Judging by the waters’ current level, it should be two hours before high tide. I’ll take one last look around.
It concerned me that the opening for my spirit’s storage compartment was relatively small, perhaps only five inches in width. But to my surprise, that didn’t stop it in the slightest–the octopus pot was sucked in like everything else.
Seeing it get slurped like a particularly fat noodle was horrifying for a second, but the pot seemed to be okay. What were the size limits? Something to find out at another time.
A hint of a smile on my face, I took the five minute walk back to the island’s other side, where the shrine was located. On the way, branches and needles from several species of trees went into storage. I especially wanted to find what the hell was up with those Norfolk pine lookalikes, and to see if and how the plants varied from island to island.
I’d previously been planning to, but decided not to take any of the other travellers’ bones. Not that I was squeamish around human remains, but it wasn’t worth it. Especially since I wasn’t completely sure that the items inside my spirit stayed in statis and didn’t mix.
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I walked inside the shrine cave, taking in its marred reliefs for what could be the last time. Just a few feet before the exit, I caught a detail in the corner of my eye, recoiling back in surprise and disbelief upon realizing what it was.
Graffiti. In Latin. It was shallowly scratched into the rock, but carefully so, the letters easily legible.
LVCIVS CAECILIVS IVCVNDVS
CIVIS ROMANVS
POMPEIANVS
NONIS FEBRVARIIS DCCCXV AB VRBE CONDITA
“Lucius Caecilius Jucundus, Roman Citizen, Pompeiian, 5th of February 815 AUC…” I mumbled.
My heart lurched when I first saw Pompeianus, but the date was wrong. 815 after the founding of Rome was… yeah, 62 CE. Not the eruption, but it felt slightly familiar nonetheless. Dad would definitely grill me about it if I had in fact forgotten an important event.
Interesting that none of it was abbreviated, too. Now that I thought about it, I vaguely recognized the guy’s name, as well, but it was probably nothing.
More importantly, it meant the shrine could be nearly two millennia old! If time flowed at the same rate as on Earth, that is.
I tried to calm down and think back on what I knew. The biggest points against dating it to be that old were language, and the relief’s relatively well preserved polychromy. Looking at the walls again, there was a complete lack of paint at the bottom two feet of the room's walls, and even less along the steps. Had the cave been flooded at some point?
Considering that measures had been taken to preserve the shrine’s weapons, it was certainly likely that there’d been ones to protect the rest of it. Had been. All of the larger items had corroded or decayed from the salt air and sea. Maybe size had to do with that enchantment inscription’s efficacy over time.
But the fact that I’d understood the majority of those looters’ vernacular was the far more conclusive piece of evidence. Even in rare cases of a language surviving for multiple millenia, such as Greek, it changed appreciably over the centuries. Though… I was aware that speakers of demotic Greek could, to an extent, understand Koine Greek texts.
Ignoring all of that, it was also entirely possible that this world’s time flowed at a different rate. Alternatively, it wasn’t a factor at all and people could arrive from any period. Or different worlds!
Still, the graffiti was an intriguing piece of evidence to add to the pile. A slight hope swelled in me of finding other travellers from Earth who'd survived. What sorts of impacts could they have made on this world?
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Climbing down the cliff path, I saw Nana groaning and stretching. She grumbled, and waddled over, then snatched an unwary green lizard from a rock.
I walked closer, and saw her take dentures out of her mouth before gumming the poor lizard. I heard the faint crunch of bones, and stared at the dentures with fascination and a hint of disgust. They were covered in thick, yellowish saliva.
“Ah, you like them? Grew the thousand-year pearls myself,” Nana remarked, her mouth full.
Is ‘thousand-year’ just a fanciful name?
“Well, come on then,” she said, then sighed, the lizard's tail still hanging out of her mouth.
She swallowed a final time, shoved the dentures back in, and shot a sunny grin at me.
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Nana held my hand during the whole trip to her island. Her grip was firm and strong, but not overly so. It was significantly more comfortable than last time, when she had roughly grabbed and pulled at my wrist.
We travelled in approximately the opposite direction from which I first saw the dragon. It was a short swim of twenty minutes.
Before reaching the island, I spied tall slabs of rock in the distance. They emerged from the water haphazardly, and were semi-uniform in size, as if some vengeful god had pried them up from the sea floor like tiles. My mind wandered back to the votive inscription’s mention of an island being razed.
A particularly enormous rock was actually set against an island, sheltering its inset cove, like a lean-to shelter. It was far away from its fellows. Had the slab been deliberately moved there?
My attention was torn away by a slight but powerful presence far below. Chills ebbed through my body, colder than any ocean waves, reminding me of what I felt falling through the water before arriving here.
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Nana grumbled and muttered. I didn’t quite catch what she said, but was sure it meant something to the effect of ‘get off my lawn’.
As we came closer to the lean-to island, the presence pointedly turned and meandered away towards the rightmost island cluster.
Now, I could see strange patterns on the slab protecting what must be Nana’s home. They were fossils, exposed by year upon year of erosion from wind and rain. One nearly spanned the two hundred foot rock face's entire length. The… dinosaur? had a long tail, nearly as lengthy neck, and four flippers, bringing to mind a plesiosaur. Except far larger.
As we continued swimming, the ancient animal’s perfectly exposed bones and curl of its sinuous body made me sure that it had been deliberately excavated. Not only did it make an incredible decoration, but also a tool of intimidation.
Several smaller fossils were in the creature’s stomach. Its last meal.
In layers cut deeper into the rock, sat several shells of nautilus-like creatures. Nana allowed me a minute or two more to gawk before she made a few of those gestures, and entered the cove. A faint light bloomed, momentarily washing over my body, and I too was allowed inside.
Nana dramatically waved her arm, causing grey-white globes set into the walls to emit a bright, lively glow.
I couldn’t help but stare at the sight before me, once again looking like a deer caught in headlights. Nana was a hoarder. Even worse than my own grandmother, which I considered an impressive (though not admirable) feat.
Much of the hoard was stuck inside caves that smoothly receded into the cliff surface. The excess overflowed out onto shore.
Emerging from the water, the beach’s tiny grey pebbles felt surprisingly comfortable to walk on. I took a deep breath, mostly smelling fish and the ocean, but with a distinct hint of old. The sort you find in old books and long-forgotten museum archives.
There were a multitude of shelves inset into the walls, some taller than I was. The larger ones were set higher up the cliff, far out of reach. Squinting, I could tell that they contained huge urns of some sort. The cliff walls themselves were unnaturally smooth, surfaces undulating and rippling like they were molded from clay.
I flinched in alarm at crashing and banging sounds coming from a cave. Nana emerged, looking none the worse for wear, holding a tunic!
She lazily tossed it to me, along with an old, stiff length of rope. The tunic itself was a tad frayed, but surprisingly soft. It was a natural, bland tan color, and had two dyed dark blue stripes running down either side.
Nana simply grunted when I told her how much I liked it.
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“Ah, is there anything I can do around here to help? Unless you’re going to leave, or something, since the shrine is broken…”
“What, you think I’m going to up and leave, or drop dead, just cause watch duty is over?” she snapped.
“I’m as spry as ever! Yes, yes, things always need to be looked after. My collection, the garden, the sickly whale calf that was born this spring… There’s none but I to do it.”
“Hmm. And you, I suppose,” Nana added as an afterthought.
A smile tugged at her wizened face.
“You got experience in tending a garden, little shrimp? A person’s fair share of work needs to be put in, yes?” she said happily, finally realizing that, perhaps, I could be useful for something.
I nodded, and she rattled off (very detailed, I might add) instructions on what to harvest and weed. She helpfully described the plants not by name, but characteristics. Delightful ones like “round yellow buggers” and “long purple bastards”.
Before I entered a tunnel leading to the surface, she tiredly called out, “Oh, and don’t wander too far from the kuduru-stones. A beastie might swoop down and snap you right up. That divine blessing only goes so far, you know.”
I shuddered. Larger cousins of those tiny dragons certainly existed, and other spirits, besides. Wait, the blessing has another function? I didn't read anything relating to protection... maybe I didn't get it. I did feel that the transfer of the shrine spirit's gift was cut short.
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It was only when I’d walked inside the tunnel, that I considered what Nana could've meant by “none but I to do it”.
I had stupidly assumed that Kıralluşira’s civilization had just collapsed, and people still lived here, if further from these particular islands. That they managed to deal with the dangerous creatures of sea and sky in their own ways. But it made me think. What if no one at all lived here anymore? If so, what made everyone leave? Or… did they all die?
I’d investigate Nana’s words myself.
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I emerged into a lush green clearing, breezes ruffling short grass. Goat-like animals with long, wavy hair and curved horns ambled about, a few glancing at me. Others snacked on weeds growing outside garden plots.
A surprisingly complex, subtle irrigation system fed each of them, made of stone bars inset in the ground. I suspected that they utilized a similar filtration enchantment as the art I possessed. It wasn't an art that showed on my spirit, but I was beginning to get a sense for objects that were magical. Several canals further away from the main garden were empty, choked with weeds and debris, the plots they led to overgrown.
I heard the soft gurgling of a stream in the distance.
None of the goats actually walked inside the gardens. Black, perhaps basalt, stones marked a boundary. Those must be the kuduru-stones she was talking about. I could see the word relating to boundary, but could also mean ‘limit’ or ‘shield’. Roughly incised inscriptions covered the stones' surfaces, with the addition of reliefs. They were crudely, cartoonishly carved, like a child’s drawing.
A portly merman slayed a small dragon with a spear. Another held a bundle of scraggly plants in his hands, and I hesitantly identified what Nana had described as weeds. More significantly, the stones gave off a similar feel to the shrine island’s serpentinite stone. However, these texts were actually legible.
I wrenched my head away. No, now wasn’t the time to dawdle! It would be sunset soon, and I had some gardening to do.
There were a few ancient stones strewn about, too, half buried. From what little I could see, their carvings were done by hands with far more skill.
Larger kuduru, three or four feet in height, marked the forest’s edge. They were shaped like fingers, with an inset relief where a nail would be.
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After a rough hour of pulling garden weeds–it seemed the kuduru had their limits–I set to work picking fruits and vegetables that ripened in summer.
Amazingly, there were tomatoes! They were the size of a nickel, with sunny yellow-orange skin. Other crops included thin, deep purple beans longer than my hand. I eagerly crunched into a short, fat cucumber. Gourds ripened in adjacent plots.
Stacks of blue and yellow gladiolus flowers bloomed, along with long, tall stems bearing multitudes of lilac purple blossoms. They bore massive, vibrant green leaves underneath them. Sadly, all plots aside from a few vegetable ones had long since fallen into disuse.
Finally finishing, and reasonably dry, I put on the tunic to immense satisfaction and relief.
I drifted away from the garden, towards the forest’s edge, taking care to heed Nana’s warning. Ferns and shrubs sprouted, not yet eaten by goats. They covered toppled structures, white bricks from the chalk cliffs strewn about. The bricks were worn, but looked to have been cut by hand, unlike the unnatural smoothness of Nana’s cove.
I noticed the huge clearing had a subtle bowl shape to it, its surface lower than the rest of the island. Upon scooping away some soil, some of the chalk-brick structures were set far under surface level. The dirt below had an odd consistency, and digging down further, it was striated.
The most well preserved and upkept structure sat near the overgrown flower beds. Goats had taken care of grass outside it, but clearly none had been able to enter. Its highest wall didn't even reach my waist. Were earthquakes common here, or had time simply taken its toll?
The fallen chalk bricks had long since been hauled away, and I could barely make out a mosaic under grime and debris. It was quite sizable, covering the entire twenty foot wide floor. An inset shrine was in the far corner, candles protected from rain. A small urn sat under it, of a style similar to those larger ones in Nana’s cove. It was an unusual two-part shape, with an upside down smaller bowl covering a large one. I'd thought they were for storage, but perhaps… they were funerary.
Taking extreme care, I brushed away dirt covering the mosaic. A mermaid emerged, smiling, with spiky white hair. She played a flute, two dolphins singing on either side of her. Another mermaid, also in a circular composition, played a lyre, a dolphin decorating it like a ship’s prow. Her eyes were closed, and she had wavy silver hair streaked with seaweed.
Nana. I was nearly sure. She looked young, lively, but still had her distinctive aquiline nose and strong jaw.
Yet another was a merman, holding a spear. He was strong, heavyset, in the fashion of a weightlifter. His long grey hair was tied in a bun, and a human sat next to him, singing. The mosaic’s workmanship was exquisite, competing with the Romans' best. There’s no way Nana made this herself. If she once had a family, where had they all gone? Did they move on to different seas, or were they dead and burned? ‘None but I to do it’, huh…
She’ll inevitably die, as well. I don’t want to, and don’t think I can take on her duties, but something needs to be done to preserve this place.
Despite my anxieties, I felt excitement at the prospect of uncovering what happened to this place, perhaps this entire archipelago. Did terrible beasts and wild spirits always live here, even alongside civilization? It was hard to believe. Throughout all the creatures depicted in the shrine’s reliefs, there wasn’t a single dragon.