Guardian: Protectors of Light (38 page)

She crossed her arms, a
slight smug grin hinting about her lips.

“
Were you
truly willing enough to risk your own life, just to fulfil some
personal vendetta? Really, Sabrina? Were you?”

Sabrina
bared her teeth. “No personal vendetta, Maddy,” she growled, “but
business. All I intended on doing, was making the boy completely
harmless by draining his power. It’d be easier that way to take him
to Master Asura, who then would proceed with his plan for Riverdale
without any further interference. The vendetta you’re mentioning
has nothing to do with Riverdale’s death, nor of any of the
Guardians. But with yours. Trust me on my very word, Madeleine: I’m
going to kill you all. And then it’s the turn for the
Guardians.”

“
So he’s got
a plan with James?” Madeleine said, completely ignoring Sabrina’s
threats concerning her and her fellow Keepers’ lives. “And what
about the other one? With the brown hair?”

“
Bennett?” Sabrina said, letting out a small snort, while a
vampire grin grew on her face. “Oh. Thomas’s an exceptional
story... but then again, that
girl
, Samira... I’m
sure she’ll break pretty easy as soon as Master Asura has finished
business with her little brother.”

Madeleine’s eyes widened
in surprise, as her jaw dropped a couple centimetres. “What?” she
stammered.

“
Oh, you
didn’t know?” Sabrina said. “Your beloved Light Spirit has broken
her oath. And for what? This so-called prophecy, the Last
Generation of Hope?” She snorted again, obviously
amused.

“
She’s using
you, Maddy. And the boy. All of them.”

“
They’re this
world’s Last Hope, Sabrina,” Madeleine objected. “The Prophecy...
It’s been foretold. He’s the Last One to have the ability to
connect with the Golden Wing.

...And you were the
first.”

“
Yeah, sure,”
Sabrina said. “But consider this: what if the boy fails? What if it
turns out he isn’t able to connect with the Golden Wing after all?
What if they’re all lost, and they don’t even know it
yet?”

“
He has to,
Sab. He’s got the Three Topazes.”

“
Not if we
get him first.”

“
Sabrina-”
Madeleine started, but Sabrina interrupted her.

“
They’re
fighting for a lost cause...” she mumbled. She then continued on an
unpleasantly threatening tone:

“
You better
assemble your Keepers, Wise one. There’s a storm
coming.”

Madeleine’s emerald green
eyes darkened as she replied to Sabrina’s threat. “Fine. So be it.
But be ready, because we’re not going down without a
fight.”

Sabrina showed Madeleine
a threatening crooked grin. “I wouldn’t expect anything different.
But I’m afraid you’ve got no chance of winning. We’ve got more
trumps to play... This was certainly not our last.”

The
Edge

“
How big is
this lake, actually? It feels like we’ve been sailing
forever!”

Antonio was rowing the
boat, while complaining about the length of time they had spent on
Imber Lake all the time.

It was obvious that he
didn’t like water; or perhaps he just wanted to get the journey
done as quickly as possible, since the end of the line was slowly
coming in sight.

Samira could partially
understand Antonio’s rush; he wanted to go home. She did, too, but
what was ahead of them scared her too much to be in a
hurry.

She obviously didn’t know
what exactly was ahead, but she knew that it could never be good.
And the sky in the distance, which was getting darker and darker as
it went further into the distance, told her enough.

Wherever they had been
earlier, nothing had been as dangerous as what was about to
come.

Samira was pretty sure
Antonio was aware of that, too, but he was just too stubborn to
admit he was scared.

She could’ve asked him if
he was all right, or could’ve told him that it was for the better
if they’d stay on the – more or less, save the sirens and other
water monsters – safe lake for just a little longer.

“
Antonio,
please stop complaining,” she decided to say instead. “We’ll get
there when we get there. For now, we should enjoy our last few
minutes in “safety”.” She made sure to use quotation marks as she
said that last word.

“
Samira’s
right,” Bella said. “We have no idea what will happen once we
arrive at The Edge. But I do know what it can’t be
good.”

“
Actually,
I’ve been wondering...” James suddenly spoke. “What about that last
Keeper? You know, number five? Number one was Rikki, two was
Madeleine, three was Gabriel, four was Violina, since one of the
Guardians is out of business... So there should be a number five as
well, shouldn’t there?” he said, while counting the number of
Keepers they’d met thus far on the fingers of his right
hand.

“
I don’t
recall Akilah mentioning five Keepers specifically,” Bella said.
“But you’ve got a point.”

Thomas nodded. “But that
would mean that they would be hiding somewhere around the Edge,
right? I wouldn’t expect any kind of pure being to be able to stay
in the Land of Void for longer than a day.”

“
And yet
we’re going to do it,” James joked. Thomas rolled with his eyes,
but couldn’t hide the obvious grin on his face.

“
Theoretically speaking,” Thomas said. “Oh well. I’m sure
we’ll-” His sentence was interrupted by thick fog, which seemed to
kick in almost immediately.

...Black fog.

“
Eh...?” the
British teenager let out a nervous squeak.

“
I’ve got a
feeling this ain’t no good!” Antonio shouted, completely
disregarding his grammar, and started to row as fast as he
could.

“
But we’re on
the middle of a lake, for Heaven’s sake!” Bella complained. “How
could they possibly appear at broad daylight, on
water!?”

“
I don’t
know, Bella,” Antonio gasped between firm rowing movements, “but
let’s just get the hell out of here instead of waiting to find
out!”

And that was the right
thing to do indeed. Whatever was planning on attacking the Bond of
Light from the black fog, it wasn’t anything good. They weren’t
exactly in the position to fight; a fairly small boat, which could
capsize quickly and drop them all into deep water filled with more
hostile creatures.

Antonio managed to get
them out of trouble fairly quick, as after barely five hundred
metres the boat rammed against the shore.

“
All right
guys, this is it... Exit safety,” James said, as the five teenagers
stood up, getting ready to leave the boat.

No word had been too much
about The Edge.

Everywhere they looked,
the ground was made of either dry soil and gravel or some kind of
red-and-black stone. Granite.

And it looked neither
pleasant nor safe to walk on.

“
Do we – have
to do this? As in – can’t we just take the boat, row around until
we find somewhere safer?” Bella mumbled.

“
Unfortunately not, Bella,” James said. “I’ve looked at The
Edge on the map a couple of times. This is the only way we can
access the Land of Void... this place was
made
to keep
people away from there.”

He could hear Bella
swallow next to him.

“
Oh-” she
mumbled, while small drops of cold sweat started to glimmer on her
forehead. “Well- then I guess... If it’s really the only way... I’d
say we should tread carefully.” Bella had normally always been
brave, but she’d changed quickly in the past few days. She’d become
more careful – more scared sometimes, even. James was sad to see
that Lunaria had such a devastating effect on a strong girl like
Bella.

“
Well, how
about before you do that, we have a little chat first?”

A boy approached the five
teenagers, not much older than them. He had blond curls and grey,
friendly eyes. “I believe we haven’t met before.”

James smiled back at the
boy. “No, we haven’t,” he said.

“
Well, let me
introduce myself,” the boy replied, while shaking James’ hand. “My
name is Timothy, and I am the Keeper of Hope. You must be the Bond
of Light.”

“
Yes, we
are,” James said. “Nice to meet you, Timothy.”

“
Same to you,
my boy,” Timothy said. He then moved his head around, nodding at
the others.

“
You all must
be tired. And hungry. Or maybe both?”

“
Well, make
that both,” Antonio said, patting his grumbling stomach.

“
Antonio,
don’t exaggerate it too much,” Samira said. “You’ve had lunch
hardly three hours ago!”

Antonio shrugged in
response. “I know,” he said, “but the rowing of the boat was very
intensive,” he said. “Especially that last bit. And... I just get
hungry really quickly.”

Timothy laughed. “All
right then,” he said. “I suggest you all pay a visit to my hideout,
where we can get to know each other more and also talk a
little.”

He then turned around,
gesturing at the teenagers to follow him. “I’m sure you’ve got a
lot of questions, and I’m sure I can answer them.”

*

Timothy’s hideout was
located somewhere with pretty strong ground, since the house was
made of stone and fairly big.

“
I know it’s
kind of a big house to put in the middle of such a dangerous
place,” Timothy said as they entered the stone house, “but it’s
mainly so big due to the dorm. There are nine beds in there... I’ve
built them all myself, over the years.”

“
So did you
build this yourself?” James asked. “Like Gabriel did with his tree
house?”

“
No,” Timothy
said. “Not all. The Light Spirits have helped me. When they had
just resurrected us - I believe you’ve heard of that story, we were
all separated and alone. I found myself here, in The Edge, so I had
to find shelter. And that’s what I got. I’ve done the rest
myself.”

They sat down at a big
wooden table, which seemed to have been carved rather
professionally.

“
It wasn’t
easy,” Timothy continued. “I had to travel a lot to get all of this
done. Luckily, my father had been a carpenter and his
brother-in-law a smith, so I knew how to get things
done...”

“
But why
didn’t you choose a different location to live?” Antonio asked. “If
you could travel, you could’ve decided to stay
anywhere.”

“
Because I
wasn’t allowed to stay anywhere else,” Timothy said. “We’d all been
given a task. And we had to guide the ones that went before you...
So I had to return here eventually. But to be honest, you’re the
first Generation that got this far – by one piece, that is. Some
Generations made it here – with a person or two missing. All I
could do is guide them as well as I could, but I knew that their
hope of succeeding was lost...”

He paused a few moments
to lower his eyes. “It’s hard to see people, young people, go
through this. But there were also older men and women... Sometimes
of over forty. Just because their shared belief in Magic and
childlike minds were strong enough to be able to take on this
task.”

He looked up again,
showing a kind of sad grin. “And then those men come here, only to
leave and do what some nineteen year old idiot has told them to,”
he said.

“
It’s sad. I
also recall meeting a woman one time, who was twenty-nine and had
two very young children... She had done nothing but crying and
worrying about them all of her journey. And that was the reason her
life ended...”

He paused again and
nodded a few times. “That really gives you a wake-up call. How
serious the situation here actually is.”

James, who had been
listening to Timothy’s story closely, allowed his eyes to wander
around the room a bit.

There were candles
everywhere, giving the cold stone walls a warm glow. He noticed
something on a shelf further in the room, but he couldn’t make up
what it exactly was.

He then quickly returned
his eyes to the table, where he listened to Timothy finishing his
story.

“
So actually,
before we move on and I tell you anything else,” the blond
nineteen-year-old said, “is that I want to give you one advice. Be
careful of what you say and do here, because anything could be used
against you. If the Master happens to mean harm toward you
specifically, he’ll try to pursue it in as many ways as
possible.

The Master is a master of
filling one’s heart and mind with fear. If that man finds your
weakness, it could mean your end.”

The Bond of Light had
spent about an hour chatting with Timothy, while he gave them
information about The Edge and told them stories of previous
Generations.

The blond
nineteen-year-old knew plenty of interesting stories to tell,
though almost every single one of them had a sad ending.

Timothy knew a lot about
the area, but not just only about The Edge. He was the first and
only Keeper to ever travel through every Realm in Lunaria, causing
him to know much more than most of his fellow Keepers
knew.