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Monarch of Profound Toxin - Chapter 69
🕑 Added 2024-11-18 16:00:12 +0000 UTCInside was a tiny room, no more than four meters by four meters, even at a generous estimate. Besides the door they had come through, there were two other doors. One seemed even more heavily reinforced than the previous one while the other, of regular smooth wood with a metal lever handle and a single common keyhole, stood in stark contrast.
Eik thought he was beginning to understand a little about how things worked inside headquarters. With the exception of private quarters and other restricted areas, any person with the right to be there could walk around freely.
There were stores and parks and, according to Mikla, even schools for the children of permanent residents. In an environment like that people simply had to be able to walk around. They had to be able to live their lives here.
Initially, Eik had been puzzled by the lack of security on the premises. It didn’t feel like a government facility. And that was because that was not all it was. It could be better described as a city. The residents required a certain freedom of movement.
Atla gave the four Earthlings an identification card each. It had a variety of personal information printed neatly on the front, all of which they had disclosed during their initial registrations with the alliance. It was information such as their names, date of birth on their home world, and home world of origin.
The right side of the card had a realistically accurate depiction of their faces. It wasn’t quite like a photograph, but more so like one of those hyper realistic drawings that some artists were capable of making.
With that she walked up and rapped her fingers on the wooden door a few times in a short rhythm while the guard offered them a small bow as he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him. Eik couldn’t see where the guard was looking but he could practically feel the intense gaze boring into him.
Immediately after, they heard the many complicated locks slide back into place inside the structure one by one. By the sound of it it was multiple different types.
A heavy set man answered the door Atla had knocked on with a grunt. Eik inched to the side to be able to look into the room behind the man. It appeared to be an ordinary, stuffy office overflowing with various documents and file cabinets with the sort of order that only the person who had organized it could find his way around.
The man was blocking the way inside. There was no way to get in. Some kind of document about Menka had to be somewhere in there. That room held the answers they wanted. He caught the eyes of his friends and could tell that they were thinking the same thing.
“Warden… Harfol, is it?”
The man nodded, his facial expression no changing in the slightest. “That’s right. And who are you?”
She pulled out the same identification card that she had used back during the Crucible tests and held it up for him to inspect. “Agent of the Nidafjeld Administration of First Contact.”
He nodded again as she pocketed the card. “What can I help you with?”
“You should have a woman by the name of Menka Tokanami in custody here.”
He thought for a moment. “I believe we do, yes.”
She pulled out a single paper document and handed it to him as she explained, gesturing toward the Earthlings. “These four were the victims of both attempted murders. Show him your identification cards, please.”
They took turns as he scribbled down their info and checked it with whatever was written on the document she had handed him.
“The document contains written permission allowing them to visit with the prisoner as a courtesy to the victims.”
Warden Harfol was silent for a while as he read through the writ before handing back their cards. “Understood. Please follow me.”
He knocked hard on the reinforced door, three raps and a pause, followed by five light raps. “It’s Harfol.”
“Mig Miq’Miqq,” one voice, a deep bass, answered.
Another voice followed. “Juy hun.”
“Unlock your side.”
“Yes, sir. Unlocking now.”
The mechanisms inside creaked and scraped as they moved. Warden Harfol mirrored the process of unlocking on his side. When they stepped through, the guards had moved to the sides along the walls of a narrow passageway that led them further in.
The passageway widened a bit as doors began to appear on each side at regular intervals. They passed three sets of doors before the warden stopped and began opening the fourth one on the right.
It swung open on well oiled hinges, revealing a set of metal bars emanating a faint green sheen. The space inside was small. Two and a half by two and a half. A toilet in one corner and a cot against the opposite wall.
A woman with greasy and disheveled black hair lay on the cot facing the wall, clad only in a black robe. At the sound of their entrance she rolled over halfway to look at them. Her gaze locked onto Eik’s and for a moment her eyes were nothing more than beads of total incomprehension.
As she stared, her mouth bobbed open and closed like a fish out of water, her body completely frozen. Then, like a video cutting from one frame to the next, she rammed full bodied into the bars, a metallic clang echoing hollowly into the tiny space like a gong.
Menka Tokanami let out a howl of ferocious, deranged rage that hardly seemed fitting of a sound uttered by a person’s throat. No intelligible words found their way into her screams, but the tears streaming down her cheeks left no doubt about her thoughts.
It was feral. It was not sane. It sent shivers down Eik’s back and he felt Michael’s hand grip his with painful E-ranked strength.
He did not blame the young healer for such a reaction. Even here in her cell, Menka was clearly a terrifyingly powerful Awakened. Multi-colored energy swirled around her fists as she pounded on the bars of her cell. Eik couldn’t rip his eyes away from the thin, green rods that looked as fragile as a stale bread stick in front of the power she displayed.
But not only did the bars hold up against her furious onslaught, the pink ripples of a barrier spread out from anywhere she hit. It was not unlike what Goran Gehun, vice leader of the 6th squad of the 11th division of the Department of Internal Conduct of the Nidafjeld Alliance, had shown during her first assault of their team. But it seemed much more powerful.
Reliving that moment rekindled something in Eik. His own anger mixed thickly with fear and desperation. As he looked on the bars were suddenly no more, and Menka’s deadly fists were held back from killing him by… nothing at all.
While his mind conjured up such images of his own impending death something stirred inside him. At first he thought it was Profound Toxin hoping to come out and play but it quickly became clear that it was the dimensional matter swirling around inside of him full of agitation.
Atla turned to stare at him as a hazy aura, like heated air on the horizon, began to flow outwards from his body. She looked impressed. The energy was reacting to his fear by bursting out defensively like a cat raising its bristles in response to a perceived threat.
Eik felt it happen but his mind was occupied entirely by the sight of Menka smashing away at the bars like a maniac, spittle flying as her screamed her throat hoarse. The novel sensation of the energy escaping from his body was pushed to the back.
Soon Profound Toxin came out unbidden as well, swirling aggressively around his body like a serpentine guardian spirit. As it rippled around him and lunged for Menka, crashing uselessly against the force field erected on the bars of the cell, it rumbled like waves breaking against a beach.
It rushed around and pulled the cosmic matter along with it, appearing at first to be mixing with Eik’s aura. Within moments they separated and even though the aura continued to be buffeted about by the Profound Toxin, they remained divided like oil and water, the toxin seeming to evaporate the white aura anytime they touched.
“Eik, Eik, stop! Your poison is going everywhere! Eik!” Michael shouted as all four of them leapt back to avoid getting caught up in his uncontrolled release. Even Atla stepped back with an expression of caution as she grabbed the warden by the shoulder and pulled him back with her.
Then she moved with lightning speed, her hand slithering in between the gaps in the whirling Profound Toxin to slap Eik hard over the head. His head was thrown forward so hard by the force of the blow that his forehead almost banged against the barrier in front of him.
The pain and shock of it pulled him out of a trance induced by the trauma of facing down Menka’s ruthless onslaught for a second time. He looked back at his friends shamefully as the toxin retreated back in through his skin.
“I’m sorry, guys. Are you okay? I… I lost control. I’m sorry.”
“We’re okay,” Michael said. The three of them looked at him with worry.
Luckily, they had not been struck by his rampant ability even though they had been standing right next to him. Perhaps Profound Toxin had learned that they were not enemies, or maybe it was simply starting to synchronize more with Eik’s own way of thinking.
When he turned back he could finally see Menka for what she now had become — a shell of a person locked in a small box of which she would never see the outside until the day of her death. An overwhelmingly powerful shell of a person, yes, but a shell nonetheless. A tortured spirit driven mad by sorrow.
“Hey;” he said hoarsely, now able to look straight into the deranged woman’s eyes. “Hey!” he roared.
Menka paused, silent. Greasy hair fell over her face, giving her the look of a ghast.
“Look at me!”
She only stared straight through him as if he wasn’t there, a low sound escaped her throat. A humming keen lamenting a loss. She sat down on the cold stone floor where she began to rock back and forth as she hugged her knees close to her chest. Tears never stopped flowing from swollen, red eyes.
Sonja and Michael came forward and kneeled down to be at eye level with the lamenting figure. “Menka Tokanami,” Sonja said quietly with a steady voice. Her trembling fingers betraying the feelings her voice had hidden as her nails scraped across the stone.
“Your son’s death wasn’t our fault. He was a victim of the Moon Shall Swallow cult. He was dead before we ever made it there. It wasn’t our fault.” — Her voice rose as she spoke — “It wasn’t our fault! It really wasn’t!” Her tone conveyed the desperation she felt to be understood by Menka.
Menka didn’t seem to hear her, however, and she simply continued to rock back and forth.
Heath took his sister up by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet. Michael too looked conflicted but didn’t say anything and stood up as well.
“How about we call it a day?” Atla asked. “I don’t really think she’s all there anymore. Grief did something to her.”
Eik nodded and stepped back from the cage, fists clenched to the point of bloodlessness. “Let’s go,” Heath said and thumped the Dane in the back.
They followed Warden Harfol out and through the reinforced door. Once they made it outside Mikla was waiting for them. “Hey,” he said with a wave. “Should I take us straight back to your apartments, or are you coming with me to get something to eat?”
“Actually,” Sonja said, her eyes flitting to her friends. “Would it be okay if we walked back instead of going by fracture?”
