“Wow, I’m surprised it still exists,” Drim knelt down and touched the crude wooden bridge that swayed at the edge of the water. It had been a while since the four founding members had all been on a real mission together. Hell, it was rare that they even all got together to spend any time together even though they all lived in the same house.
Besides their monthly meeting and weird occurrences like the investment pitches, they all had their own responsibilities and separate goals. But this was something special—not an actual mission per se, but important to Drim for a long time, and now Kada as well.
The four of them stood on the easternmost beach of the continent, staring at Ledmer Island off in the distance. It was an important island throughout history. And soon, it would be rebuilt as a resort—a spiritual successor, in a way, of how it used to be. But most would never know or remember the full story.
It had been bombed during the Drazah war, the very first nuclear bomb they’d ever dropped. Seen as a horrific casualty—the evil Drazahs testing out their new weapon on innocent civilians. It was the event that sent the war into full swing.
What was removed from history, though, was why Ledmer Island in particular had been chosen to be bombed. The best guess of most was the island’s size. Since their early prototype was much smaller than those they would further develop and use throughout the war, the small island would give a better gauge of its destructive potential.
Sure, that may have been one of the reasons, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near the top of the list. Most regular citizens around the world would have known very little about Ledmer Island, only that it was a private resort well out of their price range. With the absurd cost of visiting it acting as a barrier to entry, they’d have no incentive to dig any further into what went on at the place.
The truth was that Ledmer Island had been an absolute cesspool of humanity. It was Shindig before Shindig existed, but entirely unregulated. Truly deplorable thrills could be found on Ledmer that only the most depraved would want to attend. On the surface, it was a perfectly fine resort—a thin lining to fool a rich person who just wanted to go somewhere nice. But that lining was so easily torn if anyone made any effort to look.
Ledmer Island wasn’t meant for ordinary people, and so it wasn’t occupied by them. Honestly, its attendance was shockingly low for how upscale it was, but that was due to the exorbitant cost. A few of the wealthiest kept it funded with all they needed to keep the place operating. Politicians, nobles, CEOs—those were the types who’d visit Ledmer, often never telling anyone where they were actually vacationing.
With so many influential people gathered in one place, it made the ideal spot to destabilize the world in one shot. After the bombing, the ensuing chaos let the Drazah sweep so many early victories and cement their foothold. It was easy to say that without that one perfectly chosen bombing, there was a good chance the Drazah empire would have failed before it even started.
There was one more reason, though, why Ledmer was such an important place. None would actually know this, since not a single human had visited the island since the bombing due to the radiation. Well, not a human, but a freshly made Fiend. Ledmer Island was where Drim Drazah had been sent after being carried away by the Cosmic Boon.
“So this is how you escaped?” Xard examined the dilapidated bridge.
“Yes,” Drim stared at it for a while longer. “After months of learning my Curse, I was finally able to reach the shore. You’ll notice that the closer we get to the island, the cruder the bridge gets. I got better at using it as time went on, and I could only do so much each day. You’ll see why, I guess, when we get there.”
“I’m not sure if this bridge would hold up, though, so it’s best to just replace it to be safe.” Drim caressed the last bit of railing for a moment, waves of memories washing over him. He grabbed hold and emitted his Curse. The old rotting wood was replaced with a fresh new handrail. The green glow shot out along the bridge, creating a walkway over the water that would rival any professional construction company.
As for why they were taking this route at all, The Tourist would just get in the way of their plans. Drim took a first step onto the bridge. While it was firmly built, it was still swaying loosely over the water with only one post connecting it to the ground along the beach. “Take care to not fall in. The water here is riddled with some of the worst monsters you’ve ever seen.”
“I could just teleport us across, you know,” Phon suggested, finding it odd that Drim wouldn’t think of it.
“No, let Kada see all the work that needs to be done,” Drim started walking more confidently and the others filed in behind him. “If she’s serious about this, it won’t even bother her.”
“Yup… no worries here,” Kada was the last to step on the bridge, her steps more hesitant than anyone else. “Definitely never been a fear of mine to be eaten by something in the water that I can’t see.”
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It didn’t take long before Drim’s warning had proven true. Creatures in the water had started swarming around the bridge, enticed by the activity above. Normally, the oceans were fairly monster free, at least along the shores, but this area of the world had been abandoned for so long that it had been long reclaimed by more dominant species.
“Oh great, and now there’s creepy fog rolling in,” Kada found something new to complain about when they’d crossed about half the bridge. “First, I couldn’t see into the water, and now I can’t even see in front of my own face.”
“Yeah, this side of things gets very foggy,” Drim knew from experience. “The other side, though, is nothing but clear skies. I’d suggest having the main beach for your resort over there.”
“Stay alert. The monsters like to use the fog to attack. I repeated that mistake more than I’d care to admit.” To back up Drim’s words, a Bearracuda leapt up out of the water. Its claws were flailing wildly, trying to attack from the moment it reached the water. The monster’s trajectory sent it on a collision course with Xard, who’d be fine, but Drim still intervened—sniping it out of the air with his already nocked bow, as if he’d been expecting this.
They made it to the shores of Ledmer Island without incident, and Kada already doubled over from the stress. “Do you get why I made you travel across the water?” Drim crouched down next to her and gazed intently at her. When he didn’t get an immediate response, he clarified, “You didn't have a road to the island in your plans.”
“While the rest is pretty detailed, you neglected to include how they’d get to the island. I’m guessing you assumed it’d be fairly simple, so I just wanted you to know what you’d be dealing with. The bridge will need to be wide enough to accommodate several vehicles while also lit all day long to deal with sudden waves of fog, or have Nathym come up with a good enough fog sensor to light them.”
“You’ll also probably want it to be caged on all sides to keep away monster attacks. Of course, I’d suggest eliminating any hostile monsters around, but I’d still recommend the cage in case more show up.”
“Damn straight!” Kada yelled. “All those monsters gotta die! If my guests saw them on the way over, they’d run away and demand refunds before they even checked in.”
“We need to keep our guards up as we continue inland,” Drim warned them. “I don’t know how well the old fortifications have held up that I built back then, so monsters could have broken through over the years. Phon, keep an eye out for anything that may be trying to ambush us.”
The group carried forward along the premade path that extended beyond the bridge. The sides were entirely walled off with tall, spiked posts. Occasionally, there was a square cut out in the wood to allow visibility into the never-ending jungle, but they were so small that barely a hand could fit through them.
It allowed them to get a glimpse of the old Ledmer as they walked—ruined buildings and tarnished streets that had been overgrown with plantlife. The path they were walking on was purely dirt, not a speck of asphalt or a single blade of grass. They came across one spot in the wall that had been busted through, the posts now blocking their path. Drim took a moment to repair it, and Phon confirmed there were no monsters ahead before they continued.
“So this is where you lived all that time, huh?” Phon seemed oddly nostalgic for a place she’d never been to when they reached the old encampment at the center of the island. “I tried to picture it in my head when you wrote about it, but I never quite imagined it like this.”
Like everywhere else they’d seen thus far, the ground was purely just dirt. It was much wider than the path they’d walked, but not by too much. The clearing was still surrounded by posts on all sides, making it feel more claustrophobic than homely.
“Your small house is so cute, kind of like a big doll house,” Kada remarked as she stuck her head inside the crude shack. She and any of the others wouldn’t be able to fit inside, since it had been built to accommodate a small child and nothing more. Inside there was just a child-sized bed covered in the remains of what used to be large leaves to serve as bedding. There was also a shelf, a bucket, and a broken piece of stained mirror leaning up against the wall, but that was all.
There wasn’t much more outside, either. A firepit was near the house with a ramshackle legless-chair next to it that was now covered in dirt. There was a large circle of wood that wouldn’t quite classify as a stump that Drim had used as a workspace.
“What is this?” Phon pointed out the turtle-shell shaped object. It was a half-dome made of wood beams and twine—pretty well made all things considered. There were also wooden spikes protruding on the outside, away from the dome itself.
“That’s a shell I made, or I guess you could call it a cage,” Drim explained. “Any time I needed to leave the protected perimeter, I’d crawl into this and push it around to keep myself safe from monsters. This was the final version, probably made six or seven more.”
“Where are the others?” Phon started glancing around for them.
“They broke.”
“Oh, oh…” her tone changed when she understood the implication.
“Okay, I have a question,” Xard was staring intently at the dirt. “Why is there this circle dug into the ground? Looks like you filled it with rocks so it wouldn’t fade away.” The circle he was referring to went around all of Drim’s old possessions, like his refuge had been crammed inside of it.
“That’s… well it’ll be easier to explain once you understand this.” Drim walked over to the wooden cylinder in the center of the circle.
“Huh, I thought that was just a well or something,” Xard hadn’t given it a second thought.
“Along those lines, I guess,” Drim placed a hand on the wood. “I built this cover to keep in the light at night. It was comforting at first, but grew to be too much and was making it hard to sleep.” He absorbed the wood, and none of the others were expecting what was hidden inside.