Chapter 2 – Disembark
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When the Island reached land, it did not stop moving. It moved at the same speed and moved forward. It moved through a desolate landscape, which was seemingly devoid of life.
Simply put, it was a desert of sorts. But even a desert has its inhabitants and this one had none.
It was weird, even for a desert. The grains of sand should’ve been as golden as the sun and looked warm, but that wasn’t the case. It was something unexplainable.
The island moved, though not as much as it did in the ocean. It embedded its roots into the ground and stretched forward, looking like an octopus which was trying to move on land. And just like the octopus would get tired and stop, the island stopped as well.
This time, it embedded its roots completely into the ground along with the gem in its middle. From and outside perspective, it looked a huge, green, lush tree simply settled itself into a desert. Once it did, the birds, lizards, insects and other small critters became restless for a moment and settled back into the lushness again.
According to Meya, this was a piece of land, almost fully closed off by large mountains except for a single walkway, at which, according to Meya, Mironov was currently looking at.
Mironov himself was still with her, on her watchtower of sorts. But he couldn’t see the walkway himself, fully at least. To him it looked like a dense fog covered his surroundings and blurred everything out, though he still noticed the mountains as slightly darkened areas and the walkway which split those areas into two.
“Guess it’s time to go and look around.” Mironov stood up from the ledge and started walking towards the stairs which led out of the watchtower and remembered Throna who left a small chunk of herself, which looked like a small white rock. “Come, we need to go.” He said in a calm voice, as though he forgot that he gave the order for her to leave.
Throna materialized herself from that rock in a kneeling position and started apologizing as though her actions broke the world apart: “I’m terribly sorry for disobeying your order! I thought it would be good if I could come at any time you wished for it and thus made a quick decision before I left! But now I realize how foolish my actions have been! I’m truly, truly sorry!” Mironov looked upon the woman who was prostrating and crying herself to death in front of him immediately after appearing.
To him it came as an eye and ear sore, but he composed himself and tried to calm her down: “It is fine... You made the right judgement. Now calm down. Let’s go.”
He slowly raised Throna by the shoulders who had tears running down her eyes. Maybe I shouldn’t have pretended to notice… He contemplated, but brushed that thought aside due to seeing her current state, which looked like a deeply hurt child.
“*sniff* *sniff* O-okay… Thank you…” Throna blurted out with her trembling voice.
“Ah… M-master… Um…” Behind the two who were leaving, Meya was jittering again.
“Ah, yes, that’s right. We’ll see you next time Meya!” Mironov turned around and politely said his goodbyes. In tow, Throna also did the same by simply nodding slightly with watery eyes.
“Ah… Um… Ye-yes… But… I just felt that Slosher came back…” Perhaps she was feeling embarrassment in the stead of her subordinate or was simply shy in general, but she always stuttered and jiterred every time she wanted to say something, at least Mironov made that deduction. And when he was about to speak up again she interjected: “And… Gnar is still on your head!” She yelled out the next sentence, with more emphasis put into it, as though it was a more important than the previous matter.
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Mironov was stunned for a second, but collected himself, reached towards his head and picked up Gnar by the collar: “Thank you for telling me, here, take care of it… him? Whatever, we’ll be off now.”
Mironov threw Gnar towards her, lightly, like a ball and Meya simply caught the bundle in a cradling position. “No, n-no… Thank you. Then… Please come again!” She bowed, squeezing Gnar with her tiny body.
The two of them nodded again and walked off. While walking, Mironov noticed that Throna was a lot quieter now, which was probably due to her previous blunders. Though to Mironov they seemed like nothing to worry about, she seemingly thought otherwise.
After a brief silence Mironov asked: “Mind telling me about Slosher? Because this incident seemed like a simple misunderstanding…” He didn’t exactly know how to feel about this, he didn’t even know how to feel if one of his subordinates actually committed treason.
Throna twitched ever so slightly, that Mironov didn’t exactly notice. She raised up her head which revealed her eye gleaming with joy, her beautiful, silky hair, and answered: “Um… Hm… Simply put – he’s a treasonous idiot.”
Mironov knew that he should put more emphasis on the word idiot rather than treasonous, as every movement unknown to him or others would be considered treason or something of that sorts, he felt like that would be the case at the very least. He thought briefly about what Throna said and simply sighed to himself.
Throna looked up at Mironov again as though asking for permission to speak again and while he found this a bit annoying, he still gave her permission, but still reprimanded her about it: “If you wish to speak then do so.”
“But… No, I will follow your wishes.” After a brief silent walk, she spoke up again. “Simply put, Slosher truly is an idiot. While this may be impudent of me, I believe you shouldn’t think too deeply about it.”
“Hm… I suppose.” And then he fell into thought once again, which made Throna feel even more insecure.
They walked down a spiral staircase while Mironov was still deep in thought. Throna pondered why they couldn’t just teleport from place to place, as that was a lot faster and easier, but every time that thought popped up in her head she would just notice her masters’ thoughtful expression and corrected her way of thought, even though it is quite hard to discern what kind of emotion his wooden face had shown.
Once they were finally down, they were in a small room of sorts, which had two arches acting as directional doors, which led into two different directions of the area, one towards the exit, one towards the church. They were now back, inside the safe-haven that was the heart of the whole tree, the jewel. Without all the unnecessary motions of swaying, no matter how slight they were previously, the ground felt a lot sturdier even though it was a mix of nature and brick architecture.
Mironov walked on towards the direction of the church, where the throne was. --It would be more appropriate to call it the throne room, rather than a church, huh? But his thoughts were dispelled remembering that the room was circular with a bunch of benches and glass mosaics as its windows and had the throne surrounded by an altar in the middle. It was weird and he questioned his previous design sense, but brushed it off as a need for simple remodeling.
--Ah… But maybe they would interject, saying that they are used to such a sight. Or not interject, at least feel sad… I truly don’t understand them… yet…
As he was walking, he admired the glistening sight of columns wrapped with clean green vines, which bloomed small yellow flowers and let out pure white dust, which swayed all over the place.
After finally reaching the church, just as he was about to enter it, he turned towards Throna and spoke: “Tell everyone, I mean the elites, to gather here, in the church. Since we have arrived, we should start preparations and some sort of planning.”
Throna knelt in place and responded to the order: “As you command, I will make sure everyone will be gathered in no time.”
Mironov looked perturbed for a bit but responded accordingly: “No need to rush them. If there are some unfinished matters, let them finish them, but tell them to not take too long, as I want to be done with this in a bit.”
“Yes. As you command.”
Mironov looked back at Throna who walked off along the sky blue walkway, past the outer jewels walls and then disappeared.
“Guess I should go converse with the regular citizens for a bit, or at least the maids.” The area where he was currently at, the globe, was devoid of anyone, thus he wandered after Thronas path, towards the outside of the jewel, the heart of the tree.
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