It turned out that Chorlak food was actually pretty good before it was all mashed together in a food machine. However, Avaria could barely swallow any of the colorful fruits and meats spread before her. She blamed the twisting in the pit of her stomach on the blender-slop it was accustomed to metabolizing, firmly refusing to accept that the feeling might be dread. That would just be too impractical.
When they finished their meal, Zileca issued her more detailed instructions and sent the group on their way. Avaria had been surprised to see that their transport cube had fully transparent windows, but apparently only members of the Oversight Board were allowed to have one-sided windows. It was quite unfortunate that they would have to make their journey in a vehicle so prone to exposing them, but it couldn't be helped.
She now sat in the briskly moving cube with her hooded vest pulled low and her posture appearing relaxed. In truth, the many factors that could put a person on edge were causing a spike in her alertness, making it more challenging to maintain her unmoved persona.
One of the many sizable causes for concern was the possibility of being spotted, but the streets appeared to be nearly desolate at this hour of the night. Even the moon seemed to cooperate, its light muted to a dull glow by the grey clouds that mercifully obscured it. The less of them that passers-by could see the better off they were because there wasn't a hood in the world that could be pulled low enough to conceal her three traveling companions. Their bulky frames were unmissable.
The creatures in question spoke to each other occasionally, their native tongue sounding a bit like rocks tumbling while joints cracked. Their voices fell meaninglessly on Avaria's ears, so she didn't pay them too much attention.
She didn't mind being excluded from their conversation and was content to simply peer through the window from under her hood. Tinges of pink seeped into the sky, warning that rays of sunlight would soon assault their small transport and rudely subject the rather conspicuous Growloc to the scrutiny of every eye they passed.
“We've almost reached the first checkpoint.” The leader Growloc, who she learned was called Gorjo, stated in the standard tongue. All of the creatures looked very similar, but the patterns of lumps across their faces were distinct enough to tell them apart. Beyond that, Gorjo was the tallest of the trio.
She didn't answer but swept her eyes up and down him assessingly, her plastered half-smile somewhat offsetting the rudeness of the gesture.
Jagg, who seemed to be the least intelligent, rose from his place beside her, his bulky form infringing rather clumsily into her personal space before he found his balance, grunting oafishly when his head connected with the roof. Gorjo shot him a hard look for the mistake, making Jagg flinch in a way so subtle it could have almost been imagined.
Avaria stood too, although with much more grace. Unfortunately, the swift movement called an army of bright sparks to dance across her eyes and remind her that she still had a sizable gash on her head. She contained any outward symptoms of her dizziness, planting her feet firmly to avoid stumbling and clenching her jaw in concentration.
“We're here,” Teboc announced from his position at the steering wheels.
His voice sounded tense, although, with his thick grumbly accent, it was hard to tell for sure.
He wasn't much shorter than his fellow Growloc, but he was just short enough that he could stand in the cube with only a slight distortion of his neck.
The transport gently lowered to the ground, hitting it with a light thump before the door folded away. Avaria snatched her hood down a little further. Although in her present company it hardly made them less noticeable, her instincts demanded it, and oddly, it made her feel a little better.
She rolled her shoulders as she stepped out onto the pavement, a vain attempt to combat the tingling sensation that pulsated from the slash on her back. The injury had recovered from the numbness it had accumulated from being leaned against for so long.
They were soon creeping down an alley so narrow that the Growloc had to walk at an angle to fit. Although Avaria couldn't see from her position in the line, they must've reached their destination because she nearly ran into Teboc when he sharply halted. Jagg, who had taken up the rear, lacked such refined reflexes because he did run into Avaria. Despite almost being knocked to the ground, she regained her footing before she collided with Teboc and didn't utter a sound.
She remembered the way the other Growloc looked at Jagg when he was clumsy in the transport cube and the way he shrank under their gaze. In hindsight, when the creatures were talking, Jagg hardly uttered a word. She didn't like or trust any of them, but she did understand what it was like to be at the bottom of the food chain, so she chose not to highlight Jagg's latest bout of poorly harnessed limbs.
Teboc turned fully sideways, and she saw that he was standing in front of a large grate in the side of a building, the bottom of which was flush with the ground. He hunched at an awkward angle to loop his fingers through its holes, then yanked it off brutishly, unconfronted by the screws meant to hold it in place. Avaria hunched down to step through the hole, remaining crouched in the short space under the structure's bottom floor.
Once they were all safely concealed in the building's foundation, no easy feat for her giant co-conspirators, Gorjo drug the grate back into place, although it was slightly askew without the screws to hold it.
“I'll have first watch.” Teboc offered at a well-projected whisper, looking to his leader for approval. Gorjo nodded, making the other Growloc's chest puff up a bit with pride. His eyes cut to Jagg smugly, then he quickly scooted closer to the grate, where light had started to cast a grid of tiny square shadows. The pebbly lumps on his face, which previously seemed to obscure his races' expressions, suddenly looked harder, like he was deep in concentration, eager to perform.
Avaria knew that she needed sleep, it would take another two nights of travel to arrive at the council tower, and she would need to rest in order to be effective when she arrived.
However, as she curled up against the wall furthest from the grate, her silver eyes absorbing just enough light to see the gray figures waddling awkwardly a few feet away, an increasingly familiar sense of unease brought tightness to her features. Her concern only worsened when Jagg chose to settle himself relatively near to her spot, which was intentionally as far from the other Growloc as possible. Then it occurred to her that perhaps he too wanted distance between them. The thought settled her a little, but not much.
She wasn't entirely sure if there were such mistrust and competition among the ranks of Chorlak Warriors, but she doubted it. Such mixed goals and intentions didn't seem to align with their unit mentality.
Jagg's breaths seemed to have evened out, lessening the possibility of him attacking when she slept. Still, she tucked one hand inside a fold of her torso wrap to secure the hilt of her collapsible dagger, which she was quite glad she'd kept. The chilly metal against her fingertips served to lend her some sense of preparedness, but even so, by the time she felt relaxed enough in the creatures' presence to sleep, it was nearly her turn to take watch.
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