THE LAST KEEPER

His peace, however, did not last long because something moved, not something. Someone, and there were many of them. His eyes snapped open in a rush. He had grown to become weary of any presence. This group, however, did not have a threatening air hanging around them. This group had a smell not specifically threatening, but it was full of mischief.

Mischief?

Sagiri snapped his eyes open on instinct when he heard the group move. Of course, he could not see anyone yet because he was so deep inside. There were a few hundred feet between them. The place he was seated allowed him to blend into the darkness, deep in the shadow and broken pillar arena. Sagiri could not understand how such an arena came to be, and if it was man-made, something must have happened to make it come to be. The pillars were tall and huge, as if they had been used to hold something up or as if they had been a foundation of something really strong. Sagiri could not imagine that the pillars were built after the fourth-year pentagon. More like the fourth year pentagon had been built around them.

On top of that, the shadow and broken pillar arena had a different shape from all the other arenas. It is circular, and the other is rectangular in shape. The approaching group had scattered, and when they started to move, he finally shifted his attention to them. Nine boys in total were closing in. One remained at the flat platform they gathered to receive instructions during terrain training. Another stood at the door as if to guard it, and the rest had scattered in different places inside the broken pillars.

He was familiar with their presence and of the nine. It was blatantly clear that they were looking for him for a mischievous reason, but it was no cause for alarm. It was kiuga who oozed so much of it. It seemed that they had planned something for him, but did not tell him. None of team 25 had any sensory abilities or clan secret art of sensory like the tamelku clan, but they were still good, and he was not going to take it easy. If he moved, he was sure to get caught. There was no vision and smell-impairing gas this time, and they might have lacked sensory abilities like him, but they had sharp hearing.

He now understood why one had remained at the central position. It must have been Kaka, and Kiuga must have talked him into tagging along. He must have come along after being egged on by Kiuga and ended up standing in the centre, refusing to show team spirit but refusing to be a coward, which was what Kiuga loved to tease him with, and Kaka fell for it every time. The other seven boys moved through the shadow and broken pillar arena swiftly, searching high and low. Sagiri was lucky nvaru was not the one searching the area closest to him. Him, Kiuga, and Kaka had the highest probability of catching him, but as luck could have it, one had chosen not to actively participate, and the two had gone in different directions. Since he turned sixteen, his sensory radius had increased to more than a thousand feet out, and he could tell who was who and how they moved.

Kiuga loved being airborne and stealth, and enjoyed the hunt way too much. Same with Bukata and Zazarie in aerial awareness. They were masters of the air. Ulekai was the most fearful type, and if Sagiri could guess, the boy hated hunting in the dark, and just lucky for him, he was the one manning the place close to where he was hiding. Well, not exactly hiding because he was there first.

He came so close to the place but stopped where the shadows began. He looked straight into the darkness, and Sagiri almost thought their eyes had locked, but it seemed Ulekai was just pretending to peek into the darkness because after a long moment of pretending to see in the dark, he turned around just as swiftly and left to search in the lit places. How very careless.

The other boys searched their section and swept them clean except for Ulekai, of course, and after a while they returned to the centre position. They conversed for a long moment in low tones, so much so that he couldn’t hear before they decided to leave. Sagiri breathed a sigh of relief. He did not know he was holding. He could not sense any malicious feelings from them, and neither had the thing residing in him warned him about impending danger. Even though the smell of plotting and mischief was too much in the air, he was still not alarmed.

Whatever they had hidden under their sleeves, he did not want to find out, so he stayed put even long after they had left.

After a long moment without movement, he finally moved. He stepped out of the shadows. It must have been a few minutes to supper time, and his stomach growled in pleasure. He jumped over the crushed pieces of concrete and uneven jagged tops of fallen parts of the pillars, till his feet touched level ground. The shadows were thicker now as he made it to the door. He walked towards the door, ready to get a head start, but he never made it. Right when he was about to reach the door, however, is when he perceived a presence. He did not, however, have time to react before N’varu captured him from behind and yelled and locked his hands behind his back, taking his option to wrestle free. He was still sore from writing for five days straight, and the angle he put him in restricted his movements completely. How could he have forgotten that N’varu was able to hide his presence from him to some degree? Even after his senses improved after he woke up, he could still not feel him.

”Caught him!” N’varu must have pretended to leave, then lurked by the door.

The shadow and broken pillars must have been made in such a way that if one was outside, they couldn’t sense who was inside, and vice versa. He had underestimated Kiuga’s ability to plan. Of course, there is no way the first display was his plan, and even putting Ulekai to search the place with the longest shadows must have been his plan too. Kiuga was the first to jump through the door with the biggest grin on his face.

”What is this?” Sagiri asked, his heartbeat increasing slightly with some sort of excitement.

”N’varu told me walls keep your senses in check,” Kiuga bragged. Sagiri had never known that fact, however, but he knew that was untrue. The only time he had not been able to perceive the outside of a place was when he was in the suffocation chamber, and right now in the shadow colonnade. What material was the shadow and broken pillar made of? No other walls had ever stopped him, and it must have meant that N’varu knew something he didn’t know about himself. When the two first met, N’varu had said that he could not tell him anything until he acted mature. He was sure after the sixteenth birthday that he had grown, and he needed to know now more than ever.

Right at the moment, however, he needed to know why his former teammates were abducting him.

The other seven walked through, and Sagiri could not for himself begin to guess the reason for his sudden capture.

”Now, which part of the body do you choose?” Kiuga asked, circling the two. N’varu was taller than Sagiri and more built, so his holding Sagiri’s hands behind Sagiri’s back made him completely unable to move.

”What do you mean, a part of my body?” Sagiri asked, trying to think if he had heard the question wrong or if it was some type of joke. He could not understand humor very well yet, so he perhaps thought it was humor. He had never understood what humor was and why someone had to laugh, since he had never been able to feel his own feelings till recently, and even so, he still did not understand the concept. Now looking back, he had never laughed. He wished he could experience full laughter, but whatever Kiuga had said was not humorous.

”Is that humor?” He asked, and Kiuga laughed even harder.

”Oh, Sagiri the blind, you are so naive sometimes. I choose the upper arm,” Kiuga said, and before Sagiri could process the statement, a punch so heavy fell on him on the upper arm enough to dislocate a bone. Kiuga sure packed a punch.

”The initiation begins!” Kiuga said, laughing hard, but Sagiri wanted to hold his hand and groan in pain.

”Initiation?” Sagiri asked when the pain was bearable enough to talk.

”Well, you just did your first exams, and that calls for initiation. Everyone gets initiated by a friend after the first exam,” N’varu said, and Sagiri finally understood. So that was what all the mischief was about. If they had to initiate each other in their first year, did that mean everyone punched everyone like savages? ”It is used to break recruits in and to get used to each other and taking a punch,” N’varu continued.

”If N’varu didn’t stop me, I wanted to invite everyone,” Kiuga said, and Sagiri wondered if Kiuga wanted him dead. He was having trouble with one punch from him, and he wanted more than two hundred cadets to initiate him?

”Kaka, you are next,” Kiuga said, but Kaka just looked the other way.

”I don’t want to be punished for killing someone who can’t even hold a bow and arrow,” Kaka said, and Kiuga just laughed.

”Just say you are scared to open his stab wounds,” Kiuga mocked, and Kaka turned his head swiftly to defend himself, but instead, he went silent. At the mention of the stab wounds, everyone froze, too, including N’varu. Of course, it was a sensitive topic. Bukata looked like he could pass out, and Maita looked uncomfortable. Everyone suddenly had grim expressions, and even Kaka looked annoyed.

The earlier mood of initiating him was gone, and Sagiri did not know why, but he did not want them to feel that way because of him. He’d rather they initiate him with punches to break the ice than walk on eggshells as if he were breakable.

”I knew the Tamelku twins were behind. it was me who wanted to die,” Sagiri said, and there was pin-drop silence as everyone stared at him. ”The pain in my body was too much to bear. It’s not anybody’s fault,” he said, and N’varu took a sharp inhale of breath. Sagiri was sure someone like Kiuga would finally figure it out because with his sensory ability, there was no way he could have missed the two vermin. Another long moment of silence stretched, and Sagiri could feel the irritation from Kaka go up a notch.

”You chose to be stabbed?” It was Ulekai who spoke first, looking like he wanted to throw up.

”Yes,” Sagiri answered without missing a beat, and there was a uniform sharp inhale of breath, as if everyone had been holding their breath the first time, hoping it was a joke. When he repeated it, there was a range of emotions from disbelief to betrayal to disappointment to relief. Even Kiuga looked taken aback. It seemed even he couldn’t predict a person wanting to get stabbed to death willingly.

Oh well.

”I almost failed my first assignment from the marshal because of you,” Kaka gritted, taking a threatening step forward. Sagiri did not even have time to move before a heavy punch landed on his stomach, sending him and N’varu both back a few feet before they fell to the floor. N’varu let go of him at some point, and they both fell separately. When sagiri finally stopped, he felt his stomach burn as if someone had thrown a brick at him. He could not breathe because his diaphragm might have been turned inside out, and his chest felt inverted. It felt like he was dying for a second.

Kaka had not held back.

Sagiri coughed a mouthful of blood and spat it on the arena. He coughed for another moment, trying to stand, but failed. Just a moment before, he had said he would not hit a boy who could hold a bow and arrow properly, only to go all out in the following moment. How very Kaka of him. Sagiri felt his cheeks tremble before a small laugh escaped his mouth.

A small foreign sound he had never heard