Chương 3: The island

Ch 3: The island Felix opened his eyes, then wished he hadn't. He wasn't sure exactly how badly his body was damaged, but the pain started in an arm, then snaked down his chest and lodged in a leg. He groaned and looked out at the storm, seeing and hearing little in the dark but thunder and waves. He was on a beach, apparently, which meant there was more to this patch of land than a giant rock, at least. He laughed because he was still alive, then instantly regretted it.

"Make up your mind," he muttered to his body, unable to decide if his chest or limbs took pain precedence. Using his good hand he started checking himself for injury, and at least didn't find any gushing blood. His leg was clearly broken, but his arm seemed just to be twisted out of joint. He'd also definitely cracked or broken some ribs. Whether his organs were all together and if he was bleeding inside he didn't know. But there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Gathering more magic from the sea and the wind, Felix dragged himself away from the beach and the waves still hitting him. Whether the tide was low or high he had no idea, but he preferred not to drown in his sleep. With slow, painful effort he dragged himself with one arm and one leg, pull after pull until he left the water behind. When he felt he'd gone far enough, he finally looked up to try and see what the hell kind of island he'd actually found, and swore he saw some light in the distance.

But that made no sense. He didn't know every little island on this section of the coast, but he knew what was big enough for inhabitants and what wasn't, and there was nothing like that here. The light grew small, then large, then small again, and Felix soon dropped his head to the sand. He was probably dying, or else losing consciousness. But without much to do about either, he found the most comfortable position he could manage, and closed his eyes. * He woke to women's voices. Someone giggling?

There were words, too, but they made no sense, though Felix spoke several local languages. He sensed brightness hitting his face and slowly opened his eyes, squinting up at a late morning sun.

"Akash! Te omay kawala shet. Shet!" Felix blinked and repeated the sounds but could make no sense of them. He tried shifting his body and realized he wasn't nearly in as much pain as he should have been. Both his arms worked, first of all, and his chest—while sore—didn't lance with pain every time he breathed. He turned his head and found a shapely, brown leg filling his vision.

It was attached to a flat, brown stomach, rising up to barely concealed, brown breasts, and a young woman's face mostly hidden by sunlight and black hair.

"Keyo?" The girl was holding a cup as if in offering. Felix damn near ripped it out of her hands when he realized it was water. He sat up and forced himself to relax, taking the cup and nodding his head as he tilted it back and drank every drop.

"Dear merciful Gods," he muttered as he closed his eyes and swallowed.

"Thank you. Thank you very much." When he opened his eyes again, he finally got a good look at his savior, and practically froze in shock. She was young, as he'd expected, no more than nineteen or twenty, with big, dark, almond shaped eyes, and skin so smooth she might have been a statue. She wore little more than... a loincloth, and a thin strap that covered maybe a quarter of her small breasts. He realized he was both inspecting and staring at her when she looked away shyly.

"Sorry," she said, now in his continental tongue with hardly any accent, holding up the cup.

"Would you... like some more?" For a moment he was too stunned to speak, then nodded.

"Yes, please. Thank you again. Where am I? Who are you?"

"Mmm." The girl shifted awkwardly and her leg rubbed against Felix's hip, though the contact didn't seem to bother her.

"Sorry. Not allowed to... say such things. Village elder will speak. They'll get him." She gestured and Felix saw a few other girls running down the beach towards a patch of trees and what looked like a path. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. None of this made any sense. As he looked around he saw white sand beach stretching far down the coast. He also saw his ship hadn't struck some giant rock as he'd assumed.

It was of course mostly destroyed in any case, but still it sat buried in the sand with the water lapping in behind.

"My name is Felix," he said.

"What's yours? Can you tell me that?" The girl smiled, and it stretched across her face and took in her eyes, and for a moment Felix couldn't do a damn thing but smile right back.

"Lita," she said.

"Means... mmm, water dropping girl." She gestured at the sky, and Felix nodded his understanding.

"Nice to meet you Raingirl," he said, almost forgetting his leg was definitely still broken until the girl touched it and he cringed.

"Sorry," she said, running her hands up and down his arms and chest and his good leg as if checking for injuries. He started counting in elevens as the jolts of untapped lust and agonizing pain fired through his body.

"It's OK," he said, gently pushing away her hands.

"But careful. Don't touch... too much." She pulled back and Felix tried not to wince at the familiar disappointment and frustration. I don't want to hurt you, he wanted to explain. But he knew it wouldn't help and might make a serious problem. He also couldn't help but notice the girl's eyes were about as eager and impolite as his. She couldn't or wouldn't stop inspecting him, and it didn't seem remotely like the professional assessment of some kind of healer.

"Oh! Water!" The girl jumped up and ran to a nearby pail. Felix tried and failed miserably not to watch her pert, round ass the entire way there. He dropped his head back to the sand and looked up at the sky, no idea what the hell was happening.

"Maybe I'm dead," he muttered, closing his eyes again until Lita helped him sip some more water. He felt strange, almost... feverishly warm, but not ill and not losing control of his magic. He supposed it was just hot, though that made little enough sense. It was fall and relatively cool on the continental coast, and Felix's sailor intuition hadn't expected anything but a dreary day. For the moment he just stopped thinking, content to look up at Lita as she smiled and helped him drink.

If this was the afterlife, which seemed pretty plausible, it wasn't so bad. He probably had a lifetime of curses at the gods to take back, or at least atone for, but surely that could wait a day or two. He was about to ask Lita a few more questions when he saw some other islanders coming back down the path. His heart beat faster until he recognized the same young, rather attractive looking girls. His breath caught in his throat when men with spears came behind them.

"Sorry," said Lita, her radiant smile fading.

"Warriors. They'll take you now. To the village elder." Felix tried to move his leg and groaned, then looked for his cutlass and knew it was very lost.

"Don't worry," he told the girl, patting her knee mostly because he wanted to touch her perfect skin one last time.

"Not your fault. Thank you. For the water." She looked at him sadly, stretching out a hand as if she wanted to touch his face, then she leapt up and ran away, dropping the cup as she fled for the trees. Felix very much wished he could have joined her. * The warriors babbled in some foreign tongue until Felix explained he couldn't understand.

"Understand now?" said what looked like the eldest, his spear resting rather uncomfortably in his soft hand. Felix nodded, and kept inspecting. Now that they were close, these 'warriors' looked more like schoolboys carrying sticks. They wore the same loincloths as the women, with a blue sash across their chests. They looked well fed, with no body hair to speak of, and had soft limbs. In fact they looked like merchants, or scholars, or maybe royalty. Felix, in stark contrast, had a body carved from weathered stone.

Most of his life had been spent apprenticed to his father, either at the smithy he'd set up in a coastal village, or in training his mind and body not to explode. At fifteen or so he'd started working at the docks whenever he could, carrying cargo and doing whatever other odd jobs the men needed. After that he'd joined on with merchants and any sailing vessel that would take a green boy, learning the trade of the sea as his father urged.

"Nothing in this world can catch a good sailor on a fast ship," he'd explained.

"Not kings, not the Guild. Learn to sail, boy, and you'll always be free." Sailing was about as hard on a man as working a smithy. And Felix was fairly certain that drawing magic as he did and boosting his body left a lasting mark that made him even stronger. Now in his twenty-fourth year, his hands were rough as sandpaper, his arms and legs corded iron, his body like one of the statues decorating city squares. Except for the broken leg. The island 'warriors' inspecting him clearly noticed as much as the girl had.

They looked far less enthusiastic.

"We take you now," said the same warrior.

"Can you walk?" Felix shook his head, but groaned in pain as he shifted himself to stand on one leg.

"I can hop. With a little help." Apparently he was a good foot taller than the men, too, and their eyes went wide as they stared up at him. But soon enough they took positions on either side and helped him limp across the beach. He asked a few questions, but they ignored him. Step after painful step they took him across the sand, then to the path he'd seen, which turned out to actually be a well-made road of cobblestone through the trees.

They had a kind of wagon there, at least, and let Felix sit inside as they started walking ahead. He was about to ask who exactly was going to pull said wagon, before one of the 'warriors' turned back and lifted a hand. Felix jerked as the wagon moved, then rolled along with a steady pace as it followed the islanders. Once or twice he looked over the side, then the back and front, before accepting a rather terrifying fact: the wagon was moving entirely on its own.

His father had taught him much about magic over the years. In his time in the mage wars, he'd met just about every kind of wielder of the 'mystic art'. But not once had he mentioned men who could casually move a wagon with a flick of their hand. That was when Felix decided he was very possibly screwed.