The land cruiser the crew had acquired and the few supplies they brought with them would get them to wherever Pacno was to lead them, however they first needed to head back to the ship to load the flying pods onto the cruiser's attached hauling unit without being too noticed.
Zoic tried to ignore the one thing that was gnawing at his thoughts. "Was there a wizard that betrayed anyone at Stee?" Zoic finally asked Pacno.
"Yeah that," he laughed. "It's a long story, but there was a spacecraft that was bound for Arcan, long time ago now. I was on that ship though I was much younger then. When the people who had hoped to live here without the death-grip of the Evil One and found that it was actually worse here or had gotten worse, they wanted to use the starship to search for another world."
Zoic was suddenly aware that this was the ship Khom had mentioned as never returning.
"From Arca the ship came here, and with it more survivors as it were..." Zoic stated.
"Yes," Pacno answered. "They know that the ship was hidden away, something like that was already a target. Many of the craft of the Great Three Worlds were being seized by the Evil One. And had begun to be gathered and used to do evil deeds. The wizard was the ship's last pilot. He was often, in his day, among the Elders of Fiod. Your home world."
"There's only one question that remains then," Zoic mused. "Why would those folk back there believe you to be the wizard and why do they feel betrayed?"
The air was still and barely stirred with a breeze. They would go quietly to retrieve the pods and get them covered well and head out. Standing and looking out from the lookout point they lingered and waited at, they readied themselves to move under the blanket of night.
Finally Pacno gave clarity to the crew's restless thoughts.
"The last pilot of the ship that never returned to Arca, was my father. And when we landed and all the passengers left to form new colonies and such, we stayed with the ship as my father knew there was something amiss. This escape world became the focus of the Evil One and his elemental goons. So my dad hid the ship. And when the people realized what was happening and that what they escaped just followed, they wanted to board the ship that bore them here, to escape again. But by then it wasn't possible."
Zoic, with these new revelations, asked calmly. "What about the core element of the ship?"
"The stone you're looking for is where I'm leading you to, minus the ship for I, myself, don't know its whereabouts. But I can take you to what you seek." Pacno smiled.
"If the ship is still to be found, that would also come in helpful." Rainier said.
...
No comments:
Post a Comment