The Dark Path : The Start of Darkness, The Beginning of True Struggles

Chapter Six

- Chapter Six -

As I approached the location of the temple for the second time, I made sure that I had the twin daggers that Sun Tzu gave me. I was going in prepared this time. Peeking through the midst of foliage, I observed the area. It was nearing nightfall. Perfect. Summoning my willpower, I caused a ripple among the darkness. Almost instantly, the shadow people, my loyal servants, started appearing. Dokkalfar, my lieutenant, approached me.

“My lord?” he spoke as he bowed before me. “You summoned us?”

“Yes I did. I need you to do a little favour for me. Move silently through the surrounding area within a radius of 500 metres from the centre of the temple. Clear out any ‘trash’ you can find. The shadows are telling me that it’s rather crowded around here.”

“As you wish my lord.”

With that, they disappeared into the darkness. Now, I was able to approach the temple confidently. Heck, if I was in a good mood, I would probably do it blindfolded. Standing up, I dusted the dirt off my clothes and made my way towards the temple.

I had only taken a few steps when the rustling of the leaves high above me broke the silence. A humanoid body appeared from the branches above and dropped onto the ground beside me.

“Be careful where you drop them. I might get hit by one of them,” I spoke loudly to the trees.

“My apologies, my lord,” came a reply.

I approached the unmoving body and knelt down on one knee beside it. The body wore a military uniform. I recognised it as the uniform of the SMART soldiers. Placing two fingers at the side of the neck, I waited for a pulse. None. This person was definitely dead. Excellent. My shadow people understood what I meant.

From the moment I left the CIM Mobile Unit until I reached here, I spent the entire time cogitating on all possibilities that might occur here. Since SMART knew I had escaped from one of their laboratories, it was likely that the groups involved would be notified on the update. Since they abducted me here at the temple, it was likely that this one of the places that they were expecting me but from what happened to me previously, I learnt from experience and was never letting my guard down. Of course, I wasn’t going to rule out the possibility that I might get abducted again. Being purely positive was a definite route into setting myself up for disappointment.

Here, one of the SMART soldiers lay dead before me. A corpse. More corpses began falling out of the foliage, high and low, from the dark night. All SMART soldiers. Seeing all this death reminded me of those three years. I lost control over myself because of Alexis. I thought to myself, ‘was I behaving too naïvely in love?’

Love. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed somewhat like a joke, particularly the naïve, selfish love type. I’ve seen it all too many times. Two young people fall in love, society disapproves, couple stubbornly attempts to prove to the world that love conquers all, runs away, guy talks about starting a new life and family, girl goes all googly eyed...things like these happen in fiction and in real life. These young people act like they’ve already figured out what life is all about when they’ve only lived a quarter or a fifth of it. All that nonsense happens because two idiots couldn’t control the tingles in their genitals. There are a few pure cases but most of the time, it was because of that. It makes me gag.

I nearly became one of those fools. Why did I fall for Alexis? The reason was hard to identify. Whenever something happened like that ever happened again, I would need to take a step back quickly and ask myself ‘Is this really what I want?’ Was there really love between me and Alexis? It felt so emotionless and artificial, like it had all been planned.