"It's pitch black now, with only the light of the moon helping. We're lit up like a Christmas tree with these on, and the last thing we need is to be spotted now! We're easy targets, so let's try not to draw attention to ourselves..."
I had to agree. The lights were good for navigating the boat in low light conditions, and locating it from a distance, but it was a two-way street. If you could see the torches, a million to one the HoN Co. guards would be able to. But now, without the lights, I was rowing blind! More so than usual. Luckily I had UOPETA instructing me on one side, and THEROS guiding us by the map. We were doing very well as a team, and despite the handicaps, we were making excellent progress! Within a shorter than expected time, we reached the island crossing, and we all hopped out and began to push. It was a little harder this time; it was dark, and hard to manoeuvre, and the fact that we had all had our stint of rowing for a long time that we were already tired in the upper body. Eventually though, the boat floated free of the bottom, and we quickly climbed aboard again.
"Right, from here, it's more or less due North..."
"We'll need to find somewhere to put the boat when we reach land. We can't leave it out in the open for someone or something to find. At the moment, it's our only means of getting to that place, and we can't risk leaving it!"
I rowed the rest of the way... We sat in silence, partly from fear, partly from exhaustion, mostly because we were all trying to comprehend what we had just seen... In our own way...
Once we got to the closest possible landing to the base, we pulled the boat fully onto shore, and turned it upside down. Then, with a few branches, and leaves, we hid it as best we could. Standing back, we thought it was very convincing, albeit a little unusual to have a large cluster of branches in a single place. It would suffice for the moment. We began to head around the large cliff face, around to the pool where UOPETA activated the walkway, and the water parted like two pieces of cloth bisected by a zipper. Moving across it, we headed one by one down the hatch, locking it into place, and lowing the walkway. Once inside, we headed straight off to the lab to find the others. We knew the others were likely to be in bed; it was late enough. But OROTHO rarely seemed to sleep at all, and Amie would often try to compete with him. Once we got there, we found OROTHO examining the outside of the glowing stone, facing away from us, holding a clipboard, and Amie, slumped in a chair in the corner, arms folded with her head lying on them on a desk, asleep. UOPETA silently went over to OROTHO, and tapped him on the shoulder. OROTHO jumped about a foot in the air, before attempting to attack UOPETA with the back of the clipboard! Amie woke up at this point, dazed and confused, and OROTHO ceased his attack, only when he had realised who we were.
"Oh! It's you! You're back very early... I assume you found Syeonyx's boat then?"
"We found more than that... We found a problem..."
"A big problem..."
I stepped forward and placed the images of the huge portal room in OROTHO's hands. Looking slightly confused, he placed the clipboard underneath his arm, and began to flick through each image; the look of confusion on his face turned slowly to a mix of fear and awe... Pretty much the same as us...
"Is... Is... Is this..."
UOPETA nodded... OROTHO continued to mouth incomprehensibly, looking a lot like a fish out of water, when he finally managed to compose himself. He then began to look back at all of the images again, before running off shouting "I'll wake COLUS", whilst thrusting the images at Amie as he left... Amie began looking through the images now, the same look on her face appearing...
"You did the right thing... We need to settle this one together!"
----
Possibly the shortest meeting in the discussion room ever, but the topic on question was one of the more important ones! After showing the images to COLUS and the others, we sat in silence for a moment to allow it to sink in...
"So... You found a large underground chamber... That contains forty four portals... All of which are active?"
"Yes. We couldn't make it up. It seems that HoN Co. have been busy with their new portal replication technology, and have gone to the extent of mass producing them... They pose as much a threat as a secondary portal now, but take many times longer to destroy... It's why we returned..."
OROTHO had been running his own calculations himself and came to more or less the same time frame to destroy every portal within that room with a single piece of the stone.
"So we need more glowing stone to destroy them all faster. Preferably in one dose of the sedative. We took into account what OROTHO said about an overdose."
"Good. We can't let any unnecessary deaths be on our hands. They may be working for HoN Co., but I doubt they understand or even know about the full picture. No-one could condone what they're attempting to do..."
"Well I assume you returned for more pieces of the stone? Otherwise you'd still be there, unless you managed to lose the first one..."
"No no, we still have it. We need at least two more. That would allow us to destroy every portal within an hour..."
"That's still too much time. If you each took two stones, you could manage it in half the time. But that would mean a lot of time extracting more of the stone. But then again, there's little in the way of options..."
We continued debating on what the best course of action was, but we all knew that multiple stones was the way to go. It was incredibly resource intensive, but it was necessary, especially if more of these chambers were found. In the end we decided the best thing to do was to take multiple stones; we would rest whilst more was cut. But then talk turned to what would happen after the portals were destroyed. I assumed that we would head back to the tower and look for more information to find the next portals, but another interesting issue was raised... By Amie...
"Hang on... We're missing the bigger picture. If they can make portals... And they are in huge numbers, wouldn't it be better to put a stop to it at the source? Rather than afterwards..."
"Amie, what are you getting at...?"
"Well I thought it was obvious... They're obviously procuring obsidian from somewhere. And lots of it... Knowing that obsidian is incredibly rare, it means one thing... They're making their own... The process is complex and resource intensive, but we all know that HoN Co. is willing to go to any lengths... I suggest we find and take out the location that the obsidian is being farmed. Stop them from making any more portals. That would buy us a lot more time..."
And that's why she was brilliant... She thought of something everyone else had seemed to overlook...
Syeonyx signing off
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