CHAPTER 23: Business as Usual
Although it was unseen, the breaking hours of the early morning had finally reached Shaydon. With its arrival, Yuttoguln had finally returned to his office within Shaydon’s detainment sector. He took his seat at the desk, looking down at the paperwork he had been pulled away from due to the unpleasantness that had occurred the day before, a streak of ink from a pen marking the sudden interruption to his day. His eye twitched as thoughts from last night’s council meeting raced through his head. His department would finally be receiving more resources, sure, but he did not expect Edrip to be as open as he was to his alliance with Eyve and Ven. Things were changing, but he hoped that he would be able to continue his work uninterrupted for the most part. He heard a gentle knock at his door. Even though no one else should have been in the building at this hour, the behemoth knew exactly who it was. He lumbered over and opened it to see exactly what he expected— nobody at all.
“Hey, Yutty- buddy!” A feminine voice greeted from behind him.
“Do not call me that, Lusa.” Yuttoguln ordered, still facing out the door. “Why are you here?”
“Well, I saw you made out pretty big at the meeting last night, and I just wanted to drop by and offer my congratulations!”
Yuttoguln turned around to face whom he was conversing with- a skinny shayd of the female persuasion sprawled across his chair in a relaxed manner. She ran her hand along the hood on her head, lifting it up so it could drop with a gentle thud on her back.
“I ‘made out’ with more responsibilities.” Yuttoguln replied. “The funding is generous, but I feel Edrip’s interest is only going to complicate things.”
“Ugh, don’t you get it? You’re IN with him now! You have something he wants, and that means you can write a ticket for pretty much anything.”
“I don’t want to be IN with anyone,” Yuttoguln complained, running his hand down his face, “I just want to do my job. I want to see to it that every miscreant, thief, and criminal out in those streets is brought to absolute justice.”
Lusa slunk off of Yuttoguln’s chair and began to lean on its back support.
“Yeah, yeah, and that’s where I come in, your loyal undercover operative. I let you know what the folks are up to down there.”
“Yes. And speaking of your profession, why aren’t you at your post?”
“Gotta keep things unpredictable.” Lusa said, examining her hands, “Besides, it’s not uncommon for a “normal shayd” to have something like a second job or an errand to run every once in a while.”
Yuttoguln stepped up to the window in his office and stared out at the waiting horizon of the city. Their world was just beginning to wake up, with barges and boats drifting down the canals and the power to hundreds of buildings flickering on all at once. He briefly admired the unsung beauty of his home before returning to his desk.
“I need to get back to work. Allocating funds and sending out more patrols.”
“Not to mention, sending prisoners to those hags, Eyve and Ven.” Lusa scoffed. “You saw that creature at the meeting, right? Why do you think Edrip wants to make more of those ugly things?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Yuttoguln replied. “Cells have been getting a bit cramped lately, anyway. It’s punishment enough for their crimes, and that’s all that concerns me.”
“Well, I was thinking now that you have a bit of a demand for what you do, I could stir up a bit of trouble if need be…”
“Out of the question.”
“Oh, come on! I hate being a wallflower—”
Yuttoguln banged on the desk in frustration.
“We DO NOT instigate! Things are bad enough out there without us interfering. That ruckus yesterday has left everyone on edge, so as far as everybody should be concerned, things are business as usual. Rawth will capture the escapees, Loth will drive public attention away from the experiments, and we’ll return to normalcy. The only thing changing is that criminals are going somewhere else for the time being.”
“And, y’know, you’ll be making twice as much star.”
Yuttoguln sighed.
“It will be spent accordingly, now don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Fine, fine. I’ll leave.” As Lusa strutted out, Yuttoguln’s attention was once again grabbed.
“Oh, and could you shut the door on th—” but she was already gone. Yuttoguln groaned and got up to close the door.
It was going to be a long day.
CHAPTER 24: An Invitation
Back at Lum, Hope poured boiling water from a kettle into four cups half-filled with a yellowish brown powder. As the ingredients in each cup were mixed, they foamed up to the rim, then settled, steaming with a sweet, earthy aroma. She took the tray of drinks across her kitchen into an old meeting room where Orsel, Vino, and Jacob were waiting.
“Sorry for the lack of accommodations.” Hope apologized, setting the tray down onto the table. “It’s not very often I get visitors.”
“Uh, that’s quite alright, ma’am.” Jake affirmed, grabbing a cup of the tea. “If anything, we should be apologizing for intruding.”
“To be completely fair,” Vino interjected, taking a sip of tea, “we did think you were dead.” Jake elbowed Vino in his torso in response. Hope sighed and looked away.
“I know it sounds odd, but I’d rather keep it that way. I don’t have the strength to face the world after everything that’s happened here.”
“Of course, we’ll keep your secret, right fellas?” Jake asked, followed by the other two nodding. Hope smiled weakly.
“Well, it’s good to know I can trust some people after all this time. If you don’t mind me asking, why have you come here? I thought by now people would have seen enough of this place.”
Orsel took a sip of his tea, and found that the taste was much too sweet for him.
“We escaped Shaydon!” He coughed. “There was this lab where they were making monsters out of elementals, so we busted out!” Hope sat still, wide-eyed by this news.
“What?”
“It’s run by Eyve and Ven, the research and development chiefs. I don’t know why they’re doing it, but I think there were like ten of them.”
“Eleven.” Vino corrected. “Jake and I were there for a while before Orsel showed up, but we’re telling the truth. They were fusing cores together to make these monsters out of different elements.”
“That sounds awful!” Hope expressed, putting her hand up to her mouth. “How long have they been doing this?”
“I’m not so sure.” Jake scratched his head. “I was the first one of us to show up in that cell, but that was around a cycle ago. Even then, there were still more of those… things. A week after that though, Vino came, time went on, the other prisoners were all… turned. Then Orsel showed up last night, and well, here we are.”
“That is… troubling, to say the least, It seems like Thead still hasn’t…” Hope caught herself mid-thought and cleared her throat. “Well, you three are welcome to stay as long as you like in order to stay safe and recuperate. I only ask that you don’t draw too much attention to this place, and of course, keep quiet about me.” Having finished her tea, Hope stood up and began to exit the room. “I’ll be in my throne room. And remember— next time you want to see me, just knock, alright?” As she left, Orsel tried to brave another sip of the tea, immediately regretting the decision afterward.
“Do either of you guys want the rest of this?” Orsel offered his friends.
“Sure, I’ll take it,” Vino answered. “She seems… pleasant.”
“Generous, too.” Jake added, “Heck, we got this whole place to ourselves! Where do you wanna head to?”
“Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to go to sleep.” Orsel said, shuffling off. “I’ve been up all night and need some rest.”
The first half of the trio’s day in Lum was relatively slow, but some relaxation was definitely appreciated considering everything that had happened to them. The morning sun that crept across the fragments of Lum was a welcome sight for both Vino and Jacob. While Orsel slept within one of the less-destroyed homes, the other two made the most of their time wandering throughout the abandoned streets of the city, perusing the lost history that surrounded them.
“You know, we’re pretty lucky here,” Jake said as he plodded down the road alongside Vino, “not just ‘cause we’ve found a safe haven o’course. Visiting Lum after the Incursion’s something of a taboo, but I always wanted to see this place for myself.”
“You know, there’s something I don’t quite get,” Vino asked. “You guys are made out of inanimate material, right?”
“Well, yeah, but we can still move.”
“No, what I mean is-” Vino struggled to find the right words. “You don’t have the same limitations as organic life like us. You don’t need to eat, you can’t get sick, and you have remarkable physical durability… at least from what I’ve heard. With all that taken into consideration, why exactly did you guys make cities and stuff?”
“I dunno.” Jake replied astutely. “I guess we just followed what was already going on.”
“Yeah, but— I mean, look at you!” Vino gestured at Jacob’s size. “You could take down an army if you tried. Doesn’t worrying about stuff like housing and money seem like it should be beneath elementals?”
“Well, I can’t speak for all of us, but I like the stability. Besides, it doesn’t sound like much of a life if you ask me. For us to just give up and do nothing, living at the mercy of the world?”
“I know, but it’s always something I’ve wondered about.”
“I mean, I get it.” Jake clarified, looking downwards. “Sometimes we take what we can do for granted, after all. Here’s the thing, though, we ain’t immortals or gods. We still gotta rest during the nights, and we can still die from old age or core damage. I mean, just earlier, you saw Hope at her most vulnerable.”
“I suppose so. Well, if it’s any consolation, you’ve done remarkably well for yourselves.”
“Well, don’t speak too soon,” Jake added as he picked up a piece of rubble from one of the destroyed homes. “We also make our fair share of mistakes.”
The pair’s travels eventually took them to the ruins of a large building surrounded by broken glass.
“Watch yer step,” Jacob warned. “I know you folks don’t take kindly to sharp stuff.”
“What do you think this place was?” Asked Vino as he gingerly stepped around the piles of glass.
Jake shrugged and kept on moving, while Vino arced his head around to try and see within the structure’s confines. A metallic glint caught his eye, which was enough to pique his interest and get him inside the building.
“I think I’m gonna look through this place.” announced Vino, ducking beneath a bar of stone half-blocking the door.
“Go for it, I’ll tour further ahead.”
The volume of broken glass was unfortunately unchanged within the cracked walls, but from what Vino saw during his first look within, it was worth the possibility of a few lacerations. The building looked like a long-forgotten workshop, half of it filled to the brim with worn and rusted scraps of metal and trinkets, as well as schematics carved into tablets. The other half, however, seemed more dedicated to working with glass than metal. A long-forgotten kiln stood silent against the corner of the workshop, along with a smattering of more complete fragments of glass disks.
“They must have made lenses here.” Vino realized to himself, walking parallel to the main workbench. “Shame there aren’t any still intact.” He rummaged through cupboards and rooms trying to find anything of inherent value, only to find a set of dusty work goggles tucked away within what was once a locker. He wiped some filth off with his shirt and put them on.“Not bad, not bad,” he said, admiring himself in a nearby mirror. The locker also held something else that proved useful during this time, a broom. Vino saw the place could use a good sweeping, and spent some time dusting up the stray sand and glass from off the floor. After that was done, he was properly invested in getting this place to look at least a bit like it was back in its heyday.