Twenty

As I thought of Guardian Corp headquarters, I remembered, I vowed never to touch the moon's soil ever again. I took a deep breath and opened a portal in front of me. A portal that led to the throne room of Alkebulan. A portal to the land my stomach screamed for me to rush to.

I opened it easily, unlike 200 years ago and I walked through it. Before I could exit the portal, I saw a scene that drove me almost nuts with anger.

Shay was forced onto her knees in front of the old king and was tied. She was being forced to bow to the old crone. I frowned and took another deep breath as I fought through the anger to think clearly.

Cyraon was standing tall with arms folded in front of him as four soldiers hit his legs in a futile attempt to get him to bow. But he wasn't. The old guy was resilient and even though bounded in a land far from his domain, he wasn't giving in.

He just kept up straight and told the four men to blow harder. He was a mountain, no wind was going to make him bow.

I scoffed at it. Especially with the Old King, the new king, and the crown prince making fun of my men. My guardians. Try making the old guy bow, I knew it was hard. A lot have tried over the past seven thousand years of my life. A lot have failed.

But shay. But princess Sharifa…

She was a princess.

She was weak.

She was not to be toyed with but protected. She was…

I took a breath to calm myself down, but it was growing hard seeing her tied up like that. I walked throw the other side of the portal, making myself visible to them.

No one was going to…

"khumet!" the king shouted my name from his throne and his men stopped trying to make Cyraon kneel once they heard my name. even the one who had advanced towards me stopped when he heard my name.

"so good of you to finally join us." The old crone said getting up from the throne I should have ripped away two thousand years ago.

I ignored him and knelt beside Shay.

"you, okay?" I asked her as I ripped every chain, she had on her to pieces. She looked at me with tears full in her eyes. Once I freed her. She jumped on me and hugged me.

As my skin made contact with hers, her thoughts which were always barricaded behind a huge door screamed at me. the very same way they screamed in 2006. She wanted to be out of here. She wanted to be saved. She wanted her family. She wanted…

She was there. Not here. She was in 2006, not in 2012.

I hugged her back and told her everything was okay.

I was here to help her. I would leave her unprotected as long as she was on earth.

I hugged her tight and opened a channel beneath us before the prince who saw me disrespecting his three-thousand-year-old grandfather and wasn't going to take it could approach us and left through it.

"don't worry prince, he'll be back as a judge, why don't you all continue blowing?" he asked crossing his arms once more.

I left her go as my island materialized around us. But she held on tighter to me.

"it's okay, we are in the open, you can open your eyes now." I told her and she stole a peek over my shoulder. She saw the open land and quickly apologized for being afraid.

"It's okay." I told her. I know what she had gone through this side to be here with me. I didn't know what she went through on the other side, but for her to be as broken as she was from 2006 until 2010, I knew it had to be something not just missing her family.

But being afraid is what made a guardian a guardian. Gods are not afraid of anything except their king, sometimes, it's why they are asshats.

"where are we?" she asked, looking around. at Acadia, it was long past midnight, and at Alkebulan it was shortly before noon, she could guess our time zone easily as it was now a little before sunrise. But I knew that even though we are halfway to Arcadia as of this moment, she would not be able to guess the exact location. We were close to the frozen continent. But we didn't exist on the human reception frequency, so the magnetic field of Earth was not going to be helpful to her.

"This is my island," I told her. "I've lived here whenever I felt the need to be alone for the past seven thousand years." I rubbed her back hoping it'll make her a bit calm.

"it's the safest place there is on earth. No one can touch you here, so make yourself comfortable in there." I pointed to the house a football field away. Beside it, a kilometer-long tree stretched itself into the sky, my tree. She looked at it with questions on her face, I think, then turned to me.

"The sun will rise in half an hour, stay inside and I will be back before then," I said and turned to leave but she grabbed my hand with eyes that begged me not to leave.

"Don't leave," she said holding tightly to my shirt. I hugged her one more time and kissed her forehead.

"I'll be back before you know it," I told her again and left as she touched her forehead. Making her sleep.