Treasures of Avalon: The Noctus Chronicles by T.E. Mantil

Author:T.E. Mantil [Mantil, T.E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Self-Publish
Published: 2023-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty

Hanging Sediment Canteen, Southern Shelf, Vesketh

Midday on Vesketh had brought with it a heat wave unlike anything Marc had ever experienced before. Sweat would bead upon his forehead, drip from his eyebrows, and evaporate in front of his eyes before reaching his nose. Every time he took a breath, he could feel the hot clammy hands of Vesketh burn the air from his lungs.

Mixed with the defeating meeting they had shared with the Southern Shelf elder, the high temperatures only felt worse. Yuri had quietly led them to a water canteen dug deep into the side of the canyon. Like themselves, other pilots and crews had gone in search of shelter from the sun and somewhere to wet their whistles.

Hanging Sediment Canteen was an apt name in Marc’s opinion. Other than metal panels making a floor to stand upon, the rest of the rounded-out cavern was clay and rock. Bronze tones traced the walls with hints of gold and blue. He was certain that if he touched the walls his hands would come back covered in mineral dust.

By pure luck, or Payette’s intimidating persona, they had managed to annex a small table for themselves. Marc had insisted on getting everyone some water. He had left them at the neither fully round nor fully oval shaped table and pushed through the growing crowd of wannabe zircon hunters.

Truthfully, he just needed a moment for himself. His right stump itched horribly in the heat. Hazan’s doctors, if Marc could even call them that, had placed a layer of synthetic skin over the wound after his hand had been severed. The coating had melded with his own natural skin, but the process was far from painless. His bandages had grown damp with sweat, causing the wound to become irritated. A small SFR kit tucked onto his belt filtered his blood for infection, but the heat made the process taxing. By all accounts he should have been restricted to bedrest upon L’heureux Roger.

Checking over his shoulder, he spied Hypatia giving him a worried stare. He nodded a smile back at her and kept moving towards the bar counter that sat at the entrance of the Hanging Sediment Canteen. There was no way he would make Hypatia take this journey alone. It was his fault that she was in this situation to begin with.

“Watch it,” a large Veskethian man, choosing not to speak in his natural tongue, hissed as Marc bumped into him.

Apologizing, Marc stepped around the man. He seemed unaffected by the heat as he hauled in a brass canister. Liquid sloshed around inside of it and Marc knew it must have been water. From what Yuri told him, the native people of Vesketh were able to keep their peace with off-worlders by trading them freshwater. If anyone tried to take it by force, the Veskethians would poison the wells. With them being the only ones that knew how to drill for water on Vesketh, most people took them at their word. Yuri had said he only knew of three other times where the natives had gone through with their threat.

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