Ruins Raiders: Book Two
Chapter Seventeen, Irony It Sucks A**
By Relm
Lina and company had been in relatively confident when they had first started out on their journey to Vsvle. Now that confidence was starting to wane.
King Po-Kota hadn't told Lina exactly how long it would take for them to reach Vsvle but Lina had assumed it wouldn't take that long. This assumption was put to the test after the many hours they had already been traveling. Either the trip was much longer than Lina had assumed or they were actually lost.
Lina didn't want to say it out loud but she was really getting worried that they were lost. King Po-kota had told her what direction to go and that is exactly the direction she was heading according to her compass. Lina was sure she was reading her compass right but previous experience has told Lina that she couldn't always trust her instruments.
Many times when odd or rare relics were involved strange things tended to happen in the surrounding areas. Sometimes it could be something like the weather being unseasonably warm or cold for the geography or sudden earthquakes. A disruption in magnetic fields wasn't something Lina hadn't faced before. Usually when she was unsure if she could trust her compass she would look to her surroundings to get her bearings. Except in this situation Lina didn't have that luxury. She couldn't see the moon or stars above her nor could she see well enough around her in the darkness.
Whether lost or their destination far in sight one thing was getting very obvious. They were getting tired.
"Shouldn't we be there yet?" Val was the first to whine. It wasn't like the others weren't thinking it but the rest had the presence of mind not to be annoying. Val obviously cared little about what other people thought. He was a man that spoke his mind.
"We'll be there soon!" Lina snapped back at Val very quickly. Naturally this was a lie as Lina had no idea exactly how much longer it was going to get to their destination.
"But we've been walking for hours!" Val whined some more. "The way you were talking when we left you made it sound like we were going to be there in like an hour!"
"I never said we would be there in an hour!" Lina chided even though there was some truth to what Val was saying. Though Lina had never actually stated an amount of time it was going to take she herself had assumed it wouldn't take that long to get to Vsvle.
"Yes but I'm sure if it was going to be a very long trek King Po-Kota would have said something to that effect..." Zelgadis mused.
"What are you suggesting Mister Zelgadis?" Filia wondered.
"That perhaps we are lost."
"Lost?!" Val near screamed. "You can't be serious! We've been wandering around this stupid jungle this whole time and you got us lost?!" He glared daggers at Lina.
"Hey just because this is taking longer than we thought doesn't mean right away that we are lost." Lina shot back.
"It's true." Xellos oddly enough agreed with Lina. "I've been watching and Miss Lina has been keeping a close eye on her compass. It's doubtful that she would stray us so far off course when she was being so careful."
"Yes. However I've been in situations where certain areas had an odd magnetic polarization due to relics and it made my compass give me wrong readings." Zelgadis pointed out.
Now it's was Lina's time to glare and her target was East Rixx's ancient history professor. "You just had to say something didn't you."
"So we are lost!" Val growled.
"Now now, there's no yes for sure but... it could be a possibility." Lina admitted.
"I can't believe this! How could you get us lost?!"
"You heard Xellos was reading the compass it's not my fault something could be messing with the readings!"
"You're supposed to be some well travelled explorer! Couldn't you find another way to figure out what direction we were heading without reading the stupid compass?!"
"Yes." Lina huffed with her nose up in the air. "But those rely on being able to see the moon, stars and surroundings. Can you see the friggin' moon right now?!" She pointed the canopy of tree branches that shielded them from the sky above.
"This was stupid. We should have waited until morning to leave for Vsvle."
Zelgadis shook his head. "We didn't exactly have a choice you know. We had to leave when no one would notice us doing so."
"I told you they wouldn't recognize us!" Val protested while once again pointing to his state of dress.
"Doesn't matter we can't take that risk!" Zelgadis yelled back.
"All argument aside what should we do?" Filia interrupted. "If we really are lost and continue on we might just get further and further away from our goal. And with no real supplies it could be dangerous."
"I agree. If we aren't lost and Vsvle is just really that far away it could take us all night to get there. Better we make camp, rest and continue on in the morning." Lina rationalized while looking around for a place to settle down. "Over there looks good." She decided while starting to clear the area out a bit.
"Okay I'll gather some firewood." Zelgadis offered.
"And I'll help clear the area a bit." Filia also offered to help.
Xellos and Val said nothing on the subject. Their failings in the offering of help got acts of retaliation from the productive members of their group.
...
A distance away three people watched Lina and company as they made camp. These three people watched on with confusion plastered upon their faces.
"Who are those people?" One of the three wondered.
"I don't know. They don't look like anyone I recognize." The second admitted.
"And I was sure I couldn't understand them until we got this close. They could be travelers from a strange land." The first one stated.
"No that doesn't make sense. If they are travelers from a distant land then we shouldn't understand them at all! The only way we'd be able to understand them would be if they had a rxna stone. Which makes even less sense." The third one insisted. "They must be spies from Bnxqo."
"What do we do with them?"
"Report it to the boss. He'll want to know of anything that could disrupt his plan to dethrone the Queen and take her place as ruler of Vsvle."
The first and second man nodded in agreement and quietly they sped off to converse with their boss, Andior.
...
With no proper supplies to make camp Lina and company did not have a good night sleeping. They had spent a good deal of the night hours traveling as it was so they really didn't have much time to rest. Once the sun was up it was too hot and too bright to sleep much longer. Their bodies protested greatly as their muscles ached and their bones cracked.
"Can't we sleep a bit longer?" Val protested still desperately clinging to the sleep that was being steadily stolen from him.
"No." Filia kicked her step-brother in the side. "We're wasting time we don't have. We need to get to Vsvle and get back the auseo stone so we can get back to our own time! Stop being such a lazy ass and get up! I swear you do this every single time we have to travel anywhere!" She huffed in annoyance. Val was always a night owl/late riser while Filia was early on both counts. She was a morning person and she couldn't stand how lazy her step-brother could be.
"Okay fine... what's for breakfast?" Val sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
"Don't get me started on that." Lina growled at Val with a dark stormy expression clouding her face. She was hungry, very hungry. But they had no food. And why would they? They were expecting to be in Vsvle within an hour, grabbing the stone and be back already. Or at the very least near Vsvle where they could steal something to eat. Not in the middle of the jungle potentially lost with no clue how to get back.
"We have no food Val." Filia explained. "Why don't we just forage around and look for something to eat? Like up there in that tree don't those look like bananas to you?"
"They could be bananas or they could be something that happens to look like them." Zelgadis observed. "We don't know a lot about this time in history and what we do know doesn't include flora and fauna. Something might look like it's edible but in actuality it's poisonous. Just because the red berries look delicious doesn't mean it's not going to make you have seizers and your heart stop. The locals will know what can and can't be eaten because they have already been subjected to trial and error. We'd have to guess and hope for the best if something is safe to eat."
"I don't care, I'm hungry. I'm going to chance it." Lina decided as she scurried up the tree at speeds that would make any squirrel jealous. With her target in reach Lina didn't just grab one or two bananas, no she grabbed three large bunches of the fruit.
"Lina are you going to eat all of those?" Zelgadis rolled his eyes.
"No. You guys can eat one of the bunches." Lina offered when she got down from the tree. Of course this wasn't originally Lina's plan. She was planning on eating all of them.
"How generous of you." Zelgadis exclaimed dryly.
Lina brushed off Zelgadis' comment. "Let's eat!" She dived right into one of the things that looked like a banana. Inside the peel it looked like a normal banana taste wise was another story. "Wow that's... not sweet..."
"So it's not good?"
"I didn't say that." Lina said while eating five more 'bananas'.
Zelgadis had a bad feeling about eating the strange fruit but he was hungry. 'We're probably going to die anyway from something else. No point worrying about an upset stomach.'
"Once we finish eating we'll leave." Lina decided. "Who knows how long it will take to get Vsvle."
"Hey Lina does that look like Bnxqo's pyramid?" Zelgadis pointed off in the distance.
Lina looked in the direction Zelgadis pointed and was close to smacking herself. "No that's not Bnxqo's pyramid."
"So if we continued for just another ten fifteen minutes we would have been at Vsvle?" Zelgadis guessed.
Lina nodded. Irony, it sucks a**.