Guardian: Protectors of Light (10 page)

When nobody knew what to
say, Gabriel said, “Oh, come on! Don’t be shy; put my knowledge to
the test!”

Suddenly, Samira
remembered her question back in the forest. “You were going to tell
us how you and the other Keepers communicate,” she said.

“
Oh, right,”
Gabriel said. “I was. Well, you could call us telepathic. Our
connection with the Spirits allows us to contact each other through
the mind. It’s pretty cool and useful.”

“
I can
imagine,” Thomas said. “It allows you to contact each other in
secret, without letting anyone know.” His eyes then widened as he
let out a gasp of excitement. “Do you think we’d be able to learn
how to do that too?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe.
But it’s unlikely you’ll be able to develop the ability completely.
We only were able to learn how to do it because our souls are fused
with the Spirits.”

Thomas didn’t say
anything; he was disappointed to hear that telepathy was pretty
much out of the question. “Oh. That’s a shame.”

“
Where’d you even need it for?” Gabriel said.
“
We
can contact
you
if needed. It
doesn’t need to be the other way around.”

“
You think?”
Antonio said. “If we’re not telepathic, how are we even going to
receive your telepathic messages in the first place?”

“
I wasn’t necessarily talking about
telepathic
messages,” Gabriel said. The mischief grin on his face made
it look as if Antonio’s sceptical attitude amused him.

“
Akilah and
Madeleine have created some very clever ways of communication, but
you’ll find out more about that later. Telling you now would only
ruin the surprise.”

“
On another
note,” James said, “Madeleine mentioned that you were the First
Generation, and we’re the Tenth. How come you don’t speak old
English?”

“
It’s been a
thousand years, kid,” Gabriel said. “You learn a thing or two from
the people coming from back home - a lot can happen and change in a
century.” He paused. “My sister and I didn’t even speak English
when we first got here. But Magic helped us with that, luckily.
Communicating with the three Brits would’ve been a lot harder
otherwise.”

The teenagers were
listening silently. Hearing about the history of this world and its
inhabitants was quite interesting.

“
Well, it
seems to me that you no longer have any questions,” Gabriel said.
“Unless anyone disagrees, I believe it’s about time I started to
train you to become proper warriors.”

He got out of his hammock
and walked over to the door that lead to the other room. “You will
enter this room one by one, and then select a weapon from my
personal collection,” he said, pointing at the door.

“
Innocence,
you go first. I always find it quite interesting to see what kind
of weapon you guys choose.”

The Guardians, who were
still sitting on the makeshift couch, stared at him in silence.
“Who?” Thomas said.

Gabriel let out a loud
sigh of dismay. “You’re... you’re not telling me you don’t know
which Guardian each of you is, now are you?” he said
hopefully.

Obviously, he wasn’t too
fond of the response which confirmed his concerns. Another loud
sigh followed. “Oh dear.

Well... first of all, you
can tell by the clothes you’re wearing, but mostly by the brooches
that are attached to your capes. While every costume is adjusted to
match your personality – which makes it more likely that you will
choose the right costume on your arrival, although it seems as if
you’re magically drawn to it – anyway, I’m heading off topic. The
brooches will always be the same, indicating what your soul was
meant to do here and why it was chosen.”

The Guardians reacted
instantly, by tugging on their capes to be able to see the
brooches; they were indeed unique in shape and colour, and always
seemed to match the colour of the costume.

“
I’ll keep it simple, as I don’t know your exact names
yet... Although they have been told to me, I don’t know which name
belongs to whom, since we have two girls and three boys,” Gabriel
said. “But... I think I’m beginning to figure it out. The topaz
broche belongs to the Guardian of Innocence, the emerald broche to
the Guardian of Soul. The orange sapphire sun broche belongs to the
Guardian of Joy, the sun and moon broche to the Guardian of Day and
Night, and finally, the rhombus-shaped rose quartz belongs to the
Guardian of Life.” He paused for a second, and said, “there’s
something I wanted to say regarding something I learned from the
Guardian of Soul that came here about a century ago, in the
Generation before you –
not
the
music.”

“
I told you
it was a rose quartz, and not a pink diamond,” Samira whispered
quietly in Bella’s ear. They’d been arguing over the names of their
gemstones for quite some time, and now it’d finally been decided
who was right. Rose quartz and orange sapphire.

“
...Anyway,
so now you know who you are, so do I!” Gabriel said, carefully
examining the five teenagers in front of him. “Two birds with one
stone, eh? So, James, you go first.”

James stood up and walked
up to Gabriel, who opened the door of the weaponry chamber for
him.

The room’s interior was
pretty impressive; it was stacked with medieval weapons from all
kinds of material; all shapes and sizes were available. It was
obvious that Gabriel was trying to have something in store for
every kind of warrior.

James instantly headed
for the side of the room that had been reserved for swords, knives
and other bladed weaponry, as those were the weapons he knew how to
fight with best; he’d had a lot of sword fighting practice with his
sister when they were younger. Of course, that had merely a pretend
game; it were the fencing classes Thomas’ father had given his
son’s friends when they dropped by his house that
counted.

James took one of the
swords, which was covered by a dark blue scabbard with matching
light blue glowing patterns; it matched with his other clothes, as
if it was meant to be his.

A similar scabbard stood
beside it, but then glowing in green.

The sword James had
chosen was tall and thin, yet still small enough for him to be able
to handle. He carefully slid of the scabbard and swung it around a
bit, before shoving it back into the leather and taking it
outside.

Thomas was next to go
inside; he chose the green glowing scabbard, which seemed to please
James. Thomas then made the joke that they “matched”, as if they
were teenage girls buying matching T-shirts.

Samira came back with a
wooden bow and arrow and a murrey quiver, well-filled with fifty
arrows.

Bella had chosen some
other bladed weapon of which James wasn’t sure what it was exactly
as he didn’t recognize it; it looked like a sickle, but then with a
much broader blade. He decided to dub it “war sickle” until he’d
find out what its real name was (which actually turned out to be
the weapon’s real name, according to Gabriel).

Antonio, wanting to
impress as usual, thought it’d be a good idea to take the tallest
weapon he could find, and ended up walking out the door with a
gigantic pole arm - a glaive.

Once everyone was sure
about their weapons – Gabriel made a point out of it to ask them if
they’d like to take a secondary weapon. Bella did end up taking two
knives along, putting them on her belt, but nobody else truly felt
the need of taking a secondary weapon. They’d probably be fine with
the ones they had right now.

“
So, we’ve
got weapons. Now what?” Antonio said, probably expecting to hear
Gabriel say that he wasn’t going to train them after all, and that
they would have to fend for themselves.

But that didn’t
happen.

“
Follow me to
outside,” Gabriel said. “I’ll set up an arena for you.”

The teenagers stared at
each other, slightly confused, but then decided to do what Gabriel
had asked them to and followed him outside anyways.

They walked around the
tree house, where a large, open field revealed itself. The
teenagers gasped in awe; from the front, it seemed as if the tree
house was standing in the middle of the forest.

“
Cloaking
spell,” Gabriel said proudly. “I can’t have any Shadow Creatures
sneaking around here while I’m training myself or others. Pretty
sweet, huh?”

He opened his hand and
released a bunch of the same, glowing lights as those that had
surrounded the spiral stairs. They floated about, lighting up the
open field around the edges and the middle. Various wooden targets
had been set up there; from wooden, humanoid figures to normal
archery targets.

“
Target
practice!” Gabriel shouted, to make sure everyone could hear him.
“Something you’ll be doing for a while in this world if you want to
stay alive. Of course, at some point, the targets will be fighting
back, making a bit more of a challenge.” He grinned. “But for now,
you’ll be practicing on wood. And on me, of course.”

He pulled a sword from
his scabbard, similar to James’s and Thomas’. He was also carrying
a bow and quiver over his right shoulder. “I will test your skills,
and guide you through the training,” he said. “Although I used this
bow and arrows to fight my way through these realms, I also learned
how to use a sword on my own.” He paused. “I had a lot of free time
in the past thousand years, you see.” He grinned again. “Anyway.
You can practice on one of the targets whenever I’m not training
you personally; you can also train in pairs, if you’d like. Now
let’s get started!”

“
For how long
will we be training?” Thomas said. “I’m kind of
exhausted.”

Gabriel turned around to
look at him. “I’ll be training you until I can send you out there
safely, so I won’t have to worry whether or not you guys have any
idea of what you’re up against,” he said. “I need to be sure that
you kids know what you’re doing.”

And so the training
started. A great portion of the time was consumed by an argument
between Gabriel and Antonio; Gabriel claimed that Antonio wasn’t
following the instructions given, whereon Antonio came with a
counterargument, saying that it wasn’t the most important thing to
live by orders and instructions to make the right choice in the
heat of the moment.

Thomas and James were
having a one-on-one swordfight against each other, while Bella was
practicing throwing knives at a wooden dummy’s chest, and Samira
was perfecting her aim on the archery targets. Later, when Gabriel
had focused his training on her, she had to shoot arrows at the
wooden shield he was carrying while he ran around, trying to dodge;
he did the same with Bella and her knives.

When it was the turn for
James and Thomas to show what they had got, Gabriel first joined
their one-on-one combat, before allowing Thomas and James to join
forces against him. The training was concluded with a game, some
sort of mix of sword fighting and tag, using wooden swords; if you
were to be touched by someone’s weapon, you’d be “wounded” and were
out of the game for five minutes (determined by Gabriel’s
hourglass). If you got hit five times, you’d be pronounced “dead”
and be out of the game. The last man standing was the
winner.

They ended up playing at
least five rounds of this game, until the break of dawn.

“
Well, I
certainly believe you teens are ready,” Gabriel said. “You should
rest a little before you head back out there again. You earned
it.”

Gabriel didn’t have to tell them twice; they spread the
pillow-couch out over the floor, so the pillows would cover more
space. Gabriel gave each of the teenagers a blanket, despite of the
fact that it wasn’t
that
cold; within a
matter of minutes, everyone had passed out on the pillows. Gabriel
sat in his hammock, staring out of the window it was hung up
beside.

*

The Guardians didn’t
sleep long; hardly six hours had passed before they’d all woken up.
It was time to go.

Gabriel had provided
Thomas with a leather bag, where they could carry food and other
necessities in.

“
You’re going
to have to hunt for food,” Gabriel said. “There will be some fruit
trees along the way, but to get enough food, I’d advise you to
shoot a few birds every day.”

“
Sure thing,”
Bella said, although James and Samira had a doubting look on their
faces.

“
Thank you
for teaching me how to craft arrows,” Samira said to Gabriel, who
responded with a humble nod. “Of course,” he said. “You’ll be
running out of arrows sooner than you think, so you’ll need to be
able to make your own. Now you know.” He smiled at Samira, and she
smiled back.

The Guardians said
goodbye to Gabriel and left. Gabriel promised they could stop by
any time in case of trouble; the teenagers took his advice to heart
before officially starting their journey.

Attack

The sun was up high in
the sky, although it wasn’t really noticeable through the right
roof of leaves the trees of the forest formed, blocking most of the
sunlight.