The Forest Guardians

15. YSH Chapter 1

Omen's POV

England.

Oh, how I wanted to see her cobblestone paved streets and watched her people dressed to the nines. The sea of people, men in smart coats plus tall hats and the ladies in their colourful dresses, ambled along the sidewalks. I stared in amusement at the horse carriages running up and down the road. It was a wonder to be taken back in time.

The hustle and bustle of activity in 19th century England plus the thought of meeting the famous "fictional" detective would have excited me, if, this was just a vacation.

You guessed it right.

Dark Shadow had ultimately gotten his hands on this particular cornerstone book. Unfortunately, this was what the riddle from the 1st Alice's letter had foretold.

Sherlock Holmes had indeed met a mishap.

I had arrived at Farnham several hours before the tragedy. Mike, on the other hand, was back in the Library. He was currently locating the copies of the Young Sherlock Holmes series so that he knew what exactly happened and planned our next course of actions.

A cornerstone book acts as a pillar of support for the Library.

If one really got burnt to ashes, the domino effect would happen to the rest causing the Library to crumble and cease to exist. Imagination would be left defenceless without the protection of the Library, subjecting to great risk for Dark Shadow to take it. Therefore, it was of utmost importance that I came here to prevent or lessen the impact.

There was also a failsafe option, known to higher level Guardians like Mike and now me. There are several copies of cornerstone books scattered around the Library. Similar to a cat with nine lives, erasing one copy of a book would not be enough to bring down a cornerstone book.

As passers-by walked past me, I thought back to the last conversation I had with Mike before I came into this World.

~~~~~

(Flashback) At the Library, Mike's room

"Well, this is a first."

I leaned on the door of his room while he was ruffling up his auburn hair in frustration. His perfectly arranged hair became a bird's nest when he was done ruffling.

The moment we were back at the Library, Mike immediately made a beeline to his room to research about the 'Laughing Clowns'. Meanwhile, I went to check on the unconscious Guardians. There was nothing new to their vitals now. It was like they are suspended in their consciousness, neither recovering nor deteriorating in health.

"This is the first time I have seen you this frustrated."

He whipped his head to glare at me.

"Oh you haven't seen the worst of me yet."

I ignored his harmless threat while nodding my head towards his messy desk.

"So, what have you found?"

Mike gathered the pieces of papers that were strewn messily around. The hard covered books were buried under layers and layers of papers and maps, opened at certain pages and marked with coloured tags.

"From what I have gathered and deduced, there are a few levels within Dark Shadow's Army. Each level is a different troop of soldiers with different specialities. In total, there should be 3 levels."

"Similar to ours." I commented.

The Guardians have a system of creating ranks to organise ourselves:

-Rank 1 was the lowest. The newly joined Guardians and those that were still in training formed this level.

-Rank 2 comprises of adventurous Guardians who did missions plus those who prefer desk jobs. This is the rank that I belong to previously, Mike recently promoted me to rank 3 as the acting Leader of the Library.