Red Sun Rising

Chapter 9: Ira's Gone Nuts, Who's Going to Stop Him?

Max:

I opened my eyes to discover four things.

First, I was still alive. The pain behind my eyes confirmed this for me. That brings me to the second thing I discovered: The light in the room was so bright. Was it always like this in my room? Squinting around, I realized the third thing: I was in the infirmary, not my room. And fourth, a black knight was watching me.

"What the—" I sat up quickly. My head spun for a moment, making me groan.

"So," the knight said, polishing his war hammer, "you live."

"Yeah," I said slowly, eyeing his hammer warily. "Was I not supposed to?"

"No."

The knight set his hammer aside and strode towards me, retrieving a vial from somewhere behind him. I frowned and leaned away from him. His answer just confused me. No, I wasn't supposed to live or no, I was supposed to live?

"Lupimortus solution is highly effective in treating dark creature bites. However, there are a few cases where..." the knight trailed off and thrust the vial in his hand under my nose. "Drink."

I wrinkled my nose, taking the vial from him and observing the clear liquid inside. It smelled like the ground after a quick rain shower. "What is it?"

The knight's visor briefly glowed red on the inside. "Just drink it, Max Trever. I won't be held responsible if you go back into a coma because you were too dumb to take the medication."

Holding my nose, I downed the liquid in one go. It didn't taste so bad but I could feel it as it went down my throat and into my stomach. As I put the vial down, I noticed that Steven had come into the room. He had a slight look of disgust on his face, his left eye twitching.

"You didn't say he had to drink it." He told the knight next to him.

The knight shrugged, hefting his hammer onto his shoulder. "The Lupimortus saliva needs to work inside and out. Paenitudo applied it onto his wound, but it wasn't enough."

"Wait, what?!" I exclaimed as my stomach began to churn. "What saliva?"

Steven turned to me. "Lupimortus. You remember, Max? The silver dog creatures that belonged to the Knights of Black."

I gagged. Dog saliva? Disgusting! I frantically looked around for a glass of water. Thankfully, there was one in the middle of the bedside table. Snatching it quickly, I chugged the whole thing, hoping to wash the dreaded liquid from my mouth.

"This is the Knight of Anger, Max," Steven said as I drank. "Evander Sykus."

"But you have not earned the right to call me by my given name. So—"

Wiping my mouth, I said, "Psycho? Your last name is Psycho?"

The knight's visor glowed red again, but for much longer. He pointed his war hammer at me, its head a mere inch from my nose.

"Sykus! Evander Sykus!" He growled. "But you are to call me Ira. Your angry cousin here is the only one who may call me Evander."

"'Ee-ra'," I said, mockingly rolling the 'r' in the same way he had. He had a weird accent when he said his names, as if English wasn't his first language and he had practiced an American accent on everything except for those two names.

Glancing over to Steven, I briefly wondered what had happened to make him known to Ira as the 'angry cousin'. Before I could ask however, the infirmary door burst open and Benjin and Danny carefully walked in with a slumped over Malachi between them. A nervous-looking Kento came in after them, circling around and asking questions before being gently restrained by... was that Johanna Clifford?