Ike Penworthy

Chapter |~ 19

Leaving Sorn with his complaining sister, I maneuver through the corridors and toward my room. Jax is away scouting out Storytown and Cloud is off hunting, leaving me with my thoughts and the ever-present urge to go to the town myself and finally end all of this.

According to Sorn that'd be bad for my health and according to some guy named Liam, who annoyingly keeps showing up, my health is already bad so I might as well make the most of it and survive a little longer (because that makes sense). I nearly slaughtered them both, but Sorn is becoming a friend and I have some fuzzy feeling I know Liam, although I can't place where. I'm really, really bad with faces.

I freeze as a strange feeling prickles my senses. Barely a pause later my instincts scream and I crouch at the sound of danger. An arrow wobbles where it buried itself in the spot my head had been. Rolling away I get into the crevice of a doorframe and calm my breathing, listening to the silence around the hall. A flicker passes, hardly noticeable in the fading light. A man steps forward, a twisted sneer on his lips as he pulls the arrow from the wall. His faded grey eyes dance around the hall.

"I know you're here, Ranger." His voice is a cruel growl, rumbling around with his thick accent. "You better scurry back to your master before I find you again."

Breathing tightly, I step forward, hands up. He draws an arrow, muttering something. I glare at him. "I'm not a Ranger."

He huffs, stormy eyes roving over me. "No." He concludes. "You're not." The arrow pointed at my chest doesn't waver as he steps forward. "Who are you?"

"I am Ike Penworthy, Guardian of Dutch Dashlyn." A prideful stirring in my chest has me straightening. It felt amazingly surreal to say that.

He finds the Academy Guardian patch on my shoulder. The bow lowers. "You've got fast reflexes kid." I incline my head. A moon ray slithers through a window and passes before he talks again. "Ike Penworthy." He muses. "That's a name I haven't heard in years."

My curiosity raises an eyebrow.

He moves forward, circling me in the small hallway. "Your face matches what I remember of the name."

"And who would you be, sir?" There's a feeling of aggression in my words, a hint that he's crossing a line.

He steps back, acknowledging my warning. "I am Keeper Jon," he bows low and with elegant grace for such a large man.

My foot moving back is the only thing that tells of my sudden remembrance and slight fear. The want to run is strong.

"Ah... you remember me." His voice is quiet and forlorn. I nod. He sighs. "I guess I should have been prepared for this. I always wondered if death would wear a familiar face. Never thought it'd be yours though. Crest always figured you'd die on the table, or die in the arena, or die in the chambers." He scoffs. "Damn mongrel."

Memories that I'd forgotten, memories buried so deep they'd started holding up my head, were crumbling open. The table where needles dug into my skin. The dark arena with its horrid monsters and screaming victims. The chambers where my body was put through so much that I became indestructible. Another flash of the arena pierces my skull, a faint recollection of my hands gripping a sword and a man's head at my mercy. The muscles in my shoulders quivering with the knowledge of me striking, hacking into his body and disconnecting his head. And suddenly I was the monster in the arena.

Everything swallows me with ease, memories so old my mind blanks.

I gasp in a breath, drawing myself from the edge and open myself back to the present. Keeper is still standing there, his eyes sadden and expression apologetic. There are other memories surfacing. He's in them. Sometimes he's yelling at a man I know all too well, other times he's holding my head and trying to get me to drink. Another one he's carrying me to my cell, where on that same day Tye had appeared to befriend me.

"But you didn't, did you?" I say, my voice scraping more than normal in my anguish.

He shakes his head. "No. I always knew you'd survive. I tried for years to free you, but Crest had your family to back him and I had no one." He chuckled sadly. "No one but Tye."

I swallow past those memories, strongly ignoring them. "You left."

Keeper nods. "I left after you were recaptured. I wasn't going to watch you go through that again." My anger is a fast moving current, but not at him. "To think..." he started again, softly. "To think you'd end up here at my Academy as a Guardian. How did you escape again and become a Rider? Did you go to the mainland for training?"

I shake my head. "Tye helped me escape the second time, but he's gone now. I was captured once more at the beginning of the year. Crest had my Dragon killed and made me bond with an older one so that I could come here, all in a plot of revenge toward you."

Keeper frowned. "Against me?" A moment later it occurred to him. He chuckled. "The Rangers." His chuckling continued. "That old bat. He lost you and made a plan of revenge against me, for stealing his Rangers. How humorous."

He did something much unexpected after calming his sudden grinning behavior. Taking a knee before me, he held the bow out in his palms. "Revenge is yours, Ike Penworthy, but I ask that you allow me to help you find Crest first, allow me to avenge his crimes."

Taking a step back, I shake my head. "His death is mine, Keeper Jon, yours is not." Raising his head, he looks surprised. "You may help in the hunt, but I get to kill the man."

Keeper Jon jumps to his feet with the energy of a man much younger. "Then let the hunt begin."

©JJHays2017

[Note]: Second to last new character has come to light. Yay!!!

Don't let anyone kill you today,

JJ

08.14.17