Last night was probably the best night's sleep I've ever had, bar none! What with all of the travelling across the land, destroying portals, battling the undead, and carrying the wounded back to base, I was incredibly exhausted! Immediately after waking, I went to check on UPOETA; he seems to be fine. He's resting at the moment, and he's been told not to move his arm too much. Speaking with Amie, I got an idea as to how bad it was, but how much worse it could have been!
"The arrow hit him in the upper, left arm. Aside from the actual entry wound, he suffered a hairline fracture from the arrowhead hitting the humerus, but it didn't require any further care aside from the sling and the bandage. As long as he doesn't move the arm too much, the bone should heal over pretty quickly. OROTHO got back to us on the arrowhead tests, but he couldn't find any foreign agents that would suggest a poison, so he's likely to just be suffering from blood loss. That'll be rectified relatively quickly."
I was glad to hear that there was nothing permanently wrong with him, nor was there anything life threatening. I was fine; Amie checked me before I went to get some rest. Some minor bruising around the neck where the bow string dug into my neck, but aside from that, no permanent damage. Despite UOPETA's initial shock of the entire event, he seems incredibly lively! He lost a lot of blood last night, and at one point we were worried he wasn't going to pull through, but after a few hours sleep, he's practically ready to be back on his feet. Although Amie and OROTHO have advised against this. His arm needs to remain still to heal well, but it should begin to meld back together in a day or two. I was half expecting to see him sleeping, like you always see in films and dramas, but he was sitting up in bed quite happy and healthy looking, albeit except for the sling and the bandage.
"Just when you thought everything was going according to plan... I have to admit, this was my fault. I was getting lax in my scouting. It was all too perfect for it not to be a trap. I think it was a mixture of things really... We were all tired, I was anxious to get to the tower, and all of those chambers look the same!"
That was true. There was no way of knowing that would have happened beforehand. Admittedly it looked a little too perfect with the lack of an Affinitas cage in a large chamber, but we had all become rather complacent by then. I just wanted to get back to have some rest, and I'm sure THEROS was the same. After speaking a little more to UOPETA, I went to the lab where I found COLUS with OROTHO, as usual, and Amie, working on something. Once again, after the much needed rest, I had nothing to do, and I felt like a spare part. They didn't need anything done for them, but they said that THEXIS and THEROS were working on the next stage. We needed to check on the conducting tower to see our progress, and to acquire more reports. I was a little confused about this; why didn't we just take all of the reports at once and mark down all the locations? Maybe it was too obvious... Although Amie answered that for me:
"The reports are constantly being sent between us and the upper echelons of HoN Co. for verification. We need to keep adding to them, or editing what's already there, so we can never guarantee which reports we have. I'm getting worried now that they may have noticed the missing reports, and pinned it on me. It's a viable conclusion I suppose; I was in charge of the reports, so I was the one who had access to them at any time. They probably assumed I took them with me, so we'll be lucky if there are any more reports left."
"Well then, that either means we're going to have to resort to randomly looking for portals based on the predicted sites from THEROS' original map, or that all of the primary portals are offline, and the master portal is vulnerable! Somehow I can't see the latter being the case. Back to what we used to do then... Hopefully Amie can shed some light on some more of those: point us in a more accurate direction."
"I'll certainly try, but I can't guarantee anything..."
I left to go and find THEROS and THEXIS who were working on a map of the guard routes based on the radio traffic. THEXIS had been very busy while we were away, making sure we had something to go on before we headed off to the tower. Maybe it was a good thing that UOPETA got shot in the arm then... I don't mean that in a bad way, but after talking with THEXIS, it turns out that there was a lot of guard activity back at the tower!
"After the search teams finished, they converged on the tower and stayed there for some time. It was a racket! They eventually dispersed, and the radio traffic settled out. I think there are a few more guards than there are usually at the tower, but nowhere near as many as there were yesterday."
"THEXIS reckons we should try to get to the tower on our own without UOPETA. We need to act quickly, and we can't guarantee UOPETA will be back up to speed within enough time. I'd at least run it by COLUS. I know what he's like, but surely he can see it from a productive point of view."
I think THEROS was right. We had to act quickly. We didn't currently know how many primary portals were active, and the more time we wasted, the longer we gave HoN Co. to compensate for our work. We also gave them enough time to work on secondary portal replication. If they got to that stage, we would be done for. Who knows how many secondary portals are waiting to be activated. What if they managed to reduce the number needed to activate one? They could reduce the time to bring the master portal online in half! I'm going to see COLUS now!
I've spoken to COLUS, and after a bit of persuasion, and some support from THEXIS, I've managed to sway him. He was initially against the idea, saying that the increased number of guards would have made it impossible to gain access, even with UOPETA leading us. But I've told him that me and THEROS can handle it; I can lead us there safely, and I've watched UOPETA enough to know how to react to situations. I conveniently left out the previous incident with the skeleton, otherwise it would have drastically reduced my case! When I mentioned the severity of time, especially in relation to how close they could be to replicating secondary portals, I think that's when I got him. If they got the upper hand, we would lose. At the moment, we have the upper hand in that we can destroy secondary portals faster than they can activate them. If they can make them, we might as well give up now!
"Okay then... I didn't want it to work that way, but I see your point. Tomorrow, you and THEROS head off to the tower and look for any more information that might aid us in finding more portals. Then check on the primary portal situation, but don't draw attention to yourself. Use the blowpipes, and stay hidden if necessary. If you can't find anything to help us, it doesn't matter. Return, and we'll have to work out a map with the possible portal sites, but it'll be back to what we did before Amie came along..."
I really hoped that we would find something tomorrow. The other method we used was hit and miss, literally. And it would likely mean we would have to use the radios. This made it dangerous for us, unless we went to each one individually and checked the site. I suppose we have to do whatever is necessary...
Syeonyx signing off
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