Chapter XIV (14)

  She woke when the lifeboat ran aground, the lurch knocking her head forwards and then back into the wooden stern. She rubbed at the lump on the back of her head and scowled at the boat as she disembarked with the others.

  Some of the passengers fell to the sandy ground, weeping. Already, other pieces of their shipwreck were washing ashore from the current. Mostly just wood for the moment. Then Mitsuko’s eyes widened as she recalled from her vision seeing the crate Hideo’s son had hidden inside. Without her rescue of the boy. He might…better to not find out. The last thing she needed was the father seeing his son’s bloated corpse. Immense guilt weighed on her. She could have saved the boy if she hadn’t been so airheaded.

  “You were right,” the sailor said to Mitsuko, rubbing at her eyes in disbelief. “We’re on Ashen Island. The current brought us here, just as you said.”

  “Yes. Now we should go over that way.” She pointed down the shore. “There’s a town we can get help at.”

  “There’s no point,” Hideo said. He collapsed onto his knees and buried his hands in the gray sand. “Hirachi is dead. And I was useless.”

  “Well, he’s finally moved on to the depression stage of grief. That was fast,” Holly said, chipper as usual. “Glad he’s not still blaming everything in sight. You good to leave him here?”

  Mitsuko shrugged. “It’s not exactly a difficult path. You just follow the beach and wade around some of the rocks that cut off the shoreline. He can catch up if he wants.”

  After they dragged the lifeboat across the gray sand to somewhere safe, they started on their way. Only Hideo remained behind. Over the last several hours he’d eaten up any pity or goodwill from the survivors with his constant stream of complaints and whining. Of course people probably still felt bad for him to a degree. The man had lost his son. But nobody wanted to spend a minute more by him than they absolutely had to.

  “Have you noticed the sun?” Holly asked as they walked. “It should be evening if not night right now. Was it like that in your vision too?”

  “Yes. The barrier is like a time dilation chamber.”

  “That’s right, you were imprisoned inside one once, right?”

  “It was tiny compared to this, but yeah. And this seems to slow time to a standstill. I don’t think the sun moved at all in my vision. At least not a noticeable amount. And that was over several days.”

  “Break it!” one of the men nearby demanded. He was the one who’d gotten in a fight with Hideo on the boat earlier. Mitsuko had noticed him eavesdropping but not bothered with stopping him. This was information he’d learn in a day regardless of if he listened. “You’re a time mage! I heard you chatting on the boat. And I saw you use your magic.”

  “I can fix small, recently broken, objects,” Mitsuko said. “Not shatter complex barriers sized larger than some nations.”

  He frowned and spat in frustration but didn’t push her further.

  “How did you escape the time dilation prison back before?” Holly asked. “It’s not like you to serve your time quietly. You must have broken free somehow.”

  “A spatial magic prodigy I was imprisoned with stretched the area within the prison, temporarily shutting down the time dilation by expanding space within the prison to a degree more than it was designed for. That gave us an escape route. But that again was a much, much smaller area. And I don’t know of any spatial mages anywhere nearby. Let alone prodigies. Do you?”

  Nobody answered that. Spatial mages weren’t unheard of like temporal mages and many powerful mages knew the basics of transport via magical jumping, but people who specialized in the spellcraft were a rarity akin to most astrological phenomena.

  When the haggard group staggered into the town, the sailor took charge and acted as their voice as she explained their situation. Mitsuko was surprised by their reception. The townsfolk were clearly under a lot of stress, but they immediately took in the survivors and found them all spaces to rest, many giving up their own beds for the sake of strangers. A far cry from the welcome she had received upon arriving aboard The Terror. But perhaps that was the difference between sailing in on a smuggler ship and stumbling in after barely surviving a shipwreck. One garnered a bit more sympathy than the other.

  “What do you two do?” the lumberjack housing them asked. He was a big man, his body stained gray from the soot of the island. Even still, his face was wrinkled from smile-lines and there was a twinkle in his eyes. “Traders? Travelers? Our archipelago is far from the civilized world.”

  “I’m a cartographer,” Holly said. She held out a hand. “Holly.”

  “Carlton. Lumberjack.” He took the hand and shook. “A cartographer is a fine profession. Useful. Do you sell your maps? I wouldn’t mind a more complete image of the island I live on. We have one map, but it’s very off in some respects. And the owner is…not the friendliest.”

  “The Hon Empire hired me to record the archipelago, but Emperor Sasaki usually doesn’t mind me making a few copies, I’ll see about getting you one. In what way is your current copy off the mark? Was it not designed by a diviner? Or just natural changes to the island’s layout over time?”

  “Who is the owner?” Mitsuko asked.

  “Eh. Well, it’s old. I don’t know about a diviner. And while I haven’t gotten a good look at it, even at a glance I can tell there are glaring differences. Like lakes that don’t actually exist. A boy found it while exploring the nearby forest. He’s a bit of a scavenger. Usually he sells his curios for copper doubloons but his mother, Heather, refuses to let anyone touch it. She’s convinced we’ll rip him off.”

  “Would you?”

  “I wouldn’t. Offered Theo three gold doubloons. And that was without even being allowed a good look at the thing.”

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  Theo. Mitsuko recalled that name. She’d gone to his home to get him to guide her to the beach. His mother had been extremely uncooperative.

  “I want a look at the map!” Holly decided. She hopped off the stool she sat on. “Thanks, Carlton. Can you point me in the direction of Theo?”

  Carlton shrugged, clearly not confident that they would have any more luck than him and his fellows, but he still opened his front door and pointed to a small building on the edge of town. One Mitsuko recognized, though it now didn’t yet have all the windows shuttered.

  Mitsuko approached the home and Holly sped-walked at her side to keep pace.

  Mitsuko considered her last approach and what she might have been able to do better. But nothing came to mind. She thought she’d been decently polite. But maybe she needed to be more direct and blunt?

  Before any strategy fully formed, a crash came from inside the house and a woman screamed. Mitsuko sprang forward, yanked the door open and realized her mistake.

  The woman wasn’t screaming in fear but in anger.

  A boy, presumably Theo, was on the floor in front of her, shaking and curled in a ball,his face pressed to the floorboards, hands covering his head. His whimpers were only heard because his mother paused her tirade to whirl toward the open door.

  Heather’s eyes narrowed, her face twisting into a snarl.

  “What do you think you’re doing to that boy?” Holly interrupted, shoving her way in front of Mitsuko. The gnome matched the woman glare for glare.

  “He’s my—”

  “Property?” Holly interrupted. “Object? A thing to break when you’re bored? No. I don’t think so.”

  “How dare you—”

  “Interject when I see a child being abused by someone bigger and stronger? Well you’re bigger and stronger than me too. Come try your luck.”

  Holly lifted her small fists and Mitsuko took a step back. She’d seen the gnome in plenty of fights. The fists were for show. Holly had two disciplines of magic at her disposal and with them she could destroy most opponents in a matter of seconds.

  Heather decided to push her luck. Instead of backing down, she raised an arm to backhand the small gnome. Her mistake.

  The image of the gnome flickered away at the contact, revealing nothing in its place. The room darkened. The sunlight from the window dimmed, despite the sun being locked in place. Shadows grew. Claw-like hands formed, mutilated in shape and unnatural. Reaching. Grasping at the woman.

  She screamed and stomped at one of the shadows. It spread, clawing at her knee. From the woman’s perspective, her leg disappeared and, with her mind now confused, she lost balance. The angry mother tumbled over herself.

  Mitsuko stood off to the side, now unseen by Heather as her vision filled with darkness and ever consuming shadows.

  Holly’s laughter echoed from all around the room, the noise bouncing and morphing in pitch. The gnome appeared in front of the woman writing on the floor. Heather struck out at her, this time out of fear rather than anger. But Holly’s image flickered away again before the blow connected.

  “This is my domain,” Holly said, her voice booming from every angle. “I am what lurks in the shadows. I’ve seen doom. I’ve walked in the land of the dead. The damned begged me for refuge. You think you can match me?”

  Another bout of inhuman laughter.

  Heather wept on the floor. She was clawing at her face.

  “I—I just wanted to keep him safe. Theo. My baby boy.”

  “You beat him!” The room shook under Holly’s accusation.

  “He—he wanted to go out. It’s not safe. I have to keep him safe.”

  “So you safely beat him?” Holly spat in disgust.

  The woman had no true response to that. She simply spluttered on the ground as the shadows consumed her body. From her perspective, nothing remained of herself save for a few strands of her flesh and cloth.

  Then the illusion dropped. Sunlight poured back into the small house.

  Mitsuko glanced over to her friend and saw the reason for the abrupt end. Theo was on the floor beside her, too weak to stand but gripping her ankle.

  “Please,” he whispered, now audible without Holly’s auditory illusions absorbing all sound.

  The gnome softened as he begged her.

  Heather thrashed about and tried to regain her footing. She pointed a quivering finger.

  “Y-you monster.”

  But the finger wasn’t pointed at Holly, rather Theo.

  “You took him from me. My beautiful son. I—I’ll kill you.” She rushed at her son.

  Now it was Mitsuko’s turn to step in.

  A flick of her wrist and a blade of ice appeared. But the woman was mad, fearless of death after what Holly just put her through.

  So Mitsuko shifted her footing, and as Heather rushed forward, Mitsuko smacked her across the head with the flat of the sword. The impact cracked the icy blade as it sent the woman spinning into the ground. She lay there, moaning, but dipping out of consciousness.

  Mitsuko examined the cracked blade. It was designed to slice, not maul things. Out of curiosity, she cast her Mend spell on it. The crack sealed up and the sword regained its rigid structure, as if freshly created. Convenient. But not necessary at the moment. She sighed and then tossed her sword out the door. She did her best to throw it far from the hovel. The last thing they needed was Heather to regain consciousness and rush at them again with a half melted sword.

  Holly crouched down next to the boy. Several of his bones were broken and his face was swollen. One black eye remained closed, the other squinted through puffy flesh.

  “What made her do this?” Mitsuko asked. The wounds all looked fresh. She saw no signs of a beating earlier than today.

  The boy fell into a fit of coughing. There were specs of blood mixed in with the green of the mucus he left on the floor.

  Mitsuko frowned at the blood. An internal wound? That was strange. The boy was beaten, but not stabbed or gored by something. Maybe a broken rib punctured something. She’d need to look him over closer.

  “Does your town have a healer?” Holly asked, her voice calm and soothing. “Anyone decent with healing spells?

  The boy hesitated before he shook his head. Mitsuko suspected a lie but he cut her off before she could call him out on it.

  “Please,” he begged through a rasping throat, then turned and crawled away

  Confused, Holly and Mitsuko followed after him. After he fell down his home’s front steps, he rose to shaky feet. That was surprising, Mitsuko thought his left ankle was broken. She looked to Holly, but the gnome’s attention was focused on the boy. At first they assumed he was going into the town to find help. But as he stumbled forward, he disappeared into the ash covered foliage and into the forest.

  With no other clear information, Mitsuko and Holly followed.

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