The Necklace: The Trial Realm

Chapter Twenty Seven: The Person You've Become

The guards stare us down and we stare right back at them with shock.

We didn't have time for this.

We needed to get the hell through town and find the holding building without any more delays to make it back to meet Tonyedda in time.

The appearance of two patrol guards while everyone else is back at the chapel having mass is simply put just bad luck. Bad luck that now means we are completely and totally screwed. All hopes of becoming a Custode and serving alongside all of the amazing people and protecting the seventh realm from itself fade from possibility. All hope of one day being worthy enough that when I died I'd become something more, gone. All my friends, both the ones with me, and the ones from my past, will suffer from this bad luck. This one moment that so easily could have gone right but that decided to go left instead.

I look over at Opall and she looks back with that same look in her eyes. All her carefully laid plans weren't prepared for this.

"What are the two of you doing?" The man on the right with the pig face demands. "Why aren't you at mass?"

Opall tries to use her same excuse as before, but they don't go for it like the first man had. "Your sister doesn't look so ill that she couldn't have gone home on her own." The man on the left crosses his arms and the one on the right widens his stance, holding his ground.

"See?" Opall holds up the booklets and sheets the man at the chapel gave us. "We are both going to continue our prayers as soon as we got back home. I just wanted to see her there safely."

I will them to believe her, she really does sound truthful and the booklets are in our favor, but they still don't. "Why doesn't she have any shoes on?"

"And where exactly do you live then?"

I look down at my bare feet sticking out from under my robe, then back up. "I gave them to...to..."

"A young girl," Opall fills in for me. "She tripped on the chapel stairs and her sandals were broken, so my sister offered her hers."

"And we live..."

Opall's chin quivers as the man on the right slowly lifts his hand. "We live down...down by the shops district. Across from the Ryberns."

"You'd lie directly to me that way?" Pig Face asks. "You just left mass and you have no shame in such."

"The Ryberns have been gone for many moon cycles and you certainly don't live in their district." The patrolman straightens his spine the way I've seen them do before they punish the people in The Ring and my whole body tenses. "I know you know what we have to do now," He moves his eyes from me to her. "Are you going to show the Gods your remorse and come easily or will you fight like cowards?"

Opall looks nervous, but he's said the one thing I know about.

"I guess we have to fight." I shrug, standing and yanking off the ridiculous robe. I'm not a Utopian, not anymore, and really not even before.

I think I see Opall smile out of the corner of my eyes as I launch myself off of the front of the buggy, tackling the stunned Pig Face as he falls to the ground with a gasp and thud. "What are you-." I rear back and punch him in the face, not wanting to admit to myself how good it feels to connect my knuckles with someone's jaw again after so long.

Everything is happening so fast I almost don't keep track of the movement of the patrolman on the other side as he thrusts a hand towards me and a bolt of shiny white light flies from his palm, striking me with a burning single in the upper arm.