Spirit Walker - 2000 Words

         Rin Nuno stood in a crystal tube as the cold ocean water poured in. He despised this part. The cold sent his calf fins a flare and he jumped up and down until they settled. He popped a finger knuckle scared and looked to the heavens whispering, “Forgive me, I will have faith."

         He grimaced, uncomfortably. The weight of his quartz armor was heavy on his small frame, but he did not mind it. The weight meant he was alive. And alive was good when it came to the hunter games. Should I pray for life? No, it's arrogant. The Blue Sun looks down on arrogance.

         Rin’s thumb touched a dent in his body armor where a blow had been repelled. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but in the games things happened. How they became that way was left to the voices of the survivors or the stories told by the people in the streets. Rin had learned that the tales had little to do with truth.

         Life is true, Rin bantered with himself. No, only the Blue Sun’s love is true.

         Rin glanced at his spear for comfort. The spear was thrown at him upon entering the hunter games ten years ago, he had stumbled while catching it. The shaft was awkwardly bigger and curved slightly in the middle with a wider blade at the top. The guard did not believe he would last. “I gave the honorable spears to the bigger hunters,” he oppressed.

         By now, Rin could have asked for another spear, but he didn't. He felt this abnormal spear was an omen and had a purpose. Believe? He tightened his grip on the shaft glancing above. I have a destiny, my father told me so.
                             
***

         When Rin was a boy of five, he would sit on the opal steps of Ma'yog, the clergy house. One day Yoma, his father and the head of the house came to speak to him.

         "Your time has come,” his father said in his preachers voice.

         “Must it be?” Rin trembled.

         “Yes, I have seen the vision, you will rise as the Spirit Walker. The son of the Blue Sun. You will defeat the Muni.”

         Rin’s heart thumped, there were many fathers that had seen the vision and sent their children fool heartily off to the hunter games. The children died. And some suspected the parents sent them to rid themselves of a mouth to feed.

         “I can eat less,” Rin felt the tears come.

         “Am I, not high clergy?” His father scolded.

         Rin swallowed his hiccups, "I’ll do better.”

         “Do you doubt?”

         Rin bit his lip so hard it bled. Doubting meant he had no faith. His father did not want doubting faith, he wanted abiding faith. To doubt, meant he rejected the faith.

         Rin licked the salt off his lips, “No.”

         Yoma smiled gently placing his hand on his boy’s shoulder. The Blue Sun would rejoice once Yoma showed his delegates that he offered his only son to the games. They would no longer doubt the faith. And understand the price of faith. And when his son killed the thousand year old Muni, and returned as the Spirit Walker, the son of the Blue Sun, the people of the kingdom would fall before the Blue Sun’s power. And the King and Queen would know their place.

         “You will enter a boy, you will return a Spirit Walker. The Blue Sun commands it.”

***

         Rin hyperventilated himself as the salt water came to his shoulders and the rapid breaths burned his lungs. Ten years. Faces of fallen hunters were clearer than his own father’s. Does he live?  Rin had been kept pure, like all the rest of the hunters, blocked from the outside and trained since five cycles old, but death was all he knew.
Rin shook the thought away, his anger rising, he felt for his helmet and let his finger glide down the top fin. Luck? No, Faith! Why question it?

         “Forgive me,” he said in the water as he looked upon his arms that bore a multitude of scares. His fist tightened. The Blue Sun slaughters us! Then you have no faith! He prayed.

         The Blue Sun protects and keeps us safe. We are all creatures of his light. The fallen will become apart of him, as he is already apart of us.

***

         SPIRIT WALKER!

         Layla mouthed the words as she stood with her spear by her side bearing witness to Rin’s last ejection. She wanted to be in the tube with him, to protect the one she loved. Loved? Her fist tightened. Tears show weakness! I am not weak!

         Layla was strong, but this was Rin! And in the last event of the games all she could do was watch.She felt her muscles tense. It isn’t fair! The Muni was as large as a tower and ejected at the same time. Rin would fall into his mouth like a drop to a bucket. No, he wont! Rin always has a way out! She popped her finger knuckle.

         Rin fought with as much control as an elder. His spear landed true with every blow. And Lalya had asked him for his secret, but his answer was always the same, “The Blue Sun guides me.”

         “Then you are a puppet?” She would return knowing Rin lied.

         Rin glared with saddened eyes, and Layla knew he wanted her to give her life over to the Blue Sun so she would be safe in the after life. But it was not her way, and she conceded the Blue Sun was meant to slaughter them.

         Layla sniffed, her tears were rolling like beads of rain. She wished they were blood, her own blood. Blood would not be weak. She wiped them quickly, ashamed of her weakness and collapsed. She couldn’t be strong. She should have told him last night. She had fumbled the words, but couldn't say them, because she knew Rin would never love her back. Rin was destine for something else.

***

         Rin watched Layla fall, and it tugged at him. His hands twitched, and his body flinched, he wanted to crack the quartz tube open and be free to hold her. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, if he let his love show the Blue Sun would not be pleased. He pushed the tug down. Control was needed, she was a hunter, she would understand. And closed his eyes and imagined his story being told by a glassy eye old clergy man in front of his father’s congregation.

***

         “He died fifteen cycles old,” the old man would say in an ancient tone. “Yoma’s son, a true worshiper!”

         “Yoma sent his only child to become a hunter. And he accepted his destiny. Would yours?” He said venomously.

         The congregation shifted in theirs seats uncomfortable.

         “But the Blue Sun, found him a higher calling. One that called him to his right hand to defend the faith!”

         The congregation straightened. Defending the faith was fine, but to sacrifice their children was a different matter.

         “This is not for coin or glory! Whoever defeats the Muni is the chosen Spirit Walker! The son of the Blue Sun! We are his people, the Blue Sun demands FAITH! Sit if you doubt.”

         The congregation rises abruptly at the remark.

         “Then be strong in the faith! As Yoma did, and the Blue Sun shall praise you in the after life!”

***

         Rin gripped his spear with two hands, and the floor fell beneath him as the vortex begun. The water pulling him under as he spun with bile rising in his throat. Nauseated he felt his heart pumping and the black coming, control it! He shoved all his thought into his body as the vortex began to pull his arms open and he concentrated every ounce of energy on his heart. His heart rate alarmingly fast, he would be ejected out unconscious! He focused on the muscle mass and in the fraction of a second he slowed it. Calm! He opened his eyes, and everything was slow as he blasted out of the tube.

         Rin spiraled as he shoved his spear forward with his adrenaline gone and saw the creatures jaws open. He pulled his shoulder with everything he had and controlled his spin as the creatures enormous mouth anxiously snipped. It missed! He felt a sudden thump from his heart and realized he was in shock, as he smacked the side of the horn that protruded out the creatures head. Fear and panic creeping on him, he lost control as his body scratched along the spiny scales unable to stop himself and his legs went numb. Old scars opened and blood sputtered everywhere.

         Control it! Guide me Blue Sun!

         His heart receded as he gripped his crooked spear tighter and tumbled toward the dorsal fin off the creatures tail. An upward stroke, from the creature's tail, flung him to the other side of the bowl. He crunched on the glass wall. He caught doubles of spectators roaring in a frantic madness and his blood pumped again.

         Too many?

         He swallowed and watched the creature make a steady bank on the other side of the bowl. Blackness taking him as ringing pierced his skull. Barely able to raise his eyes to the heavens, give me strength, as he felt his body going calm before pushing off the glass to the chains.

         The salt burning his wounds as he headed for the bottom of the bowl. The chains! He settled his spear flush to his body, and readied himself to weave in and out of the chains as he glanced over his shoulder and saw the mouth of the Muni. The creatures interior teeth stretching to the darkest places of his belly. Rin’s heart pounded as he realized the muni was to fast! He wavered and the pain saturated as the blackness started to overwhelm him.

         Faith!

         He stretched his long spear out and caught an upward jet stream at the tip of it as he raced toward the top of a buoyant disc, and thanked the Blue Sun for the miracle. The jaws snapped, and the Muni's momentum carried him into the chains.
         Rin twirled out of the stream onto a disc and saw the Muni struggling to free his talon from the chain. His heart thumping, guide me! He jumped off the disc and opened his calf fins extending his spear. Swimming hard as his heart went calm.

         I’m too slow!

         The creatures talon released from the chain and the razor claw came upon Rin like a slow rolling boulder. And in an instance, that felt like hours, the calm took him deeper, and he saw himself through the creature's eyes, and he was but an insect.The Muni’s memories spoke to him like a brother. He was loved as a baby before he was captured by the nets of the Tetarians. Poked and prodded, he became mean. The shock pool was his home, and every day it stung against his skin. Some days he tolerated it, other days it angered him. "Turn it off!" he cried in anguish, but they did not. And when the hunger was unbearable, he was unleashed into the bowl. He wanted food; he would eat the cruel land dwellers with pleasure. He was a creature of the Blue Sun, a creature of love, and a creature of life. But when the tube launched him from his pool, he swam with a vengeful hungriness in his eye.

         “STOP!”, Rin cried as the talon heeded his command, and Rin saw himself ram his spear into the heart of the creature instantly breaking the connection.

         Surrounded by the the Muni’s purple blood it died beneath Rin as his heart thundered and his calm faded. Air. He swam for the top drenched in the Muni’s life to a silence and stunned crowd. The calm was gone. He hobbled himself on the edge of the bowl as he shook violently upon his knees.

         What am I?

         “SPIRIT WALKER!”  A familiar clergy’s voice boomed with pride before the crowd erupted and the son of the Blue Sun collapsed in darkness.

The End

Author Comments: I would like to know about the Layla scene and if it works with the story. I also would like to know any grammar issues and any structural issues with the story.