THIEF OF BREAN (VOL-1)|✓

A DECEPTIVE DIMENSION- XLIII

The dangling wooden veneers of the crumbling building were singed and mildewed. The walls had been burnt away completely. The scorched gut of the rusty skeleton was filled with wooden debris and rum bottles reduced to shards. The only thing that looked intact was a round iron table that was rolled over to one side and half buried in the sooty wreckage.

Carl peered at its heavily rusted surface. It had some kind of strong carving that ran around the edge-something like a long chain holding small palm-sized arrows in between the links.

They halted to pry the premises. As Rhett and Lamont kept dumbly looking about the debris for god knows what, Carl searched the ground for fresh footprints. The mud was damp and leather hard. That kind of gault was likely to bear an impression.

When he crouched to the ground to get a closer look, Carl sensed a sudden change in the air. It was thickening up around him. At once, his mind went numb and body turned insensate. He could not stir or call for help. Darkness flashed across his vision. He shut his eyes.

He was having a stroke! Carl fretted.

Just then... he heard strange voices. Laughter... loud slurry dialogues... and gags... an unknown tongue.

His jolted forward and felt the damp ground against his palm. Perception left his hands and raced back to his mind. His body numb again. He saw faces-fair faces of men with long dark hair flowing down their shoulders-greasy and bushy, some flowing down the shoulders, and others knotted into a high man-bun. He saw the tips of their nails filled with filth as they flicked their fingers through the cards.

The group was playing cards. They joked, laughed and downed the rum generously. Each one was holding up a magnum bottle... and they were seated around an iron table... it had carving of a long chain holding small palm-sized arrows in between the links

Carl snapped his eyes open. His chest was burning up. He sucked in a long breath and looked to his sides. An instant sense of disorientation gripped him. He was bent forward in an awkward position, with his palms dug into the mud.

Giles came up to him as he rose to his feet. "There is nothing to see here, Detective. Let's not waste time."

"Yeah... yeah, right," he nodded masking the unrest bubbling inside him.

He couldn't believe that he had dozed off. Carl rubbed his eyes and shook his head to overcome the sleepiness.

They resumed shortly. Skirting the building they continued southwards. It was an abrupt end of the Gree-made path. Further, the land was a pathless expanse along the turfy southward slope rising toward the shoulder of the mount. While the Sentinels efficiently balanced their footing over their canes over the outcrops, Carl had to almost scrambling over them.

Although their pace was way slower than before, they did not run into any snag up-slope. The course that Rhett had chosen was clear and the shortest they could have trekked as the first time travellers.

Rhett was well aware of this place, Carl reckoned, looking over the throng of young Sentinels to him in the forefront. Lamont trudged to his side, abiding by his every step and complying with his every gesture, like a right hand man more than a friend. Rhett and Lamont appeared like they knew every curve that they had to take; every mound they had to cross to make it to the crest in quick twenty minutes walking. It was like they had a mental map to what laid ahead.

And when they finally made it to the spanning shoulder of the mount, Carl recalled Webb Croft telling him about Rhett having been to the place before.

Not just once-said the voice inside his head. Rhett had charted the path like he had been there before. Not once but many times, many times enough to know the nook and corner of Mount Lucan.