Displaced

Chapter 77

Akhustal Palebane opened her eyes to the soothing chirps of the lizards and the warm light of the morning sun leaking through her window. Well, not really; the Stragman people still made their home in the dark, cavernous, sunlight-deficient confines of Hoxoni in the south of the Stragman forest. But in her mind, those warming rays of light and familiar sounds were as real as the glow of the glowmoss by her bedside. For the first time in seasons, Akhustal felt content. She smiled as she stretched. Today was sure to be a very special day.

The guards offered a firm salute as Akhustal strode into the Stragman government headquarters some minutes later. Making her way through the various hallways toward her personal chambers with a confident smile on her face, nodding to the array of government functionaries saluting or bowing as she passed, she arrived in perhaps the best mood of her life and gave the door a hearty tug.

To her befuddlement, it refused to open.

"Tepin?" she called, pounding on the door several times with her oversized balled-up hands. Not once in her life had this door ever been locked when she'd arrived. Tepin always unlocked it when she arrived, which was generally well before Akhustal bothered to wake up. "Tepin, are you in there?"

There came no answer.

Akhustal gave a mental shrug. This whole situation struck her as rather strange, but she wasn't about to let a locked door ruin her day. Not today. With a single swing of her club, she bashed the lock into pieces and pulled the freshly remodeled door open.

The room inside stood undisturbed, everything as it had been left the day before. Nobody could be found inside.

"Tepin?" she called again anyway. What was going on? Though weak, the Shell basically never missed a day, and on the incredibly rare occasions that she did, she always made sure to arrange a temporary replacement. For her to not only be absent but also to fail to find a substitute would simply be annoying on any other day. For it to happen today, however, left a strangely ominous feeling in her gut. Tepin was a Shell, so wouldn't she want to be present for today's events more than anything? Akhustal told herself that it had to be just a meaningless coincidence, but the feeling wouldn't go away. Furrowing her brow, Akhustal left her chambers and headed down the hallway to the office of General Stonefist-hono, the head of Stragma's Intelligence apparatus and another notorious early-riser.

"Have you seen Tepin?" Akhustal asked as she barged into his room, interrupting some sort of briefing. All the assembled Stragmans stared up at her in confusion for a moment, caught off-guard by her sudden forceful arrival, before jumping to their feet and saluting their leader.

"Is something the matter?" the general asked.

"Yeah, Tepin's missing," Akhustal grumbled. "She wasn't around when I arrived."

"Strange, I have not seen her this morning either," Stonefist-hono replied, rubbing his chin. He looked around at the assembled intelligence officers. "Have any of you seen the Shell anywhere this morning?"

They hadn't.

"Have you sent somebody to her home?" the general suggested. "You know how frail she is. Perhaps something happened unexpectedly."

"Normally Tepin would be the one handling that," Akhustal griped. Still, General Stonefist-hono had a good point. Marching back out, she headed back towards the building's entrance and grabbed two of the guards outside. Once they'd gotten over the shock of her massive mitts grabbing them by the shoulders from behind, she ordered them to go retrieve Tepin from her home, wherever that was. She was sure they would be able to figure it out.

Patting herself on the back for a job well done, Akhustal decided to head out. Normally, she'd need Tepin to give her the day's agenda, but today there was only one thing that really mattered. A skip in her step, she headed into the caves, making her way deeper and deeper into the city.