LIGHTNOVELONLINE Dark Guardian Chapter 26: Betrayal
I moved further into the building. I could finally see the end to the great hall off in the distance, and from where I stood, there seemed to be open wall on both sides near the end. I figured that space was probably waiting eagerly for the newer members to be added to the Hall of the Renowned.
“What happens when they run out of space?” I asked Master Kiev who had taken to walking a few feet behind me as he seemed consumed with his own thoughts as I walked the Hall.
“Hmmm…” The man seemed almost startled out of whatever it was he was pondering.
“I was asking what happens when they run out of space in the Hall?”
Kiev looked a little embarrassed that he’d been caught off guard. “Oh, they simply add on to the building. That’s why it was placed at the edge of the College. There’s only open desert out there, so they can expand as much as they need to. This building has already gone through three expansions since the College was settled here on Sora X.”
“Huh, that’s pretty cool.” I said as I continued my walk and allowed Kiev go back to whatever it was that was so important to him. A few more feet down, I ran into another face I recognized, and it made my stomach turn as I remembered the one and only time I had met the man.
He was a big man. Enough muscles for several men in one hulking body. I stared at the greatly intimating holographic image of Captain Kaller Hame and I was in awe of how I had ever managed to fight this man and actually beat him. I realized that perhaps it was just dumb luck and maybe some surprise on the Captain’s part.
Hame hadn’t expected me to know quat-lo, and neither had I, for that matter. The locked memories had released when the Captain had a choke hold on me and I lay grasping the last breaths of air. I suppose almost dying was one way to unlock memories closed away by a Mind Bender, or maybe more likely, that had been one of the parameters my dad had set for the memories to release. Thanks Dad.
I must have said that last part out loud, because a distracted Kiev spoke up. “What’s that?”
I turned to the man shaking my head. “It’s nothing. Just a thought I had. I think I’ve seen enough. How about we head back to the chalet?”
“Oh, but you haven’t gotten to the end yet,” Kiev said as he gestured behind me where the other holographic images lay.
“I know, but I am tired. I think that assessment is starting to catch up to me. Maybe we can come back to finish?”
I started to walk past the Master, but he stopped me with a touch to the shoulder. He turned his head back to seek out my guards. Both Gunther and Vasti had kept a sizable distance as we had walked the Hall. And why not? There was no one else but us in the building. Kiev then turned back and leaned in close as if afraid my guards would hear what he would say next.
“I think it wise to stay here just a little longer, Highness. Maybe another few minutes?”
I gave the man a curious look, but I kept with his cloak and dagger routine and whispered back “Why? Is there something wrong? You’ve been acting off since the Cantina.”
“I––” the man opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. He looked deeply troubled and that started to make me feel concerned.
Kiev looked back once more, and then said. “I apologize in advance for what’s about to happen, Adar. You have to know that I didn’t want it to go this way, but it’s getting harder to find people to trust at the College to protect you. And I know I could trust him.”
I did a double take at the Master. Surprised he had used my first name, since he’d seemed to be avoiding it. And I was completely at a loss for the rest. What in the world was he talking about? I opened my mouth to ask, but in that moment, an explosion rocked the entire Hall.
The floor quaked beneath my feet and the air had an electric quality to it that made my skin prickle and tingle. Intense white light flashed in my vision causing a moment of blindness, while more deafening explosions echoed through the great hall. I remembered there was a wall not too far away from me, so I stumbled in that direction until I felt the cold stone in my grasp. I braced myself against the solid wall as the world around me exploded in deafening sounds.
A few moments later, my sight began to clear and I was able to get a look at the Hall. There was a dusty haze everywhere. Gunther and Vasti were already down. Their bodies sprawled among a large pile of rubble from the stone wall they had been the closest to, which was across from me and at least fifteen feet from my current location. That caused me to shuffle back from the wall afraid that my portion would be joining the other.
That’s when I saw an individual encased from head to foot in a slick black armored suit. The person held a long black stick in one hand that arched with white electrical light and was aiming a long black gun that pulsed red near the tip of the barrel. The armored assailant targeted the downed Pledges. But neither of them moved. The attacker stood there a moment just to make sure that they wouldn’t. Then the armored assailant marched across the shattered great hall right toward Master Kiev, who hadn’t even moved from the last spot I had seen him before the attack started.
“Make it look good,” Kiev said in a surprisingly normal voice.
I blinked and it took me a long moment to put the pieces together. Kiev had known this was going to happen? I suppose that would explain the warning he had given me just moments ago. My mind momentarily frozen in shock. What the actual hell? Had it all been a trick? Him being so personable, patiently answering all my questions, even seeming to be looking after me? Had Master Kiev just been trying to get close so he could strike against me at the right time?
It felt like the foundation of my very existence had been shaken. I mean sure, I hadn’t know the Master that long, but I always thought I’d been a good judge of character. My instincts had told me that I could trust him. And yet, here Kiev stood in obvious collusion with this attacker. How could I have been so wrong? But then maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe. I had been wrong about the person my dad had been. He had been this whole other person that seemed a complete stranger to me.
The attacker approached Master Kiev and zapped him with the arching light from his long stick. Kiev convulsed and dropped like a sack of potatoes to the floor. The attacker then turned toward me.
My mind was finally catching up to me at what was happening, but I had hesitated too long. The wall was still behind me and I just ended up backing myself up against it. My heart thundered in my chest and I desperately tried to figure a way out of this.
“Look, maybe we can talk this out,” I said as I put my hands up, but the armored assailant didn’t even slow down as he came right up and gave me the same treatment as Kiev. One minute I was standing, and the next, I was falling to the floor with all the muscles in my body locked up and my brain firing off one last message of how I should have run instead of just standing there like some idiot fool.