Dieties Or Soldiers?

Chapter 3

Where?

He heard the sounds of people speaking. All he could see was darkness although he knew he was fully awake. Even if he knew this himself, he couldn't bring his eyes to open. His body laid immobile and with all his struggling to move he never lifted a finger. A light began to shine in the darkness. He remembered hearing once, 'In a place where there is darkness surrounding and a light illuminates, you are surely dead.'

He couldn't be dead could he? Certainly not. He felt quite alive. Then again, that's what someone who is dead would say. Yet he couldn't stop himself from walking towards it. Within a few steps he became blinded within a shower of bright light.

After having adjusted his eyes to the blinding light, he found that the sight before him was quite pleasant almost breath-taking.

Tall trees stood proudly, the greenest of grass below them along with colorful flowers littered beneath the towering tree. The sky a baby blue, not a single dark cloud in view. He could distinctly hear the chirps of happy birds and see the butterflies fly in front of him. All of this seemed so real to him and yet a complete dream.

He knew this was a dream simply because he could still hear the outside voices that didn't seem to fit. Those voices that he could still hear were a reassurance that he was still alive. Though there the was a possibility that the voices were part of his imagination, just false noise. He chose to ignore that thought and pushed it to the far end of his mind.

"Ryan!" A far away voice shouted to him. He felt as though that voice he knew so well was a part of his imagination. With that in mind he began to look around ignoring the familiar noise. The voice yelled for him once more. He turned around to see a figure running up to him.

He stood there waiting. When the figure approached him he could see how tired she was.

"Why... didn't you... wait?" The girl said to him panting. He looked at her and said nothing. "Right. You don't speak much." He rolled his eyes at the girl he knew as Ava. Other people ran up to them before Ryan could begin to walk again.

"I'm glad to see you stopped him before he did something dumb." A girl, by the name of Chloe, said sarcastically. Chloe and him never got along, that was still clear to him even if this place was solemnly a dream. He turned around ignoring her and everyone that had walked up to him. He was in a foul mood and in no way wanting to gain a headache.

"Stop walking Ryan, we need to speak." Jayden's voice cut through above the rest. "Your actions almost caused us a valuable item." Wait, this conversation has happened before. Now that he completely stops to think about it a sense of déjà vu hit him. He's been to this place before and he remembers exactly where the place is. Jayden's voice cut his train of thought forcing him to focus on the things he was saying. "We had a plan and you knew to stick with it. So what happened?" Ryan simply looked at him before lowering the scarf that covered his mouth.

"You never told us what the item did and you definitely did not tell us that our lives would be put on the line if we were to fail. I don't know about you but I'm sure that was an important piece of information." He remembered completely now.

The team had to gather the missing pieces of a statue in the order shattered in. They were all given instruction in handling the pieces once they were found after the designated time or order. Though the thing that Jayden lacked to mention were the trials prior finding the fragments. As he recalled, he had a hard time proving himself capable of protecting his statue piece. In short almost insignificant words this mission was a suicide one. Despite this everyone was successful in gathering them.

With a slip of his hands the fragment fell towards the floor and time seemed to slow almost to a stop. He was lucky as he caught the piece before it shattered once more. In the lapse of time that took him to take ahold of the thing he was able to foresee the many bad decisions Jayden would take that would ultimately lead all of them to an early grave. He had first shaken it off but him, the one who was remembering that day, now knew better and had come to distrust his own leader. Connor could sense it, Ava and Chloe had a feeling about it, Mia and Ethan, being the perceptive ones, knew it, Madison and Jayden were oblivious to it.

"Look, the trials were a complete surprise to me as well. If I knew about it I would have chosen a different route but we were all too deep in to have called it off." Jayden defended himself while putting a hand over Ryan's shoulder. Ryan, at that time, had accepted the excuse with a nod of his head.

From then on Ryan was wary of Jayden, otherwise why repeat this memory over and over?

All he had to do now was figure out how to wake up.

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"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse." -Edmund Burk