23 | ORB
I'd been locking my room for what felt like ages, resting on my bed while hanging my head off the side to amuse myself. I counted the different speckles of light in the ceiling and stared at the locked, upside down bedroom door.
After a while, I'd finally accepted this weird angel world as my reality and that this was not a dream. With my acceptance came some happiness and some dread. My anxiety came from realizing that home was nowhere in my near future and that I actually had no idea where I was. I probably wouldn't get that information anytime soon either. It was best just to ignore those thoughts if I wanted to stay sane.
The joy stemmed from my new friends who were willing and ready to bring me into the new world without fear regarding my abilities or Secta's wrath for letting the prisoner out of the cage. I'd taken more lessons with the senior guardians and my muscles ached from constant skirmishes or runs with Raphael. Finn had stopped overseeing my combat instruction for no apparent reason at all, and it had stung.
Raphael had been in his place one random day and had told me not to question it, so logically I did and ended up getting my ass handed back to me gift wrapped in return for my irritable interrogation. Samaria had chuckled and giggled with pleasure, going off about how curiosity killed the kitty Kate.
I hadn't seen Finn often at all any more as he'd dove into other lessons and seemed distracted whenever we spoke as he walked me back and forth to meals. Those walks even became less frequent as Secta would be the one knocking on my door instead of the friendly guardian.
I wondered where he was but never had enough time to ask him as he was always on the move with so many other people to talk to. I ended up just dropping any interest I had trying to talk to him because he seemed to be off the wall with a full schedule. Maybe we just simply weren't really as good of friends as I thought, but I wanted to remain positive so I got rid of that idea.
To my delight and reassurance of our friendship, the reason for his lack of focus was revealed as a large herd of doves, the name of their huge jet airplanes, were being loaded down on the other side of the hill at the tarmac which I didn't have access to besides through the window of the library. I peaked out to see their engines fire up before the golden dome parted to allow the huge jets to soar off towards the horizon and they disappeared.
The guardians were headed off to fight.
Raphael, Cybele, Finn, and Annie were gone from lunch that afternoon, leaving Charlie to entertain me along with the other senior guardians I'd met: Madeleine, Diego, Sullivan, Kyle, and Sophie.
Secta had become my closest companion with the others gone and therefore the leash around my neck got a hell of a lot tighter. I really had luxuries under my other friends that were swiped out from under my feet.
I sat by Secta's side for every meal or took them alone in my room when he couldn't be present, an annoyingly chatty guardian who was head of the house perched outside my door to keep watch and monitor my behavior.
All my lessons came to a halt except for a basic cardio routine with Charlie and more meraki training to see if I could conjure a ball of fairy dust or move a cup of water around in a circle. It was tedious and I was beyond bored as I had made no progress. I could tell that Secta was getting frustrated at my lack of talent. Maybe I would get to go home after all.
The biggest knot in my stomach was that I hadn't realized how much I'd grown to like the new people in my life, even Raphael who reminded me a lot of Vulcan and the Benton Brothers from home (which would have made Raphael delightfully irritable as he would hate being thought of as warm and fluffy in any sense).
The details of where the guardians had gone weren't revealed to me, though a large portion of guardians was missing from the everyday line up. During meals, many of the tables were left empty and abandoned with food portions smaller than usual. From guessing by the number of open seats, nearly a third of the guardians had left aboard a dove a week ago. This had to be a large scale event.
I'd worn Secta down a little in exchange for adding another meraki practice to my schedule, which had bought me to my disappointment only a blanket statement: "they left to solve a crisis on another planet because it is their job. They did the same on your planet and they have plenty of other missions to lead."
He wouldn't answer why he was still here with me instead of leading his troops into battle as their leader, which was odd to me. Secta also wouldn't reveal our location or other details, which I also found peculiar because it wasn't like I could run off and tell anyone.
I guess the guardians had Cybele as their general, with Finn, Raphael, and Annie. There were plenty of advanced fighters who had enough experience to lead a mission, whatever that term technically meant.
What type of missions did they embark on? Obviously they saved civilians from predicaments like full scale extinction similar to Tron's breakdown, but what else did the guardians do? What was their business with international affairs? How far did their influence go? How much did they get involved in different crises around the universe? How bad did it have to be?
The look on Finn's face whenever I saw him before he left revealed to me that their mission must have been serious. Cybele had seemed to have lost her cheerfulness and was even relatively quiet when teaching me more history, which was a symptom in itself. Annie had been sullen and irritable with a lack of her usual jokes, and Raphael was even more painfully quiet during meals and drilled me relentlessly in practice until I wore holes into my running shoes.
Whatever it was they were facing this week, it wasn't good and they had all been on edge getting into those doves. I felt anxious, particularly because I was stuck inside this room while they marched into battle or fires or something just as terrible that I couldn't even imagine.
Could they be fighting demons? The terrible night children and evil pixies from Cybele's lessons? Maybe even Noxia herself was on the battlefront?
It made me wonder even more while Secta wasn't with them especially considering how jumpy they all seemed to be. Maybe he was worried that he'd be a bigger magnet for Noxia and her demons. His subconscious had pulled the evil woman out from whatever dark hole she was lodged in during our walk down the golden brick road of my memories. I couldn't imagine what could happen if they met face to face.
I sat up, feeling all the blood running to my head. Falling back on the pillows, an itch for something outside this room ran through my spine. I was going insane in here. I felt as though I were an inch from mentally unstable.
Secta wasn't quite as fun as Finn or Cybele and hardly gave me an invitation out of my room besides for meals or lessons. He'd cut me off from most of the other guardians completely, and I hadn't seen Gabriel or Samaria in days. I was quarantined like I had the plague and life had gotten a lot worse than it had before.
I looked down at my hands, flexing them into fists before releasing my fingers. Meraki coursed through my veins at this very second even if I didn't want to believe it. I'd felt it inside me and I'd released it on many different occasions, but its sheer power frightened me more than I wanted to admit.
I wasn't in control and had no idea how to actually use it or manipulate it like Secta or Cybele. It was easy for them, but this hurricane of fire that filled my chest when I dug deep inside always burned me if I got too close.
If only I could just figure out this spirit thing inside me and maybe this entire journey would be over. Or maybe I could end a very long war.
Shaking my head, I pushed those thoughts away. I wasn't the Prodigy, because that simply couldn't be.
But there's power inside me. A lot of it or else they wouldn't want me. If I wasn't important or at least a prospect, they wouldn't have taken me with them to train. Dabble. Try to get to know that spark.
It was dangerous territory to start picking around my meraki without Secta around after all the threats he'd listed out to me. I was a newborn Merakian as he liked to say who needed guidance and supervised lessons because I'd already put myself into trouble by letting my power grow too quickly for my mind to handle. The strain could kill me.
But, just a little soul searching couldn't hurt. I would just admire the flame from a distance and take a look back into my old memories to see if I could try and pinpoint that trigger of emotion which set my meraki free in the first place. Soul searching was good just like self reflection.
I crossed my legs as I sat up straight, taking a deep breath to loosen my muscles and stretch out my shoulders. Closing my eyes, I crossed my arms over my chest to lay my hands just below my collarbone on either side, one hand above my heart.
Think of a meadow with a picnic basket and fruit.
Inhaling deeply, I focussed into my core and imagined the meadow that Cybele had spoken of before with the same basket filled with the golden orange fruit that contained my fire. But I wouldn't touch it.
I opened the basket and it began to glow out like the suns in the heavens as I fell backwards onto the ground. The meadow began to bleed away as the corner of my thoughts started to tear apart like ancient parchment and I was pulled into another sense of consciousness altogether.
The air was cold around me, making shivers run up my forearms as my breath turned to an icy white when I let out a gasp. It was dark all around me, a single lamp swinging overhead with a rusty creak that echoed loudly in my ears.
I looked up at the three pronged lantern, its metal cord disappearing into the blackness as the lights began to flicker.
"No, no, no..." I said, a fear running through me. I couldn't be trapped in this hole in the dark!
One light burnt out, leaving only two before it revived itself to glow a ghastly grey as the second light bulb turned into a color like frost. The light still swayed above my head as the ground shuddered, giant windows erupting from the darkness to let in great rays of light. Walls of stone built around me from nothing as the room came into focus.
The floor turned into a smooth marble as large statues of old age soldiers rose like vigilant watchmen, towering high over my head so that their faces were masked in the darkness of the ceiling. The lamp still swung as I turned to look about.
The room looked like a cathedral of sorts though much older yet impeccably clean. A giant mural of seven serpents hung on the wall in between two of the giants, framed in gold with ornate patterns that spiraled around the artwork.
I stepped closer to admire it, watching as a malicious black spot began to spread across the portrait along each serpent. It burnt the canvas, eating up every snake one by one until only seven hollow circles existed on the painting. It was empty and the atmosphere around me felt far colder than it had been before.
A loud clanging made me scream as I turned on my heels, a giant orb resting on the marble. The floor was cracked under the orb's weight, splintering like the ice from my vision of Noxia. The ball was clear, a whirlwind of black and gold sand swirling about inside like a sandstorm.
With caution, I reached forward to touch the glass, gazing inside the magnificent sphere. There was a whistle above me as I stepped back, watching as the original orb was smashed to pieces by an even larger sphere composed of the same glass with the two colors of sand.
This orb had small cracks running along the glass as both swarms of dust ran inside and out of the sphere, twirling about before diving back inside to twist and mingle with the other. Though the black and golden sand was free, it was still drawn back into the center as though by a powerful magnet.
I narrowed my eyes, the center of the orb holding three small, white spheres that the sands swirled around. They looked like small beads fit for a necklace and I took a step away, turning back to the picture frame.
It still remained, black and rotting as a little wooden table now sat in front of it. On the table was a long, black box that radiated a sort of warm aura which drew me in closer. I went to open it, but the box was locked. I removed my hand as the lights above me began to swing faster. The three lanterns grew brighter as an overwhelming chill covered my body.
It was time for me to leave.
Just at the thought, the color drained from my vision as it began to fade away like a pleasant dream and I was thrown backwards into the land of the living.
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