The Templar

5 The Eye of the Catacombs

Mat woke up to the sound of a bell. Templar Laggard barged in the dorms and paced quickly between the beds, yelling, "Get up you lazy slugs! Wear the light armors you were instructed to take with you! I want everyone ready in two minutes! Templar Sawyers will come and take you all to breakfast! Skip that, and you will starve all through morning practice."

He stormed out and slammed the door. Mat groaned and tried to move but pain shot through all her muscles. She sat on the edge of her mattress and looked around. She managed to obtain a bed on the second row and was fairly proud of her duel with Templar Ravens but something was troubling her.

She stole a glance towards the corner of the room at the first bed on the first row. A guy in a black cloak was still sleeping there. Last night when her group came back, this guy was already sleeping in the exact position he was in now. Ash had asked the first group about him and apparently nobody knew anything about who he was and why he was already there when they arrived. What intrigued all the trainees was the absence of a shield or any sort of emblem tied to his bed post, unlike the rest of them.

Mat had a feeling that he was the same person as the shadow she had spotted during the Selection and she was dying to see his red eyes again. Her own eyes were the only she had ever seen glowing but his also shone red and her curiosity was taking the best of her. She wanted to know the secret behind their glow.

Someone's hand tapped on her shoulder and she snapped out of her reverie. She turned and faced a grim Ash with horrible bed hair. "You really want to be kicked out on the first day? Hurry up and get ready, idiot!"

Displeased with the way she had been called but amused at his familiarity, Mat replied with a slight shove and a snarly comment. "If you looked in a mirror right now you would break it, idiot."

The only answer she ever got to that remark was a sleepy growl.

Mat hurried to dress herself and strapped the leather breastplate and the braces on her arms. By the time she was finished and was tying her hair in a braid, a Templar who she assumed was Templar Sawyers entered, his dark green cape fluttering behind him.

"Are all of you ready? Good. If not, it is none of my business. Those who are fully dressed follow me."

He left the room as fast as he had entered and the trainees hurried after him, leaving only two to three tardy lads behind as well as the mysterious boy in a cape who had not moved an inch.

Soon enough, but still far too late for Mat's liking, they reached a spiral staircase, abruptly coiling upwards. The girl's eyes shone green as she looked up, taking in the age of the architecture and the stones. None of this could have had less than a hundred years and the sturdiness of the steps as well as the cut of the stones was impressive. She quickly realized that the trainees in front of her had already started going up and followed in their footsteps, now being among the last of them.

At quite a few points she almost slipped, the humidity of the underground not being too kind to the stone or to her boots. When she staggered for the fourth time in the almost complete darkness, she had to hold herself to the wall in order to save her face from reaching the level of her feet. As she was about to look for Ash's distant blonde buzz cut as she had done the times before, a dreadful feeling paralyzed her and her blood froze in her veins, draining from her face as if it were trying to flee her body. She felt an intense stare, sharper than any spear piercing through her very soul, an ominous presence being its source. She quickly turned around, reaching out of reflex at her hip for a sword that she was not carrying and scrutinized the darkness for a target. But she saw nothing. Not a glimmer, not a movement, not even a sound or smell reached her senses. But the gaze was there, slightly lower down the steps and she could feel it very distinctly. It was there and it was real. The eye of death was locked on her and she was locked on it, trying to find its owner.