LIGHTNOVELONLINE Dark Guardian Chapter 12: A River of Red
I moved across the matted floor in one of the many form sets my dad had taught me in our special training sessions. I couldn’t even remember how many times I’d gone through it that afternoon. But here I was, at it again. But the annoyance I normally felt at doing the same moves over and over had dimmed somewhat as I became hyper focused on my movements.
And then it just seemed to click like it had so many other times in all my other trainings. It’s that moment where you finally stop overthinking it all and the moves just become a part of you. There is just the flow and a deep understanding where you belong in it.
Arms fluid. Strikes quick and precise. Legs sturdy, but quick to respond to my cues. All of me focused on this moment like it was the only one that matter.
Until the movements of the form came to an end. And I found myself with feet together, arms at my sides, and my chest rising and falling fast with my rapid breathing. I felt a thrill. I had finally gotten this particular set correct.
“Excellent,” I heard my dad confirm what I already knew.
I looked to him. Proud that I had finally gotten it right. We had been working on that particular set for months. Dad waved me over to the side of the room where he had a small towel and a bottle of water waiting for me.
“You’re doing well, Michael. I think we can move on to the next level, but before that I need to tell you something.”
I finished gulping down the water and eyed my dad already eager to get to the next level. I might not know exactly why all this was happening, but I enjoyed the sessions more than I let on to dad. Mostly, because it was just him and I spending time together. I really liked that. I also liked knowing I was learning sometime Eric didn’t know. He was such a know it all sometimes. I couldn’t wait to show him I knew something he didn’t––some day. When I could actually remember the sessions outside of our trainings.
Dad placed a hand on my shoulder, which caused me to look deep into his eyes. I was a little taller than him now, and I was looking down to meet his gaze. I was still getting used to that.
“Like so many other things we have done in these sessions, what I am about to say to you won’t make much sense to you right now. I’m telling you this now, so you can remember when the time is right.”
I simply nodded. I had learned that this was the best course of action when he got like this. It was so frustrating, but I had been arguing with him for years, and it had done nothing to stop him from being so damn secretive. And whether I liked it or not, I did discover that when I could manage to put my frustrations aside, things with my dad flowed so much better.
“The Nadors are the key to your other adapted memories. Seek them out. Spend time with them. And the lock will release.”
I blinked at my dad like he was crazy. I had no idea what he was talking about. What the hell was adapted memories anyways? And who were the Nadors?
My dad clapped me on the shoulder, and then turned to walk toward the center of the training room. “Alright, let’s hit this from the top.”
I followed him and took my place across from him as I usually did and I stood waiting for my next set of instructions as the room around us slowly grew fuzzy. Only my dad’s face seemed highlighted for a long moment, before everything faded to black, and I was left in a dark void of nothingness.
I woke up to a warm breeze blowing across my face. My eyes fluttered open to see the soft light of dawn breaking in the wide open sky just beyond my balcony and the white transparent curtains that I had drawn across the left side of my bed. There had been a slight chill in the air when I went to sleep sometime in the deep part of the night, and the flimsy barrier seemed to be just enough to make sleeping comfortable.
The morning air was already starting to warm up. It would be blistering hot before too much longer. I had been concerned about the heat during the day considering that both my room and the main living area was open to the balcony and the great outdoors, but Dur-rele had informed me during dinner last night that there was a climate control to prevent too much of the heat from entering the chalet. I asked how it worked, but he just looked at me like I asked why the sky was blue. So I decided to just drop it.
I sat up and stretched as my mind drifted back to the dream I had been having before I awoke. It was the same dream I had every night since my last night in the White Palace. It was the first time I had ever had a reoccurring dream like that, and yet, I knew it wasn’t really a dream.
It was a memory. One of the ones my dad had locked away to keep me and the information he’d taught me safe until I needed it. I’m not sure he could have anticipated the situation I had found myself in that had caused me to release the locked memories of dad teaching me quat-lo. The Emperor’s Protector trying to choke me to death with a towel on the floor of my own bathroom just wasn’t one of those kind of these you really could anticipate, and I might have reacted a little strongly to that by almost killing the Protector with what my dad had taught me.
Along with knowing this new deadly discipline, I now had a set of memories spanning from my childhood to young adulthood years that I had not known about until just a few days ago. It was weird, but awesome all at the same time. Yet, for some reason this particular moment out of years worth of memories kept invading my dreams.
Why that one? I had to assume that it was trying to tell me how to unlock one of the last two locks still in my mind. Which I got––the first time I dreamed it. Why did it keep popping up? I shook my head. Who knew?
I decided it was a puzzle for another day. I wanted to make sure I got a shower in before breakfast and before Master Kiev came to finish our tour of the College. I pulled back the white curtain surrounding my bed and put my feet onto the marble floor. I was expecting the floor to be warm. Dur-rele had also explained the the floors were heated at night and cooled during the day.
What I wasn’t expecting was it to be sticky. I looked down to see a river of red had trickled from the balcony across the black marble floor and continued by my bed and right under it. I jerked my feet up as peered down closer. Holy crap! Was that blood?!
My heart pounded in my chest as I found a place that didn’t have any red from the red river. I immediately stood up and crouched down to place a finger in the red liquid. I brought it up to my nose and a whiff of copper filled my nostrils. And it was still a little warm too. Was that because of the heated floor, or was it recently spilled?
Shit.
I stalked across the balcony and looked around the corner to where the main living area was. I jerked back to find the lifeless eyes and cut throat of Pledge Haxley. For a handful of moments all I could do was stare, and then I realized that whoever had done this could still be in the chalet.
My heart picked up even more as I scanned the living area. I peaked back around to my bedroom and looked there too. The balcony itself was empty save myself. What the actual fuck?
A sound came from the opposite side of the living area. I looked up to see Dur-rele coming from his room. He took one look at me and the body at my feet and stopped. His face paled and he looked like he might be sick. In fact, a moment later found Dur-rele leaning over a planter and retching into it.
I stepped back away from the body. My stomach feeling a sudden need to hurl too, but somehow I managed to keep it together. Barely. It helped if I didn’t look directly at the cooling body of poor Pledge Haxley. I walked over to Dur-rele, not knowing what else to do.
“Did you hear anything?” I asked the man.
He managed to pull his head back up, but he still looked green. He shook his head. “No. What happened?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just woke up and I found him lying there. I didn’t hear a thing. Isn’t that odd? Shouldn’t we have heard something? And if someone killed Haxley then…”
I couldn’t bring myself to continue with that thought, but I could see Dur-rele knew exactly what I was thinking. I didn’t think it possible, but his face paled even more. He then stood up and rushed to the wall near the front door. I hadn’t noticed there was what looked like a control panel there. He pressed his hand to a palm scanner, and then he said “activate security lockdown.”
Dur-rele turned to me and waved to me. “Highness, step forward. You don’t want to get caught outside.”
I didn’t hesitate to do as he said. As soon as I was inside the main living area, I heard something slam shut behind me. I whirled around to find a solid wall the same color as the other walls where the balcony used to be. I looked back to Dur-rele.
“Was that wise? You may have just locked us in with a killer?” I said.
Dur-rele motioned me to his room. “That’s why we are going to lock ourselves inside my room until a security team gets here. I was just in there and I’m certain it’s empty.”
I didn’t argue. It seemed like the best option considering, so I quickly dashed into Dur-rele’s room, and was glad when he came a few seconds after. He placed a palm on the scanner next to his door. I heard a discernible click, and that sound was enough for me to let out a sigh of relief.
Then a piercing shriek sounded. It was like the wail of a baby times ten. It was loud and seemed to vibrated right down into my soul. And it did not stop.
“What’s that?” I had to yell over the sound to be heard.
“The alarm. I set it off, hoping it would scare away whoever did that to Haxley. It will also call the assault team.” Du-rele yelled his own response.
I couldn’t argue with that logic either. I had to admit, Dur-rele sure did know how to think on his feet in a tight situation. It kind of left me felling kind of useless, but then he knew the ins and out better than me. I was still learning how everything worked here. Not there was much that could be done at this point. And so both of us stood in the middle of Dur-rele’s room dressed only in our night clothes and bare feet––waiting for the calvary to arrive.