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Monarch of Profound Toxin - Chapter 17
🕑 Added 2024-09-18 18:12:15 +0000 UTCWhen they managed to wrestle off the excited kids wanting to know what he had done to his sparring opponent, Mikla, the black haired man who could open fractures at will, took Eik to a room with a nice, springy bed, a sofa, tables, windows, a bathroom, and other amenities that made the whole place resemble a luxury apartment.
“What is this place?” Eik asked, biting into a round, red fruit from a bowl on the center table. It was so sour that he had to spit it back into his hand and throw it in the trash.
“Those are an acquired taste. I could have told you that, you know,”
“I’m adventurous if nothing else,” Eik said.
“Really?” Mikla questioned as he bit into a fruit of his own.
Eik didn’t answer.
“This will be where you stay anytime you come to the headquarters.” Mikla continued as Atla came through the door, carrying a laced leather pouch which she held up for Eik to see.
“I have what I promised,” she announced.
He ran up to her and looked into the pouch, where a single small, blue pill lay unprotected.
“Will this cure Olivia?” he asked, voice permeated with hope.
“Unfortunately, no. This will simply prevent her from succumbing to her condition before you’re able to cure her.”
Eik’s hands clenched into fists around the leather pouch. “You said you’d save her…”
“I said I’d help, and I am. We’re only just getting to know each other, Eik. This is an expression of trust and goodwill. As the relationship between Earth and the Nidafjeld Alliance grows closer, so will the help and benefits we provide each other grow,” she said, eyes never wavering. “She will not die if you give her this pill. I promise you that.”
Eik deflated into a chair, feeling defeated. He was helpless. Anything they told him he would be forced to accept. This slim woman could annihilate one of Forest’s strongest physical Awakened with a single punch, never breaking a sweat or even showing a hint of exertion. She was absolutely and utterly overwhelming.
And she was nowhere near the top of the Unified Mass. Until now, B-rank had been the epitome of power in their world, but with the revelation of S-rank and even X-rank, were their strongest fighters now just molehills next to mountains piercing the tallest of clouds? Was there something more, even after X-rank? Their world had crumbled and rebuilt itself into something unrecognizable.
No matter how one might think about Earth’s predicament, joining the Nidafjeld Alliance seemed to be an undeniable necessity in their continued survival. All humans on Earth were on the brink of extermination, and it was on Eik to secure their only lifeline.
Cold sweat ran down his back and he felt an urge to run to the bathroom. “Excuse me!” he said as he closed the door behind him. Hopefully the high-ranking emissaries weren’t listening.
When he came back out he offered a deep, respectful bow. “Thank you for the medicine. I will definitely pay you back for this favor.”
She nodded with a pleased smile. “I’m glad you mentioned it. You can pay it back now, if you’d like.”
The still bowing Eik’s mouth tightened into a thin line as he stared at the floor in silence for a moment. “… Yes, certainly. What can I do for you?” he managed.
Atla gestured to Mikla and he handed her the same stack of documents that she had been referring to when she came to visit them on Earth. She riffled through the many pages, tongue peeking out from the side of her mouth as she hummed to herself.
“Ah!” she exclaimed and fished out a couple of page from the middle of the stack. “There just so happens to be something you can help us with,” she said ominously.
“What…?”
“Are you up for a tiny interdimensional expedition?”
“Do I have to answer that?” he muttered apprehensively.
Ignoring his discomfort, she pushed on. “A couple of weeks ago, one of our F-rank trainee teams was lost on a new world. We need someone to go to that world and find them. Are you up for that?”
“Uuh, why don’t you go? You could stuff my whole body into a can of cat food if you wanted to. Surely someone like me isn’t fit for something like this.” Eik said.
“I’m not sure what a ‘can of cat food’ is, but I can’t go because the world is even newer than Earth. It can’t support someone of my caliber yet.”
“And the natives?”
“There appear to be no natives as far as we can tell. And to be clear, that’s more common than not. We often use those new, uninhabited worlds to train our kids,” she explained.
Eik received the general rundown of the situation from Atla with running commentary from Mikla. A five-man team had set out, scheduled to return within, at the very latest, seven days. Today was the eleventh day since their departure. If they agreed to go, Mikla would drop Eik and his team off at the same coordinates where the original team had been sent.
“I’ll ask my friends to come when I go back to give this to Olivia,” Eik said, dangling the pouch of medicine. “Do you happen to have more of this? We have several other patients with the same condition.”
Atla snorted. “Alright. If you go to rescue our F’ers, I’ll see what I can do.”
Mikla ripped a fracture out of thin air, gesturing for Eik to walk through first. The transition to Earth was more or less tolerable this third time around, a slight change in elevation causing him to stumble, but nothing more. He blinked at the noon sun. The fracture had dropped him back in the middle of the central square where Atla had intially emerged.
An arrow missed him only by a hair’s breadth, grazing his ear as it whipped past at frightening speed. He was about to jump back through the fracture, almost colliding with Mikla, who was just stepping through, when a loud voice echoed thorughout the square,
“Stop, stop, stop! He’s one of ours! He’s come back!”
A final arrow flew wide before the assault ceased completely.
By the time Eik turned back again, Mikla looking past him with curiosity, Travis Lockwood had already made it to him. The entire square had been transformed into a military camp with several rows of spiked barricades surrounding the fracture location. What where they expecting those things to do against someone of Atla’s caliber? At least a hundred Awakened circled them, weapons drawn, faces tense and cautious.
They had been ready for a real, genuine invasion.
“Eik.” He nodded, eyes wandering to the unknown man standing in the back. “And who are you?” he asked, wariness oozing out of him.
“You can call me Mikla,” he said, extending his hand for Travis to shake, a courteous gesture he was instructed in by Eik before coming. “I am one of the members of the Nidafjeld Alliance tasked with making contact with TX497—81414, or better known to you as Earth.”
Travis shook the proffered hand and introduced himself. Having had a little time to digest the sudden appearance of an alien being, he was clearly more in control of himself, but he was still maintaining a careful demeanor. Despite the setup here in the square, the high-rankers must have realized that there was no fighting the Alliance. The best they could do was try to navigate it with minimal damage.
“And by the way, I’d like to apologize for anything offensive or irritating that my colleague might have done,” Mikla added with a sly grin, defusing some of the tension.
Travis shook his head. “Truthfully, one incident in particular turned out to be something I’d been dreaming about for some years now,” he said, unable to hide his own smile.
As soon as he had explained the situation to Travis, Eik headed for Olivia. Another two patients had died while comatose. Olivia’s mother, Sarah, was there by her side, sleeping in a rickety chair, heavy purple bags under her eyes. Eik had never seen the woman look quite that exhausted, not that there was anything odd about that, given the circumstances.
He woke her up before he placed the blue medicinal pill on Olivia’s tongue. Some of the color returned to Olivia’s pale face within seconds. Sarah hadn’t had any complaints about the unknown medicine, even the smallest hope winning out over the despair of seeing patients with the same condition dying one after the other, knowing her daughter was only waiting to meet the same fate.
What they hadn’t been able to do anything about, this blue sphere alleviated in moments. Maybe whoever had made this would be willing to teach Eik. He hugged Olivia’s mom as she cried with relief, promising that he’d find a way to cure her. He only hoped that he could keep that promise to her.
Travis had gone to fetch Heath, Sonja, and Michael, so when Eik made it to Mission Central, the three of them were already there, waiting for him at a table. He and Mikla joined them and Travis to brief them about the prospective expedition into the new, uninhabited world. Heath and Sonja took the invitation in stride, their minds already set on a career as hunters, but Michael didn’t appear to be on board.
The young healer had gone pale at the news, his hands shaking something fierce as he reached for his glass of juice. “Mike?” Eik asked.
“I don’t know if I can do this…” he said, staring intensely into his glass.
“Of course you can!” Heath said with a reassuring pat on the healer’s back, which seemed to do absolutely nothing to better his worries.
“I wanted to be a doctor, not this.”
“Healing skills like yours require battles and field experience as well to improve properly, you know,” Sonja pointed out—another point which didn’t seem to make him feel any better.
Michael leaned back in the chair, covering his face with his hands. “You know, I Awoke at my mother’s sickbed. Even before Earth’s collapse—or whatever the hell this is—I always wanted to become a surgeon, so when I was offered the Heal ability, I thought I could finally do something for my mom…” he said and downed the last of the juice.
“Turns out it’s not nearly enough to help her,” he said as his hand began to glow with that soft, green light. He looked like he was on the verge of tears.
“If I may,” Mikla interjected, raising a hand. “If you agree to participate in this rescue mission for us, I’d be more more than happy to ask Atla for medicine like what she gave your friend Eik here. Then you can grow stronger knowing that your mother will not get worse before you can heal her yourself.”
Michael’s eyes widened, and Eik saw the exact moment when the young man became the most determined person in their four-man team. They loaded up on healing spheres and checked their gear before Mikla drew a fracture to the Nidafjeld Alliance headquarters.
Eik popped through more or less unaffected along with Heath, whose [Fortitude] ability apparently allowed him to withstand the worst of the symptoms of interdimensional travel. Sonja and Michael on the other hand didn’t fare quite as well, Sonja stumbling around dizzily, while the healer fell through the fracture to his knees and puked his lunch onto the carpet of Eik’s ambassadorial suite.
“You guys look fit for fight,” Atla said with a cheerful smile, standing up from the couch she’d been waiting on. “Ready to go?”
Heath and Eik nodded while Sonja and Michael struggled to make it to their feet.
“When you arrive, you will find a wooden post stabbed into the earth somewhere near your landing point. That’s something we teach all our explorers to do when they determine an intial direction to move,” she said, handing out soft pockets of bread stuffed with a thick, rich stew of meat and vegetables. They dug in with gusto, even the unwell Michael unable to resist the alluring aroma.
“Oh, it’s dirt duck again,” Eik exclaimed, savoring the dish.
“Dirt duck?” Heath asked.
“It tastes like duck but digs around underground like a mole.”
“Anyway,” Atla interjected with a raised eyebrow. “Follow the direction indicated by that post and you’ll hopefully be well on your way to locating the missing team.”
She led the way out of the room and through a series of hallways until they reached a large room. There were a couple of active fractures, hanging freely in the air within chalk-drawn borders of the floor. Their group went to an unoccupied space as a woman came to meet them.
“I can’t open any more fractures for a while,” Mikla explained. “It’s very taxing, so I’ve asked one of my colleagues to send you through.”
The woman smiled wordlessly and slashed a fracture into existence before walking away. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to seeing that,” Heath muttered to himself.
Atla stood next to the fracture. “We will open a fracture to the exact coordinates every day for the next seven days, after which we will assume your failure. In such a case, please try to make it as close to the fracture as you can, and leave traces of your movements so a potential third team can locate you. Is that understood?”
They all nodded, and she stepped aside to let them pass.
The first thing that hit them was the heat and humidity. It was extreme. Surrounding them were moss-covered trees as far the eye could see, and the deafening whir of a seemingly infinite number of insects forced them to speak with loud voices despite not knowing what might be lurking close by.
“There’s the guide post, I think,” Heath said, waving them over.
The soil underfoot was soft, moss growing wildly there as well. Their feet sunk in with every step and the clearing was covered in old footprints presumably left by the original team almost two weeks ago. A smooth, wooden rod was stuck into the earth, a single wooden arrow nailed to it that pointed to the tree line. There wasn’t anything apparently significant about the direction, so maybe the Alliance team had simply chosen at random.
“There’s something stuck to the back,” Sonja said and ripped a piece of tattered paper off the post.
One side of the page was a bunch of official-looking scribbles written in characters they couldn’t read. The reverse side was a single word written hastily with a muddy finger, edges of the page smudged with bloody finger prints.
