TA Chapter 18 Aspiration
Luthor Dugavu(POV)
"Please, please, please... Ril! Ril! Can you hear me? Don't close your eyes! Stay with me baby! Stay with me! Momma's here." pleaded Ravena, tears sliding down her cheeks, her words trembling. She was pressing upon her daughter's wound while exhorting her to stay awake, gently.
"Madam Ravena! Get a hold of yourself! We need to tend to the young lady! You! Come and help me!" shouted Estella towards a man on the side with lavender colored dreadlocks and dark chocolate skin.
"Press here!" she ordered even as Ravena distanced herself to give them room to work, yet her eyes didn't leave Ril.
I clenched and unclenched my hands repeatedly, wondering what I could do in this situation.
"We need to keep a look out. Mr. Luthor, it would be better if you joined us." offered David with an unreadable expression.
"Why would he need to join you? Luthor! Come, let's take a direction." interjected Dan before walking off towards the west.
I followed him, my mind in an almost daze-like state, until I bumped into his back, my awareness returning.
"The air here is cleaner." commented Dan.
I gazed at his back with narrowed eyes before stepping out to the side to stand beside him. I took a deep breath, letting the air here, filled with both sweetness and rot, cleanse my lungs, and emotional distress. Thin rays of light played upon the forest floor as the intertwined canopies above danced from the gusts of wind traveling above.
"It is not your fault that that young lady ended up like that. Beating yourself up will only be poor judgment." spoke Dan once again, his palms fully enclosed around the two short rods holstered at the sides of his waist. His eyes were sharply scanning everything, making certain that any anomaly would be taken care of the moment it appeared.
"I know." I answered while unholstering a pistol from the right side of my waist. I first discharged the cartridge, making certain that everything was in order in a mere fraction of half a minute, then put it back and lowered my hand, but remaining as alert as Dan.
"Ohhhh! And I had thought you were beating yourself up over it." Dan raised an eyebrow.
"I should have at least sent a scouting party beforehand." I said, though inwardly, I was fighting against my desire to rush off towards the suspected landing place of the golden figure.
"We all make mistakes... Though, it would be better if you give that woman some space. Her daughter is the most precious thing to her, just like mine. Which is why I am not planning on dying on this expedition. Though, I do have a question burning on the tip of the tongue... " Dan paused here, his pupils turning in my direction for a moment before returning to the surroundings.
The muddy forest floor was adorned with all manner of flora struggling to capture the little light that filtered through the canopies. Multi-hued moss covered tree bark, with vines having slithered through it during their race to the top, circling each and every tree within our sight. The trees themselves had such gigantic trunks that atleast four people were needed to fully encircle their width, with roots that crept away from the stems to burrow beneath the black soil while also supporting small ecosystems of their own.
The sounds in the air, reverberating within my ears brought the forest to life fully. From the multiple bird calls, the screeching of the insects, to the roars of the large creatures that occasionally entered our ears.
Then there was the rot infesting the air, from the dead matter decomposing upon the forest floor. The myriad scents of the shrubbery upon the forest floor coupled with the fungi and moss.
To me, it was as beautiful as it was overwhelming. A sigh escaped my lips, releasing many of the negative emotions I had stockpiled before my attention shifted to Dan.
"Ask away."
"Do you really care about humanity's advancement that desperately, to have led us here without the proper preparations?" he asked.
It was a question I had known I would have to entertain at a certain point in time. So, there was no surprise that it had been asked, only, that it had taken this long for someone to breach the topic.
"I am an avid reader of progression fiction books. Especially the works of Jolah, the Katonda series. You and many others wouldn't understand my motivations, but I am going to try and explain it in a way that you can atleast understand the surface level." I started, then paused to arrange the words that were about to come out of my mouth. It was imperative that Dan didn't misunderstand my intentions as those of a crazed scientist.
"As a scientist, a curious curious observer of the universe's mysteries, I have come to one conclusion, we humans are bugs in the grand scheme of things. A mere hurricane can kill us, a mountain slide, flooding, and most of all, everything related to dark energy. But look at this forest, from the shrubs at our feet all the way to the tallest trees... Everything is thriving in this region of highly concentrated dark energy. I have lost comrades, friends, and family to beasts over the years. If they had been fairly given the same attention by the universe, just like the flora and fauna, I would have simply taken it as if they had been weak..."
"Do you know? At first, I selfishly wanted to make myself powerful enough that I could save everyone alone, but as I spent more time among the people after leadership was transferred to me, I saw their pain. Children who had become orphans because their parents had suddenly been killed in an ambush, or an assault. People who had to continuously stay nomadic, losing many as they searched for places to hide from the increasingly ferocious beasts, soldiers and civilians whose sunny expressions had turned gloomy because of the horrors they had witnessed... My chest hurt every time I saw such and many more! I have always asked myself the question. Why do we suffer? Were we really abandoned by the universe? The dregs that were supposed to have been driven into extinction because they couldn't adapt?" I paused here, exhaling to calm my rising temper.
"I want humanity to thrive, to evolve, such that I can prove to the universe that we too, aren't a mediocre race. But that isn't my only goal. Though, the others are a bit outlandish at this point in time. But trust me on this, Dan. Just like you saw in the moving pictures, we have so far been lucky enough not to encounter something like that dark worm. If I am not mistaken, such powerful beings must exist in our planet's oceans. That golden asteroid, meteor, or even alien tech, is our only chance to master the secrets of dark energy."
"Well... I would have never known you were this invested. Most of the time you are a quiet nonchalant type of guy, but it seems I was mistaken! You can actually speak so many words!" exclaimed Dan.
I paused, frozen at the direction he had chosen to focus upon, before I increased the grip strength upon my gun, disappointed that everything I had just said had been ignored. It seemed that finding people among the other leaders that could be on the same wavelength as me had been a wishful endeavor.
Before anything else could happen, like the continuation of the conversation, a sound entered our ears, one different from the rest of the normal cacophony, bringing change to our expressions.
The shrubbery before us, a few meters away from us was trampled, with the weak stems and branches breaking with an audible crack before something crawled out. It froze the moment it's eyes fell upon us, a sign that it hadn't expected us to be here, yet before the beast could react, my hand was raised in a familiar instinctive posture, with my hand squeezing the trigger.
Within a moment, the beast's corpse hit the ground, a finger wide tunnel having appeared in the middle of its brows.
"A gorilla with green fur. Now I have seen everything." commented Dan without dropping vigilance.
Silence prevailed for a few minutes as we strained our ears and eyes, wanting to pick up any signs of any other gorilla, yet after almost a minute had elapsed, nothing appeared.
"A loner? Gorillas are social creatures..." I mumbled, gazing at the corpse before us with a strange expression.
"Luthor. As your elder, I am supposed to advise you on certain matters. I know you have good intentions, but you made the mistake of being hasty this time and not thinking things through. If Ril had died, your relationship with Milena state would have become tenuous. I would even go on to hypothesize that Ravena would have plotted revenge. She lost her husband during the beast wars, and Ril is the only thing that's keeping her tethered to reality. So please, starting from now... Think extensively before you act." exhorted Dan, his face a serious mask.