Chapter 19
The Vial
Underneath Rinto Laboratories – Corridor Z23
September 25th – 00:06
"I can tell you must be surprised, after all he certainly doesn't act like royalty, now does he?" He turned away from me and began to scowl at the wall. "It is truly disgusting what people find entertainment in nowadays."
"What do you mean?"
He gestured to the bloody message on the wall and said, "This ghastly message on the wall. Is it too much to write a message on a piece of paper? No! Yet that mindless oaf had the audacity to use my own blood to write a message on the wall. And such a bothersome message too. Bah!"
I looked at the message but it still didn't look legible to me. It still looked like a bunch of random hieroglyphs crisscrossed haphazardly.
Suddenly Gainen's shade turned to me and said, "This probably doesn't make much sense to you, now does it?" I attempted to say something but he stopped me with a wave of his hand. "Don't bother trying to explain it away. I'll agree that this is written horribly Serator must not have taught his new pawn any penmanship, but I am an expert in the old tongue so it isn't too hard for me."
"Are you going to tell me what it says or not?" I stood facing him with my arms crossed trying to appear intimidating.
He smiled a ghostly smile. "It says, 'Your time of running must come to an end soon. There is no escape for we have agents everywhere and you can not hide forever.' Honestly it isn't too intimidating, Serator was always better at acts of violence rather than words."
He stopped talking and floated over to a small safe sitting on a counter. Upon reaching for it, his hand passed right through the safe. He turned back towards me looking extremely frustrated. "Would you mind helping me?"
I walked over to the safe and turned the dial as he told me the combination. The safe opened with a soft hiss and I reached in and pulled a small black chest with red markings all along its sides. "What is it?"
"That is something that was outlawed centuries ago. In that chest is a small vial of an icy blue liquid that belonged to one of my ancestors."
"Okay… Why did you want me to get it for you? And what does it do?"
He sighed deeply and for a second it looked like he was in pain. "My ancestor was a master at was called Resonance. It was when a Shadow was able to endow non-shadows with special abilities. This vial here has the potential to give whoever ingests it all of my ancestors powers. It is much more potent than what normal Resonances were capable of. Can you guess where I'm getting with this?"
I looked at the chest and then at Gainen's shade. "Why would you give this to me if Tatsu and I came here to kill you? Not to mention all of the times that you attempted to have us killed."
"Because now I know what Serator is planning and, quite frankly, I can't allow him to do so." For a second his body seemed to fade. "It's a shame really, the original intent of the Runic was to advance our civilization through gaining knowledge. Somewhere along the line it turned into gaining absolute power for one's self." Once again his body seemed to fade and he said, "It would seem that I am running out of time now. I must warn you that the powers that you'll gain from that vial are extremely dangerous and you ought to be careful at first. At least until you have a greater grasp on your soon-to-be powers. "With that Gainen faded from existence leaving me alone in a room with a ton of blueprints, a rotting corpse, and me feeling hopelessly confused.
I opened the chest and saw that the vial wasn't the only thing in it. There were several documents as well, they seemed to relay locations of various people. But for now my focus was solely on the cone-shaped icy blue vial.
Gingerly I took the vial out of the chest and placed the chest on the floor. I felt afraid and excited all at once. I could feel that this would be the end of my life as I knew it, but at the same time it was something new and exciting, something that I longed for.
I took a deep breath and removed the vial's stopper. The scent of crisp ice wafted out and without a second thought I downed the vial's contents in a single gulp.
Then I felt cold and everything began to spin. Then everything faded to black.
Well there we have two chapters in a single update. I hope you all enjoyed them. Please review and tell me what you think.