Chapter 12

I woke up from my sleep to see Arquis packing our belongings to travel further on towards Lava Rose Rift. He saw me watching as he packed and said, "Good you're awake, help me pack." and threw some of my belongings towards me and I caught it sleepily and it fell from my grip. Arquis shook his head and said, "It's amazing that you kill effectively when you can't even catch some simple belongings or keep your wits sharp when traveling." I snapped back at him, "You wouldn't even have went here to begin with because your drunk lazy ass would still be in bed wasting the day away if you had your choice!" Arquis came at me like he was going to hurt me and I walked up towards him the same way back and we just stood there waiting for the other one to start something. Arquis stared at me angrily and I glared back at him showing him he wasn't going to push me around and get away with it. He turned away and continued to grab everything and tossed it onto the ATVs and said in an angry tone, "Come on get on before I leave you behind, we still have a long distance to cover." I got onto the ATV and followed him close making sure I wasn't stranded in the middle of nowhere. We rode into a town that was less populated than most places but luckily they seemed to have plenty of food and other essential items such as one I'd never knew of before and neither had Arquis; they called it an Entra Tracker, apparently it would help guide us to places even faster than a GPS could. I got it even though Arquis believed it would be useless and make the trip longer. I powered it on syncing it to my electronic watch, punched in Lava Rose Rift and waited. Shortly after we heard a whir inside the machine and it flew midways to our chest away from us and left a constant red ray behind it's path for us to follow and once we did they disappeared from view; not only did it make sure it was the fastest route, but it also scanned the surroundings for obstacles or danger and projected symbols and short messages describing what it found. I read the instructions and told Arquis about what the symbols he didn't know stood for, and after the sun went down that evening we saw Lava Rose Rift up ahead and rode in looking for a place to sleep and found a place called "Always Away Inn" and took turns watching again, not just because of the funnily named sign, we took watch because Lava Rose Rift was known for it's occasional rule breakers that seemingly disappeared when their punishment for breaking the law was due (somehow they still ended up in an arena somewhere). It was a beautiful place built upon an inactive volcano, the people who built the city knew that it was dangerous and came up with a way to incorporate the volcano into their design, using hardened glass of different colors to fill in the cracks that lead to the magma and see through blast protectors that were made to diffuse the volcano should it ever erupt kept everyone calm and once the citizens of the town got used to the strange idea of walking over a volcano every day they eventually got used to it and the city was a beautiful place to visit. Nevertheless we stayed vigilant that night and I couldn't sleep as much anyways with all the excitement and dread of finding the person we came here for I tried to go to sleep when it was my turn to but couldn't. So much had happened when we fought Denvas I wanted to get back to see Renfro and Pirouette to confront her about what we had found. Finally my mind had settled down to sleep after a few hours and we set off to find our target. We looked around different areas of the city and while we did I admired the glow of the ground around us and felt what the rest of the other people who lived here must have when they had to get used to life on a volcano, the fear of the ground beneath dropping you into the lava below. I looked back up and followed Arquis careful of where I was stepping now. We went from the marketplace to the flower shops where they got their name from thanks to the special type of flower that grows on volcanos, it was a rose unlike any other the magma passed through it and the flower somehow still thrived and made the orangish red glow of magma part of it's splendor. Looking back on where I came from I would've loved to have came to this place to have a vacation, despite the problems with people breaking the rules coming from here most of the people around us were friendly and seemed at least mostly happy with their lives except for when someone occasionally looked down and freaked out internally. Most people would assume that this is a bad place to be based on its reputation but it's wrong to stereotype a whole city's society off of a few people breaking the rules. We finally got a lead and my moment of wonder for the place we were in was put on hold momentarily for us to find who we came for. Arquis and I were heading down a street when we saw what appeared to be our target walking slowly away with a crowd not to cause suspicion; they stayed that way for a long time until we were right on them and feeling as though they were going to be caught they started running. We ran after them dodging people and obstacles in our way while rapidly chasing our quarry. We caught up to them after they made a staircase from their yellow spirit while I made a grappling gun from mine to hurl myself over and on top of them holding them down until Arquis made his way over walking up and down two purple wooden beams he'd made across the fence. Once Arquis was across I turned them around and the face of a woman looked back at us. "It's her." I said to Arquis confirming we had the right person. "Want me to finish it or do you want to?" I asked him. Before he could respond the woman blurted out, "I can help you find more Archive Sanctums!" We looked at her and then at each other and decided we needed to talk about what to do, while we decided our best approach we both made a prison for our captive. Arquis made a purple prison chamber and I covered it in a red round barrier. "Now what do we do?" I asked Arquis.