Guardian: Protectors of Light (43 page)

She kept shouting her brother’s name,
until the shouting faded away in sobs of hopelessness.
No.

This hadn’t happened.

The Warlock Spirit and Shadow Walkers
seemed to have disappeared. But it didn’t matter to Samira. They
had taken the most precious thing in her entire life away from him;
her brother.

Her father had been taken from her
years ago; now she’d lost her brother too.

Samira felt she was grabbed, forced to
stand up. It was as if her ears had gone numb; she heard his
friends’ voices shouting her name, but it was as if they were miles
away...

“
SAMIRA!”

Samira came back to her senses by a
hard slap in her face. Thomas had slapped her to bring her
back.

“
Samira, are you all
right?” Thomas asked. He looked worried.

“
What?” Samira asked. A
creepy smile crept up around her mouth. A laugh followed. “Yes,
Thomas!” she laughed, sounding almost maniacal.

“
YES! I am perfectly fine!
WHAT DO YOU THINK?” she roared.

“
We’re going down into that ravine right now, and find
James! I don’t
care
how deep it is down there or
what
ever awaits at the bottom-”

“
Samira,
that’s not a good idea-” Thomas said, but Samira ignored both his
and Bella’s objections. She proceeded to walk toward the ravine’s
edge where she had been dragged away from, but Antonio stopped her
in her tracks.

“
Calm down,
Samira,” he said. “Your anger has raised to your head.”

“
Antonio,”
Samira said, “please let me pass. I have to save James-”

“
James is
gone, Samira,” Thomas said. “There’s no way he could’ve survived a
fall like that.”

Samira closed her eyes.
“He’s not,” she hissed. “And I am going to find him.”

She wanted to walk past
Antonio, who prevented her from doing so by grabbing her
shoulder.

“
James is
GONE, Samira! Thomas’s right!” he shouted. “There’s nothing you can
do!”

“
He’s NOT! HE
IS NOT!” Samira shouted, jerking away from Antonio’s grip with all
her might.

“
Listen,” she
breathed, slightly calmed down. “Here’s the deal. I don’t care
whether you’re coming with me or not, but I am going down there. I
refuse to believe he’s gone until I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I
am not leaving him behind.”

“
I’m with
you, Samira,” Timothy said, still wearing his purple cloak and
carrying his glowing katanas.

“
Good,”
Samira replied. “Anyone else is welcome to follow. If not, wait for
us here. Or leave. Whatever.”

Without saying anything
more, Samira walked toward the ravine’s edge and started the climb
down.

Timothy followed her
closely.

Thomas, Antonio and Bella
looked at each other. “Shouldn’t we be following them?” Bella
asked.

Thomas nodded. “Bella’s
right, Antonio. We should go after them.”

But Antonio shook his
head. “No way,” he said. “We’re staying here. We’ll wait for them
to come back; we’re with too many not to be seen down
there.”

Thomas stared at the
ravine. “I hope Samira’s right...” he sighed.

Meanwhile, a couple
metres further down in the ravine, a sixteen-year-old boy had
managed to save his own life by clinging on to a ledge and creating
one to stand on underneath his feet shortly after.
Magic.

James was surprised to
hear someone calling his name in the distance. A familiar voice. It
was Samira!

“
Samira?”
James replied. “I’m okay!”

“
James?”
Samira’s voice came from the darkness above him. He could see the
light of Timothy’s katana swords move around with them. “I’m glad
to hear you’re okay! Stay there; we’re coming to get
you!”

James did as he was told,
and waited for Samira and Timothy to come and get him. He stood
still as he waited and watched the glowing katanas come closer,
until something else caught his attention.

A tiny, green light,
floating not too far away from him.

He tried not to look at
it at first, but his gaze was drawn to it, as if it was hypnotizing
him to look at it...

The longer James looked
at it, the calmer he became. It was as if the light radiated a
sense of serenity, bringing that feeling of calmness over
James.

It almost felt like the
light was calling out to him. Wanting him to come
nearer.

What he didn’t know, was
that Samira was now nearby enough to be able to see the little
floating light as well. Apart from this, the feeling it gave Samira
was exactly opposite to the feeling it gave to James.

Samira knew this “light
in the darkness” could never mean anything good; he could feel
it.

In the glowing light of
both the katanas and the green light, Samira could finally see him.
“James,” she breathed.

She got in such a sudden
hurry to reach her brother, that she misplaced one of her feet in
the dark and nearly fell down.

“
Careful,”
Timothy said to her. “Falling down here is the last thing you might
want to do.”

“
Tell me
about it,” Samira grunted.

She wanted to keep her
eyes fixed on James, but she had to keep an eye on where to put her
hands and feet instead, to prevent similar repetitive actions from
occurring.

So it happened that she
didn’t notice what was going on down there where James
was.

Driven by curiosity,
James decided to go check out whatever the green light was supposed
to be. He knew it was a bad idea, yet he still wanted to
know.

But every time he got
close enough to reach out for the light, it’d float away from him,
just out of his reach.

As if he was hypnotized,
James scaled the wall, following the light all the way across it.
He made sure he never let the light out of his sight.

“
I’ll get
you,” he whispered. “You’ll see.”

What kinds of danger
could there possibly be behind this small, innocent light, after
all? It seemed like nothing to worry about.

Samira probably wouldn’t
mind if he just went to check it out for a short moment.
Right?

Meanwhile, Timothy and
Samira had arrived at the ledge James had created to prevent
himself from plummeting to a painful death. But he wasn’t
there...

“
Where is
he?” Samira said, while looking around. “Where’s James?”

Fortunately, Timothy knew
the answer. He pointed one of his glowing katanas into the dark
distance, saying, “There he goes! He’s following that green
light!”

“
Oh, give me
a break!” Samira grunted. “We must catch up with him, before he
winds up into trouble - again!”

But they’d barely begun
to scale the wall, or both James and the light seemed to have
disappeared into the dark.

“
What!?”
Samira exclaimed in frustration. “Where did he go? He can’t just
have - disappeared - right?

Timothy looked at him.
His golden locks seemed to glow in the light of the katanas.
“Perhaps the ravine takes a turn over there?” he suggested. “We
just have to follow him and we’ll find out.”

And so they did. They
kept climbing, careful not to misplace their hands or
feet.

It was obvious that
Samira was in a hurry, but despite of that, he knew this wasn’t the
right time or place to be in a hurry.

One wrong move could cost
them their lives.

James, who was still
following the mysterious floating light, had ended up in a secret
cave, hidden in the walls of the ravine.

The light had stopped
moving, and was now floating still in the middle of the cave.
Nothing – or nobody, for that matter - else seemed to be present
here.

“
Hello?”
James asked. “Is anybody there?”

Nothing happened. Until,
a few seconds later, a familiar voice spoke to him from the
dark.

“
At last,
James,” the voice said, still hidden in the shadows. “We meet
again.”

She then stepped into the
light, showing her face. It was Sabrina.

“
Sabrina?”
James asked, instinctively starting to move backwards. “What are
you doing here?”

“
I could ask
you the same,” Sabrina said. Her voice sounded cold and almost
threatening, and her face looked unnaturally pale in the green
light.

“
I – uh –
fell,” James shrugged. Sabrina still didn’t smile.

“
You used
Magic,” she said, still on a chillingly cold tone, which sent
chills down James’s spine. “Something I thought I’d restricted you
to do.”

She looked a lot
different than the last time they’d met.

There were deep, purple
circles underneath her eyes, indicating sleep deprivation, and her
blonde hair was tangly and untidy.

“
I have no
choice, Sabrina,” James said. “It’s the only way to get past this
ravine.”

“
Exactly,”
Sabrina said, still, on that same, cold tone. “You’re not supposed
to cross the ravine, James. You never were... And now I’ve found
you, you shall never do so, either, I’m afraid.”

James knew something
fishy was going on, even though he didn’t know what exactly.
“Sabrina?” he said, sounding slightly suspecting, “what’s going
on?”

The next moment, he let
out a yell in horror.

Black veins had started
to appear from the skin on Sabrina’s neck, spreading all over her
face. Her eyes changed their colour to blood red.

“
You
should’ve run when you had the chance, boy,” she hissed. “Because
there’s no chance for you to get away now. There’s no way to
run...”

James did want to run.
And grab his sword. But when he tried to do so, he found out that
all four his limbs were completely frozen. He was paralyzed, unable
to move.

“
Your powers
belong to the Master,” Sabrina hissed. “And he has sent me
personally to collect them.”

“
Sabrina,
NO!”

Sabrina started as two
figures entered the cave. She wasn’t pleased to see either of them,
but the blond-haired one appeared to irritate her the
most.

“
Ah,
Timothy.” She spat the name out. “By your outfit, I’d assume you
and your little friends are on your final quest.”

Timothy snorted in
disdain. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, though. Just for
the sake of you being you... I think you understand how
disappointed I am to find out it was true. Especially after all
we’ve been through, Sabrina.”

“
You should
be disappointed in yourself, Timmy,” Sabrina said. Her eyes shortly
flashed toward James, then to Samira. She realised she was cornered
and her chances of seizing James gone, because she threw Timothy a
withering look.

James didn’t think he’d
ever seen such hatred in a pair of eyes.

“
I warned
your little friend-keepers to leave it be, to stay away...” Sabrina
hissed. “But they wouldn’t listen. And now...”

A malicious grin crept up
around her mouth, showing a set of vampire-like teeth behind her
thin female lips. “And now you’ve got a storm coming.”

“
What do you
mean?” Timothy said. “Speak up.”

“
You better
watch over those teenagers, Timothy,” Sabrina threatened him. “Or
else you won’t have anything to look after at all pretty
soon...”

Both Samira and James,
who’d been freed from his paralyzed state due to Sabrina’s lack of
interest in keeping him captive, instinctively reached for their
swords after Sabrina had made this particular threat. This was
bad.

Timothy’s eyes darkened.
He didn’t like to be threatened, that was obvious.

He looked very confident,
and that same confidence also returned in the way he spoke to
Sabrina.

“
I’m not
afraid of you, Sabrina,” he said. “I’m not afraid of anything. This
world’s taken the meaning of fear away from me. I shall defend the
Last Generation of Hope, and I know my fellow Keepers will do the
same.

We will hunt you down,
Sabrina. You’re going to lose.”

His confident face made
way for an amused, arrogant smile. While slightly shaking his head,
he said, “We’re already dead, anyway. We’ve got nothing to
lose.”

Thomas became even
angrier than she already was. “Just wait and see how much you’ve
got to lose, Keeper,” she hissed. “Because I’ll take it from
you.”

And with those final last
words, she was gone. In a flash, like the darkness had swallowed
her.

All what was left of her
was the glowing green light.

“
She’s going
after them,” Timothy said. “She’s going after my
friends.”

He looked at James and
Samira. The look in his eyes was serious. “It won’t take long until
she’s alarmed the Master that things are getting out of her
control. And when that happens... The man himself shall take care
of the situation.”