Dilan was missing.
We didn’t notice immediately. I’m loathe to admit it, but all of us were caught up in our own projects then. If he wasn’t in the laboratory, then surely he was in the library, or the gymnasium, the chapel, the garden… it was a large castle.
Elaeus was the first one to mention it, and it was like breaking ice. Nobody could remember seeing him. Braig appointed himself his brother’s keeper and made a thorough search of the grounds. He found nothing.
“Could someone have attacked him?” I asked Braig later.
“As if! He’d kick their asses. No, something weird’s going down.” He was sitting with his feet were up Ansem’s– my desk, but there was a nervous tension around him. Braig was nervous. That simply was not natural.
I went to my room that night still worried. I sat with eyes closed and let the shadows creep close to me, as they’d been doing since I opened the door in the basement. They were cold velvet against my skin, but any comfort was welcome. Even was so, so busy. We all were, now that Ansem the Self-Important wasn’t there to hold us back. The last thing we needed was another loss.
“Ah, Dilan, where are you?” I murmured, thinking of the knowledge the Dark was said to give. Perhaps it could guide me now?
“I am here,” came a whisper. Dilan’s voice, but faraway and forced. As if he were struggling to speak at all. I felt something move and opened my eyes, half-expecting to see him there.
There was only a heartless, one of the natural ones, but taller and somehow more humanoid than the shadows that I’d been seeing in the corners. Only…
Then he bowed and I understood. This was Dilan.
This was a surprise. It shouldn’t have been, considering how much we pushed into the Dark, but it was nonetheless. It was… worrisome. It should have been, at least, though I didn’t actually feel worried. I did feel a trill of elation at having recognized him, having been answered by the Dark, and then the expected guilt at feeling that thrill. To think that he’d been reduced to this and still he bowed to me!
Still, the loss of Dilan was nothing to take lightly; he was a good researcher. At the very least, Braig was not going to be happy.
I shouldn’t keep him waiting. I stood.
Dilan’s heartless started to follow me, but I stopped him with a gesture.
I stopped him! But no, it was not appropriate to feel… or at least, not appropriate to show it. So many feelings, so little time.
Still, they would keep. I left my room in search of Braig.
