Divided Nation

Parliament

"Where's Harold," I said the second the Water Dancer docked within the Center Island.

       "At the command tower," The guard told me, "But sir, I don't think you should..."

      I pushed past him and rushed up the stairs. Kyxio greeted me on the way up, but I didn't really pay him any attention. Leon and a couple other guards accompanied me up, since I didn't exactly know where the command power was.

      They lead me up through the Parliament building, to a slim, but tall tower in the North West corner. there was a small, claudraphobic staircase leading up to the top of the tower, lit faintly by torches.

      At the very top, was a room similar to when I met Harman for the first time. It had a 360 view of the sea around it, but the room itself was very small, orderly and compact. Harold lay on a bed in the corner, with a small army of people crowding around him.

      "Move aside!" Harman shouted as he entered the room, "make room, make room!"

      The people slowly dispersed and flowed out of the room, except for a person who I assumed was the doctor. Harold was unconscious on the bed, with the arrow that had pierced his eye been removed. The skin around his eye was red and swollen, with lines of infection slowly creeping through the bandages around the wound.

     "Poison," I realized as I recognized the green lines through his thin skin, "The arrow was poisoned."

      "And not only poison," The doctor said, "We found traces of snake venom, frog poison and, of course, Winterflower."

      That was bad news. Winter must have came early for the Northern regions of the Regime. That meant that they could harvest winterflower early. It was a deadly type of flower, the only flower that grew during winter, but once harvested, it could be turned into a thick type of liquid, capable of poisoning 10 men with one flower.

      "How concentrated was it?" I asked, examining the wound. I wasn't a doctor, but I was fairly educated in the medical field. Any concentration of winterflower higher than the amount in one flower would be enough to kill him.

      "Not too bad," The doctor said, "It was at the Battle Of The Rapids, so it was early in the winter season. This must have been their first batch of winterflower. By my guesses, only 1 tenth of a flower."

      I sighed in relief. One tenth of winterflower wasn't bad. Enough to kill an average person without medical care, but Harold should be fine. There was no known cure for winterflower poisoning, but it usually wore off in a couple of weeks. It was designed to only immobilize the enemy in the battlefield, not to kill them.

     "We've done everything that we can," The doctor explained, "We've cleaned out the wound, added alcohol and patched it up as best we can to stop further infections. At this point, all we can do is wait."

      "He should be up in a couple of weeks," Harman announced, "And after that, it'll take a couple of weeks to be back in the battlefield. Until then we'll put a council together, from Leon and the other ministers to take control of the States."

      "Of course," Leon said, "We'll get ourselves together. A meeting in the dome in an hour, tell everyone else."

      The guards nodded and marched out of the room. 

      "You too Hayden, I want you at the meeting. We've got a task for you."

      "Gotcha, see you in an hour then."

      I walked out of the tower and back into one of the guest rooms in the large building. Kyxio joined me along the way.

     "Hey," He started, "I didn't see Alexia see anywhere. What happened?"