Dark Warlord Chronicles

Deception of the Soul

Part 5
"Riddles"

Dais walked into the kitchen. Cale and Sekhmet were already awake, eating breakfast. Dais noted the strange pleasing smell of the cooked food. As he looked at the other Warlords, he noticed that they quite enjoyed the food.
"What would you like Dais? Eggs? Pancakes? Sausages? Homefries? Toast?" Unacera happily chirped at the awakening Warlord as she was busy fixing more food on the stove.
"How about a little of each?"
Unacera turned her head to the right to look behind her at Dais. "Let me guess. Never had it before."
Dais merely shrugged at her blunt question. Apparently the others said the same thing, he thought. "Where's Kayura?"
"She woke up before we did and went off to meditate." Cale managed to say as he tried using this strange thing to eat more food with.
"What is that?" He pointed at Cale's hand as he took a seat at the head of the table. Dais had enough of riddles to solve already today.
"It's called a . . fork?" Cale looked questionably at Unacera. She nodded in response as she was cooking up Dais' meal.
Sekhmet paused for a moment. "Knife. Spoon." He held each in turn for Dais to see. Then Sekhmet returned to his breakfast.
Dais just looked on surprised and curious as they used these utensils to eat with. "No chopsticks?"
"I'm used to these. Sorry Dais." Unacera took the toast out of the toaster and cut them diagonally. "A lot of people use these utensils today."
Dais sighed in interest. He watched his friends eat, learning how to hold and use these silver utensils.
"A lot easier to clean too." Unacera winked at Dais as she carried over a plate of food and a couple of cups. "Pancakes will be done in a minute or two. Here's some rye and white toast, two pieces of each. I forgot to ask which you wanted, but since you wouldn't really know anyway." Unacera sighed and chuckled a little. "Two eggs, two sausages and there's butter for the toast over there along with grape and strawberry jelly." Dais followed her gestures to the items on the table. "There's also salt and pepper here if you want it."
Unacera placed down the cups in front of Dais, then grabbed a pitcher and was surprised at its weight. She opened it to look in and then replaced the top. Then she put it in the sink and went to the refrigerator. Unacera then pulled out a gallon of orange juice and went back to the table. She then poured some in one of the glasses for Dais.
She left it on the table as she went back to the refrigerator for the milk. Then she filled the other glass with the milk for Dais and placed the gallon of milk back in the fridge. Unacera shook her head. "Geeze you guys are hogs. Guess I'm gonna have to let you have a whole gallon of orange juice besides that half of one you drank." Unacera said sarcastically to the open refrigerator, although everyone knew she was referring to Sekhmet and Cale. She closed the fridge door and went back to the stove.
Dais picked up a piece of toast and asked someone to pass the jellies. He spread some grape on one piece of white toast, and strawberry on the other. Then he took a bite and his eyes widened in surprise. "Not bad! I always liked a good cook."
As Unacera was about to blush, Cale, who was sitting to the right of Dais, mumbled out loud, "Kiss up." Cale even puckered up his lips and gave a few smacking sounds to accentuate his point. Dais gave Cale a hard nudge in the arm with his right elbow, then he returned to eating his toast. Cale just laughed at the Warlord and stabbed his fork into a homefry. In fact, Sekhmet and Unacera couldn't help but chuckle softly at Cale's joke. Although, Sekhmet nearly choked on his food from laughing while he was eating. He swallowed hard and drank some milk to help the food go down properly.
"So did Kayura eat this stuff too?" Dais attempted to draw Cale's attention away from his smart remarks.
A smile came on Cale's face. He knew what Dais was up to, but the food put him in a good mood. He would let it pass, and play with the charade . . . for the moment. "That's what Unacera said."
Unacera carried a plate with two pancakes and a bowl of homefries to Dais. "Hopefully there still should be maple syrup left on the table for the pancakes." She said sarcastically. The Archdruid was quite happy to see that there was plenty left for Dais.
Dais picked up the fork and knife already set at the table. After eating his eggs and toast, he saw that Unacera had finished cleaning up the pans she used. "Not going to eat?" He said to her.
"I already did earlier. Figured I'd need my strength to cook for you guys." Unacera winked and smiled pleasantly.
Unacera moved out of the way as Sekhmet got up and went to the sink with his empty plates. She helped place them in the dishwasher. Sekhmet then quietly thanked Unacera for the breakfast and went to the front room to watch the television. Cale finished as well and after placing his dishes away, he went to sit down with Sekhmet.
Sekhmet sat on the right end of Unacera's blue couch that faced the TV. He held the remote and flipped through the channels. Unacera decided to stand in the open doorway to watch along with them while she waited for Dais to finish. A certain news channel caught Sekhmet's attention as he turned up the volume.
"There's been no more disturbances in Toyama Japan. Scientists though are still quite puzzled by the odd occurrences that happened to this date. Law officials also can not explain the strange castle that temporally appeared above downtown or what happened to it. Although we do have some footage given to us by a television station. Until recently this tape has been kept secret for examination, but since the threats have seemed to have subsided, the tape was released."
"I wonder if you're going to be on TV?" Unacera said aloud to the Warlords. At this Dais got up to watch as well in the open doorway.
"This small news crew was near the sight of the strange events as they unfolded. The film is quite raw and not clearly focused either, but this is what they taped."
The follow footage on the television showed the people running in panic as glass smashed down upon them. Then the taped skipped to show four distant figures, each standing on the roof of a building.
"Hey you are on TV! Not your best shot though."
The footage continued as lightning blazed the sky and a strange castle seemed to appear. Then as a strange dark green gray mist approached the camera crew, and the footage was cut abruptly.
"This footage is only mirrored by the likewise strange event of New York." The next tape showed an empty armor attacking people.
"Sage's armor!" Cale gasped.
"Yes. It is as I said and feared." Unacera replied sadly.
"The Japanese government is working with American law officials to determine if these two distant events are indeed related. However the strange armor and the objects from Japan have yet to show themselves again. In other news..."
"Sometimes I wonder if it is more evil from the Dynasty." They all turned to see Kayura in the hallway behind Unacera and Dais.
"And we stick out in this society. It would be easy to find us like this."
"I've been thinking the same thing Dais. There's not much that we can do for the moment. However it would be nice for you all to get some clothes. They would look much better to people than those bicolor body armors."
"And an Ancient's monk robe." Kayura added to Unacera's comment.
"We can go late tonight to shop, when less crowds of people are around. That way we'll attract less attention. I think I may have a jacket that each of you can fit. With them zipped and buttoned you should look better when you shop around too."
"Good because I think I would like to take a little break from it all. It would be nice to not be stared at so I could look around at the sights while we're still here in Japan. It sounds like that if this new trend keeps up, we'll have to go to New York." Dais looked out of the large picture window. "Well I better return to my food before it gets cold anyway." He added before anyone could reply.
No one thought anything of Dais' reply or that he had an alternate purpose for his vacation. Besides, Dais thought, a nice jacket with deep pockets would be able to hide a certain silver flute.

To Be Continued...