Divine: Merchants of the Silent Shore
Chapter V
The Defense Minister, who had only just arrived, was quick to take charge of the search and rescue party. He organized the soldiers into two groups. One would come with him and head to the raider camp that he claimed to know about and the other would scout the rest of the woods in case the raiders had fled with Petrus in another direction.
The diplomats that had come with the convoy demanded that half of the guards be left behind to protect them. The had it in their minds that the raiders were targeting them and not Marty. The Defense Minister managed to convince them to be left behind with only a third.
Marty volunteered immediately to be part of the group to go and attack the camp, but the Defense Minister assigned him to the scouting party. He explained, in an accent that reminded Marty of the French colonists of Europa, that the raiders were after him. If Marty was spotted coming to the main raider camp, then they would call in any of their guards in hope of killing the famed, Messenger. If Marty was elsewhere, then they may send out raiders, making the camp easier to attack.
Some people had issues with Marty being so obviously used as a type of bait, but the lone human saw the logic in it and agreed to his posting.
Vargus on the other hand would not be anywhere but with the group to attack the main raider camp. He wasn't thinking straight and had both his son and blood on his mind. Marty couldn't say anything to calm the wolf down who had gotten very quiet.
Little time was wasted and within an hour, the two groups departed with the Defense Minister leading one and Marty put in charge of another. The paladins had to stay behind. They were injured, but also had healing miracles they could use on the wounded.
Marty didn't know how to command, so he delegated his authority to the various sergeants that were in his group. They then split the group into squads that would go off in different directions. Marty, Felix and two soldiers went west into the massive forest.
Marty marveled at the size of everything. It wasn't just the trees that were as tall as sky scrapers, everything was upsized. Ferns grew to be as large as houses. Grass was the size of normal trees and moss turned into a network of damp tunnels. Then on top of that was normal size plants. It created a layered effect that Marty's head had a hard time wrapping around.
"Why would they make such a place?" A soldier asked. He ducked under a branch, his eyes gazing upwards. The tips of the trees weren't even visible. "A massive forest in the middle of a dry plains. It makes no sense."
The second guard grunted an agreement.
"How long has this place been known about?" Marty asked whoever was listening. He led them past a series of moss cavern since he was sure that they would get lost if they ventured in there. He watched as a squirrel ran across branches as thick as his torso and thought about how terrifying it would be if the animal were massive as well.
Thoughts of being attacked by horse sized squirrels came to mind and then images of taming them and riding them into combat. It made him chuckle.
"These woods have been here since before written history. Their exact origin and purpose are unknown," A guard replied. "The gods have left nothing about this place behind and centuries of expeditions have revealed nothing."
"There were stories of ghosts," Felix said as he nimbly weaved through the foliage. Scarcely anything touched him as he followed behind the human who had to force his way through the dense undergrowth.
"Don't fill the Messenger's head with silly tales," A soldier growled. "Merely bed stories to frighten children from running off and getting lost."
Felix got a little closer to Marty. He knew that the soldiers still didn't trust him. So many wanted to see him executed and were outraged when he was spared. They were so used to the Church handing out capital punishment liberally.
The hostility in the air wasn't unknown to Marty. He had seen hints of it at times, but didn't actually believe that anyone would harm Felix. He was the Messenger's slave after all.
"What ghost stories?" Marty asked as he led on. He had no idea of where he was going. The woods were so vast and the terrain was ever changing between from hills, to clearings to dense, almost impassable, growth. He let his wrist computer keep track of direction and estimate how far they went based of steps to keep them from getting lost.
A soldier sighed, not thinking that it was worth Marty's time, but explained. "The woods are well explored. Hundreds of expeditions have been made in search of rare herbs and other resources. All have been documented, and some of the recordings tell of strange noises coming from deep in the woods. All attempts to find the sources fail. Some say ghosts. I say it's nothing but the ears playing tricks."
Marty left it at that. He didn't believe in ghosts or the supernatural. But after seeing magic, he was willing to believe that there may be more to these woods than what was apparent.
The group headed farther into the woods, coming across nothing of note and Marty was becoming more and more convinced that they weren't going to find anything. There was just nothing but more woods.
"I think it's time we headed back." Marty tried to judge what time of day it was, but the roof of the woods was thick and it was hard to tell how far along the sun was in the sky. The days were longer here than a standard cycle of 24 hours. It was closer to 30 which made the days drag on even after being marooned on the planet for months.
The rest of the group agreed and using his wrist computer, Marty turned them around and began to head back the way they came.
About an hour after they began to head back, Marty's wrist computer, which was projecting a screen, cut out.
"What happened?" Felix came up next to Marty and grabbed his wrist, inspecting it. "Why'd it stop?"
"I don't know?" Marty pressed the power button on it, but it refused to turn back on. All of Marty's diagnostic tools were back in Melur. He felt like an idiot for not bringing something. "First the rifle and now this."
The party stopped for a moment while Marty worked on his equipment.
The soldiers sat down on a few rocks, keeping watch. Felix hovered close by Marty. The cat had shown interest in Marty's technology, always asking about how things worked. Marty never told him much. Who knew how much of the planet's future had been affected by him already.
Marty peeled off the metal casing of the device, revealing crystal circuit cards and wires. There was no damage or signs of shorting which was good. The diamond memory chips appeared to be in good shape which was a relief. All of his notes were on the wrist device. Losing it would set Marty back indefinitely.
"What's that?" Felix pointed at a small, round object that was sticking out of a mass of gold coils.
"That's the projector." Marty grabbed it and gave it a light twist. It came off and showed more smaller versions of itself. "All of these together create an image that we can see." He inspected them and all was in order. Physically, everything was undamaged. Without actual tools, Marty couldn't figure out what was wrong. He began to put it back together.
"You think they main group got to the raiders yet?" A soldier, a raccoon, said. The guards were talking to each other. They were both disappointed that they didn't come across anything on their patrol. Disappointed they weren't in the attack group.
"I'm sure of it," The other soldier, a green scaled lizard, replied. He poked his sword into the soft soil repeatedly. "Bet everyone will be back by the time we return to the caravan. Be waiting on us."
"At least we're the ones watching over the Messenger." The raccoon was trying to raise the mood, but even he knew what was being said among the soldiers. Sure it was an honor to guard the Messenger, but it no longer had flare to it. Guard duty for the Messenger meant long and boring days.
"Sure." The lizard stopped his prodding of the ground and sheathed sword. "He's just a bit dull. I guess I was..."
"Expecting more?" The raccoon finished his sentence.
The other nodded his head. "More like the Symphony of Blades. Did you see how he single handedly saves our tails. He was spectacular."
"Don't forget that magic is corrupting," The lizard reminded his companion why magic was forbidden by the Church. "Who knows what price he's paying when no one is around."
"Yeah." The raccoon looked back over at Marty who was putting the last pieces of his device back together. "Maybe that's why the Messenger is the way he is. Dull to avoid corruption?"
The lizard just shrugged. If the Messenger was the way he was to avoid corruption, then that was okay in his book.
Marty clipped the faceplate of his wrist device back into place. He pressed the power button, but nothing still happened.
"No use," he said to himself.
"We can't be too far from the caravan. We'll find out way back."
"Maybe." Marty wasn't so optimistic. "The fact that this stupid thing stopped working without any kind of physical damage tells me we wandered into some kind of field." He looked around them for any kind of familiar land mark to tell them where they were. There was nothing but more trees and oversized plants. "We didn't walk into this field on the way out which tells me that we're already off course."
"Wasn't that thing keeping track of us and where we went?" Felix pointed at the device. "Shouldn't it have led us straight back with no detours?"
"If I had gps, it would have done so perfectly, but it didn't." Marty didn't bother to explain what gps was when Felix gave him a confused look. "Without gps, it had to use an internal compass and guesstimate distance. Not very accurate on uneven ground."
Felix barely understood what was just told to him, but he got the jist of it. Marty was dumb was got them lost.
"So what now?" Felix asked.
The lizard overheard the conversation and stood up. "The Giant's Garden isn't very large for a forest. Someone could cross its entirety in a month on foot."
"So you're saying we just pick a direction and just try to walk out of here?" The raccoon snorted. "We don't have a month. We're expected to meet back at the caravan before dark."
"We don't need to pick a direction. We were already going in the correct general direction. We just keep going in that direction." Marty pointed where they had been walking before.
"There are a lot of roads in here," The lizard added. "We'll hit one before too long and then it's a lot simpler from there."
"Then it's decided." Felix clapped his hands, but quickly shrunk away and behind Marty when both the soldiers glared at him.
"Let's get going," Marty said. He wanted to get everyone moving and in a less stabby mood. Marty still didn't believe that Felix was in any real danger, but hostile moods wasn't going to do anything and as much as Marty wanted to soothe Felix by scratching him behind the ear, he belated his hand.
Felix had explained how petting was a sign of affection and one that was reserved for children or the privacy of home.
Marty led the party ever onward. Occasionally he would try his wrist device, but it remained stubborn.
He did his best to make sure the sun was always to his left since that was where the setting sun was when they were initially making their way back.
The going was slow, but it was progress. Everyone began feeling like they were going to break through the bushes and hit the main road any second until...
"You hear something?" Felix asked Marty. Like he was going to ask the soldiers. His ears perked.
Marty stopped which caused the whole party to stop. He raised his ear to the wind, cupping it with a hand.
"I..." He strained and he could hear something. "Yeah I can. It's... It sounds like... I don't know what it sounds like."
The lizard crossed his arms. "Probably just some animal or something." He wanted to get a move on. His legs were aching now. Better not let the captain know or she would drag an entire battalion out here for drills. "We should just keep moving."
"Yeah, you're right." Marty agreed. "We really need to get back."
The group pushed forward again, but the sound grew louder. It was a high pitched whine. It wasn't overbearing, but it just seemed to dominate their senses. It even made Marty's fillings hurt.
"It's ghosts!" The raccoon shouted. He tried to plug his ears with his fingers and when that didn't work, with moss.
"It's not ghosts," The lizard said even though he couldn't think of anything that would create this noise. It made his scales feel slimy and all he wanted to do was get away.
"I don't think it is either." The noise didn't bother Marty as much as the others. His ears just weren't as sensitive. "Sounds artificial."
The others cocked their heads at the strange word.
"Sounds fake." Marty clarified. "Like a machine is making it and not an animal or a person."
"Whatever it is," Felix said, his ears twitching endlessly as well as his tail. "I hope that it goes away by the time we get over this hill." He pointed at a large mound they were coming up on. It was barren of trees, only having a layer of grass and moss covering it.
Marty's eye brows scrunched together in confusion for a reason that Felix couldn't discern, but didn't say anything. He kept pushing on and the rest followed.
"Don't you think we should go around the hill?" The lizard said. The hill had steep slopes while the ground around it was flat.
"What hill?" Marty asked.
"That hill." Felix pointed at the obvious mound of dirt and stone that Marty was walking towards as if he was going to just go for a stroll up its steep side.
Instead of walking up the hill though, Marty walked into it and vanished.
"Marty!" Felix shrieked.
The guards drew their swords out of instinct.
"Where'd he go?" The raccoon asked even though he knew that was the same question everyone else was found to say. He just got to the punch first.
Felix clawed at the hill. Dirt fell way and he began to tunnel. His paws weren't made for digging and he quickly had to stop or risk drawing blood.
"Do either of you have a spade or something." Felix's fear of the soldiers faded for a moment. It was no longer about him and then, it was about Marty.
"Yeah." The lizard unlatched a pouch he had on his side and pulled out a short metal rod with a wide base, a trench shovel. He handed it over and the cat took it. A thought about the possibility that Felix would steal it crossed his mind, but went away once the cat began to dig.
On the inside, Marty didn't notice that he was separated. At least not right away.
He never saw any hill. It looked like there was. Just more normal terrain in front of him and that's what he saw now.
"What hill?" Marty asked again. "I don't see any hills." He turned around and gasped when no one was there.
Marty mouth the words, 'What the fuck.' He turned around several more times as if the rest of his party was going to magically appear out of thin air right where they were just a few minutes ago.
He then began to walk back the way he came, when something caught his eye.
A cave. More like a hole in the ground.
Normally such a thing wouldn't have caught his attention. He had passed a few caves already, but this one was different. It was perfectly round and on closer inspection, it definitely had stairs. Steps carved into the stone that descended into the ground.
Marty looked back the way he came. "Maybe I should..." he then looked back down the whole. There a faint light down there and the sound of the high pitched whining seemed to be coming from it, inviting Marty to take those first steps. He took them.
"They'll be alright," Marty told himself. "Wherever they are."
The whining got a lot louder the moment Marty crossed the threshold of the cave's mouth. It echoed and vibrated, seemingly screaming at the human from all directions at once. The air was also instantly more dry versus the damp, cool, forest air outside.
Marty grazed his fingers along the smooth stone wall as he slowly went down the steps. The whining didn't grow in strength the further he went down, it was actually going away slow enough that Marty never realized that it had gone away. Instead it was replaced with the soft whir of machinery.
The cave expanded out into a large cavern of metal and light.
For months, Marty's purpose had been to fix his ship and try to escape himself. The Cossus engine was working. All he had to do was get up into space. Even if everything got fried again, he felt that he could still use it. Use a portable power source and then rig his wrist device to input coordinates right into the engine. It was a long shot, but the slight possibility of success had driven him forward. But what he found in that cavern gave Marty new purpose.
Sooooooo many questions. On to the next chapter to find some answers.