Holy shit! I'm really not dead, I have an update! No, really, a new chapter! *Wonders how many people just passed out.* Anyway, it's not super long, but it's hear and I've got some of the next chapter typed already. My muse finally came home. *does the happy dance* So, off you go!
~~~Chapter 8
Ryo eyed the darkness warily, straining to hear something, anything that would help him right now. There was something out there, he knew this without a doubt, but what the hell was it? What had followed him away from the house and into the woods? What had taken away the sunlight in the middle of the day? Could something actually do that, take away all possible light? He didn't think so, but he did have an orb the size of a marble that contained a rather large magical suit of armor… Who was he to say it couldn't happen?
Ryo finally took a few hesitant steps forward, feeling the ground before him with his feet as he moved. He'd already tried calling his friends for help through the armor and had yet to hear anything from them, then powered down to his sub armor. Were they lost in this darkness too? That thought made Ryo's blood run cold. Did they follow him after he'd thrown his little fit? He'd been so stupid, throwing a fit over something like that. It wasn't like he didn't know how to swim, he'd seen Kento and Rowen sneaking towards him with that gleam in their eyes, he knew what they were about to do and could have fought it. He didn't though and they tossed him in the lake, and he pitched a fit afterwards then took off. Stupid, stupid, stupid idiot.
Ryo paused in his memories and looked around again, or tried to at least. He was outside, in the woods, shouldn't he have run into a tree by now? He was stumbling around in the pitch black nothingness and hadn't tripped over a branch or rock, hadn't come across an uneven footpath, just nothing. There was literally nothing around him, and it was starting to freak him out. He took another step, no longer wary of the ground, trying to find some clue as to where he was. A few moments later he heard something that stopped him in his tracks. Very sharp metal scraping against stone. That wasn't his sword, his was sheathed and with his full armor. There was most definitely something out there…
Mia stood quietly, then turned around to set the sleeping child back down on the loveseat. She couldn't sit still anymore and didn't want to wake the toddler. She looked around the room at her friends, Cye had finally fallen asleep on the couch, where Rowen sat reading quietly and Sage was meditating once again. Kento had left the room earlier, preferring to be in the kitchen. She noticed Raye was gone and couldn't remember her leaving, maybe she snuck off to the bathroom. Mia stretched a little before heading towards the kitchen herself, a small snack sounded good right about now. She could question Kento some more while she was in there.
Kento sat at the large table quietly stirring his long melted ice cream while he continued to think on the events that led to where they were now. He couldn't figure out how they led up to where they were, why things were this way right now. None of it really added up right, and it was slowly pissing him off even more. He glanced down at his bowl in disgust before dropping the spoon into the bowl and pushing it away.
"Never thought I'd see you turn down sweets, Kento. What are you thinking about?" Mia asked as she made her way to the table and sat down across from the young man.
"Ryo, still. It just doesn't add up, none of it."
"Before the fight you thought he died in, when was the last time you guys saw him?" Mia questioned softly as she studied Kento's face.
Kento thought for a moment before answering. "It was towards the end of summer, we were all out by the lake. Ryo was laying in the grass, just soaking up the sun while the rest of us were in the water. We kept trying to get him to join us but he just kept saying no. Rowen and I finally decided Ryo was going swimming whether he wanted to or not. We picked him up and carried him to the lake then threw him in." Kento explained, studying the grains of the wooden table top beneath his hands.
"What happened then?" Mia asked, intrigued. She had leaned forward a bit and folded her hands beneath her chin while Kento spoke.
"Ryo was livid," Rowen said from the doorway, making the other two occupants jump. Sage and Cye stood just behind Rowen, then followed him into the kitchen and sat at the table as well.
"Ryo swam to the dock and got right back out of the water. I'd never seen him that angry over being thrown into the water. He just lost it. He did a lot of yelling then stalked off towards the house. He came back out a few minutes later in dry clothes and headed towards the forest and didn't come back until well after dinner." Rowen explained.
"He was really quiet when he returned, more so than was normal for him," Sage picked up where Rowen left off. "He went straight up to his room without a word to any of us, I think that was the first time he ever really ignored us."
Mia sat there listening quietly with wide eyes, trying to put this together with what she already knew. Maybe if she heard the whole story from them with the little she knew from Ryo, she could figure out what had really happened because it was becoming clearer that no one knew the whole story. She waited a moment for Sage to continue before she finally spoke up. "Sage? Are you alright?"
"Hmm? Yeah, fine," he said quietly, still not looking at anyone in the room. "Anyway, he came back down ten minutes later with his duffle back packed. He mumbled that he was going home for a while and didn't know when he'd be back, then walked out the front door before we could say anything. We got a letter every month for six months, then saw him during that fight. There was nothing after that," Sage finished.
"So he had kept I touch for a while after he left. I wonder why he stopped, he couldn't possibly have know that he'd supposedly died here if he was in England at the time," Mia thought aloud.
"But if he was in England already, was he really the one that was writing to us? The letters had a local postage stamp, not foreign. Maybe whoever was pretending to be Ryo was the one writing the letters too, it would explain why they stopped after that fight," Rowen argued.
"Yes, it would explain that, but it brings up another question," Cye spoke. "If Ryo wasn't the one writing the letters, why didn't he contact us at all after he left? Why did he ignore us completely? He wouldn't have ignored us that long, or even leave the country just because he was mad at being thrown in the lake. I mean, you guys do that to him and least three times every summer."
"He has a point there," Kento commented. Mia nodded in agreement while the others started to think some more on what could have happened.
He stood still as a statue in his fighting stance, swords at the ready, listening to his surrounds as though his life depended on it. For all he know, it very well could. He could hear someone, or something, circling him, the metal hitting and dragging on the ground around him every so often, gradually coming closer. The chill that had run down his spine earlier had returned and refused to go away this time, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were standing on end and his heart was about to burst out of his chest. He would willingly admit now that he was terrified, and wanted nothing more than to be back at the house, playing in the lake with his friends.
A drop of sweat slowly rolled down his spine as the mysterious one drew closer still. His hands trembled ever so slightly as he continued to hold his stance and listen to his opponent come closer. Then silence. He couldn't hear any better than he could see and he knew without a doubt that something was about to happen. He tightened his grip and waited for the inevitable.
So, am I confusing you yet? It's about to get more interesting with an unexpected visit in the middle of the night, and someone disappears. Dun, dun, dun! Let me know what you think so far, reviews are loved. Flames however, are fed to my purple and silver dragon, Gizmo.
