Day 4, June 2nd, 703 CR
Zyn would have slept late if he had gotten any reasonable chance. But he received no such reprieve.
“Time to get up, Zyn,” Lorian greeted him, shaking his shoulder back and forth. “We’ve got things to do.” For a moment Zyn was confused by the old man’s tone, but then he remembered that in their collective fatigue they hadn’t buried Bresan. Or had they?
It was dawn, a little bit before dawn, actually, and Zyn looked around to see Bresan’s body covered in various leaves and vegetation. Apparently the others, or at the very least Grumiah, had at least covered his body before falling asleep, which left only one thing yet to do, for which all the others were being awakened to perform.
Digging a grave was not an easy chore as they had no tools to heap up mounds of dirt, or sand, with. Grumiah, however, had found one patch of ground that was mainly a pile of rocks, beneath which was simple dirt. When the rocks were removed it created a hole about six feet by four feet and about three feet deep, more than enough to hold Bresan’s body. Zyn shook his head; it must have taken Grumiah hours to clear out those rocks, though now that he got a good look at Lum he saw that he looked quite worn out and exerted, so perhaps he had helped.
As far as he knew, the ship had been mostly crewed by Pyralians and Southlanders, so most if not all of them had been Followers, and when none of his now five companions flinched in the slightest at burying a man in a grave rather than burning him on a pyre, he figured they were all such. Together they hoisted Bresan’s body and lowered it gently into the grave, and one by one replaced the rocks to cover the burial place. Lorian, using a rather sharp rock, inscribed into a boulder that had been rolled to the head of the grave to serve as a tombstone, etched out a simple epitaph reading:
Here lies Bresan Drekmaan
Died upon reaching this island the first of June, 703 CR
May Eli grant him clear horizons
Finishing placing the last of the rocks, they all stood back. “Should... uh... Should we say anything?” Lum asked. Everyone gave each other questioning looks; normally a priest of some sort would give some rites, but with no priest they weren’t sure what exactly to do. Finally, Grumiah stepped forward.
“This ain’t easy; it never is. This time... with Bresan we’re lucky to have a body to conduct a burial, because dozens of our shipmates are never going to get that opportunity. But for us, we’re alive, we’re still kicking. So we’ve got work to do.”
With that simple speech, if one could call it that, Grumiah walked off; moments later Zyn and the others followed. They were on this island here and now, and in the here and now they had to survive.
The first order of business was food and water. One did not have to look very long or very hard, however, before noticing that the entire area was littered with coconuts.
Zyn reached down, finding a nice brown coconut right in front of him. Wanting to dig into its contents as soon as possible, he grabbed it by the husk and looked it over, noticing its hard, firm surface and wondering how he was possibly going to open the thing up. Experimentally he tried bashing it against a nearby tree, but his efforts to open the coconut up were fruitless. Becoming more and more frustrated at the thought of food and refreshment being so near and yet so inaccessible, Zyn starting throwing it at the tree and then at the ground at his feet, which unfortunately included his feet as poor aim sent the hard-as-a-rock fruit smashing into his toes.
Lorian and Lum came barreling over at the sound of Zyn’s incessant screaming, shouting “What! What is it?”
“Gravity! Eli damned gravity, that’s what it is!”
“What, a coconut fall on your head?” Lorian asked.
Zyn was about to answer in a resounding negative, but then suddenly realized that what he had just done probably hadn’t been the brightest thing, especially considering how badly he had just missed. So instead of the truth, “My feet; damn thing fell down right in front of me onto my toes!”
Lum let loose a callous chuckle at Zyn’s luck, but at least he wasn’t laughing about him throwing rock-hard fruit onto his feet. That, combined with the nasty gash on his left arm he had secured himself on their wonderful jaunt through the coral reef getting to this island, made him feel less than comfortable now that he ached more than a wooden dummy after being chopped up during sword practice. Massaging his foot while Lum and Lorian went off to tell the others it was just raining down coconuts on Zyn’s toes, in the corner of his eye he saw Parn ambling about aimlessly. The slightly ponderous mage rummaged through some leaves, looking for something that wasn’t there, turned about and made eye contact with Zyn. Immediately he broke off, trying to look busy moseying around the brush with no obvious goal in mind. Had he in fact seen that his injury was not a random accident but a blunder of anger and frustration? Or was he simple avoiding eye contact? It wasn’t out of character from what Zyn had observed. Parn showed himself repeatedly to be easily cowed and unwilling to challenge others assertions or authority, even though he might have objections. But that only made it seem stranger as to why Parn was traveling across the sea by himself. What was his deal?
In the hours that followed they set to work in ensuring their survival and confirming that they were on an island. “We gotta be sure,” Lum explained emphatically, “we’ve gotta be absolutely sure.”
“Even though it’s almost certain that it is an island?” Zyn asked.
“Come on, what did we see? We saw one side of this landmass at night of all times. That small mountain up there,” Lum pointed at said mountain, “it’s gonna take us an hour to get to the top of that, max.”
Lorian looked thoughtfully at the mountain, though to Zyn it seemed to be more like an over glorified hill top, despite its rocky craggy features and its sheer bluffs. “It’d be a good idea to get an accurate lay of the land, regardless of whether this is an island or not.”
That seemed to sway the group, and it did make sense to Zyn. However, Pols jumped in voicing another concern. “What if we’re not alone here?”
“W-would not that be a good thing?” Parn asked, stuttering as seemed typical for him.
Letting out a rueful laugh, Pols shook his head. “You haven’t heard the stories. If we went as far off course as I think we did, we could be in the Lypomese islands for all we know.”
“Give us a break, Pols,” Grumiah said dismissively, “You’ve been listening a bit too much to those stories.”
Parn, however, seemed to catch the foreboding in Pols’ voice. “Lypomese?”
“Yeah, they say those islands are populated by cannibals.”
“Abba, not this again,” Grumiah groaned.
This Zyn actually found amusing. “Cannibals, eh?”
“Hey, I’ll have you know—”
“Look,” Lum interjected. “I’m sure that we can figure out just all that’s going on and what we’re going to do once we get a good look at what this place is from above, alright?” This at least quieted Pols’ spouting sailors’ legends that had only himself and Parn going. Lum and Grumiah headed off to the summit almost immediately, leaving Zyn, Parn, Lorian and Pols to see what they could do about shelter and supplies.
The raft, or at least the largest piece that was still intact that Lorian had ridden to the shore on the previous night, had been salvaged relatively intact. It made an excellent roof for whatever structure they hoped to build, keeping out most of the rain, so that left whatever they could scrounge around for to support it. After finding several nicely sized sticks of wood, they propped it up against a heavy palm tree and presto: shelter made.
At first it seemed as though water might be somewhat annoying as they had to crack open coconut anytime they wanted one, which after his last debacle Zyn had managed to do so with some effort.
“Hey,” he said, mostly to Lorian but also to Pols, “I got some milk out of this thing, but where’s the white flesh part?”
Pols responded by giving him a slightly contemptible look. “That ain’t milk. It’s coconut water. Coconut milk is something you make from the meat.”
A scowl crossed Zyn’s face at being lectured by the “midget” whom he didn’t have a great deal of respect for. “Well excuse me for not knowing the finer points of coconut anatomy. And what the hell is the ‘meat?’”
“The ‘white flesh’ part, you stupid landlubber,” Pols grumbled as he stacked wood.
“Well that’s just fine and dandy, but how come there’s only milk in this thing instead white flesh?” he asked, deliberately choosing to call it milk instead of water mostly to tick Pols off.
Pols let out a string of expletives and shot Zyn an evil look. “Because mature ones have meat and young ones have water! Are you just intentionally stupid and ignorant?”
“Depends. Is it pissing you off?”
Lorian let out a chuckle while Pols approached Zyn with his eyes full of menace. “You’re lucky you ain’t a newbie sailor, ‘cause if you were I’d bust your ass so hard it’d pop out the other end of the Earth!”
Unable to back down at the ignorant ruffian’s asinine posturing, Zyn didn’t back an inch. “Nah, I’m not stupid enough to be a sailor.” He expected something fierce in retaliation, but somehow Pols misconstrued as he went back to work with his wood. He had meant it to mean only stupid people became sailors in spite of the fact that Pols might have decked him in the face, but apparently the sailor was dense enough to take it to mean something along the lines that Zyn knew he wasn’t cut out to be sailor so didn’t bother making a stupid decision like becoming one. At least that’s what he thought, and apparently Lorian had caught onto Zyn’s intended meaning too.
“Haven’t you learned in all these years of following me around how not to get into stupid fights?” he said softly.
“I’m not coddling to an incompetent,” Zyn said derisively, “Besides what’s he going to do besides hit me a little? We’re not in a situation where he could do anything serious.”
“Damnit Zyn,” Lorian hissed in one of his rare moments where he dropped his nonchalance that he carried with him everywhere. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re ever going to develop the patience you need to succeed me in the Business. You’re mouth is fat and it’s going to get you into trouble one of these days. And I mean worse than what happened in Eavey last year.”
Zyn snorted in recollection. “That wasn’t anything, just a scuffle with a couple blowhards.”
“Who happened to be nephews of the Bishop of Eavey!” Lorian said, still keeping his voice low so as not to let Pols or Parn eavesdrop. “Just because someone is an idiot doesn’t mean you have to run your mouth until you get punched in the face.”
“So you agree he’s an idiot,” Zyn said, unable to miss the opportunity.
“So?” Lorian counted, taking all bite, all the relevancy out of Zyn’s point. He got up and went back to work after that. Zyn sat sulking for a few moments before he got up himself and decided to find something useful to do.
Thinking about what got the whole thing started, Zyn remembered, banging his head for forgetting, the whole ordeal they had gone through on the raft. If they could just find something better, or build something better than blankets of shirts or pants they could collect all the water they needed by boiling it. And why not? Fire would be way easier on dry land with loads of wood around and they had materials, leaves, rocks, whatever they needed to make some kind of contraption that could collect condensed water.
He was about to look into it when Grumiah and Lum came trudging back to camp, with Lum in particular looking quite glum. “Island then, huh?”
“Yup,” Lum answered, plopping himself onto the ground dejectedly.
Zyn nodded to himself quietly as he piled some stones together for a fire pit. “No cannibals either I take it?”
“Nothing,” Grumiah answered. “This whole island’s got nothing on it. There’s about a mile and a half of land on the other side of the summit, but there nothing that would point to anyone living there. No clearing, no buildings, no smoke, nothing.”
There was a long period of silence before someone spoke up. “So... what are we going to do?” Parn asked.
“We get are shelter all fixed up for now,” Lorian said, “Then we can worry about finding some way off this island.
Starting a fire turned out to be harder at first than they thought. Pols and Lum were immediately sucked into an argument that focused around Lum’s complete and utter inability to get a spark going. Pols kept deriding Lum about how he was rubbing the sticks together wrong, which the latter waved off dismissively. After another five minutes with not so much as a whiff of smoke Pols’ derisions morphed into screams, with Zyn shaking his head the whole time. He wasn’t the most knowledgeable person about living in the wilderness, but it seemed pretty apparent even to him that there wasn’t enough kindling or tinder around the base. By this point Pols became fed up and shoved Lum aside to light the fire himself. His few minutes of attempting this proved to be just as dismal a failure that ended when his grip slipped, causing the stick he had been holding to gash him across the palm. After screaming in pain for several moments with the rest of them laughing hysterically at his misfortune, Pols uttered a long string of explicatives that had to go on at least two minutes; no one bothered to interrupt him because they were all laughing too hard, even Grumiah. Well, Parn wasn’t laughing, he was more just sort of standing there with a distinctly awkward look on his face that somewhat looked like he wanted to laugh being counteracted by an intense need to bleed out embarrassment.
Suffice to say though with the day wearing on and dusk some hours off they wanted a nice warm fire started, so they grabbed Parn from his embarrassed gawking and shoved the two clowns aside to make a real fire. After letting out a few more obligatory protests that “this was not his specialty” Parn begrudgingly closed his eyes and began chanting, though Zyn could quickly see this was no panacea and grabbed a bunch of kindling by himself to stack on the fire. Everyone displayed a measure of caution as Parn’s frequently misdirected spells on the raft were fresh in all their minds, and only got within two feet of the fire pit until the thing started burning healthily on its own and the mage stopped his chanting. Looking as though he had just pulled a carriage uphill by the strength of his own two legs, Parn literally collapsed onto the ground and just laid there utterly exhausted and, more surprisingly, utterly indifferent to everyone else’s reaction. Obviously casting spells outside his “specialty” drained him immensely, but Zyn wondered just what on earth the mage’s specialty was if he couldn’t cast a measly fire spell.
They had seen several crabs walking along the beach earlier and, tired of coconuts, decided they’d much rather have crustacean for dinner. When the time came to actually catch them, however, the little pests seemed to catch wind of their potential demise and were nowhere to be seen except for two at the far end of the beach scurrying into the ocean waters. They decided to wait several hours, but the overgrown underwater bugs sat out invisible in the water taunting them like a parent evilly showing their children delicious treats only to hide them on top of the cupboard out of reach. As such it was coconuts for dinner; Zyn had only had one meal of the things and his belly was already clamoring for something different.
As night fell they all gathered around the now roaring fire, exhausted from the day’s hard labor. Except for Parn that is as besides lighting the fire he had been about as useful as an inebriated three legged mule. Every time he had tried to help out with something instead of staring aimlessly around he had rather stared helplessly at whatever chore set before him, like he had been tasked with lifting a mountain or raising the dead. Now he just sat there eyes darting back and forth laughing nervously and uncomfortably and the rest of them enjoyed themselves with rowdy manly talk.
Invariably the conversation drifted to their present predicament, six men stranded on an uninhabitable island. Alone.
“Of course you know what that means,” Pols pointed out sighing, “no women around here. If we can’t make it off it means no kids, no community, we’ll just age then die one by one.”
The statement had the effect of killing all the immediate joviality in the six men, and they all just stared wistfully at the fire as it burned and crackled before them.
“Ah,” Lum cut the quiet, “we’ll figure out something with this raft.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Parn asked.
“Because we ain’t gonna give up, that’s why!” Lum exclaimed. Zyn let out a long sigh at that one. “As long as we’re alive there’s hope we’ll get off somehow.”
Zyn rubbed his hands through his hair. “You sound really confidant of that.”
“Well why not? Holding onto hope’s better than just resigning ourselves to this shithole island.”
“Maybe, but maybe we should put our bets on reasonable possibilities than just blanket feel good hope.”
“And who says I ain’t got reasonable possibilities in my head right now?” Lum countered.
Zyn rolled his eyes. “Maybe you could talk about that instead of this hope crap.”
“Hey, since when is hope crap, huh? I’ve been around longer than you, Zyn, and I’ve seen impossible situations turn around ok? Little bit of faith won’t kill you.”
Inwardly Zyn bristled at Lum’s use of the word “faith,” as if pithy aphorisms and inspiring life stories mattered when you got the dirt between your nails dealing with everyday life. But he kept his mouth shut, unable to think of anything to say that wouldn’t just pointlessly escalate things. So another period of silence descended upon them.
“Damn,” Pols said, breaking the silence, “what I wouldn’t give for a drink right about now. And a whorehouse.”
Lum could only laugh at that one. “Whorehouse. That was predictable. I thought you learned your lesson when you got your crabs.”
Pols’ face darkened as he glared evil things at his fellow sailor. “The only reason you don’t got ‘em is because of devil worship or something, ‘cause you’ve been down by those docks just as often as I have.”
“Ah, he’s just sore because of his eternal bad luck,” Lum pointed out to everyone else. “Because knowing your luck, Pols, if we hadn’t crashed on this island you’d probably ended up in some other messed up state.”
“Like what?” Pols challenged.
“Dunno, the predictable kind. Maybe getting stranded on a real Lypomese island choke full of cannibals, maybe end up all the way in Irombi with a bunch of deadra worshiping heathens, maybe getting stuck up north in Metamor.”
That sent Lorian roaring with laughter. “Oh I’d pay to see that.”
Parn shifted uncomfortably. “Metamor? Is not that some fortress that was cursed?”
Grumiah nodded grimly, taking a sip of boiled water from a hollowed out coconut shell. “About ten years ago some wizard came and cast some horrible curses on them, making them act like animals or something.”
“Four years ago,” Lorian corrected. “And I’ve met with people who’ve actually been there. They don’t act like animals up there; they, or at least a number of them, were physically transformed into animals.”
“...Damn, that’s... wow,” Lum said ominously.
Zyn of course knew of the Valley, the only passage there was to the inhospitable monster ridden northern wilderness beyond in the far north of the world. Aside from the fact that it was heavy Lightbringer country, it was well known as the gate to the barbarian lands of the Giantdowns, and as such full of people who spent almost their entire lives fending off evil hordes of monsters, for which the rest of the world had long held them in great esteem, even somewhat among the Ecclesia lands. But ever since the curse had been placed, tales of bravery and heroism were replaced by quiet whispers and horror stories.
“To be sure,” Lorian continued, “The stories I’ve heard have been somewhat conflicting and contradictory, but they all seem to agree that some curse was cast turning some fraction of the inhabitants into animal men. Though that was only some. Others lost their age and become children and infants. And the rest became women.”
Lum visibly shuddered. “That almost seems worse.”
“Yeah,” Pols said thoughtfully. “Though, it might not be so bad if that last one were to strike here. You know, turn someone into a woman so the rest of us could be satisfied, even have children.”
The groans and dismissals came like a steady wave in response, but Pols continued his line of thought. “Come on, seriously. Would it be that bad for the rest of us? I personally think the chubby mage would make the best woman here.”
Parn’s face drained of color quicker than Zyn had ever seen anyone’s do in his entire life.
“Come on, he’d be nice and pleasantly plump, and he ain’t much else good for anything else around here.”
“Why not you as a woman, Pols?” Grumiah interjected. “You’re certainly bitchy enough.”
“Yeah, I gotta admit, you’d make a perfect wench,” Lum joined in. Dodging a punch from Pols, Lum just laughed and heaped on more. “See, you got that lovely prickliness that you gotta have in any good wench!”
“Well maybe you’d make a good woman yourself Lum!” Pols shot back.
“No, I think I have to agree,” Zyn said, unable to resist taking a swipe. “I think you’d make the more suitably tempered woman.” Pols was up and ready to start a fight, but the others all just laughed at him.
Soon the moon was rising high into the sky and they all finally fell asleep one by one, though Zyn considered the possibility that Pols might try something to him or Lum in the middle of the night and thus considered acting preemptively, but in the end fell asleep in the midst of trying to think of just such a thing.
The night wasn’t entirely peaceful, however. Multiple times Zyn awoke to what he distinctly thought was something rustling in the brush. The third time or so that it happened several of the others awoke as well. Then... silence came again and they fell back to bed, but several times more Zyn woke up to what he swore was a rumbling sound coming from far off, but as soon as he strained his ears it vanished. No one got much sleep that night.
Day 5, June 3rd 703 CR
“I ain’t the type to believe in what some call ‘collateral damage.’”
“Why not, Lum?” Zyn asked, brushing aside a particularly annoying fern leaf from his path. “Some argue that people will die no matter what.” Somehow, after being tasked with exploring parts of the island around the summit, Zyn and Lum had gotten into a discussion about politics and warfare. Invariably the conversation had drifted head on into the siege of Sisard nearly a hundred years before where the attacking general had, in a bid to deal a crushing blow to the city’s defenders, killed several hundred civilians. The massacre had been immortalized in tales, at least in the Southlands, and to this day even your average sailor knew about it.
“A bunch of scribes, scholars and such have been arguing that for a hundred years. And they do it because no matter how horrible or wrong it was for a previous generation or foreign nation to cross the line, when the time comes that their kingdoms have to go into a war they magically have leeway to do ‘whatever it takes.’”
“So if one innocent person’s death was all that it cost to stop a war, you’d be opposed,” Zyn asked, going for broke to see just how far Lum’s convictions went.
The sailor laughed for a moment. “Say what you want about sailors, Zyn, but don’t count us all as lovin’ senseless, pointless violence. Sure I like to have my fun every now and then, but not if it’s gonna cost lives. One would think with all the times the Canticles talk about the sanctity of life we’d have gotten the message.”
That took Zyn for a loop; a hoarse, washed up promiscuous sailor talking about the Scriptures? “What, got nothing to say to that one?” Lum asked smiling.
“No... it’s just I’ve got a hard time thinking that it’s absolutely and utterly set in stone that one course of action is completely applicable in every situation that life throws at you.”
“I thought that was the point of it all,” Lum said “that we measly little humans can’t be trusted with ourselves. Why do you think they make priests swear to celibacy? Granted that’s somethin’ I could never do in a thousand years, but then I was never called to a priest, was I?”
Zyn shook his head, not sure of what to say. He didn’t quite believe in blanket statements, it was one of the things that Lorian had repeatedly drilled into him.
Lum continued. “Besides, I got my own ‘innocents’ back home, though sometimes they ain’t quite such,” he grinned mischievously. “A nice, loud, stubborn wife and a demonically energetic son and newborn daughter; I love em all to death, and being a husband and a father... well, let’s just say it really changes things. I look at everyone one I meet nowadays wondering who’s son or daughter they are, who’s brother or sister, father or mother. Everyone’s got a family, and talkin about ‘innocents’ and ‘civilians’ is just another way of gettin around the fact that anyone on this earth is another human being who’s part of a family.”
Zyn again said nothing in response; though there were things he could say, he wasn’t sure if they would make the conversation go anywhere it needed to go.
As he stepped over a fallen tree, Zyn looked up and saw a large rockface. In fact it was all part of the small mountain that dominated the island, of which the western half (which they were passing by now) was quite steep and sheer rock most of the way up. Two thirds of the way to the top Zyn noticed a large cave opening right into the side of the mountain, though there was no way to reach it except by what was an utterly impossible climb. Quite a shame, considering that the cave would have made an excellent shelter for the six castaways.
Up ahead, however, they saw another opening into the rock, though this one was nearly at ground level. “I wonder if this is connected to that big cave that we just passed,” Zyn wondered aloud.
Peering into the darkness of the cave, Lum’s curiosity was hooked. “Let’s
see if we can find out.”
“Wait, what about light? It’s going to be nearly pitch black if
it bores into this mountain to any significant degree”
Frowning, Lum continued to gaze into the cave. “We can explore just a tiny ways in, see what it’s like. Then if we don’t find anything we can simply head back and get that nerdy little mage to light a few torches for us.” With that, the two of them carefully crept inside, watching their footing as the ground trust up quite unevenly and unpredictably. The light faded away behind them, and the passage ahead of them quickly took a dive downwards, which had the added effect of magnifying the darkness tenfold as they travelled deeper into the underbelly of the island.
“I don’t think this links up with that other cave, at least not for a long while,” Zyn said.
“Eh, we aren’t going to find out then,” Lum said mildly dejected. “I can barely see in fron—”
A clash, a thunderous roar assailed them both, though it took Zyn a long while to realize it wasn’t something he was literally hearing. It was a dark, screeching wave that rushed over them more powerfully than any he had felt the ocean deal him in the past few days. It felt like... death, clutching and trying to drag everything down into its unfathomable maw.
Staggering back, both Zyn and Lum bolted and scrambled back to cave entrance, adrenaline pumping their every footstep out of that accursed cave. They didn’t stop until they emerged into the daylight and then some, ceasing to put distance between themselves and that horrid clutching only when they passed into a small clearing completely out of sight of the cave entrance.
“That... that wasn’t normal,” Zyn declared, panting frantically, the terror only now beginning to recede.
“Normal? That sure as Hell wasn’t normal! I’ve got no idea what that was, I just knew I was damn well getting my ass outta there!”
Zyn turned back and stared in the direction of the cave, wary and watchful for the slightest disturbance that entered his vision. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing, just heavy suspicion, fear, and the oppressive weight of the unknown. He was no expert in this sort of thing, but if he had to guess he’d guess that something very magical had just happened. Something involving evil magic. And somehow he knew it involved a very violent death.
Zyn and Lum staggered back into camp, trepidation never completely hidden in their movements. The others were standing around trying to improve the shelter when they noticed the pair. Lorian was the first to pick up that something was amiss. “What?”
“There’s a cave nestled into the base of the mountain back there,” Lum explained, pointing behind them. “We ventured inside ways, and then...”
“We got hit by something, hard,” Zyn finished for him.
Grumiah looked more confused than worried. “Hit by something? I don’t see any bruises on you; you aren’t favoring anything.”
“It... wasn’t something physical,” Zyn said. With those four words a pall was cast over the group, and all hint of lightheartedness or joviality ceased.
Parn was the most visible shaken. “Y-you mean something magical?”
“Magic nothing,” Lum declared, “this was black magic, blacker than a demon worshipper’s piss.”
“Where exactly is this cave?” Lorian had the presence of mind to ask.
Turning around, Zyn pointed back at the island dominating summit. “West side, just past a big cave entrance way up the side of the rockface.”
Grumiah nodded. “We saw it on out trip to the summit yesterday. We’ll just have to make sure we know to stay clear of it.”
“I take it for granted that no one is in favor of exploring this cave,”
Lorian probed.
“Uh, you got a death wish or something old man?” Zyn asked incredulously.
“No, but it will make things more complicated seeing that we won’t know what’s actually in that cave since none of us want to go in. We have no idea what could be in store for us.”
More silence. “I wonder what it eats,” Pols mused, unsettled even as he was sitting against a tree.
“Who says it’s anything that needs food?” Lum responded. “Who said it’s anything physical?”
“What if the it is a them?” Parn added, building the atmosphere of fear.
“That’s speculation,” Zyn countered, annoyed by the direction this discussion was starting to head in.
“Speculation?” Lum asked. “You felt what was in that cave; you wanna tell that thing what it can and can’t do?”
Zyn shock his head, all the while keeping his eyes locked on Lum, hoping that he’d at least mellow a bit. “No, I want to not get carried away in a bunch of rashly conceived worst case scenarios.”
“Alright, calm down,” Lorian declared. “Let’s not get too testy with each other,” he said, fixing a brief warning glance at Zyn, letting him know that he knew the younger man was on the verge of making things explosive.
Pols shifted nervously. “What about that other spot we could have picked for a campsite; the one on the beach? It’s got a better view and it’s a lot less enclosed by all the trees and brush.”
“Yeah, who says we need to stay here after all?” Lum joined his friend.
“Uh, yes, why could we not move to some place... better?” Parn jumped on the bandwagon.
Zyn shifted his gaze between the growing proponents of moving camp, eyes slowly hardening as he did. The herd mentality was on the move, a prospect which caused him to roll his eyes. “Look, we saw something nasty down there; that doesn’t mean we should just pack up and relocate in a panic.”
Pols fixed him with a hard stare. “Why not?”
“Supplies, for one,” Grumiah declared, pushing against the tide of the underlings. “We’ve got stone and wood within sight of the camp, and we’ve already set up our shelter here and starting building water collectors.”
Pols and Lum snorted in unison, quite unconvinced. “That stuff ain’t much reason to stick around; we could just move all of it,” the former declared.
“Look,” Zyn said, “if we want to best ensure our chances of survival we need to get set up and established. Running off because we saw some kind of boogieman isn’t the best way to do that.”
Lum’s gaze could have frozen Hell itself. “That wasn’t any ‘boogieman’ and you know it. That thing was pure evil and it could do anything anything at all that it wants to.”
“Yeah,” Pols joined in, “Maybe it could come out and get us.”
“Maybe it could come and shut you up,” Zyn muttered, though not low enough.
“What was that?” Pols shot.
“Who cares?” Zyn said, “The point is—”
“I care if you’re being an arrogant little—” Pols interrupted only to be interrupted himself.
“Enough!” Grumiah shouted. Lorian grabbed Zyn and pulled him aside. Fearing another pointless lecture, Zyn braced himself, which Lorian must have noticed as he did not provide fuel to Zyn’s fire of annoyance. Instead he just stared at him, barreling into his face the message to shut his mouth now. Suppressing a sharp retort, Zyn brushed his mentor off and turned back to the group, trying to hide his private fuming.
“Alright, we’re all a bit on edge,” Lorian said, returning his attention to the group though standing uncomfortably close to Zyn, no doubt reminding him of his “temper.” “Let’s not be hasty with any of this. Right now we don’t really know what you saw in that cave; you said it was magical?”
Zyn nodded. “Yeah, like some kind of wave of blackness, or a scream that you couldn’t actually hear.” Parn visibly shuddered at the description.
Lorian’s countenance mellowed. “Now, that’s all you felt? You didn’t see or hear anything?” Upon Zyn’s negative answer, Lorian probed further. “Did it feel like it was near you or deeper into the cave?”
“Definitely deeper,” Lum answered, “I got the distinct impression that there was something evil further down that tunnel.”
“Well then, it sounds to me that it seems like something residual, like a curse or an echo of something that passed. Now don’t get all worked up, such things usually affect a given space or area, and caves are among the foremost areas to be inhabited by such dreadful things. Fortunately, that also means that it is unlikely that whatever it is will leave its haunting grounds.”
“Yeah, but can we be sure about that?” Pols asked.
“No,” Zyn spoke up, “but what’s the point of running all the way to the Moon with this? We don’t know what that was in there.”
“But... surely we should take every precaution, shouldn’t we?” Parn interjected.
“If it really is that bad what’s to guarantee that moving camp will make a difference?” Grumiah voiced the worst case scenario. It certainly did not improve the mood all that much, but it had the desired effect of silencing the now pointless debate. Pols, Lum and Parn reluctantly fell into line, and they all went back to their business.
Some of them went to continue improving the shelter, while Zyn set about to fashion a spear to help catch fish or crabs. Mostly, however, it was an exercise in getting away from the others.
Zyn was about halfway through sharpening the point a good nine inch long stick he had found when Lum hustled up behind him. “You’re for staying here even after what we saw?”
Shrugging, Zyn continued with his sharpening trying not to make eye contact. “It makes sense, we are somewhat established already, and what good would another campsite do for us anyway?”
There was no respite, however, as Lum put him self squarely in Zyn’s line of sight, making avoiding eye contact all but impossible. Zyn struggled against the urge to tell the sailor to get lost in less than kind terms. “You can’t tell me you’re not worried about the cave.”
“Who says I’m not?” Zyn responded, breaking his gaze and trying to focus on crafting the spears.
This gave the sailor pause. “Then why were you getting so testy back there?”
His simple question was met with silence. “Zyn?” he asked after a moment.
Putting the spear down with some force, Zyn grunted. “What?” he then asked, almost as if Lum hadn’t said anything in the first place.
The bearded sailor didn’t say anything, just shaking his head. Just standing there for a minute or two, he decided to make himself useful and positioned himself next to Zyn, a stick in hand to turn into a spear too. “I figure a couple spears are useful for catching fish and stopping monsters if some come out.”
Brush rustled behind them, but when they snapped their heads back they saw it was just Parn ambling through, doing whatever pointless thing he was doing. They had tried numerous times since they landed to put him to good use other than lighting fires, but he seemed to be resoundingly incapable of doing anything but stand or sit around looking helpless. An idea popped into Zyn’s head, and despite the hard feelings that had just been foremost in his mind, he gave Lum a wry smile, indicating to Parn with his head. The sailor caught sight of the mage quickly, and grinned back.
The next two hours were spent on a jolly romp through the woods where the two men proceeded to scare the living piss out of Parn, who, being the dimwit that he was, failed to notice the two unwashed hooligans shadowing him through the woods. They whispered loudly enough to catch his attention, made odd animal noises, and threw rocks in front of his face. This predictably resulted in the panicking mage running back to camp, claiming he was being chased by spirits. But they had already thought of that, and Lum was already waiting there ready to dismiss Parn’s delusions just as fast as they came out of his mouth. Lum, having been the most adamant about paying heed to the danger presented by the evil cave, played his role perfectly as his (of all people) denial that anything serious was going on lent serious credence that in fact nothing was going on, and the terribly confused mage putzed around camp for about fifteen minutes before starting to pace around the fire pit. Zyn by this point had quietly crept back into camp with no one none the wiser.
Eventually Parn grew discontent with his limited pacing and announced his intention to go relieve himself. Again Zyn snuck after him while the mage squatted taking his dump, oblivious to the mischievous menace that crept up beside him. Aw, if only they had face paint or something, that way Zyn could make himself out to be a ghost or some crazy native ready to spill Parn’s guts. As it was if he wanted to do anything Parn wouldn’t be able to see him anyway...
Sneaking behind his quarry, Zyn pondered the fact that Parn was in fact a mage, although from what he had seen not a very impressive one. Everything they had prodded him to try was “not his specialty,” so just what was his freaking specialty? The way he nervously looked about all the time, the manner he met every new experience so far with anxiety... He was definitely more of the scholarly bent. Shrugging, Zyn figured that would make this all the better as he inched up to the squatting form of Parn and lunged, one hand wrapping around his eyes while the other grabbing his mouth.
A startled cry tried to lurch its way from Parn, but Zyn’s hand stifled such cries before they could begin. The mage tried to struggle for several moments, but Zyn’s grip held firm, not to mention that Parn was incredibly weak. Instead of going into a threatening speech about how this was going to be the end like Lum had suggested, Zyn remained utterly quiet, banking on the guess that the mage having a “captor” who said nothing and refused to announce his intentions would be even more terrifying. Perhaps it was fortunate for the mage that he had just relieved himself as the ashen white tone of his face revealed plenty about just how terrified he was. No doubt that Parn would be nervously asking what his captor wanted non stop by now were his mouth free to speak, and the fact that he couldn’t even open it to do so was another element that caused him to be literally trembling in fear by the time Lum came along. The sailor had to suppress a laugh at how terrified Parn was before grabbing his legs just like he had planned with Zyn. Swiftly they hoisted him up with Zyn finally letting go of Parn’s head, but before any revealing glances could be taken Zyn growled in a distorted guttural voice, “Don’t open your eyes or else...” Terrified, the mage was forced to comply.
And thus the subsequent trip to the beach went along quite smoothly, right up to where they tossed him into the lagoon at which point Parn wiggled through the air like a cat undergoing a seizure. The rude immersion into the seawater instantly sent him thrusting up to the surface as soon as he went under, screaming bloody murder. His first sight, other than the panicked rush of water everywhere, was Zyn and Lum rolling on the beach laughing hysterically.
The noise predictably attracted the attention of the others, who were merely greeted with the sight of a soaked Parn ambling his way back onto dry land and his two tormentors cracking up. While there was the obligatory eye rolling from Lorian, the others lent their own chuckles at the somewhat pathetic scene. Poor Parn didn’t get an ounce of sympathy or help though, but when he plopped down near the tree line in an overdone “woe is me” state, he got the usual macho slaps on the backs and the “it’s all in good fun” speeches from the sailors; Zyn just kept laughing at the whole time.
Night came upon them rather quickly, and not to much welcome either. The incident with the cave still left an unpleasant tinge to the air, to the point that no one could breathe a completely relaxed breath. Lum and Pols as usual coped with it with the standard mutual jeering, with Pols insulting Lum’s mother and Lum pointing out that Pols was a socially retarded asshole with the charm of a lobster who picked up a new whore disease at every port.
Still, even the jeering couldn’t completely purge the undercurrent of fear in the six men and once the insults stopped uneasy silence descended. Zyn tried to force himself to sleep, but had very little luck as his ears sought out every disturbance and twitch like an alcoholic sought out drink.
An hour of nothing conclusive did have the effect of wearying him out, to the point where he could almost taste the sleep in his eyes, but his imminent encounter with blissful rest was snapped by the rustling of leaves. Eyes snapped open, but no one snapped up, seemingly afraid that sudden movements were not in the best interests to their health. And the others were up, all of them. They all shot each others concerned looks, silently asking what that noise just was, but all were caught in the same paralysis. Even their breathing was kept low and soft.
Another rustling followed. Now several breaths could be heard, though Zyn fervently hoped that they could only be heard within the immediate campsite and not the brush beyond. Then something snapped in the woods. More silence and white knuckles followed. Another rustling.
By now it was painfully obvious that something was out there; they were most definitely not alone on this island.
Then... silence. For a good five minutes nothing moved at all except the waves on the beach.
The calm was shattered with a crash as an entire tree came tumbling down, slamming into the ground not twenty five feet away. Instantly the six of them bolted from the camp and were surging to the beach as fast as their adrenaline could take them.
“It’s coming to get us, it’s after us!” Pols shouted as they frantically scrambled to a small peninsula of sand that jutted out from the main beach. “We’re screwed, we are so totally screwed!” No one even had the presence of mind to tell Pols to shut up, so frightened were they all.
However, that didn’t stop Pols from casting a brief I told you so glance.
They all stood on the sand, totally alert and showing absolutely no signs of sleeping, and stayed that way until the sun came creeping over the horizon. By that point their adrenaline had long since been spent, and they all plopped down one by one onto the sand, drifting into sleep beneath the comforting security of daylight once it seemed clear that whatever it was had fled with the night. The brush was still not their friend; anything that could remotely provide cover to whatever curse had come out to get them was something to be avoided, so they fell asleep where they were. Even so, Zyn couldn’t help but cast a watchful glance at Pols every now and again, waiting for the next smug glance shot his way.