Fiction: The God Named Poe (Part 3)

***Continued from "Fiction: The God Named Poe (Part 2)" .


    Thorns tore at soft skin, inching ever deeper.  Daxton futilely attempted to reach for his sword, but it was too far away.  The monsters played a game of tug-o-war with his ever numbing body.  Their Venus fly trap mouths extended outward, dripping with a viscous fluid. 
    He wished they would just kill him already and get it over with.  At least he would finally be done with it all.  It’s not suicide if something else kills you.  He closed his eyes, relaxed what muscles he could still feel, and waited for the end.
    One of the creatures let out a deafening screech.  The pressure pulling at his shoulder stopped.  He opened his eyes.  Something had cut the vine.  The monstrous plant stumbled back, impaling one of the bulbous berry trees.  It struggled to free itself, but the effort was futile.
    Daxton rolled, grabbing the nearest blade with his good arm.  One quick slash disarmed the creature grasping at his leg.  Literally.  It cried out in agony and disappeared into the Technicolor jungle.
    He tried to stand, but whatever venom was in the thorns had finally won.  He fell back to the ground, the world fading to darkness.  Shadows passed overhead as he fell unconscious.

    Daxton awoke sometime later in a brightly lit room that looked rather unimaginatively like a hospital.  He still couldn’t move, nor could he really feel any of his limbs.  A moment later and he realized he was still alive.
    “Damn it,” he muttered softly to himself with a sigh.  He had been so close.
    “You are a perplexing individual, Author Wreaths.”  Viskau spoke just out of sight.     
    Daxton couldn’t move his neck, but he could still tell that Viskau was sitting next to the bed.  “Most men would be happy to realize they’re still alive.”
    “Whoever told you I was like most men was a liar.  Where the hell did you come from?  Kavira said you were dead.”
    Viskau stood and walked into view.  He was missing an eye.  A large scar that ran down the length of this face answered the question of what happened to it.  The empty socket was covered with a small mechanical device that looked like some sort of camera.  He’d lost a hand as well.  From just below his right elbow to his hand, everything had been replaced by a robotic prosthetic.  “Close to it, Author Wreaths.  But, we Da are survivors, like yourself.  Very few have ever encountered a single toric and survived, let alone a pair.”
    “Where’s Kavira?”
    Viskau sighed.  “She’s being interviewed by the military as we speak.  She made it to the monitoring station, but it was guarded.  So, she did what she had to.  I received her transmission just before they cut her off.  My…rehabilitation had taken longer than expected.”  He flexed his mechanical fingers.  “I arrived at the rendezvous a few hours after your departure.”
    “Was it worth it?  Did she find out anything important?”
    “She helped me save your life, for one.”
    “By ‘important’ I meant anything that will help me stop Poe.”
    “Later.  You won’t be able to move for the next few hours, so fuming over the details won’t help you at all.  Just try to get some rest.”
    “Tell me what you know, Author Viskau.  That’s an order.”
    “I know that a good friend of mine is now in a Da military camp because of you, Author Wreaths.  She was put there trying to save your life.  Every Da knows how to avoid the toric nests, but you felt the need to disobey the Editor and barrel off into the Maln Forest without your guide.  You can order me around once you understand this world as well as I.  Until then, you’re nothing more than a temporary guest on Da’kri.”  Viskau passed out of sight and slipped out of the room.

    He had battled creatures the size of skyscrapers.  He had survived missions into horror novels filled with poltergeists, demons, and zombies.  He had been stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, and almost dissected on three separate occasions, not to mention what the vampires had almost done to him.  He had bravely faced all the terrors the Realms had to offer, but the only thing that truly stalled his blood was…nothing.
    The room was silent.  Not even footsteps from the hall just outside the room penetrated the soundproof wall.  Daxton lay there, unable to move.  He hated the quiet.  He hated the calm.  For Daxton, the silent moments were the most tortuous.  In those moments, just before sleep tightens its grasp, he remembered her.  He could almost smell the rose oil she liked to wear.  Most Authors did their duty out of honor.  He did his job for the danger.  The peril kept his mind focused on other things.     
    Times like this were very rare for Daxton.  In the still of the room, his thoughts continued to wander, but they always returned to her.  He tried to focus, tried to plan his next move, tried to determine what Poe was after, but he couldn’t.  His thoughts were only of her and how he wished she were still alive.  The hospital was quiet.  Not even the sound of a weeping man penetrated the soundproofed walls.

    Two and a half hours later, Daxton emerged from the room.  He was silent and visibly shaken.  His wounds had been miraculously healed by the wonders of Da medicine.  The only sign his wounds had ever existed were the tears in his uniform and some new scars.
    “Feeling better, Author Wreaths?” Viskau asked sincerely.  He had been waiting just outside the room.  Daxton was suspicious he’d been there the whole time.
    Daxton tested the portals at his wrists.  Nothing emerged.  “Where are my swords?”
“In the security lock up on the first floor.  The Da are accustomed to caring for alien visitors, but weapons are strictly forbidden in the hospitals.  I had no time to hide them before the medical transport arrived.”
    “Take me there.  I’ve got work to do.”
    A few minutes later, Daxton had his weapons returned to him.  He tested them by tapping them against each other.  An Author knows the sound of his own blades.  The hum is as distinct as a fingerprint.  He would know if they’d been swapped out or tampered with.  Once he’d been convinced they were unchanged, he withdrew them back into their sub-dimensional pockets.
    “Did Kavira fill you in on Poe?” Daxton asked as they left the hospital.  He had been irritated by how human everything within the hospital looked.  The kid’s imagination needed work, but those creatures he had faced, the torics, showed he had promise.
    “She mentioned the Gnukata, yes.  There’s no way we can get near him unless we lure Cilodah away.”  Viskau led Daxton to a small craft that appeared to be some sort of hover transport.
    “How will that help us?”
    Viskau entered the cockpit and prepared it for launch.  “Poe cannot wear the pendant himself.  Whoever created it before the Long Battle ensured that only a creature born of Da’Kri can wear it.”
    “So, he needs Cilodah,” Daxton realized as he climbed into the adjoining seat.
    The engines whirred.  “He has been the only creature in our history to successfully wield it.”
    “What about this staff I’ve been hearing about?”  The craft lifted off the ground effortlessly.  Had Daxton closed his eyes, he would have never known they were moving.
    “The Staff of the Fathers?  It’s pure myth.  No one has ever been able to prove it even existed in the first place.”
    “Well, those people didn’t have a narrative explaining its exact location.”
    “You’re joking,” Viskau accused, half hoping it really was a joke.
    “I’m not one for humor.  Poe is in the mountains right now digging for it.  We don’t have much time.”  Viskau steered the craft away from the mountains and increased the speed.  “Where the hell are we going?”
    “To retrieve, Kavira.  You owe her that much.”
    “Weren’t you listening?  Poe could have that staff in his hands any minute now.”
    “And Kavira, among other things, is a writer of history.  Her favorite subject is the Long Battle.  If anyone on this world knows how to separate the pendant from the staff, it will be her.”

    Viskau set the craft down in a crowded city twenty minutes later.  Da, along with many different species of alien, filled the streets.  There was no sign of a war here, like in the Valley of the Da.  Poe’s power had not spread this far yet.
    “The military holding facility is just down the street.”  Viskau led the way on foot.  “I can get you to the building, but without my swords, I cannot do anything more.”
    “Don’t worry about it.  I need to work out some aggression anyway.”
    “It won’t be that easy.  The structure is heavily fortified.  With the sudden threat from the Kri, security has probably been heightened as well.”
    They rounded the corner and there it was, shimmering in the light of the two suns.  It wasn’t as tall as the buildings around it, maybe ten stories at the most.  It looked like it could survive a nuclear bomb with as much shielding as it had.  Guards were scattered everywhere, and not just around the building.  They had a wider perimeter set up across the entire block.  Add on the robotic guns welded to the building’s exterior and anyone would have more than a simple challenge getting inside.
    “Damn.”
    Viskau sighed.  “We’ll have to find a way inside.  There must be a way.”
    Daxton’s eyes drifted upward, to the rows of flying vehicles streaking by overhead.  “Maybe there is.  Come on.  You’ll have to drive.”
    “What?  Where?”

    “I’m not so sure this is a wise course of action, Author Wreaths!” Viskau shouted over the howling wind.  The craft streaked through the sky with its windows blown out.  Daxton had placed a small device behind the main console that spewed black smoke.  To anyone on the ground, the craft would appear to be having engine trouble.
    “Relax.  It’ll work!”  Daxton hunkered down on the floor in the back of the vehicle and prayed he was right.  The plan was for Viskau to drive erratically and slam into the building, hopefully crashing through a window.  In the ensuing chaos, he would slip out and go find Kavira, while Viskau distracted them all.
    “How do you know they haven’t planned for this sort of attack before?”
    “I don’t.  I’m just hoping a fifteen year old writer hasn’t thought of this yet!”
    Viskau sighed.  “May Centillus smile on us.”  He jerked the controls and the craft slammed into the building, clipping part of the wall.  Aliens of every shape and size on the street looked on in horror as smoke spewed from the impact hole.  The structure went on high alert.  And energy shield activated after all the guards had been called inside.  No one else would be getting in or out.

To be continued in...

ID: 1487581   (Rated: 13+) Title: Fiction: The God Named Poe (Part 4)  Description: Daxton and Viskau hunt for Kavira, while Poe might have found what he's looking for... By: JDMac