THE LAST KEEPER

Chapter 145: 145. ARCHIVE POCKET

Sagiri staggered on his feet before he steadied himself and held onto the bars. His memory might have ended with the man in Myama’s memory mixed with the telepathy, but he was dragged into Myama’s memory.

In Myama’s memory sagiri could see the beast moving through the desert as if looking for something or someone. Then the memory changed to another quickly, and it was the man in Myama’s memory giving instructions for Myama to come in search of him so that this moment could happen. The man must have been doing this before he was put in prison or wherever he was put in chains. Myama had been caught soon after she left the desert, and she had been locked up in chains since then.

Sagiri had wondered how such a creature was caught, but it turns out Myama did not hurt anyone, and she had been locked up in many chains under the earth for years. Sagiri’s heart constricted to what he had suffered. The beast had been mistreated so much over the years, but it had not retaliated to hurt anyone, anyone. Sagiri was pulled out of the memory or pushed out by Myama and he fell forward, his hands submerging in the water.

Myama had not been the one to push him out, but the archive had been the one to push him out. He had not realized it, but he had exhausted more than half his strength from the memory journey.

”You should go too, you have been here for four hours,” Myama spoke out loud this time and not directly to sagiri’s brain, and sagiri jolted in shock.

”You... ” Can you talk?” sagiri asked, his heart beating fast.

”No,” Myama answered. ”I can when I take human form for a few minutes,” Myama said, and sagiri finally looked up, and he almost jumped out of his skin. A beautiful woman with scales was now standing behind the bars. still chained because somehow the chains had been made to contract and enlarge with the size of their prisoner. She did not look totally human, but she now looked to be half snake, half human.

”Why didn’t you do that earlier?” Sagiri asked, and Myama had the guts to laugh.

”I did not want a teenager like you to see a woman of my age naked,” Myama said.

”Do they know that you can do this?” sagiri asked, looking around as if Loku could suddenly pop out.

”No,” Myama answered, so on top of mythicality, the snake was a damned chameleon. ”You should go, before you get into more trouble,” Myama said before she suddenly retracted back to her normal form.

”Didn’t you hypnotize them?” sagiri asked, and this time Myama spoke directly to his head.

’Yes, but the ones outside have been looking for you for hours,’ Myama said, and Sagiri remembered clearly what he had done. He had rendered a man supposed to be way beyond his league unconscious.

”What about you? I have to get you out now,” Sagiri said, but Myama’s big head shook in denial.

”I waited here for you for more than a decade, I will wait till you are ready to go home,” Myama said, moving back a bit further. His head and eyes suddenly changed as if he was experiencing some pain before he pushed out something from deep in his throat.

An egg fell out of its mouth and hit the soggy ground softly.

”What is that?” sagiri asked, even though he could clearly see what it was.

’This is my egg. Us desert snakes only lay one egg in their lifetime. The people who locked me might seem mindless, but they have been waiting for my egg. Desert snakes are loyal to a master, and they must know I would never be loyal to them, so they have been waiting for my offspring.

sagiri looked at the big egg, almost the same size as half of him, and wondered how he was supposed to hide it. Has Myama gone mad? Sagiri was still contemplating what to do when the archive suddenly expanded, and just like that day when it absorbed a whole book of knowledge, it snapped out and absorbed the egg before it retreated inside sagiri.

What?

Sagiri could not fathom what had just happened, but he somehow knew what had happened. So the archive had been like a library to keep things all along, and he had known that. It had responded to his worry about the egg and kept it within itself. It was as if the egg had disappeared and was never there.

’You seem surprised, keeper. It seems you still don’t know the strength of the echo archive,” Myama said, and sagiri shook his head before nodding. How had he not known that the archive was a pocket too? The archive always tried to do new things at the most random times, and he was beginning to wonder what its other abilities were that he did not know of.

”You should go now,” Myama said with sadness in her yellow pupils before she started pulling back.

”I will get you out soon, and you will hatch your egg yourself,” sagiri said out loud to Myama who was already disappearing into the back of where she had emerged from previously. Somehow, Sagiri did not want to part with Myama but now the desperate call had gone, and he knew his mission had been accomplished. Myama had only called him to deliver the message from her master. Now that the desperate call was gone, he kind of missed it.

After a few moments of staring into the cell after Myama and long after the chain stopped dragging, Sagiri was finally able to peel himself from the dark underground prison and start ascending. He had depleted more than half his strength, and the strength and he did not know how much trouble he was in yet, but one thing was for sure. He was in big freaking trouble.