Wind Arrow

Chapter 9: Shadows

Chapter 9: Shadows

The emergence of the sun glimmers throughout the horizons giving birth to an inception of a day. Symphonies of sceneries schemes the whole town shredding off the murky darkness of shadows.

Before being strayed off to my real task, I focused on scrutinizing any tiny spot to find a clue that will lead us to my father’s location. We first made our way to the old warring states where my father, Daniel and Zora beheld their battle twelve years ago. Because of its abandonment, nothing can be possibly discovered.

Only a temple like facility lies in the middle of nowhere having mostly trees and wild vines swathe its facade. We entered the grotesque temple with the peculiar change of temperature from the warmth outside. It gets more frigid as we take our steps further.

Step back.

I hear something unusual making me stop my pace.

Zylle looks back at me, confused of my actions. “Why did you stop?”

Step back. Don’t enter.

 The whisper repeats itself. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Zylle asks in puzzlement.

I breathed deep to calm myself. Maybe it’s just my inner thoughts. “Umm… It’s nothing. Let’s continue.”

Be careful.

The whisper continues as I follow Zylle’s footsteps, making my heart throb faster than its usual beat. I didn’t mind the voice but strengthened my bravery.

The more the more it thrills me, the more I want to break the shackles of boredom that dwells in my veins for years. The more I’m warned not to, the more I’ll persist to disobey.

We reached the shrine-like’s basement.

“Step back.” Zylle stops his strides out of the silence.

 “What is it?” I ask in cognizance.

“No matter what happens, stay here.”

“Why?” I persist of asking.

“If I don’t get back in ten minutes, leave this place and go back to father immediately. Take these.”

He places the two pendants of a necklace with the shape of an arrow on my palm. The other one was the pendant I had under my pillow when I had the nightmare on the night before I went here. The other similar pendant was what Zylle showed me the night we traveled here in the Azorian world which was told to be my father’s.

“Where are you—”

Before I could even finish my question, he closes the door leaving me in the eerie room without any knowledge of what’s going on.

In the first minute he left, booming sounds of clattering metal and steel just above echoes through the halls reaching my location. I linger in sinister silence as rattling clamor continues, slowly breath along with the hasty pulse in my chest, stop any reverberation to occur in the wind, only to obey Zylle’s words for the first time. It seems like a battle is going on at the moment. But if this perception is accurate, then who is Zylle’s adversary?

I count in my head, having every tick of each second frantically elapse. Five minutes, seven minutes, nine minutes passes yet no signs of him become evident to be noticed. The screams and uproars from the above floors prolongs, getting stronger and louder as the seconds slip away.

55 seconds… 56, 57, 58, 59… Only a second left. Tick, 10 minutes.

Without delay, I enthuse this body to endure the escape of dread. My hands slowly turned the knob along with the thump of my chest reverberating through my ears as I open the door. Without warning, the bizarre welcoming of an impending arrow forms in my vision ready to strike at my direction like what happened back then.

My body freezes in my position, the pendants are being held with my hands trembling, my eyes stared at the arrow with absolute emptiness, together with this impaired adrenaline not responding in the emergence of the life taking situation I’m facing.

For a millisecond of just being frozen, waiting for the arrow to hit me while closing my eyes and hoping for a miracle was all I managed to do. Seconds passed with my eyes closed knowing that my body is ready of being bulls eyed but I felt no pain, making me feel confused if I just felt numbness with the pressure of blood pulsating.

Curious of what’s happening to my body feeling numbness, I slowly open these eyes seeing Zylle’s back against me. His head was filled with blood trickling down his forehead candidly. His body slumped against mine as the arrow which was supposed to kill me penetrated through the side of his abdomen, letting more blood flow out of his wound. The more did my body tremble, shaking in stillness as fear slowly invades through my soul, impairing me to be useless and helpless as always, staring in vain.

I hear his rapid breathing, the pumping of his heart. I feel the continuous blood running on my hands, the DNA that keeps taking every single chance of his life to live.

I straighten my vision at where the arrow came from.  The same pendant of an arrow slung against the chain around the neck of the same figure that tried to kill me at the forest. A single piece of metal illuminates through the natural dim light from the cracks of the walls, yet his face was masked by the shadows unreached by the beams of light.

“Who are you?! What do you know about my father?!” My voice box screams in fury.

He remains in tranquility as an answer as he turns around ready to leave us behind.

“Why do you want to kill me? What do you know about us?!” I continue to demand with rage.

“To protect you.”

His voice can’t give me a hint of his identity but rather gives chills traveling down my spine.

He vanishes through the shadows with my curiosity unanswered.

This was in my nightmare before, this happened in the past making me question myself again.

A dream that continues its life in reality horrors yet awakes this sleeping soul.

To protect or… kill me?