Heaven Falls

Chapter 11

Damien

The Kingdom of Amestrid

The Hawk's Headquarter

21 hours from Shamballa

Indoors

I'm being escorted by two armed guard.

Their face look tense, and their footsteps are hard in the black carefully-polished boots against the black marble floor in the wide hallway; I study their outfits: perfectly ironed uniform with no single threads found, guns cleaned, bullets checked, hair combed neatly under the black leather cap. These guys are the Royal Guardians, only receive orders from the Counts. Five minutes ago, they came knocking at the infirmary's room, waking me up with a stocky shake from the gun's barrel, and pulling the blanket out of me in an extreme force.

"Soldier Whealing, you were requested to come with us".

"Whose request? Where are we going?"

"I'm afraid I can't reveal that to you yet. Please dress yourself and follow us".

I look at myself, again. The guards dragged me out in no time, so I'm still wearing battle uniform with white T-shirt and dark blue trousers, but no jacket; my shoelaces are loosely tied, but worse, my leg still in bandage, making me impossible not to limp. One of the guards did notice this earlier, but he said nothing. I guess this is no big deal, after all, although, base on their looks and expressions, the person I'm going to face must be someone very important and powerful. It can be Count Wyatt, or the Princess, or even someone else in the Royal family. Whoever that is, I'm curious, and excited at the same time, to know why I was called.

We go down to a narrower hallway, where the lights are fluorescent, the walls are white blank, and so does the floor. Dead silence fills the place, I can sense the pressure of the echoes of our footsteps from every corners of the hallway.

"We're here" one of the guards speaks out when we reach a grey rectangular door with a book-size window frame on the upper part.

"Security check" says the monitor on the door's handle, it shows a line of numbers and a blank line. I can see the other guard is pulling out a metal card from his back pocket and slides it through the slit on the handle.

"Beep... Confirmed" the red huge button on the top of the door suddenly changes to green, the swing cracks opened, the heavy metal texture makes a really disturbing sound against the floor.

"Please come in" the guard at the door motions me to come forward, while the other one points his barrel at my back to push me in. Eventually, they close the door, leaving me in the room.

There's only one light in this room which is being held above a long wooden table and two wooden chairs. I gently touch the smooth and shiny surface of them, sycamore, extremely rare and expensive, at least in here, Amestrid. There are two tea cups placed on both sides of the table, and a teapot on a tray nearby, all reflected in the large mirror hung oppositely and takes up nearly eighty-percent of the wall. Certainly I don't have to be the most intelligent guy in the world to know this is actually a one-way mirror. Someone is possibly watching me from the other side, and I don't feel very comfortable with it, with everything in this room because it looks like I'm about to be interrogated, the thing they do with suspects.

The metal door cracks open again, which startles me. I turn around, two people gently come in. My throat suddenly choked, like a viper is rolling around my neck, because one of them is the last person on Earth I expect to encounter.

Our Lord-commander Arisna Cuberstaine.

"Soldier Whealing" she opens a smile, but in a practiced and emotionless way, "Thank you for accepting my request. Please take a seat" her voice is colder than usual, which only churns me a lot more.