The constant sound of drops from the ceiling feeding puddles on the floor echoed in the Imperial dungeon. What on the surface was the most opulent and lavish place in Goldhaven, several feet below was a putrid and dilapidated place.
The constant stench of rotting flesh came from the carcasses of rats and other small animals unfortunate enough to lose their lives there, and the slime on the walls prevented the smells from evaporating and escaping, creating a sort of sticky patina.
The flying demon rested its tiny black legs on a horizontal bar, closing its wings and chirping. "Tweet!" it exclaimed as if calling out to the prisoner who resided in that cell.
Beyond the bar of metal eaten away by rust and moisture, a figure appeared from the darkness, moving slowly toward the robin.
The lower edges of the gatekeeper's long, sacred red kimono crawled across the filthy floor, dragging the ubiquitous muddy substance with it. "I thought you weren't coming back, Miru," Ryutaro whispered, supporting his weary body on the bar of the cell.
"Tweet! Tweet!" the bird frantically replied, flapping its wings and alerting the man in front of it. Since the old Ryutaro had been locked up in that cell, he had received neither food nor water and his already precarious physical condition was deteriorating by the day.
Ryutaro had lived his last hours in a room about three meters wide and four meters long, without windows. To stay straight on his feet, he was forced to remove his headgear, which otherwise would have touched the ceiling.
The gatekeeper of the Goldhaven Dojo, who was once the right-hand man of the Tentochu Emperor, was now forced to live like a caged beast as if his entire existence had suddenly lost importance.
Anyone who had seen the Palace dungeons at least once knew that whoever entered the place would only come out lifeless and inside an anonymous rough wooden coffin.
"Hey, calm down. What happened? Try to explain to me calmly," Ryutaro continued, bringing a hand closer to the robin. Stretching out one of his large fingers, the gatekeeper stroked the bird's back, trying to calm it down.
"Tweet, tweet. Tweet! Tweet!" the demon explained, speaking a language understandable only by its owner.
"Mhmh... and then what? Did he use his draconic powers?" Ryutaro inquired, listening intently. "I understand. Hmm. Good. Uff... I figured this would happen," he continued, as the little bird kept on tweeting.
"That's enough, Miru. You've done your duty excellently, as always. Wait here a few seconds, you have one more thing to do for me" the poor gatekeeper added, stepping back and leaning down.
He grabbed the bottom edges of his long kimono and lifted them, clutching the layers of fabric underneath. Unlike the outer fabric, the cloth behind the kimono was a different color, lighter, almost white.
Ryutaro paused with his hands on the kimono and looked towards the outside of the cell, trying to see if any guards were nearby.
*strap* - with a quick and decisive movement, he tore off a piece of the whitish fabric, standing up again and pointing it at the bars, letting the dim light from the flashlights hanging on the walls illuminate it.
Without adding a word, under the watchful green eyes of Miru, the robin demon, Ryutaro clutched one of the door bars in his left hand. That bar was damaged in some spots, and the metal surface that was originally smooth and blunt was now sharp and uneven.
Gritting his teeth, without uttering any cry of pain, he swiped his palm on the bar, getting himself a superficial cut. Soon after, he let his hand hang downward, allowing blood to flow from the wound.
Dipping the finger of his other hand into the blood from the wound and resting the piece of fabric on the sticky floor, Ryutaro used that red ink to write a message on the cloth. Tracing each letter, the gatekeeper shaped that one word, making sure it was legible.
"There you go. Here, take this," he said to his flying friend, rolling up the piece of fabric as if it were a paper scroll and waiting for the robin to clasp it in its toothed beak.
Miru carried out Ryutaro's command and, acting like a tame animal, grabbed the message written in blood. "You must take this message to Yoichi before he leaves the capital. Have him read it when he's in my room, at the Dojo" the gatekeeper ordered, making final recommendations to the demon. "Take care, Miru. This is very important. Come on, what are you waiting for? Go!" he spoke, moving his hand as if to chase it out of the cell.
*chirp*chirp* - little Miru's chirp drifted further and further away from Ryutaro's position, who remained there, facing the bars and making sure that the bird was on the right path to rise to the surface.
"Phew..." he huffed, backing into his damp cell and sitting down on the straw bed, still stained with the blood and sweat of those who had occupied that space before him.
"Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to, boy. You'll have to continue your journey alone, for now," he stammered, thinking back to Yoichi. "Find the blacksmith, forge a weapon, and continue to study the ancient texts, never stopping to cultivate your powers. Fate has great things in store for you, Yoichi-kun."
The last words of Ryuaro's sentence, choked by his weariness of going through that heavy experience, were followed by yet another deep sigh. His cell was one of the last in the longest corridor of the dungeon, accessible only from one direction and guarded by a man in armor every ten meters.
Ryutaro had been fighting all his life long, and just when he had found a reason to continue fighting, the Emperor had decreed his end. What was the message he had written to Yoichi?
His trusty winged friend sprang out of the air duct, through the grid and back to the surface. Its eyes squinted for a moment, forced to adjust the amount of incoming light due to the difference between the underground environment and the outside world.
Hurriedly, it lifted itself into the air and flew over the building, not attracting the gaze of the Akai Kaiba on the lookout on the balconies. The piece of cloth torn from Ryutaro's kimono was clutched in its beak: all Miru had to do was deliver it into the hands of its addressee, on the other side of the city.
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