The Ready Guardian

By C Utigard

For years Daniel had admired it, the cryptic stone temple in the heart of downtown. He could never have guessed the secret it holds...

• Language: English
• Publisher: C Utigard
• Release date: Mar 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311589675

Book preview

The Ready Guardian

Copyright 2015 C. R. Utigard

Published by C. R. Utigard at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The Ready Guardian

The door closed and filled the temple with darkness, flooding the interior with a thousand echoes. Flinching, Daniel peered over his shoulder nervously. He wasn’t sure he was allowed to be there; he wasn’t sure anybody was around. Maybe the temple was filled with some sort of congregation he was interrupting, and maybe it wasn’t. Whatever the circumstances within, the door closed loudly and mostly everyone is shy of an accidentally-slammed door.

But Daniel wasn’t interrupting—the place was deserted. When he did turn around, he had to squint through the darkness to confirm it, but it was apparent almost at once. The shadows of the expansive room betrayed little besides their loneliness, and Daniel was not accustomed to loneliness, so it put him off. Regardless of how he felt about the slammed door and the lonely hall, he was trapped. The heavy, medieval door wouldn’t budge no matter how he fiddled with its lock or pulled and pushed against its bulk.

Suddenly, Daniel was aware of the thickness of his breathing and felt childish. It was only a dark room after all, but he’d always been nervous of the dark… he saw things in it, things he readily discounted as conjurations of his imagination, but still they were there and they inflated his unease. For a moment, with his back to the dark room, Daniel put his head against the door and contemplated his next move. The answer seemed obvious: on the one hand, go through the building and find another exit, hopefully before he was late to work; on the other hand, he was impeded by a cowardly voice from within pleading for him to stay by the door and wait for someone to come along and open it.

He didn’t like waiting, so he faced the room. Row after row of pew all led up to a front-and-center platform raised by a few steps. Upon the platform there was a podium and behind the podium, a table. His eyes, having adjusted to the dark, were just able to make these things out. They were aided by a thin band of golden light