Red Leaves and the Living Token - By Benjamin David Burrell Page 0,5

Yet forgiveness had a price. He had so much to protect, so much at risk.

"I will do everything in my power to stop you from taking it. You must know that." He told them with as much strength as he could pull together. To add emphasis to his words, he struggled to push himself up enough to rest on his elbows.

"Master, please. You assume the worst of us. That's not why we're here."

"Then what do you want from me." He questioned.

"I'm no longer the angry young boy that left here so many years ago. I've come to regret, rather deeply, the way I ended our relationship. The memories are... an embarrassment."

At least they agreed on that. The events were an embarrassment to both. The School Master thought. Never had he been so grossly humiliated by a student to whom he had bestowed so much trust. That trust ended in the breaking of a sacred oath. True, it was the boy, not he, who broke his covenant with the school and the order. Yet he held himself just as accountable. The boy was his responsibility.

He had left for his monthly trip to the mountains to perform his duties. The young Valance must have followed him into the woods. He must've been there hiding in the trees watching him when he took the Token from his cloak and opened the path.

That path was visible only to the holder of the Token. So he gave little thought to preserving its secrecy path. He never thought he'd be followed.

At the end of the path, below the gray peaks of mountain range that separated the Zoen lands from the Petra and Botann, a majestic white building rose up out of the mountain wilderness.

He had always paused for a moment as he came through the trees to take in the beauty of the Temple, the Temple of the Order of the Reds. It was the only one in existence, that he knew of.

"You went where you were not invited and took what you were not given!" The School Master accused.

"Yes, yes I did." Lord Valance admitted.

It wasn't enough that valance had followed him to the temple. He was seen hours later returning to the school ground with a sack of weapons and armaments.

He stole from the temple!

The School Master looked up at Lord Valance. "I follow the same rules I asked you to follow? I go nowhere unless invited and take nothing that is not given. It is their decision. And to you, they did not give."

The School master had remembered pushing through a crowd of students that had gathered in the commons. He found Valance at the center of the crowd standing over his loot of weapons trying to stir up the students with his stories of secrecy and oppression. He had wanted to shows the students what was being kept from them, how they were being held back.

The School Master had expected their confrontation to be abrupt. He expected the young Valance to back down, admit his error and accept punishment. Instead, the boy bent over, picked up a sword, removed it from its sheath and held it up as a threat.

The mass of students crowding around them took a step back in reaction, not just from the young Valance's aggressiveness, but from the weapon. The blade that he had unsheathed was moving, or rather, flowing as though it were made of a black liquid. It's entire length radiated a halo of darkness.

The situation had progressed into the most horrific possibility he could've imagined. Violence was something he abhorred. Violence against a child, a student, was unthinkable.

As the boy stood there holding this dangerous weapon, his glare fixed on his target, the outcome became clear. The school master slipped his hand into his cloak. In that moment, all thought pushed out of his mind, all that was left was instinct.

The boy lunged.

The School Master stepped aside to dodge the blow, slipped the dagger from under his cloak and put it to the boy's throat. "Put it down," He had commanded.

His short blade shined with a blinding light, filling the room. He remembered the look on Valance's young face as his resolve finally began to weaken. He dropped the tip of his sword.

The awful ordeal was over; he thought. Until another young boy stepped out of the crowd and picked up a weapon from the pile under Valance's feet. He unsheathed it and held it against the school master. An instant later he was followed