Selection (Book 2 of P.O.E. chronicles)

Chapter 20 A series of unfortunate event

With the assurance of safety from Legre attacks we settled in a little cave not far north of where we met, close to a long ridge that sloped all the way down for hundreds of feets. We could see a distant plane further north of us which Steven told us was the Tibetan plateau; beyond that laid our destination.

It was about the fourth day in and we hadn’t gotten any news yet. The initial excitement for getting our friends back had subsided and I knew Steven was getting a little restless about the situation; he wanted to move on and move away from the danger zone. He didn’t fully believe that we were safe where we were. Au contrary Jeremy and Kailey seemed to be more back to their own selves; it was great to see them so relaxed again.

I was standing at the edge of the cliff on the fifth morning, facing the rising sun when a wolf cry sounded, causing my head to snapped back towards the source of the noise. My heart lurched in my chest as I took in the form of a Lupa approaching and I immediately went up to meet it.

The Lupa eyed me wearily as I got closer and I turned around to see the rest of my team had all stopped whatever they were doing and were closing in on us, anticipation in their face. I held a hand up signaling for them to stop getting closer, it was definitely not feeling comfortable coming into a group of humans.

Hi. I started with a greeting, bending down so I was at eye-level with it. It still startle me a little to see the level of intelligence in these Legres’ eyes. The Lupa just narrowed its eyes at me and I waited for a respond but a few awkward seconds past without any form of communication.

We have news. The wolf finally opened up, and my mind perked up and waited for the big news. We found one of the men nearby. He then projected the face of Vladimir and my heart both leaped and dropped. It wasn’t one of those from POE Academy, but on the other hand it was an important person to Emily and I was glad that the guy who had decided to stay behind to save us is still alive. But this also begs to question, what happened to John and Ho?

Where is he now? I followed up immediately and the wolf indicated that he was only about fifty miles away from us, but not in very good shape at all. For a moment I thought about asking the Legres to help us get him here but I knew it would only end with a fight between the two. We had to go and find him before he dies from his wounds.

“It’s Vladimir, they found him.” I turned around with a solemn face. Emily’s face lit up but her smile quickly froze as she took in my expression. “He is about fifty km east from us and he is gravely injured.”

“What are we waiting for? Lets’ go and find him!” Emily exclaimed and started to run, but froze quickly when she realised none of us was moving. The rest of us looked at each other, a look of uncertainty crossing our faces before returning to the running figure of Emily. She stopped abruptly as she realized none of us had moved, or maybe she had cooled down a little from the initial rush.

“Fifty km.” Steven repeated quietly, his expression told us that he was contemplating about the decision; and it didn’t look quite good at the moment.

“Are you serious?” Emily turned and faced us, lethal glares aiming at us. My heart contracted at her stare and I knew in my heart that the right thing to do was to go and save Vladimir.

“We owe it to him.” I said, surprising everyone and Emily shot me a surprised look. I could hear Tom sighed and stepping next to me.

“They are right.” Tom said, then looking at the increasingly constipated expression on Steven’s face. “I am not saying that it wouldn’t be dangerous, but we could easily make fifty km with the Lupa’s help.”

The expressions lightened up as if a light bulb had gone on inside their brain. We didn’t have to hide around Legres, the only thing we had to worry about was running into other POEs and the Lupa would know their whereabouts.