The Four Guardians

After encountering a wall of the monsters that watched them. Sagitta ran with the boy back through the mansion, hoping to find another exit.

"God damn it!" She screamed in frustration. "This place is so confusing!"

They continued to run around aimlessly, using the footsteps of the one with them in the mansion as a guide of where not to be. It was three floors but each floor was the size of a city. Thousands of rooms that looked identical except for slight changes with patterns in the walls or floor. Some rooms only had a single cracked tile as their difference.

"Grrrr," Sagitta said still running without worrying about stamina. "What would the other guardians do? Mane would try and punch his way out but I can't do that… I'm not built like him."

"G-guardians?" The boy spoke. "I want to be a guardian."

"What did you say?" Sagitta said putting the boy down only for one of the monsters to walk through the walls causing the two of them to continue running, all the way back to the prison.

"Why are we back here?" the boy said rubbing his head causing his hair to spike.

"Forget about that. What did you mean earlier about wanting to be a guardian?"

"I-I wanted to become a guardian when I escaped this place… when I left the prison… I can't become a guardian if I'm stuck here."

Sagitta looked at the boy closer than before. As when she was always running she never got to look at him.

"Y-you aren't a boy?" She said realising your mistake. "You're a girl?"

STOMP STOMP

Sagitta's realisation was short lasted, as the footsteps continued to advance. She kept running whilst holding the girl's hand. Coming up with a million questions in her head that she had to know the answers to.

"Alright…" Sagitta said as she began to show that she was running out of breath. "What's your name?"

"I-I don't know… I don't think I have one." The girl said.

"What's your earliest memory?"

"I-I don't know. I remember waking up in this prison, being tortured then killed."

Sagitta stopped and looked at the girl who wore a smile. She crouched down on the hard floor to get eye level and looked blankly at the girl that was standing in front of her.

"E-earlier," Sagitta said. "You said you'll be killed… Did you die in this prison?"

"I don't know." The girl said no longer hesitating on her answers.

"What about the garden? What is it?"

"It's a warm place." The girl said as if she was a different person. "It's where we always watched the monsters."

"we?" Sagitta said. "Who is we?"

The girl didn't answer but instead lead Sagitta by the hand, showing her the monsters that sat in the cells. Ones that were unlike the ghosts that were following them. They were much smaller and their eyes showed pain. They wore a humanoid body but their bodies were as soulless as the farthest planets. The girl led Sagitta back to the mansion and sees another young monster looking at them with a smile. The girl let go of Sagitta's hand as she began to walk towards the monster which was backing off with every approach.

Sagitta turned back to look at the girl she was leaving behind, who smiled brightly at her.

She didn't have much choice as to what to do. She followed the small monster that led her around the house, into places she never went into before. Eventually leading her back into the demon realm.

"W-what?" Sagitta said looking around. "I'm back?"

She quickly ran around the tower she and the other guardians live in. Calling out for them, only for no answer.

"This must be a memory…" She said to herself as she continued to follow the young monster.

"So, Tempus, tell me…" In the centre room of the tower, where Sagitta was lead, Ifer and Tempus sat battling it out at chess. Talking to each other. "What is your favourite human superstition?"

"Hmmm?" Tempus thought to himself. "There was a strange one I heard from my parents… something about the souls of the dead… a human soul is represented by nothing but darkness and follows the one that took it from the world."

"Why am I seeing this?" Sagitta said looking for the young monster who was already leaving. Sagitta wanted to stay and listen more, she wanted to understand more of what was going on, but she wasn't sure where that answer would come from. If she didn't follow the monster, would she be trapped?

She walked back with the young monster, all the way to the garden. In the garden stood all the monsters she had seen and more. From babies to old men. It was clear what the person used to be before. Sagitta looked at them all with an isolated smile. She tried to make herself seem as contempt with the situation but couldn't block out what she was experiencing.

"I had a feeling when I saw that prison…" She said to herself as if she was tormenting herself over it all.

"I'm sorry." She said to the group of monsters that watched her as the sky in the garden turned quickly to night. Sagitta looked at the sky but didn't care. She let out a big breath before sitting down on the grass, only to be approached by one of the monsters who resembled the young girl from before.

"Are you me?" Sagitta asked.

"I don't know…" The girl responded, throwing Sagitta another question.

"Do you feel bad about what you've done?" The girl said to Sagitta who looked at her with the same smile of anguish.

"I can't change it…" She said. "Perhaps I did what I did as a way to make up for the pain I was caused. A way of revenge… These places are parts of my past. I remember them all… They may not be the exact same as they were but they were a part of me."

Sagitta laid back on the once warm grass that gently graced against her pale skin and thought to herself about the places she had visited.

"What happens next?" she asked the girl.

"You can leave whenever you want." The girl said causing Sagitta to shoot up and listen. "You just need to go back home… We won't stop you…"

It was hard to understand what the girl meant. Sagitta didn't know and could only walk through all the parts of her life that she had been through, looking back on them with regret and guilt as she was followed by the monsters. After some time passed, she retracted all her steps since she arrived, ending up back in the cell she woke up in.

She grazed the walls of the cell dragger her hand across the chains hung on the wall. Pulling them away, revealing ch.i.p.s in the stone.

"857," Sagitta said to the monsters. "The number of days I was in prison for…"

She looked out the window of her cell at what was once snow, and now only a dark abyss of nothing that would no longer show her the memories.

She sat leaning against the back wall as all the monsters returned to their own cells and places that they came from. Sagitta could only hope to eventually fall asleep on the cold solitary floor.

# # #

"Sagitta…" A voice called out.

"Sagitta!" It called out again.

"Sagitta wake up!"

"What the hell!" Sagitta said as she jumped up, looking at the bright world that was around here. "W-where am I? what year is it?" She asked.

"You are at the border of our land," Ebba said relieved that Sagitta wasn't dead. "Your heart stopped but it seems as if you were ok.

"H-how long was I out?" Sagitta asked.

"About 2 days. They got the eye. They got the glass eye. We couldn't stop them..."

"The eye…" Sagitta said thinking to herself. "I have to go."

She jumped up and was offered a horse dragon by Ebba and quickly accepted. She had one thought in her mind after waking up. Trying to suppress the memories of what she witnessed she could only focus on returning to and warning Tempus.