The Knight From Beyond [Ground: Zero, Book 2]

3. a notecard for an immortal, a boogeyman for magic

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RYAN FOLLOWED OSCAR THROUGH THE LONG HALLS OF LIMBO'S. The purple-gray stone of the walls were the only company in the silence. It was Saturday, so she didn't expect much else, but it would've been easier had there been some noise besides the echo of footsteps and the muffled howl of the winds outside.

Through the entire twisted path towards his office, a growing lump formed in the back of her throat. To Ryan, it was an old enemy, but a familiar one. That sour feeling of anxiety that sunk in her mind as her eyes felt heavier with each step they took towards the back of the school.

It dug into her, like some desperate creature had built itself in her gut for far too long, and now was making its way up her throat and eyes, begging to be noticed, begging to be heard, regardless of how it made Ryan look in front of not only a teacher, but Zack's dad.

"I just had to agree to help Kat." She mumbled.

Oscar stopped and turned to her. Though he didn't say a word, the twitch of his ear and the curious look on his face told her all she needed to know.

"I'm fine." She said nervously, "I'm just tired after training with Kathleen."

"I'm sure you are, Ms. Ferris."

Oscar started back on the path again, the back of his ink-stained lab coat flew behind him like a cape.

Ryan did her best to avoid turning her gaze towards the ground. She knew she couldn't cry. Yet, at the same time, she couldn't swallow down this feeling.

No matter how desperately she lectured herself, no matter how hard she tried to push everything down back into the depths of her mind, it still resurfaced. This feeling of everything building and building and as the more she thought about it, the more she couldn't deny it as her face weighed with every emotion that crept up from the morning.

"I'll be right behind you!" She said, though her voice came out a raspy whisper.

It was, of course, a lie, and the moment Oscar was a chunk ahead of her, Ryan wiped the tears forming in her eyes. Under her breath, she swore and wished crying and other emotions were as pretty as they seemed in movies.

Especially in animated movies, instead of the sniffling and gentle creep of ugly sobs, she could have gentle little waterfalls from her eyes, preferably ones that sparkled too much.

Ryan pinched her nose and took a few deep breaths. If she couldn't pull herself together after a single flashback, she wouldn't make it through her talk with Oscar, she was already wasting his time by staying back.

She dusted herself off and bridged the distance between them. She found Oscar in the middle of the hall, his back against one side of the wall, facing the other head on. 

"Why did you stop again?" Ryan asked.

"I thought you might want to have a quick visit before we continued. I was planning to come here later today anyhow." He replied.

Oscar gestured to the other end of the hall he was so focused on. There, as though it was poorly pasted on top of the rest of the stone bricks, a wooden door with a circular handle stood a few feet away from them. It was exactly like any medieval door that would be found in a fantasy video game for an entrance to a dungeon or stairway.

Ryan recognized this hall. The west wing dorms and faculty offices weren't too far away, Though even in the short time she was in the valley, she had never seen that door. Admittedly it fit in nicely with the rest of the aesthetic of the school, and she wouldn't give it a second glance, had it not been brown wood.