Nibiru: Chaos Collision

by Knox Locke

Chapter 2: First Contact

The two siblings had stayed perfectly still for quite some time, waiting to see if the monster in the crater moved. When it failed to, Luke turned to grab his sister's arm. She, however, had other plans. Maggie swiftly ducked below her brother's hand and started tip-toeing closer to the crater.

Before she could get too far, Luke had firmly grabbed her arm. She turned around, obviously annoyed by his interruption.

"Maggie, what are you thinking?" he whispered.

"I'm thinking," she whispered back, "that whatever that thing is could be hurt. We have to check on it!"

"Are you kidding me? That thing is some kind of monster or... demon! It's dangerous."

"How could it possibly be dangerous if it's not even awake?" she implored.

"We don't even know if it's alive."

"Just one more reason to make sure it's OK!"

"Maggie, it's not safe!"

"What if you were in its position?"

"What?"

"What if you'd just fallen through a building," she elaborated, looking at the thing mournfully, "and someone just happened to see it happen. Wouldn't you want them to check on you?"

Luke looked towards the creature for a moment, then returned his gaze to his sister. Giving off a groan, he loosened his grip on Maggie's wrist and started working his way quietly towards the crater.

His sister let out a small excited squee before following close behind.

The two carefully maneuvered their way down the sides of the crater until they were less than a foot away from their unexpected visitor. After getting closer to the creature, there were a few things they noticed fairly quickly.

First, the creature was breathing. Maggie sighed with relief upon noticing this, and started looking over the demon for any injuries. The next thing that stuck out to them was the sheer absurdity that was this monster's body. It was a crazy hodgepodge of different animal parts: a lion paw, a goat horn, a snake tail, a cloven hoof, an eagle's talon, and more! Luke looked at each individual part, quickly trying to piece together what this thing might be.

"It seems to be chimerical in nature," he said.

Upon noticing the confused expression plastered on his sister's face, he decided to elaborate.

"In the case of many legendary creatures, it means to be made of the parts of many different animals."

"Well," said Maggie, satisfied with his explanation,"chimera or not, this thing's in rough shape."

She pointed out the many deep cuts and awkwardly angled limbs she had discovered during her examination.

"Yikes," Luke said, wincing out of nothing but sympathy.

"What do we do?" Maggie asked as she reached out and placed a delicate hand on the creature's what-she-could-only-assume-was-a-shoulder.