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:
[i]Here lies Bresan Drekmaan
Died upon reaching this island the first of June, 703 CR
May Eli grant him clear horizons[/i]
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 voila: 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 hi
s misfortune, Pols uttered a long string of explicitives that had to go on
[i]at least[/i] 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 spell
s 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 things 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 when he wasn’t staring aimlessly around he had
instead 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 the, were physically transformed [i]into[/i] 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 the
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 this 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 contrictory, 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.
!DSPAM:4af0cd77215108154786014!
_______________________________________________
MKGuild mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.integral.org/listinfo/mkguild
