Quest for Justice by Sean Fay Wolfe Page B

line.
    Stan, Charlie, and Kat exploded into cheers. None of them was entirely sure what they had just seen, but it was certainly spectacular. “That was amazing!” Stan yelled.
    â€œYeah, it was! And what exactly was that thing you just killed?” asked Kat.
    â€œOh, that was just a Snow Golem,” explained Jayden. “They use snowballs to keep away monsters and unwanted guests. So, which of you wants to try first?”
    The smile fell from Stan’s face. He had forgotten that he would have to do what Jayden had just done. Jayden made it look so easy! What if I just end up looking like an idiot? Stan thought.
    â€œI’ll take the bullet,” Charlie said meekly, stepping forward. The others looked surprised, even Jayden, thoughhe still tossed Charlie the axe. Charlie never volunteered to go first.
    â€œWell, snowballs don’t hurt, do they?” said Charlie, taking his stance as Jayden readied the Golem. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
    Famous last words , thought Stan.
    And he turned out to be right, as Charlie’s trial was a bona fide disaster. The second Jayden yelled go, Charlie dashed forward, but he instantly fell back on his butt, still grabbing the handle of the axe—he had clearly underestimated its weight. With Charlie on the ground, the Snow Golem had a clear shot at Charlie with the snowballs. Each snowball knocked Charlie into the air a little, but he was so bad at dodging them that he was actually blasted into the air by the rapid-fire stream of snow. It was only a hoe thrown spear-style by Crazy Steve, which impaled itself in the Golem’s face, that stopped Charlie from being lifted to a fatal height. Still, Charlie was pretty badly hurt when he fell back down, and a disgruntled Jayden had to pull out another golden apple to fix Charlie’s leg.
    Kat’s trial was almost as bad. She decided to throw the axe with all her considerable strength toward the Golem’s head. It would have worked had her aim been better. The flying axe ended up hitting and killing a cow in the adjacent field. From there, it was all Kat could do to keep from being lifted into the air as Charlie had. She was better at dodgingthan him, but she had no weapons, and she only dodged about half the rapid-fire snowballs. Jayden had to pull out a bow and arrows from the chest and fire three shots into the Snow Golem’s pumpkin head to put an end to it.
    Finally, Stan took the axe. He dropped into a fighting stance with a nervous pit in his stomach. He hoped he wouldn’t just drop the axe like Charlie, or do something else to make himself look stupid. Jayden put the pumpkin head in place, the Snow Golem became animated, and Stan took off.
    The first thing he noticed was that the axe wasn’t as heavy as he had thought. It felt rather light in his hand as he ran with it trailing behind him. The second thing he noticed was how easy it was to dodge the snowballs—he simply knew when to duck and weave around them, and in no time, Stan had reached the Snow Golem. What happened next was so incredible that even Jayden didn’t believe his eyes.
    As he neared the Snow Golem, Stan had a brilliant idea. Instead of trying to copy what Jayden had done and doing a triple spin, Stan launched himself forward into the air and spun with all his might, axe stretched in front of him. He slammed into the Snow Golem with such speed and such incredible revolution that the Golem was cut into dust as if it was in a blender set to liquefy.
    Stan landed with one hand and two feet on the ground, well past the red line, breathing hard, his axe held in theremaining hand, and there was no evidence that there had ever been an enemy there. Nobody could even see any pieces of the pumpkin. The only evidence of the snow was the light dust hanging in the air, creating a rainbow in the light from the square sun.
    There was an absolute explosion of cheers from Charlie and Kat, and Jayden