In Search of Home

Chapter 40

The limo rolled to a stop slowly. Viktor, who had been slowly falling asleep on Vok'Rul's tail (it really made for a comfortable pillow, even with all the pointy jewelry), jerked awake as the soothing rumbling noise of the vehicle suddenly shut off.

"Where's th' fire?" he mumbled, sitting up to blearily look out the window. He squinted against the harsh morning light. He wished he could go back to sleep. He was not a morning person.

"Kohgrash," Vok'Rul said behind him. Viktor looked over his shoulder, still blinking hard against the light. The alien looked amused. He was holding something.

Oh! The harness. Viktor thought he might have forgotten it. He wondered when the alien had grabbed it.

Regardless, the human let out a big sigh, shuffling closer to the alien to let him secure the damn thing around his chest. It sat comfortably over his clothes, which was a relief. He could barely even tell it was there.

The door on Vok'Rul's side opened, and Viktor fought the urge to cower like one of those cliche vampires. No one here would get the joke, and he'd just end up looking like an idiot.

Both he and Vok'Rul jumped out of the car (Vok'Rul was way more graceful than Viktor, who felt like he was jumping from twenty feet up), and Viktor curiously looked at their surroundings. In front of them lay a giant building. It reminded Viktor of the United States' capitol buildings, as it had a giant ornate dome on the top. There were massive stone pillars that had engravings Viktor couldn't quite see from this distance. Large windows decorated the sides of the building, giving it an open, airy sort of feeling.

The most interesting parts of the building, though, were the large floating statues suspended in midair in front of it. They were definitely made of rock. Their polished white gleamed in the weak sun. But they seemed to be alive.

Snake-like in nature, the statues seemed to be fixed to one area, winding and twisting in patterns that Viktor couldn't decipher. As Vok'Rul ushered him along, Viktor watched as they connected, winding around each other before separating quickly, going back to their positions on either side of the building.

As they got closer, Viktor could see that while they looked like giant marble snakes from a distance, the statues were separated into large segments and only the end pieces were tapered to a point. Each segment had a small pair of wings connected to them that didn't seem to move, but looked beautiful, nonetheless. Words that he couldn't read were engraved onto each section, and Viktor desperately wanted to know what they said.

The most impressive thing, though, was that each segment was independently floating. They didn't seem to be connected to each other at all! There were small, barely noticeable rocks in the open space between the sections, but they were floating, too.

"Wow," he said, almost tripping over Vok'Rul's tail when the alien turned to look at him. His gaze was stuck on the statues. "Those are so fuckin' cool, man!"

Vok'Rul just smiled at him, and when they approached the giant steps (of course, there were steps, of course), Viktor didn't mind getting picked up so that they could get into the building a little quicker. It gave him a better view of the statues.

He turned and leaned over Vok'Rul's shoulders as far as he could go, trying to keep them in his sight. He sighed mournfully when they fully entered the building. Vok'Rul patted his back consolingly, setting him gently on his feet. Hopefully, he'd get another chance to look at them.

Now that he was closer to the pillars, though, he could see that they also had some words engraved on them. They looked more stylized than the snake statues, looping and falling often into some curvy design. Viktor had never been a big fan of architecture, but he could admit that most of this stuff was pretty neat.