“Heroes for Hire” by Tannon Jaye Rogers

2018 Winner, Middle School Fiction

Prologue

A low, steady growl echoed from within the center of the large woodland maze. I clutched onto my Skyland Sword tightly as my team and I continued onward.

“First we have to travel through this huge maze, then we have to fight a nokk, all while not ending up as a roasted corpse because of all of these Firebirds. Why couldn’t we have just asked for a map or an ax or just avoided this area completely? Or maybe, when you and Dillin were fighting that cave troll at the village, just grabbed some of the weapons that it stole?”

“C’mon Ria, we’re almost there.” Ria continued moping until suddenly the ground rumbled. A loud roar echoed through the labyrinth.

“We’re close,” Tiar said, putting a finger over her lips. We crept forward until finding a large room with a gigantic leathery snake with spines lining its back. It had a bottom jaw that jutted about a foot outwards with sharp black teeth jutting out of it. Thankfully, it seemed to be asleep.

The wooden walls of the room had multiple holes which seemed to have been scratched out. They weren’t too large, but were probably big enough to fit a skinny person in them (if the person was lying face down). Now we had to think of a plan.

“The nokk looks like it’s covered with some pretty tough skin. I don’t know if Sky is gonna be able to cut it,” I whispered to the team, studying the nokk’s body.

“Maybe we can try hitting its underside,” suggested Ria. “That’s usually the softest part. Of course, an arrow probably couldn’t pierce it, but one of you guys’ swords probably could,” Ria said. Ria wasn’t as skilled at fighting as Tiar and I were, but she was exceptional at coming up with plans and making traps. Plus, she took two courses in monster anatomy in school, so she gave us a huge advantage on our bounty missions.

Every second feels like an hour when danger is staring you down, but after an intense, 30-second whisper-debate, we finally came up with a plan. Ria would climb on the wall and provide a distraction, Tiar and I would hide in one of the holes, and Ria would try to lead the nokk up the wall so one of us could stab it. I wasn’t positive, but I thought it might work. I squeezed into a hole. It was noticeably deep, so I was able to scoot back far enough that I was almost unseeable and able to drive my sword into the nokk. Tiar crawled into a hole on the opposite side of the wall and readied her daggers.

We both gave Ria a thumbs-up, and she began scaling the wall. After about a minute, I heard a loud breath and then Ria let out a blood-curdling scream from above, followed by an arrow which whistled through the sky and hit the nokk in the eye. It jolted upward, looking around.

“Hey! I’m up here! Come at me!” I heard Ria shouting and shooting arrows as the nokk slithered toward her. The nokk pressed its belly against the wall and began slithering upward. Its underside blocked my view. Just as I was about to stab it, I noticed a problem. I didn’t know where this area was. If I stabbed it now, I might just end up hitting its tail, which would give away my position, and literally do nothing but slightly harm it. I had to take it out in one hit. There would be no second chances. I just stared at the nokk and watched it move side to side trying to reach Ria.

Eventually, the nokk stopped. It slithered toward the middle of the room, curled into a ball, and got ready to fall back asleep.

“Hey, idiot! You can’t just fall asleep! C’mon!” I was surprised Ria hadn’t lost her voice yet. The nokk let out a small growl. Ria then chucked a rock at full speed at the nokk’s head. It bounced off and hit the ground with a thud. The nokk got up again and let out a loud roar. Then, the nokk reared its head and sniffed the air.

The nokk continued sniffing, then it turned toward Tiar. I pushed my way outside of the chasm and saw the nokk sniffing and heading in Tiar’s direction. On one hand, I didn’t want to possibly get chewed to bits by the nokk.

But, without thinking, I let out a loud yelp. The nokk turned towards me, emitting a loud roar. I shimmied back into the hole just as the nokk began to tear at the wood with its large teeth, taking out chunk after chunk. I tried to stab its head, but the sword didn’t seem to do anything.

Suddenly, the nokk made a gagging noise, and pulled its head out of the hole, and disappeared from sight. I didn’t know what happened and I didn’t care. I stayed in the hole for a while longer until I saw Tiar’s head pop up in front of the hole.

“ Haraz ! You’re not dead!” I squirmed out of the hole. Tiar gave me a small hug and ruffled my hair. Ria climbed off of the wall and pushed past Tiar and me so she could survey the nokk’s carcass.

“We should cut it up so we can carry it easier,” I said.

“No. We get more money if it’s in one piece,” Ria said, “I’ll grab the head. Tiar, you grab the tail. Dillin, you grab the middle.” I heaved the nokk’s huge carcass onto my back, and we carried it out of the maze, and back to Shavari, the Village of the Woods.

All of the buildings were built into trees. Even the empress’ palace was built into the base of a massive maidenhair tree. We walked over to the village trade market, which was built into one of the roots of the empress’ palace. A short, slender man welcomed us from behind the counter.

“Hello,” he said, revealing his beaver-like teeth, “welcome to the Shavair Village Trade Market. I’m Sha’api. What would you like to trade?” His squinted eyes then focused on the large nokk we were dragging behind us. “Woah! Is that a nokk?” He asked, leaning over the front of the counter.

“Sure is,” replied Ria, holding up the nokk head as though it was a trophy.

“I’ve only seen those in stories! Hah! I never actually thought I’d be able to–”

“Sorry for interrupting, but my friends here almost died by this thing.” She motioned to us. “I think we’d like to just collect our money and leave, if that’s alright.” Ria held out her hand.

“Oh! Yes yes yes. Here’s the money. All 500,000 ticas.” He put a large pouch on the counter, and Ria picked it up. Then, she placed the nokk’s head on the counter and we all left. We left and bought some food from the local market and some arrows and elixirs form a traveling merchant. Then, we found a nice place to stay for the night.

We hitched a ride back to Akal with a trader, who sold me some new clothing and Ria and Tiar some armor. On the way there, we discussed what we were going to do with the rest of the money.

“I think we should put some of the money into finding new recruits for our team,” suggested Ria. “It would be better to have some more teammates for the more dangerous quests.”

“I think that we should get more powerful weapons,” suggested Tiar, “mainly for creatures like nokks, where they have some sort of… seemingly impenetrable protection.” We nodded our heads. Both of these sounded like good ideas. “That’s a good idea,” Tiar said.

We finally arrived at Akal. The city was buzzing, as always. The roads were full of people going in and out of work, getting goods and just touring. We stopped by the Quest Board, which, as always, was full of quests. None of them looked too interesting, though. Most of them were infestation removal along with the occasional dungeon quests.

“We should drop the ticas off at base,” Tiar said. We followed her over to a towering house. As we stood in front of it, someone called my name. A woman with light green skin, brown eyes, and hair the color of tree bark ran up to us.

“Are you Dillin of the questers who killed the nokk?” She said, grabbing my shoulders. “U-uh yes. I’m Dillin. These are my friends, Ria and Tiar.” The woman let out a breath she was holding in.

“I have been trying to find you a’aku laaike ! I’m Javari from the Akkia village. There was a beast, we don’t know where it came from. It destroyed most of the village and killed multiple ovei. I left very quickly, and I do not know if the beast still lurks nearby, but my sister Asika fled when it arrived and I must find her! Will you three please help?” We all exchanged glances. Then Ria sighed.

“Can you give us a description of the beast?”

“No. I am sorry. I did not stay long enough to see it.”

“No need to apologize. We’ll find it, and kill it,” declared Ria. “For now, you can stay here. We get a lot of outsiders here, anyway, so you being here shouldn’t be too much of a problem.” We took a carriage to Maz Forest, the closest we could get to Akkia before the coachman dropped us off with the sudden sound of booms and splintering wood. We turned towards the forest, took a deep breath, and walked in.