Gifts Of Blood
They hadn't known, how could they? The power the man possessed was absolutely staggering and he had been able to hide so well that everyone had taken by surprise.
Out of the corner of his eye,
Cye could just barely see the other Ronin Warriors through the blurry, red haze
that veiled his vision. They were all
covered in blood and their armors had all but shattered under the stress of the
blow that had caught all five of them unaware. He knew they were dead, a thought that made him cringe, and he refused
to believe it; but he knew that he would soon follow and that fact was
undeniable. A solitary tear rolled down
his burned cheek.
The man had just laughed when
they fell; he never imagined it to be so easy. It was a laugh that made Cye wish he still had the strength to get up
and punch the guy's ugly face into next week. But he turned away, forgetting about his so-called opposition, and faced
the shrine placed in the back of the room. It consisted of a large, wooded dais and upon it sat a six-armed, stone
deity.
At the predicted time the
statue glowed and the six objects in its hands hummed slightly.
And, to think, all this had
been made possible by the small crystal necklace that sat in one of the deity's
palms. The man gave it an admiring
glance, as without it he would never have been able to begin his invasion on
the human world.
"You look like shit," pointer out a familiar voice above his head.
"What an amazing coincidence," Cye muttered as he cracked an eye open, "I feel like shit."
"You hungry?" Kento asked, with a genial smile, from where he sat in a chair next to Cye's bed, feet on the bed.
"Mia will kill you if she finds out you're doing that." Cye warned, prying his other eye open.
"What she don't know won't kill her," He responded, "or me, for that matter. Are you hungry? And just to warn you, I'm not taking 'no' for an answer."
Cye groaned. "How long was I out?"
"You've been in and out of it for six days; most of the time we thought you were hallucinating, you kept talking in your sleep. Don't you remember?"
"I barely remember Sendai even, much less the past six days."
"I'd be happy if I were you, you took the worst of it in that last battle. But don't worry about it, it's over now." Kento took his feet off the bed and stood up. "I'm going to get you something to eat, I'll be right back."
With Kento gone, Cye's thoughts turned to the only thing he was able to clearly remember from the past week. The dream had been so disturbingly clear and so easily remembered that he was beginning to think it hadn't been a dream at all. It had to be something else, anything else. Though he didn't know what it was he knew what it meant.
It had been the future, not a certainty, but one of many possibilities. This dream had been so firm that Cye was dead sure that if he and the others continued on the path they were walking they would undoubtedly find themselves in that irrecoverable situation.
It was no longer a matter of changing the future for the sake of his friends' lives but to protect the mortal world as they knew it; for if they failed….
Cye didn't want to think of the consequences of that, and, thankfully, didn't have a chance to dwell upon it as Kento reentered the room. He held a tray laden with a bowl of soup, aspirin, a cup of water, and a spoon. Kento slid the tray onto Cye's nightstand, careful to not dislodge the light blue armor orb from it's perch, and helped his friend to sit up.
Cye felt a little embarrassed at having to be helped, but didn't complain as Kento replaced the tray in his lap and proceeded to sit back in the chair, his feet back on the bed. He glanced at the contents of the bowl and felt slightly nauseous at the sight of food. The debate in his mind wasn't as much about whether he could get the soup down as it was about whether it would stay down.
Kento spied his hesitation, "I'm not leaving until you eat all of that."
Since there was no use in fighting him, Cye opted to try and was able to choke down the first couple bites with a minimum of fuss from his stomach. When it felt as though his appetite was returning he managed to get through most of the bowl before Mia happened to wander by.
"Kento!"
He jumped at the sound of his name and jerked around in the chair to face the doorway where Mia stood.
"If I've told you once, I've told you a million times. Get your feet off the bed!" She walked over and grabbed Kento painfully by the ear. "And why don't you let poor Cye get some rest?" She flashed Cye a friendly smile before dragging Kento out of the room.
Cye returned the tray to its place on his nightstand and moaned as he felt a headache form. Maybe that aspirin would come in handy, though the brand tended to make him more than a bit drowsy. He retrieved two pills from the small bottle and swallowed them with a little of the water before sinking beneath the bed covers. The medicine mixed with his own fatigue sent him spiraling down into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Cye awoke to a splitting pain in his head so bad that it darkened his vision. He groaned and sought out two more of the small, white pills and swallowed them dry.
Before the medicine could take effect, Cye leaned over the edge of the bed and felt around under it for something he had hidden there. It had helped him through some pretty tough times and as far as he knew, no one else realized he had it. He didn't care to think about that though, all that concerned him was escaping the pain.
When his fingers contacted the plush orca he grabbed it and wrapped his arms around it before falling asleep again.
Kento wandered back into the room he shared with Cye. He'd been checking on his friend periodically ever since he had escaped Mia's wrath. So far Cye had been sleeping soundly, which put everyone else in the household at ease.
The stuffed whale that Cye had been holding had fallen to the floor since the last time Kento had checked in and he reached down to pick it up.
Kento was the only other person in the house to know about it. There had been times after Sage, Cye, and he had been captured by the Dynasty that he would wake up from a nightmare and look over to find Cye clutching it in his sleep.
He replaced the Killer Whale in Cye's arms and frowned, the fighting wasn't over yet. The Nether Realm possessed the spheres from the cavern now, how that happened Kayura promised to explain later. Their struggle was far from over yet, but Kento could only hope it was their last.
* * * * *
No cliffhanger, darn.
Hopefully, that won't become a trend.
Disclaimer: I don't
own the Ronin Warriors, but I do own a pack of wolves, three bears, a lion, two
dead fish, and an umbrella.