Chapter 41 - Hylik

Jude decided that it would be wise to look to see if anyone at the motel looked like a leader, as opposed to just rushing into the truck blindly. He looked around again, augmenting his vision like before.

The people looked as if nothing was going. Even Krynn seemed oblivious to the truck and what was going on in it. He didn't even seem aware of the fact that his friends were missing. Of course, Jude could not assume that Krynn had even been with the friends since the village was destroyed, although Survivor had said that in the visions.

One man did seem like a leader above the rest. Jude had never seen him before in his life, however, and could not identify him as the leader if he was. He looked for signs of whether or not this man was the leader of the group.

He did walk with a certain authority, however nobody seemed to acknowledge his existence as he walked by. In fact, nobody seemed to acknowledge anybody's existence, leading Jude to believe that something else was going on, something that was deep and sinister.

The man walked over to the truck, and one of the guards nodded at him. He opened the lock on the back, and doors swung open. He motioned to whoever was inside, and four people came out. Jude immediately recognized two of them - Relik and Tyra, but he did not know the other two.

He focused his mind and felt a mental aurora spreading across the neurons of his mind. His brain spun, but when he opened his eyes again to look at what was happening now, the desired effect had not come. He had tried to augment his hearing much as he did his vision, but it did not work. Perhaps he could only augment one sense at a time, or perhaps he simply was not able to augment his hearing.

So instead he watched the exchange between his friends and the man. His friends were badly injured, thin, and tired. Survivor had been right. If they looked like they did, then they were almost certainly in grave danger. And right now, they still were.

Still, Jude knew that it would be unwise to try to free them now without learning more information. So he looked closer, hoping that he could identify what was being said based on body language.

He looked closer at the group, to see what sort of emotions they were displaying. He saw that one of them was certainly Tyra, and his heart fell, knowing that whatever she had been through it must have damaged her spirit. She looked crushed and lonely, but also hopeful, as if she were waiting for something. Another female there simply looked scared of what the man was going to do to them. And Relik stood there, standing close to the third woman. Both of their eyes were filled with crushed pride, and fear - possibly for one another.

The woman by Relik was the first to speak, which seemed odd, seeing as how she seemed to be the prisoner. And although Jude was not able to read lips, his augmented mind seemed able to identify the word being spoken.

"Hylik". Jude assumed that this was the name of the leader. He searched his mind to see if he could identify what, if anything, the word meant in the kryon tongue. The root "-lik" was there, though Jude had not yet worked out a concise definition of what it meant. He thought, however, that it meant "destination", of which the full word would be "rêlik".

And then he thought more, and realized that the name meant "hell-bound". Surely this man was the leader of the group, simply because people were given kryon names for a reason. And frequently, the kryon name would mold the character of the person to match that of the name.

Hylik walked over to the woman, and gave her a hard punch across the face. She looked back at him angrily. He began to taunt them, though what he was saying was not clear. Jude could only tell the basics of what was being said based on the body language of the people recieving the comments.

Tyra looked ready to kill the one now identified as Hylik. In fact, looking closer, all four of them seemed to have that same look of disdain and disgust upon them.
Hylik whistled, quite loudly in fact, as Jude could hear it, and the guards who were still standing by the truck came over and grabbed each one of the people by the arms. They wrapped them around back so that the prisoners would not be able to fight back.

And then it happened. Hylik closed his eyes, and seemed to lose all mental connection to the world around him, and the prisoners seemed to be going into a trance. Jude knew just what was going.

Hylik was using the powers of his mind.