I gave him the eyebrow, in shock.
“Really, Saff, just tell me. Did a plane drop a bomb or something?” Then there was the sound of something landing behind me. I turned and saw something that vaguely fit the description Saff had talked about. “Neat costume”, I said.
It was about six feet tall. I had small spikes scattered all over his scalp. It had narrow, mean eyes, with two black markings under each one. It’s nose was thin and about two inches long. It was grinning evilly, baring long fangs. Its ears were long and pointed, with a red tasseled earring on the left ear. He was wearing a thick cloth around his neck with a red and black tiger design. Over it was a long necklace with a small fang at the end. His arms here long and there was a band with the same design as the cloth on his right arm. On his hands were long gray claws. He was very muscular and didn’t wear a shirt. Instead of legs, he had a long, black snake tail. He was holding a crooked, six-foot sword with a black 1-foot handle. On the blade were the words:

DEATHBRINGER

On his back was a sheath for his sword. He had a set of bat like wings with a wingspan of about 8 feet.
“Saff, how did you find someone this tall to dress up like this?” I knocked on the chest with my fist. It wasn’t hollow. I stepped backwards, stumbling.
“My name is Rokashida,” he told us. “I have been given orders by Krynn to kill anything living. You are living, are you not?”
“Run…”Saff choked. “RUN!!!” We ran in the direction of home. My feet pounded on the ground in a steady beat. I looked back and saw Rokashida slithering at full speed towards us, gaining fast. He slowed down right behind us.
“Fall to the Death bringer!” he yelled, raising the crooked blade.
“Run faster!” shouted Saff, his voice shaking. I was already running faster than I ever had before, but I speeded up my legs and avoided Rokashida’s blow. The remains of our house came up over the horizon. Rokashida took to the air, disappearing. We slowed down and skidded at the flaming remains. There was a body lying on the ashy ground. It was our mom!
“NO!!!” I cried. “MOOMM!!!” Saff was quiet, shaking. There was a thud behind us. “DUCK!!!” I yelled. We crouched to the ground as the Death bringer swung horizontally above our heads. Rokashida was behind a half destroyed wall. He swung his tail and hit the wall. It slowly starting falling towards us. We got up and quickly ran out of the range of the wall, picking up Mom and carrying her out of the way. Then the ground started shaking, making me fall. Across the street on an empty lot the top of what looked like a temple came up out of the ground. Rokashida jumped onto the collapsed wall. I got up and ran towards the temple. Saff came after me carrying our mom.
“Gravity Break!” yelled Rokashida. The gravity increased and I fell to the ground again. I got up and Rokashida chased after us. The temple was fully out of the ground now. There was a small doorway, about three feet tall and 5 feet wide. I dropped to the ground and rolled through the opening, into a dark hallway. Saff pushed our mom through the opening. And followed through, rolling. Through the entrance we could see Rokashida’s lower half. He backed up, and slammed his body into the wall, making it collapse, blocking it with boulders. We could hear muffled swearing and the swooshing sound of wings.
As we walked down the hallway, torches lit as we passed them. We walked for what seemed at least an hour without much event. Then we came upon two staircases, one on each wall. “You go down the right one, I’ll go down the left,” said Saff. I nodded in agreement. He shifted Mom in his arms and walked down the left staircase. I took a deep breath and descended down the right one. It led to a dark room. As I stepped in, there was a flash of dark green light, which made my body uncontrollably jerk and twitch for a few seconds. I felt stronger, faster and smarter when it ended. For some reason, I knew where I was. The Shrine of Gaia. Torches all around the room lit. There was a long stone table in the center of the room with a sword on it.
The blade was about four feet long and one foot wide, curving into a point. The hilt was dark gray and rectangular, about as wide as the blade. The handle was about one foot long, and was wrapped with dark red cloth. At the end of the handle was a small metal ring with dark red scraps of cloth tied around it, dangling off the edge of the table. I confidently walked up to the table and picked up the sword. It looked like it should weigh at least 200 pounds, but it felt as light as a feather in my two hand grip.
Words wrote themselves on the edge of the blade. They read:
GAIA BLADE
“Gaia Blade?” I asked myself out loud. I ran up the stairs and down into the left room. “Hey Saff!” I shouted. He was wielding a long, six-foot spear. The handle was wrapped in light blue cloth. At the end of it was a curvy x-shaped blade, with a two-foot spike sticking out forwards. On the spike were words:
CYCLONE CRASHER
He was pointing it at something else in the room. It was another demon. It had long, curvy black horns and three smaller horns aligned on a ridge between the big ones. It had scars over each eye, and the eyes were faded and glossy. He had nostrils in the middle of his face, like a snake, instead of a nose. He had thin, spaced fangs and a lipless mouth. He was wearing two square and black pieces of shoulder armor. He had huge muscles and didn’t wear a shirt. He had very long and shiny black claws on each hand and foot. He wore ragged black pants that went down to his knees. On his back was a set of wings, with a wingspan of twelve feet. He was about ten feet tall. He was holding two seemingly identical 6-foot swords, which curved at the end in a different direction. The only difference was on one sword there were the words:
ARMAGEDDON
And the other said:
APOCALYPSE
I felt fear build up inside me. “Saff!” I yelled again, running to him. “Who’s this guy?” I asked.
“I am Krynn”, he announced. “I am the leader of the demons, and I can manipulate and harness the elements and nature. I sent Rokashida to destroy this puny town”.
“You started all of this?” asked Saff in rage.
“You’re going down”, I said, furious.
“I don’t have time for you two” Krynn said annoyed. He took the Apocalypse sword and slowly sliced it through the air, creating a pitch-black mark in midair. “Release! Argaron!” A large hairy something jutted out of the portal. Then three more came out. Then, a giant spider head and body followed. I started trembling. The rest of the legs came out afterwards. I stepped backwards, still shaking. I backed myself into the corner. I suddenly realized I had arachnophobia. Krynn jumped into the hole, which then closed with a loud snap. Saff walked towards the giant spider, spear at the ready. Without warning, he jumped forward and cut at the front two legs. He spun around and hit Argaron’s head with the butt of the Cyclone Crasher, then spun the spear around, cutting off the next four legs. Argaron scuttled around, turning itself around, and kicked at Saff with full force. Saff flew through the air backwards, crashing into the wall next to me. He kicked himself up, bleeding at the mouth, and sprinted at Argaron. Argaron’s legs grew back, making me feel nauseous. He then ran at Saff. Saff jumped into the air and slashed at the spider’s neck, cutting it off and spraying spider blood. It rolled on the floor towards me and stopped at my feet. I stood up, raised the Gaia Blade, and faced it downwards, pointing at the severed head. Its mouthparts were rapidly moving. I stabbed the head vertically, cutting it in half. I looked at Saff, then the fallen body of Argaron, then our mom. I walked over to her, and noticed that her chest had stopped moving.
“NO!!!” I cried. “MOM!!” Saff ran over and felt her pulse. His head hung, tears dropping to the cold stone floor. As the tears rolled down my face, I wanted to kill Krynn. I wanted to kill all demons. They were pure evil. They wouldn’t get away with this. I knew that all demons must die! We picked her up and laid her down on the stone table that the Cyclone Crasher was on. We silently grieved and cried, and left the room. There was a staircase where the dead end wall used to be.
“I think we should go up it,” suggested Saff.
“I guess,” I said. We climbed the staircase for about half an hour, when we saw light at the top. We reached the top and looked at the sky. Suggesting by the position of the sun, I guessed it was around 5 o’clock. We turned and saw two statues on platforms. One was of a tall man that looked like an older version of me, and it was holding a stone version of the Gaia Blade. Below it, etched into the platform, were the words, ‘Tancha Rentora, Gaia Blade’. The other statue looked like an older version of Saff, with a stone version of the Cyclone Crasher. Written into the platform there were the words, ‘Astet Nossaw, Cyclone Crasher’. I was too shocked to speak. Then a portal similar to the other one appeared, the point of Krynn’s sword sticking out of it. Krynn stepped through.
“You two are more powerful than I once thought,” he said viciously. “But you are no match for me!” He slashed us on the chest, and we fell to the ground in agony, blood staining our shirts, He bared his fangs and stepped through the portal. Saff and I got up painfully and followed him through, our world, our home, closing behind us, and a new world, a new experience, opening up in front of us.

CHAPTER
III
SHINGARA

“Oof!” I landed on my back on cold stone. My back felt like it broke and I hit my head. I felt it to see if there was blood, but I felt something weird. There were two rock hard bumps that felt almost like...horn stubs? I looked around and Saff was sitting up next to me. He had a black stub in the centaur of his head. He was tapping on it with his fingernail.
“Weird…” he said out loud, “Do you think maybe when Krynn clawed us, he infected us or something? It looks like we are growing horns or something.”
“Maybe” I quietly replied. I stood up and noticed I was holding the Gaia Blade. Saff got up too and inspected the Cyclone Crasher. I looked at my surroundings. We were in a dark alley, and the buildings to the sides had no light. At the end was a dark figure, which seemed to be walking towards us. There was an empty dumpster beside us. I pulled Saff behind it and followed.
“Hey what are you…” I kicked him in the shin to shut him up. “Ooww…” he said quietly.
“I saw something walking towards us at the end of the alley,” I whispered. “I think it was a demon”.
“Lets attack it,” suggested Saff. I nodded.
“Now!” I said. We jumped out and slashed at the figure with our weapons, but another one blocked us. It was a bright blue short sword, and the blade was about two feet long, and the handle was eight inches long. The handle was wrapped with black cloth. The person holding it, thank god it was a person, looked a little bit older than us, and had spiky black hair. He was wearing a black short sleeve shirt with a diagonal blue line across it. Under it he was wearing a gray long sleeve shirt with no particularly special arm designs. He was wearing black jeans and black shoes.
“You don’t have to attack me, you know,” he said. He lowered the sword and I noticed he had another identical one.“Did you think I was a demon? I’m Otake, and I’m 18. I lived in Orlando, Florida, but it was destroyed by demons. One demon killed my family and kidnapped my sister, Kada, she’s 16, and I followed him through a portal he created. I ended up in a town called Jotsa. There’s humans there, by the way, and someone there told me to climb Kalasari Peak, which was south of there. I did, and the top was in the clouds. There was a stone pedestal there, with these on it” gesturing to the swords. I picked them up, and a bolt of lightning hit me, and instead of being hurt, I felt stronger. I went back to the bottom, and there was that guy there, and he told me to go south through the Kalasari Desert, and that I would find a small town, and two people with a sword and a spear. He said to go with them wherever they go, and I’m assuming that would be you. What’s your story?”
I let Saff tell him, with me adding in bits and pieces.
“So how do you plan to stop from turning into demons?” he inquired.
“I don’t know, but I still say that we find Krynn”, I said. “Maybe we will find his sister on the way”.
“Yeah, but first we have to get out of this dump”, said Saff. We all walked out of the alley, and looked at our new surroundings.We were generally in a bigger alley, same dark and dankness.
“The guy gave me a map”, said Otake, reaching into his oh-so-deep pocket. He pulled it out, along with a compass. He opened the map. “Northeast and across the Kalasari, there is a city known as Belond, and we may be able to get some information there.
“How are we going to cross a desert?” I asked. “We have no food, and no water”.
“I learned that cacti have water in them”, stated Otake. “If we cut them open, we can drink from them. We should hurry, or you may be stuck as demons”. He was right. We walked down the alley, and ended up in a bigger yet alley. Finally, we reached an alley, that had some sand spilled into it, and we could see a desert at the end of it. We walked to it and as soon as I touched the sand, I felt a burst of energy, as though I had just chugged a gallon of espresso. I needed to run, I couldn’t hold in my energy. I ran through the sands, eventually tired. I looked backwards and I couldn’t see the town anymore, but Saff and Otake were struggling to keep up with me. I looked forward and saw endless sand. They caught up.
“Holy crap, Ekim” Saff cried. “What was that all about? How did you run that fast?” I shrugged.
“When I stepped into the sand, I had an energy burst”. I explained. I looked forward again and saw a cactus in front of us. I figured the sun tricked me before. I went up to it, realizing that I was thirsty, and lobbed off the top with the Gaia Blade. Water squirted out of the top like a fountain. I put my mouth over it and drank from it like a water fountain.
Saff pushed me out of the way and drank, and then Otake did the same. We then started walking again and heard a thump sound hit the cactus. I checked the cactus and there was a black shuriken, and it was on fire. On it, it read:
PHOENIX BLAZER
I turned to see where it came from, and saw a wavy figure in the distance. The shuriken shot backwards, and the figure caught it. It started to walk towards us. I readied my sword. Soon, the figure was completely visible. I gasped as he approached me. With one leering eye and a bloody hole, Nyar Karami was staring me in the face, grinning evilly.

CHAPTER
IV
AN OLD Enemy

By Bobbynose