Chapter 48: Chapter 48

The long-range cannons are firing again. With each hit, I feel the earth cry, and keeping my balance becomes a challenge as I try to keep my running pace. Mini showers of gravel and rocks sprinkle over here and there. Some making all the way to me, tapping at the back of my armor and helmet.

The farther the blood trail takes me, the more my blood boils.

“This is taking forever,” I cry. “Please be over soon.”

The deeper the red sparkles take me into the smoke, the harder it is to breathe, and the harder it is to hope. The deeper I go into the heart of destruction, the deeper my heart falls into its darkness. Trying to keep reality at bay is painful. There’s loose stone everywhere, but each step feels like I’m barefoot on hot glass. Only a tiny calculated odd for happiness keeps me going forward. Only impossible dreams make this weight on my chest bearable. I am willing to follow this trail to the very end, but please, please, be much sooner than that.

At last, the scarlet current listens. Its direction changes and takes a dive straight down.

“KAI! NINA!” my fingers dig into the rubble as I battle my way uphill against the shaking of the explosions. Like a trapped animal, I claw my way up.

At the peak of my revived hope, I reach the top of the hill, and right there, something dies in me. What I see makes no sense; the trail ends, pointing straight down at my final destination, but there’s no sign of my friends. Nina and Kai are not here as they should be. My mind rushes to put this puzzle together, but my heart can’t seem to pinpoint the meaning of the image.

Slowly, the truth sinks in. My heart skips a beat as it pierces through it. The blood trail isn’t over. It’s still going, but I can’t follow it anymore. I can’t slither and creep between the cracks. I can’t move between the rubble as it can.

“No, no, no, no, no!!” yelling, I throw myself into drilling. Each piece I cast out of my way shatters as it hits the bottom. I want it to break. I want them all to fall to pieces and break for trapping Nina and Kai in.

The sunset is almost over and all my efforts barely make a difference. At least there is still the night’s moon to light my way down to my friends, but that plan disappears along with the last of the remaining sunlight. This day ends, with a deafening blow.

I can’t believe how close that bomb hit. As I rise up from the cover, my brain feels like someone placed a tuning fork inside it. This ringing in my head makes my eyesight dance, making the amount of rock double. All these symptoms remind me of a hard day at the arena, including this strange pain in my stomach. But as I look down, I know there’s no way I will recover from this one. With no magic barrier to protect me from consequences, a long steel bar protrudes from my midsection. For the second time, I see blood on my hands, but this is no vision from the archangel. Not this time.

The blood I see on my hands is real because it’s thicker and brighter. Surprisingly, this time there is no sense of panic to go with it. There is no terror or disgust, instead, a strangely overwhelming feeling of relief sub comes to me. A relief that the blood on my hands is mine. Not Kai’s. Not Nina’s. Not Lada’s. Or my parents. I sigh. It’s mine, just mine.

But this is not enough. I’ve got to get my two friends out of the rubble and soon enough I won’t be of any use to them. The gravity increases on me with each passing moment and suddenly, this hot and frustrating day starts to grow cool and damp. Feeling my numbing face, I realize that this change has nothing to do with the weather. I’m dying.

“No, I can’t go yet,” I talk myself into staying conscious, “I still have work to do,” and work up an idea that might buy me more time.

My hand tries to pull the Sphynx’s Whisker out of its halter, but there isn’t nearly enough blood pressure in my veins to do something so simple. Conjuring isn’t even an option, for I don’t have any kind of herb on me.

Besides, my body is too broken to act as the vessel for the ancient voices. I’m not strong enough to even hold myself up. Against every fiber of my will, my body gives out and I collapse to the ground. Just like the world around me, I’m crumbling. The awareness of time is the few bits that remain of me. There is still some of the sunset color lingering in the clouds, but the orange light grows dimmer and dimmer with every passing blink.

“Hello, Adrien.”

Looks like I’ve got a visitor and I turn my head to see what madman would casually choose to hang around here.

“Hello, Michael,” I greet him back. “It’s a little too late for another warning, don’t you think?”

The archangel can’t help, but smirk.

“I’m not here to warn you. I’m here to invite you.”

“Michael, this is bad timing.”

“There is a sort of a job opening we’d like to offer you.”

“What use can I possibly be to you?”

“Come live like us. Be like us.”

“Do you really think I’m qualified?”

“Yes, we do,” he nods.

“Where are you wanting to take me?”

“Where all other deities and angels live, of course. No time for the afterlife, you still got some work to do, young knight.”

“I’ll go running to hell if you want me to, but only under one condition: Kai and Nina get rescued and live through this and see that my parents escape this chaos.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“If they die, I die.”

“Okay, I’m willing to make that deal.”

“Are you sure they’ll be rescued?”

“When Lada and her friends find you, they’ll find them next. Your body is the X that marks the spot.”

“Okay, it’s a deal then. I’ll take the job,” barely, I manage to find the strength to smile as the archangel takes my hand.

Slowly, my ghost begins to disattach itself from my body, leaving fewer and fewer sparks of consciousness to float in my head. Halfway faded, my ears sense someone calling. It’s faint, but I can recognize this sweet voice anywhere. I know this strawberry sound all too well. She’s getting closer and closer. I, on the other hand, am drifting farther and farther away.

“Adrien!!! No!! Oh, gods, please, no!!” she found me, just as Michael promised. “Adrien! Adrien!”

I’m so sorry for this, Lada. How I wish she wouldn't have to see me like this. How I wish I could keep that promise to take her out somewhere nice. How I wish for things to turn out differently between us. But, she’s alive and my friends are going to make it out of here soon enough. She and my friends and my parents will go on. They’ll live on.

Then, it hits me and I realize something as Michael keeps pulling me out of my weary shell of pale flesh; just like they never start from the very beginning, stories never really end either. They’re funny like that. And this one is no different.

“This is the end of the story 'Ghost in the Roses', but then like he said ‘Stories never start from the very beginning and never really end’,” says an old lady to her preteen granddaughter as she deactivates the sphere filled with the dead knight’s memories.

“Adrien Rivers? That’s him? That’s the name of the ghost who haunts the rose orchard in the country?” wide-eyed girl pulls the covers a little closer to her chest.

“That’s him.”

“Did his friends survive as the archangel promised him?”

Just as she was about to answer that question, her husband knocks.

“What is it, Kai?” The grandmother smiles at him.

“I’m sorry to interrupt story time, but the Knight’s Council just send you a message. I’ve put it on your desk.”

“Thanks, candy heart.” The old woman smiles at the man she met in their youth years and years ago.

“What about his friends?”

“Well, they did survive, got married, and started a family. His parents were secretly relocated, and so was their entire village.”

“But this can’t be the end. What happens next?”

“I’m afraid that the end. What happens next is up to us. It’s up to you.”

“So, who found Adrien? Who rescued Nina and Kai from the rubble.”

“Lada and her search party did. She was devastated when she found Adrien dead. With the help of the dragons, they dug out his friends to safety. For Adrien there wasn’t much left to do but collect his memories as part of the protocol for the deceased warriors. In secret, his funeral was held at his family orchard.”

“And he’s been haunting the orchard since the day he died?”

“Not haunts,” the grandmother is careful to correct the girl as she gets up and places the sphere back with the rest of the girl’s stories. “Protects,” she then closes the little door behind it.

“So, I can’t go back there anymore? Where are we going to get groundhog’s lilies for roasting and roses for health remedies?”

“Of course, you can go back. Don’t worry, he’s not going to hurt you. You or anyone else are more than welcome to visit the orchard, but remember one thing,” for a moment, the grandmother pauses to make sure that the girl is paying very close attention.

“What?” The girl leans in, ready for more.

“Take only what you need, rest there when your travels become tiresome, and hide there only if you need protection.”

“He doesn’t sound like a typical ghost.”

“I don’t know how to explain this, but he’s neither a ghost nor living,” the grandmother taps her fingers on the bed’s headboard.

“Are you telling me he’s some kind of vegetarian zombie?” the girl raises her eyebrows.

Not being able to help, but laugh a little, the old lady sits back on the white princess bed.

“No, he’s a vegetarian zombie.”

“What has he become then?”

“How can I explain this,” her eyes look up at her granddaughter’s sticker-enchanted ceiling filled with glowing pieces of stars, phoenixes, angels, and other winged creatures, and from them gets an idea for an explanation that this preteen can understand.

“He’s in the same league as the Capricorns, the angels, the Leos, and all of those celestial beings. They’re alive but can’t die. They’re spirits, but they can actually kick your butt.”

“What happens to the ones who try to exploit him? What happens if one leaves nothing else for others?”

“You’ll be lucky if he only sends the Capricorns after you and they’ll chase you away the same way they once chased him. You are not going to want him to show up and drag you out of his acres by force.”

“But I only take what we need for the following week and I don’t take anything out of the farmhouse when I walk about it. So, there is no reason why I should be afraid of him.” At last, the child is reassured.

“Of course not, so next time we go into the country for the weekend, don’t be afraid when you see him walk the hills. Don’t let his armor frighten you.”

“So, what should I do when I get scared? And I don’t mean of him, but in general.”

“Do what a knight does; visor down, arms up,” she picks up the girl’s chin, “and proceed.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Oh, but it’s not, because even heroes get scared.”

The girl smiles and turns toward her bedroom window.

“I wish they’d finish building that school already.”

“Be patient, my love. It will be finished by the time you graduate high school and by the time you earn your undergrad, it will be well established.”

“Why did it take so long for The Federation to decide to do this anyway?” The girl frowns.

“Well, a hundred years ago, the people still had a lot to overcome and things were much different from what they are now. The Rouge Red wanted to be the new government so badly, that they were willing to leave so much chaos, but Lada and her followers beat them in the Civil War and helped establish the system we have today - you’ll learn about her presidency next school year. After so much war, it took a while to recover the knowledge lost. These things take time, just like everything else.”

“When they’ll finish rebuilding it…when they reopen the Knights’ Academy, I going to apply.”

“And you shall become the greatest knight ever,” her grandmother is filled with pride.

“Maybe, I can even convince the ghost of Sir Rivers to help me train and show me all the moves.”

“Maybe,” old Nina gets up to go join Kai to finish some new paperwork.

Getting that done will mean one step closer to making that promise come true. Being elected the new director, there’s still plenty of work for her to do to make the Academy’s reopening a reality. She almost decides to tell her granddaughter to go back to bed, but what would be the point? Nina knows that the moment she will walk out of that door, this trickster will climb on the window to keep a vigilant watch on the construction far ahead. The only thing she could do is kiss her on the forehead.

“Good night, Zoya.”

“Good night, Grandma Nina. Tell Grandpa Kai I said good night to him too.”

“Will do, sweetie,” as she leaves the door just a tab open, she takes a last glimpse of the girl dreaming her daring dreams. Dreaming of becoming a knight in this new age, just like her grandparents once did. But that’s another life’s chapter for another time.