Don's mind continued to wonder until he heard his parents open the door. They had just come back from their date so they were a little lively.
Don pretended to sleep as he heard his parent's footsteps.
His parents opened the door to see their soon sleeping soundly with a book still on his bed. Alfred smiled warmly as he saw this. He carefully took the book off his son's bed and put it on Don's shelf. Betty pulled Don's sheet over his shoulder and gave him a kiss on his cheek.
"Good night baby Donny" Betty whispered. His parents closed his door and then went to Marylines room to do the same thing.
Don opened his eyes and looked at his door. He felt a little bad for keeping such a huge secret to himself but he felt like it was the right thing to do. When he was 10, he somehow got trapped within his siblings' cross fires. He ended up getting hit by a stray chair and fell to the ground.
He was unconscious for only a few seconds but at that moment, he heard the words,
"I will witness it for you" Those profound words woke him right up.
His siblings were berated by their angry parents and they were band from watching theater plays for a whole month.
That very night as he slept he heard that voice again. At first, he had thought it was his head playing trick on him but for the next few days it continued. He hadn't told his parents n fear that his siblings would get punished even more.
In the beginning he started to meditate in order to calm his mind in hopes of making the voice go away. Instead of making it go away however, it became more profound. After a few months he became immersed in the few scenes he had uncovered. Then a year after he had gotten hit by a chair, he deciphered the flying with the birds scene.
As soon as he did, he felt enlightened by the scene.
"The feeling of flying...That would by quite fun" As he said this to himself, he felt his body tremble. All he could feel was pain. He wanted to scream but could not stop open his mouth. Light started to dance around him before disappearing like the wind. After a few minutes, he realized the light was not disappearing but instead, he was absorbing it!
He finally stopped shaking as colorless light started to emit from his body. He was a little confused about what element he had awakened. This was definitely not earth, and it did not seem to be any variant of light magic that he knew of.
He was no quite sure about how other awakenings looked like other than the ones he had seen so he to read about it later. After he stopped analyzing his situation, he became really excited. 'I awakened. I don't know how but I have powers now hehe. I need to show Maryline. She will be so jealous.'
As this thought came into his mind, he heard a women's voice.
"Is this how you will live your finale days?"
For some reason he stopped moving. He felt like crying for some reason. Felt regretful. Felt angry. He felt overwhelmed with so much emotions that he could not even express it on his face well.
After calming down a little he replayed the voice over and over in his head.
He did not know why but after hearing that voice, he felt like he needed to keep his powers a secret. He felt like if he didn't he would face a tragedy.
After that night, he started to meditate in order to better familiarize himself with his power at night. In the morning he would read books about strange events and variant powers known in the world.
He discovered that before moon day became a tradition, some people did extreme things to awaken their powers. In one popular instance, a man jumped over a 120-foot hill and almost died. After waking up from his fall, he lost most of his childhood memories but gained the power of earth and water becoming the rarely seen di-element user. Another popular awakening story was of a 11 year old slave who was almost beaten to death by her owners. Left to die, she awakened the power of flames and burnt her owner's house down including all the people inside.
After reading these stories for months, he realized that he was sort of similar to the flame girl. She had fallen unconscious and when she woke up she had powers. Although he was a little slower at gaining those powers, they were still there.
According to the biography of the girl's life, her powers only fully awakened when she was 13 and before then, she had a tendency to go berserk and act on her emotions. Later on in her life when she became more mature, she joined Arron's ranks as a captain of the first defense.
Arron is the hero of the Aries continent, the land of barbaric beastman. Although this girl was human, she had lost fate in humanity and had won the respect of Arron who gladly took her under his wing.
After mastering his powers in secret, he discovered that he could heal things. This trait of healing is mostly seen in light magic but could also be seen in water and earth magic. Don was not sure which element he had since, his aura was still colorless and was unable to manifest it into a physical form.
After his parents were done with their rounds, they went to bed to sleep. Don sat up from bed and began to contemplate on today's events. Something about the things Viscount Bart said just made him feel uneasy. But more than Viscount, The man in the black helmet made him feel even more uneasy. Out of all the 12 knights, Florence was the only one that kept his helmet on.
Did he have something to hid?
Over the next couple of days Don began to investigate them. He would observe their actions meticulusly and would use perception to see if they were lying or not. He would usaully hide in the wave of kids that listened to the adventurer's story or help Maggie out in the inn while the adventurers were drinking.
It has been 3 days since the party had arrived and they were already to leave on the road once again. Even for adventurers, they were quite quick.
This was the last day that Don could investigate them. To Don's dismay, he had gotten little to no information that eased his heart. He still felt like the party was hiding something from the village.
When he had asked Chief Mayweather on what they had spoken about with the party, he had been swiftly declined. When he asked Maggie, Solomon and the others adults on what they thought of the party, he had only gotten normal replies.
It was the last day and they were going to leave soon so Don decided to take action.
While the party had left to gather some the last bit of supplies, he sneaked his way into their room.
Finding their room was not hard since it was the largest room in the inn. Sneaking inn took some smarts. He had to first note all of the employee's routine and find an opening in which they were not paying attention to the residence hall. He then had to make sure that all the adventurers were gone before he went into their room.
Luckily he had taken the right key before entering the residence or else he would have had to due the whole thing over again.
When he went inside, he noticed that there was barely anything inside the room. He thought it odd but changed his focus quickly to finding a hiding place. He decided to hide inside an empty closet close to the edge of the room.
He stayed there patiently until someone unlocked the door to the room.
through the cracks in the closet door, he saw 5 grey armored adventurers walk through.
"Thank God we are finally leaving this hell hole. How can people live so close to that place." the first grey knight said.
"I know right? I would never live here even if you gave me a 1000 gold." Said the second knight.
"I wish we did not have to stay. The fact that we are so close to the wave scares me. I wish we could have just gotten some resource and bolted on the first day." The third knight sighed at this thought.
"Its not like we had a choice. Viscount Bart thought the villagers would be a little suspicious if we left too quickly. If they knew that a beast horde was heading their way, do you think that they would just stand there and take it?" said the fourth knight as he laughed.
Don heart trembled a little when he heard the word beast horde. In the past 1000 years, what has caused the most casualties in Taurus is that very same beast horde.
"First it will just be a few, but before the villagers will have time to run, Boom! That shitty spider would probably get them." The first Knight said this and laughed.
Don's heart went cold as he heard this. 'We were nice to you and gave you food and supplies for your long journey...'
"It seems like you're not even a little bit ashamed at what we are about to do. Many of these villagers will die you know." The fifth knight looked at the first and fourth knight with contempt.
The first knight walked closer to the fifth knight.
"Don't act like your innocent either. We all ran away that day... we could have saved some more people but we didn't. Those were our comrades. These guys are just gullible bumpkins they don't mean shit. They spend their lives looking at the sky through a well. They worship us, adventurers like we are the 12 Heroes. If they can slow down the Beast horde, then they would be doing their heroes a solid. So, don't think about it." First knight then shoved the fifth knight to the side.
Fifth knight looked very angry but couldn't retort first knight. He was right, at that time, they left their comrades on the guise of protecting Viscount Bart. They knew what they were doing, he knew what he was doing. Fifth Knight's anger slowly turned into shame and sadness for his late comrades.
"Come on man! Get your act together before the others come in!" Second knight said as he heard footsteps.
Fifth knight quickly changed his composure as he pushed down all those feelings.
Don stood motionless as he saw the rest of the party come in. He wanted them to leave already. He wanted to tell everyone about what he heard and evacuate everyone from Laire village. But he knew he could not be found out yet, so he waited patiently.
Once Viscount arrived with the rest of the party, they started to discuss about their plans following their leave. They would leave tonight and go as fast as they can away from Evan forest. They would first head to Beach town to warn them of the beast horde before going to Vernia City to report on their findings. Florence had estimated that by the time the Beast horde has taken over Laire Village and the 2 other villages nearby, it would have been 20 days already.
After they wrapped up their discussion, Viscount had ordered the party to get ready to leave. Th Knights were excited. They were nervous every second of the day at the fact that they were living inside a ticking time bomb. As soon as Viscount took the lead and left the room, everyone else quickly followed.
After everyone had left, Don quickly opened the closet door and ran towards the exit of the room. As he opened the door he saw a black armored knight staring down at him. Don's heart trembled as he saw Florence looking down at him.
"It seems like you did not want to get caught?" Florence said in a cold tone.