Ok I am continuing with DT2 but I got the idea for this earlier today and I had to whip it out. This will be a shorter story but I think we will all still enjoy it. Selen's Mansion I awoke to just a normal day. Or so I thought it would be. But I'll get to that later. The sunlight was shining through the window next to my bed. Music from my alarm clock rang in my ears. Put on a red, short-sleeved shirt and some jeans then walked downstairs. I quickly poured myself a bowl of Cheerios, gobbled them down quickly, picked up my backpack and wished my mom goodbye as I walked to the bus top for my first day of high school. I saw some old friends from middle school and chatted them up for a bit before going off to gym for my first class. The gym teacher rang off attendance and I heard my name called. "Is Selen Rand here?" the man asked. "Here!" I shouted back. Then he continued down the line of names until he hit bottom. "Ok we're going to go outside and test your strengths and weaknesses so I know what you are capable of." The class groaned but followed the teacher outside anyways. And this is where it all began. ********** I walked out the door to the school and onto the football field. The first thing I noticed was a man standing in the middle of the field. He was dressing in full metal armor and held an axe about a foot long in his hand. I whispered to my friend, Jackson, "Who the heck is he?" Jackson replied, "Uh...what guy? Who are you talking about?" Was I the only person who could see him? I pondered to myself. I kept watching him. The armored man just kept looking around in the class. As if he was trying to find someone. I ignored him for a bit. Maybe I was just hallucinating or something. I had to run a short obstacle course. I aced it. It was easy. But right before class ended and we were supposed to walk back inside I took a long look at the man. He was still standing in the same exact spot. But then he spotted me looking at him. A gruff voice spoke in my head. It didn't sound like it was coming from him but I knew he was talking to me. "You're the one who can see me here?" I nodded slowly. The man hefted his axe and threw it towards me. I wanted to leap out of the way but my feet were planted in the ground. The axe struck me right in the chest but I felt no pain. My vision just went blurry and then everything was black. There was nothing to see. Or hear. Or smell. Just black. The void. The bottomless pit of nothing. Then a bright light appeared in the distance. It got bigger. And bigger. Until all I could see was a bright, white light. What was going on? Am I dying? Is this the bright light at the end of the tunnel? ********** Then I awoke in some kind of mansion. I was still wearing my gym clothes. Along with around thirty other kids my age. There was a huge difference in outfits people had. Some of the kids had rags while others were wearing nice suits. We all looked around the massive room. there was an elaborate carpeted floor beneath us and hung on the wooden walls were paintings. Paintings of the armored man. The ceilings were high above us. On one of the walls was a door. The door looked like it did not belong here. It was a golden metal door with a clock on it. Above the door was a modern exit sign. Also the door was about forty feet off the ground so no one was going to reach it. Then I noticed something odd. In the middle of the room was a simple wooden sign that read one word. Survive. Survive? Survive what? What was dangerous about this odd room? My question was answered very, very quickly. The paintings of the armored man suddenly had axes, the same ones that the armored man had, shooting out of them. One boy, dressed in motorcycle leathers, was struck in the back of the head. Normally you would think that blood would be shooting out but there wasn't blood. The kid just keeled over on the ground and his body just...faded. In seconds there was no body. He was gone. Just like that. But there was no time to grieve the lost because an axe was racing towards my chest. This time I was able to jump out of the way but the kid behind me caught the axe. With his back. He faded too. After a five minutes of this there were only about fifteen kids left. I was one of them. I had survived. Staircases appeared from the ground and led up towards the golden, metal door. "Should we go through it?" one girl asked. "It's the only way out," I chimed in. So we silently agreed to go. We climbed the stairs and I opened the door to peer through. All I could see was a bright, white light. I guess I gotta actually go in and see. I thought to myself. ********** I stepped through the golden door to another massive room. On the ground was a glass floor with a giant clock underneath. But there was no way to tell the time as the hour hand was just spinning rapidly. This room wasn't as wide as the previous one but it was taller and circular. Just like a tower. In the center of the room was a sign. It read one word just like in last room but this word was different. It read: Escalate. What was this place? End of Part One.
I looked around the clockwork tower. On the curved, stone walls were ledges and golden hands of clocks spun around, to knock people off the ledge. At the top was a wooden trapdoor with a modern-looking exit sign next to. We had to climb up a dangerous hundred feet to progress to the next room. This would be a tricky task. ********** "Well guess we gotta climb," said one girl. She proceeded up the tower. At the third ledge a clock hand was rushing towards her. She easily jumped over and kept climbing. We just watched. "Come on, sis," the girl yelled. "It's easy!" The girl who I guessed was her sister started up. She got to the fifth ledge before a clock hand came spinning around to knock her off. The sister tried to jump over but her foot got caught on the edge of the hand. She fell head first towards the ground. We all backed away. We expected a gruesome sight but just before she hit the ground she faded away. The surviving sister did not see this and kept climbing until she reached the trapdoor. As she opened it we saw a bright light. Then we she was out of sight. I took the initiative to climb. I was going to survive and leave this room. No doubt about it. ********** It was an easy climb. I hopped over the clock hands and kept scaling the tower until about the fourteenth ledge. I was jumping over the hand when I realized my jump was not high enough. I tripped over and began to fall. I screamed. The golden hands and stone walls raced by. Then I thought to myself I was not gonna die like this. I thought I was doomed to be another victim of a falling death when a hand caught mine. It was at around the fifth ledge when a boy wearing a suit grabbed my flailing hand. He grunted when the full weight of my falling body was on his arms. I got my bearings and grabbed hold of the ledge. "Thank you," I told the boy. But no good deed goes unpunished. A clock hand raced by. The ornate design of the clock hand spared my hands grasping the slender ledge but my savior was not so lucky. He had just enough time to realize that sparing me would cost him dearly. He was brutally shoved off the meter wide ledge and I had just enough time to see the look on his face as he took his last fall. ********** I decided I would not waste the gift that a random stranger gave me and I would not fall again and I would seize the handle of the trapdoor and live. I raced around the spiral staircase of ledges and clock hands spinning about. While I was taking a short break to catch my breath I saw one boy who thought he would be clever and try to climb up the center pole where the clock hands were anchored he was making progress when I saw a stone brick of the tower slide out and then an axe came shooting out. The axe struck the kid in his hand he was using to hold himself up. The voice of the armored man boomed through the tower. "Cheaters will be dealt with." It was a long way down. Finally I made it to the trap door at the top. I opened it as a few others had already done and climbed on through. ********** When I was out of the tower I closed my eyes to relax a little bit. The sound of crashing waves soothed me. Wait. Waves? End of Part Two
I was startled by the sound of the crashing waves but then again, how could it surprise me. Nothing was normal about where they were. He was hit with an axe and then teleported to a magical funhouse filled with things that don't belong in this world. I observed my surroundings. I was aboard a ship. It looked to be a stereotypical pirate ship. Like it popped out of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Instead of a sign giving us the one word order to do we got visited by the armored man. It looked as if he fell from the sky and landed on deck. I thought he was going to shoot right through the floor of our boat but instead he gently slowed down before impact. "Greetings, friends," He told us. As if he was our friend. "You will be passing another ship filled with kids your age. Your goal is to take their flag and return it to your ship. Surviving members of the winning team move on to the final room. Good luck." Then he just faded from view and the ship he must have been referring to came into view. I noticed that we had cannons on deck. Perhaps we would be able to use them. It took around five minutes for the ship to get close enough. Then, abruptly, our ship and theirs stopped and the game begun. ********** Planks bridged our ships and a few kids attempted to cross. I decided to test our cannons on one of the enemy kids. I aimed and fired. Instead of a large ball of metal shooting out there was an axe. It nailed him straight in the chest and he flew back. He missed landing back on his boat and instead hit the wall of his ship and then fell into the water below. One girl, Helen she said her name was, made a plan. Apparently she found a supply of axes aboard and that there was enough for all. Five of us were to cross the planks at the same time and kill anyone in our way. The others would man the axe cannons and pick off enemies. I was chosen to cross. "Are you ready?" a boy asked me. "Ready for anything," I replied. "GO!" Helen shouted. The five of us crossed. The boy that had spoken to me was hit in the leg. The force of the blow thrust him off the narrow plank. He fell to his watery demise. "Right, Selen!" a voice shouted in my mind. It sounded like the armored man. I looked right to see a cannon pointed at me. The girl on the cannon looked like she would have fun shooting something. Too many video games, most likely. In what could only be described as a miracle happened. I hefted the axe, like the armored man had done, and threw it. A perfect throw. She faded instantly. I looked at my hands with a mix of shock and awe. I did that. "Take the flag!" a girl shouted. It was Helen. She had found the flag at the crow's nest at the top of the ship. Those were the last words I'd hear her say. An axe cannon sniped her and the flag fell towards me. I picked it out of the air and started off towards our ship. I was sprinting across the long plank when an axe was racing toward me. The axe did not hit me but it struck the plank and it snapped. I had just enough time to throw the flag like a javelin before I started to fall. It landed on our deck. We had won. ********** They would celebrate and I would die, I thought to myself. And then I stopped falling. The armored man came to my aid. "Good job," he told my team and me. I started to float up on to our ship. "You are a surviving member too, Selen. Good work by the way." He grabbed my hand and pulled me up to a doorway. I turned to see the other boat start to sink. An open door had appeared on our deck. This led to my final challenge. I had a chance to leave this place and return to normal life. The armored man had faded behind me and I started toward the door with the four other surviving teammates of mine. I walked through. Then I stepped out to the last area. I heard snow get crunched under my shoes. End of Part Three