GARO Fanfic – Exiled’s return, 7

Chapter 7: Ghosts


Next morning Rei, with one of his shorter swords, partially collapses the spell protecting the Shrine of Darkness, and the trio can go into its area.

“Good hiding place” the younger knight admits. “It’s unvisible from outside but, look at what it’s behid the spell!”

It is a black and almost cubic structure on one level and, contrary to what would be normal, made of stone. It is without any windows or architectural ornaments, or steps, or anything that catches your attention, except its shape, stuff and color.

“Plain essence” Jabi concludes after watching it. “This building was made to bear something as dark as genuine”.

“And, you think we will find here something about the Bariri horrors?” Kouga adds pragmatically.

“ ‘Legendary horrors capable of becoming physically and auric the humans they choose’, the Enciclopaedia said” she replies. “I understand that here there’re stored the most old and obsolete books and, also, the most dangerous ones. I don’t know where else we could find a legend”.

“Zaruba” Rei turns to Kouga’s ring, “this is the place where Barago found the book that got him lost, doesn’t it?

“Indeed”.

“Look”.

Jabi points to a metal plate attached near the doorway, inscribed with the text: ‘Honorable guests, take care of the spirits of those ones who remained here’.

“So, it’s a graveyard or a cursed place?” This idea looks to amuse Rei, but it does not deserves the consideration of his two workmates.

They cross the threshold, and there is a hallway with some doors. The ceiling is invisible, so hight it is. Soon, their trained eyes to the darknes can see a room.

“Fascinating!” Jabi rushes there. “It’s a real sanctuary!” When Kouga and Rei get there, she adds: “Or, at least, it was at some point”.

At the middle a platform raises, where the priest did his job. Jabi jumps up quickly. Its floor lights up.

“Jabi, I think you should get down” Kouga says. “We don’t know what it was and, apparently, it still works.”

She ignores him and looks for a meditative state, until she gets dizzy and is dropped by both knights.

“Incredible!” She says after recovering. “I had a vision of the world of the horrors, I know it was!”

“Don’t do something as stupid as that again” Kouga scolds her. “You haven’t been trained to practice in a sanctuary”.

“You know something, Kouga? You're getting more grumpy than usual”.

Afterwards, they spread over the rooms of the hall. Rei’s inspection is very slow. Each step he does, every place his eyes fix, show him a strange book, a curious artifact or a bag full of some apparently unknown substances. He has a trouble concentrating on what they have come to do.

Jabi feels suddenly trapped by the archaic objects which, in its time, had to be useful. She recognizes ones and deducts the use of others, but some few ones are an enigma to her. She feels tempted to take away some of them to be studied in her spare time. But, at last, she holds under the folds of her full skirt a book entitled The Shrine of Darkness.

Kouga knows what they are looking for, and puts all his attention on it. He reads titles and opens cupboards, and nothing can distract him. Until a book falls right at his feet. He turns to see the cause of such an unexpected landing, without success. He understands that the book seeks to him. He feels invaded by the reminding of what happened to Barago in this place, but he reads its title anyway: Advanced Attack and Defense.  He leafs it, curious, but soon his fingers stop in one of its pages, which he reads eagerly. Until he hears Jabi’s voice.

“I’ve found it!”

Kouga save the ancient book in an inner pocket of his trench coat and goes to her.

*     *     *

Twenty-four hours later Rei and Jabi try to enter into Kouga’s house, but no one comes to open the door.

“Didn’t we agree to meet at this time”?

Rei does not respond, but pulls out a wire from inside his black trench coat and puts it in the lock of the door.

“Why am I not surprised that you knew to do that?”

Jabi displays a sly smile when asked, but Rei does not seem to find it funny.

“If my dad had come to learn it” he says, “I'd be screwed”.

A ‘click’ marks the opening of the door. They enter. On the little table in the spacious lobby there is an envelope, and the letter apparently contained inside it, on the floor. Rei pull it up to put in on the table, but a casual glance at its content does stop him to read it.

“Stupid!” he exclaims, drawing the attention of his fellow. “He has brought Kaoru from the hospital, with the explicit opposition by the doctor!”

“Don’t be so surprised. What could the doctor do?”

“Firstly, if she stays here, he’ll be more distracted. Besides, why discharging her from the hostpital, if we can’t do anything for her either?”

Jabi shrugs.

“He's in love. You’re worrying too much about it”.

The young knight shakes his head in disbelief, but Jabi has stopped to attend him and goes to the salon”.

“What’s the...”

She rushes into the room and Rei hurries behind her.

It is a strange scene. Kaoru, sitting on an armchair, so much hieratic. Stiff. In front of her, on the floor, Kouga looks to have been left where and how he fall down.

Jabi can not wake up Kouga. He’s dull, she finds out after touching his aura with her hand.

Surprised because Kaoru looks foreign to everything happening there, Rei aims to shake her with a hand, but he seizes it away and screams. He rocks it with his face contorted with pain.

Jabi takes out her attention from his childhood friend. Rei's hand is rarely pale, swollen, and still aching. She touches it. It is hard as a stone. She turns to the girl on the armchair.

“ There’s some kind of energy surounding her. What’s this?”

The priestess watches that there is a medium sized book on the floor. A very old one. She picks it up.

“Advanced Attack and Defence” she reads, and eyes it. “Do you bet that he found it inside the Temple of Darkness?”

“He's insane!”

Rei began to notice that his damaged hand softens, gradually returning to normal. By her side, Jabi has found a white paper, a modern one, among the pages of that book.

“This’s what he’s made: a shield of time” she concludes, after reading the marked page.

“A what?”

“A spell capable to isolate a being or a thing inside a capsule where time has stopped to run” she says.

Rei, shaking his hand almost restored, looks at the unconscious Kouga with some admiration.

“So, he’s managed to protect her”.

Jabi, which has taken away her eyes from reading, adds:

“But the power invoked by him to pass through himself in order to be controlled, and I fear that it may have damaged him”.

“I knew something was wrong. He’s lost any consciousness of his limits”.

“He never really had them” Jabi says, sitting beside the young man on the floor. “Kouga has lived on the edge of destiny, remaining balanced, yearning no more than necessary. But, he’s lost his link with his heart and, now, he’s a man in the jaws of that same fate”.

“His weakness has turned his love into an obsession”.

“Shut up. That sounds like an epitaph”.