Urgon (The Seven Worlds: Book 1) [Unfinished First Draft]

Chapter 9: Journey Back To Antau

The journey down was uneventful as we knew which way to go and what to avoid. Ray wanted to stop by Biranto to see his uncle again. Grandpa and I agreed as we wanted to see what had happened to Berti. When we arrived, we saw Dave talking to another villager. This villager was a short gray-haired man with a cane.

"Ray! Jack! Greg! You're back!" Dave exclaimed when he saw us.

"Hi, how are you?" Ray asked him.

"I'm fine."

"What happened to Berti?" asked grandpa

I was just discussing with Abraim if we should punish her. Right now she is being held prisoner. Technically, she didn't do anything bad. She was just following orders." Dave explained.

I say you should still punish her for betraying you. But maybe not something severe," grandpa proposed.

"Indubitably. She did say she would let you stay here for a night and then she locked you up," Abraim agreed.

"I think we should visit her and then we can help you decide," I suggested.

"I agree. She is being kept in the town hall, this way," Dave said.

We followed him to the building I had guessed was the town hall last time. The ground floor was filled with villagers waiting for the decision to be made. Berti was being kept in a small cell on a lower level.

"You again!" she screamed when we entered.

"Calm down. We just want to talk about why you locked us up," grandpa told her.

"I already told you. Samulon said he would reward me if I did."

"Anything else?"

"I guess I just wanted the attention," she mumbled.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Could you speak up?"

"I guess I just wanted the attention," she repeated, louder.

"Interesting. And that's all?"

"Well, I was always jealous of Abraim. Why should he be our leader? I campaigned against him for the position of mayor and got only five votes! Turned out, only my close friends voted for me." she admitted glumly.

We left the cell and went up to announce our decision to the villagers.

"For those of you who do not know me, I'm Gregory Green. I'm here to talk about Berti's punishment. She betrayed several of us and admitted to her motives. First of all, Samulon promised a reward for stopping Jack from reaching him. Second of all, she wanted to lead, mostly because she was jealous of Abraim and humiliated from getting only five votes for the position of mayor. Third of all, she wanted attention because she was a bit of an outcast. We think you should pardon her as several of you were involved with this revolution and we cannot imprison all of you. Another reason to forgive her is that she was mostly acting on orders. Finally, one of her reasons was mostly just disliking us and we do not want this to become an endless cycle of vengeance." grandpa announced.

"Who agrees with this statement?" Abraim asked the crowd.

Most of the crowd raised their hands showing they agreed.

"As the majority agrees with Greg, we will pardon Berti for her acts against us."

As the matter was decided, we prepared to leave Biranto and head for the HoverTrain station. We were just about to leave when Dave ran towards us and screamed:

"Wait! You should stay here for a night, like this Ray and I can spend more time together and you can rest before setting off for wherever you're going."

"I guess we could stay one night. It's not like we have a deadline."

We went back to the house we had slept in last time and got settled. It was getting late so we joined Dave for dinner. After dinner, we discussed our plan for getting to Hyskoi before going to bed.

The next morning, we had breakfast, got ready, and left to go catch a HoverTrain. We arrived at the train station right when a HoverTrain was arriving. There was no direct route to Hyskoi or Jorind so we decided to stop in Antau and stay for a night at the hotel Luxurgon before flying to Jorind (We decided to take a shuttle to change a bit from HoverTrains as we didn't trust them, following the crash). We arrived in Antau without incident and went to the hotel to put down our equipment. We visited Antau and had lunch in a restaurant. We tried to find the old man who told us about the prophecy but he was nowhere to be seen. We stayed at the hotel and planned our journey before having dinner and going to bed.