A Monstrous Heart

Chapter 8

Lea put his back to the large doors behind him and slid down to sit on the floor, hugging his knees. The sun's last rays shone in the castle's white walls, then disappeared. Night had fallen, and his first full official shift was starting. This time wasn't just practice, unlike yesterday. But it was fine, right? He was a brave castle guard now. Nothing could stop him, right? And he wasn't alone, Aeleus was with him. It was gonna be fine.

Lea's eyes were drawn to something moving a bit further away. He stretched his neck to try and see, but there was nothing there. Must've been the shadow of a tree in the wind.

Then something else moved. Something as flat as any other shadow, but much darker, and moving. Moving towards them.

Lea sprang up, holding his frisbees as hard as he could. Aeleus summoned metallic weapon and got onto a defensive stance. The flat thing stopped moving about three meters away from them and started to... Grow? It stopped being flat, expanding like a balloon to gain a third dimension. It stood there, on its weird little two feet, staring at them, if it could even see. It's figure was humanoid, completely black, crouched forwards. Its head was huge, about as big as the rest of it's body, and two sorts of horns or antennae bobbed on it's top. The only thing on it that wasn't pitch black was two protruding circular things on it's face that must have been it's eyes, but they were entirely yellow with no clear pupil or iris. The thing remained there, twitching lightly. Then it pounced on Lea all of a sudden. The kid screamed, trying to hit the thing with his frisbees without much effect as he fell backwards onto the ground. Aeleus yelled something, but he couldn't hear him. He quickly gave up with the frisbees and just tried protecting himself with his arms, as the panic made him lose control and turn to full monster form. Then the thing was no longer there, launched like a golf ball by a single hit of Aeleus' weapon. Lea curled up into a ball, sobbing uncontrollably despite the adult man's vest attempts to calm him down.

It took a good few minutes until Lea was alright enough to turn human again. He sat up, looking at Aeleus in front of him, who'd fallen silent to just let him cool off on his own. "Alright, that is enough. Go to your room, kid. I'll stay here the rest of the night." Lea lowered his head in shame, but was extremely thankful to be dismissed. He stood up, grabbed his frisbees and tried to do some sort of salute despite the tears still streaming down his cheeks.

"Y-yes, sir, thank you!" And with that, he scurried back into the castle, finding the way back to his room. He was ready to just jump on the bed and fall asleep without even putting his pijamas on, but when he opened the door he was surprised to see someone else was already sitting on the bed's edge.

"Back so soon?" Isa lifted an eyebrow. "I thought you had to stay there until two AM. It's barely eight, slacker"

Lea teared up again, frowning. "Oh, shut up, you meanie!" He sat besides Isa. "It was horrible out there. Some creepy... Thing attacked us. I have no idea what it was, but it definitely wasn't the saw as the ones from a few weeks ago." Lea brought his knees up to his chin and hugged himself. "...What are you doing here, anyway? Wrong room."

"Oh, I- Sorry, I didn't know it was that awful." Isa's eyes widened with shock, both at Lea's strong reaction and at the things he said. "I... I wanted to wait here so I could congratulate you on your first real shift"

Lea's gaze softened a bit. "...Thanks for that. Shouldn't have... Some guard I am, running away at the first weird thing." He turned his head away, but Isa used a finger to turn his chin to make him face him again.

"Hey, don't say that. You did well. I mean, come on, the other guards have magical metal weapons while all you have is your frisbees, and even then, you're still alive. You have more guts than all of them combined." Lea chuckled, ready to make some comment, but Isa stopped him with a finger. "No, wait. Don't say anything else. I've got something for you that'll help." Lea looked at his friend weird while blueberry rummaged through his pockets. With a triumphant "Aha!", Isa pulled out some sort of marker. He opened it and held Lea's chin. "Alright, hold still." Lea wanted to protest, but Isa had already started drawing something on his cheeks, and he didn't want to ruin it. After a while, Isa smiled satisfied and closed the marker. "Done!"

"What is it? What did you do?" Lea touched his own cheeks, trying to discern what he had drawn on them. "I swear, you better not have drawn something stupid-"

"They're the Inverted Tears. You can't cry with them, so they'll help you on your guard stuff." Isa smiled. He had just come up with that on the spot, but for the time being it might serve to help Lea realize he had the strength to not cry all the time.

"Really...?" Lea thought about it for a second. He physically relaxed a bit, and his tail and claws reappeared. " ...That's neat. Thank you."

"Oh, you're wel- What are you doing?" Isa looked a bit confused as Lea grabbed his tail and gently stroked it with a finger, like looking for something between the scales. He jumped a bit when the monster suddenly grabbed one of the scales and pulled it out with a tiny squeal. "Lea, what-!"

"Take it." Lea interrupted him, handing him the scale. Isa took it, looking very confused. "It's one of my scales. Some humans say they give good luck. Keep it."

"Oh- uh, thanks...?" Isa looked at the scale in his hand. It was a brilliant red, in the shape of a slightly squished pentagon. "...Are you okay though?" He looked back up at his friend's eyes. "That kinda look like it hurt"

"Nah, it's fine. A single scale ain't much." Lea gave him a slightly smug smile, with a sort of 'cool guy' air to it. "It's only a fair trade. I get the cool inverted thingies, and you get the lucky scale. Make sure ya don't lose it."

Isa couldn't help but smile. "Bah, like I'd ever be so careless." He opened his jacket and hid the scale in a secret pocket on the inner side. That was, to him, the new most valuable thing he had ever owned.