Spectrum of Passion Chapter 1: Escape

I slowly walked through the dark, cold, wet passageway. My brother, cousin, Howzer, the two princesses and I had found this passageway when we were little. Curious, we followed it to the end and ended up outside the castle. We had quickly turned round and gone back of course, the princesses were too young to be outside the castle without a Holy Knight back then so we had to go back to avoid getting into a lot of trouble.

The passageway would have been easily accessible if it wasn't for all the Holy Knights patrolling the place looking out for any suspicious activity and the fact that the Holy Knights seemed strangely focused on keeping me in the city wasn't helping matters either.

The knight that was told to watch me was the only reason I had to use this passageway in the first place. He fell asleep while we were in the library of the castle so I had to use the passageway in order to get out of the castle. There was no way they'd let me out the normal way alone so I would have to sneak out. Then I could go home and grab a disguise in order to get past the gates.

I don't think anyone noticed me going in here, in fact I don't think there are many people that even know this place is here. A good thing really considering I wasn't strong enough to take on any Holy Knights. Ironic really considering my father was a Great Holy Knight and my brother is a diamond ranked Holy Knight. I didn't seem to have any powers at all; I was a druid just like my father but… I couldn't use my powers, powers that, as a druid, I should have.

My father thought this odd too. According to my father all druids have a power of some kind. So why didn't I? Maybe my father was wrong; maybe I'm not a druid at all. No that can't be it, my father once told me that he was 100% sure that I was druid and if not then I was definitely connected to the Goddess Clan in some way. Maybe I'm just… not strong enough to do anything noticeable.

…

This passageway is a lot longer than I remembered it; I've been walking for quite a while now. Although that could just be because I was walking slowly in order to not crash into anything or trip over anyth-

"Ahhh!"

I pushed myself into a kneeling position and looked behind me to try and find out what I tripped over, whatever it was it was pretty big, I could tell because of what it felt like when I tripped over it.

Unfortunately I couldn't really see anything there; it was just too dark for me to. Curiosity peaked, I moved to touch the thing I tripped over, perhaps I could find out what it was by touching it.

The thing I fell over was covered in dust and underneath the layers of dust was something I vaguely recognised as metal. But it didn't feel the same as the armour the Holy Knights wore, perhaps that was because it had rusted.

Maybe I could use this. The armour would completely conceal my appearance and would make me look like a Knight, I wouldn't find anything better at home. It was pretty unlikely I'd get away with using Gil's armour, it would probably be recognised and I wouldn't be able to believably imitate my brother.

It should fool the knights on duty into letting me through the gates and allowing me to get outside the city grounds which would then allow me to officially start looking for the Seven Deadly Sins, whom I planned on asking to help me save the Kingdom of Liones from the Holy Knights.

The Seven Deadly Sins are a group of very powerful criminals, they used to work as Holy Knights here in Liones, but had to leave after they got accused of killing the former Great Holy Knight and my father, Zaratras.

As the name suggests The Seven Deadly Sins consists of seven people, each has a sin of some kind; the Dragon's Sin of Wrath, the Serpent's Sin of Envy, the Fox's Sin of Greed, the Grizzly's Sin of Sloth, the Goat's Sin of Lust, the Boar's Sin of Gluttony and the Lion's Sin of Pride.

They also have a variety of rumours about them. Many revolve around what sin each of them committed, as most did not know what they did in order to become known as the Seven Deadly Sins in the first place, and of course people got curious but with almost or even no information everyone was left to make guesses.

One of the most talked about rumours though is a rumour revolving around the leader of Seven Deadly Sins; the Dragon's Sin of Wrath, Meliodas. The rumour basically states that Meliodas is a Demon and this rumour was made because of a witness to the Seven Deadly Sins' escape 10 years ago. Apparently the witness had seen a mark appear on his forehead that resembled the mark of the demons if that wasn't enough the witness also claimed that they had seen his eyes turn black.

The response to this rumour was… mixed. Most didn't believe Demons existed at all, others believe they did but are no longer among us, some doubt Meliodas is a demon simply because he waited so long to act against us. In other words most people didn't think the rumour was true, despite this they still enjoyed talking about it. That being said there were some people that believed it, the witness for one and a good majority of the witness' friends and family (there were more of course but they were the ones that most stood out).

Personally, I wasn't sure what I believed. It may be a rumour but that doesn't mean it's not true, I've heard of plenty of rumours that have been proven true before, there was a possibility that the same could be said for this one. In fact every rumour surrounding the Seven Deadly Sins has a possibility to be accurate, not all of them of course but there is a chance a few of them are true and considering those rumours have little to no basis, this one (that actually has a relatively decent basis) has the highest chances of being true.

I admit I am somewhat curious as to whether or not Meliodas really is a Demon, it doesn't matter if he is I just want to know. I can't just outright ask him, though. There was no way he would tell me the truth if he is with the Demon Clan's reputation being like it is.

While thinking about this I had managed to put on the armour and get right to the end of the secret passageway, much to my surprise as I hadn't really been paying attention. I had to make sure I payed attention from here on out though. There was no one but me in that passageway but that would no longer be the case once I walked outside.

Taking a deep breath I stepped forward and pushed the exit of the passageway open and stepped outside, making sure to close the door behind me.

…

Fortunately, the only people that interrupted me were the guards at the gate and thankfully I managed to fool them into believing that I was a knight sent on a job which allowed me to walk right outside the city walls.

The escape had been much easier than I thought it would be especially since the Holy Knights didn't want me getting out the city. They had even gone so far to have a Holy Knight watching me. My escape from him was entirely luck based really, the Holy Knight assigned to watching me had fallen asleep on the job and I managed to get away from him because of it. I'm not sure how I would have gotten away from him if it wasn't for that.

In truth the only reason I had managed to escape at all, let alone so easily, was because I got lucky. The knight falling asleep, no one noticing me heading to the passage or seeing me slip into the passage, no one bothering me as I walked towards the gates and those knights on duty not asking questions, it was all luck that things went the way they did.

And as I trudged through the forest connecting the city of Liones to Kaynes Village I hoped my luck would last until I at least managed to find one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

…

"...Seven… Deadly… Sins…" I uttered. I have long since lost track of how long I've been walking. I was tired, hungry, thirsty and I didn't know how much longer I'd be in this forest for.

But I couldn't afford to stop, I had to keep going. Constantly repeating "Seven Deadly Sins" was helping me do that; it was keeping me focused, reminding me why I was out here in the first place.

I was walking much slower than I had started out, probably due to fatigue. My whole body ached, my breathing was laboured and my body was covered in layer of sweat. Even my sight isn't like it usually is, I could hardly see a thing due to my blurry vision.

Narrowing my eyes, hoping to improve my vision slightly, I noticed a light. Does that mean I'm almost out the forest?

Feeling a sudden burst of energy, my pace quickened as I moved towards the light emanating from outside the forest.

It wasn't long before I reached it, I was finally outside the forest, I could see the village of Kaynes and a building that looked like a hat in the distance.

Heading towards the hat building as it looked closer and I wasn't sure I could even make it there let alone the village beyond it I hoped that whoever was there would be kind enough to let me rest for awhile.

…

Before I entered the building I noticed the sign that hung outside. "The Boar Hat" huh? I get where the hat part comes from but what about the boar part? I didn't see anything to do with pigs around here.

Uttering "The... Seven… Deadly… Sins…" a few more times I pushed the door open and as soon as I did almost everyone inside screamed and ran past me. Were they afraid of me?

I didn't really have much time to think about it though, my head swimmed and my vision started going black. The last thing I saw was a blonde haired boy before…

I blacked out.