Chapter Twenty

‘Akela, be ready for anything!’ I said to the wolf as the spear wielding pirate began to talk.

The two other guys — presumably sailors from the same ship — were just standing there on either sides of him, looking around nervously, squirming and shifting their weights from one leg to the other.

The language was still alien to me, but the pirate didn’t sound like he was offering peace. The girl paled and began to sweat despite the coolness of the morning. This didn’t look good, and I had a feeling the man was not going to leave without another fight.

I was just about to activate Mana-Armour for Akela, when the man stopped talking, and the girl lowered herself to one knee, starting to pet the wolf. What the hell? Now? In this situation? Then she whispered something. Something I understood, strangely enough. It was the name, Jevan, and that same word she’d uttered when I’d first showed her the sword I’d looted from the slaver.

Jevan. The sword. Jevan’s sword. She wanted Jevan’s sword! I brought it out of Jack’s Room without thinking, holding it up to her with a Mana-Gloved tentacle coiled around it. It was only then that it hit me: was she … was she going to fight them? All three of them? It was too late. She took the sword. Oh, this was not going to end well, was it? I was trying to decide if I should tell Akela to rush the men so I could Mana-Blast them, or eat their souls or something, but the girl twirled the sword around in her hands, then slammed it into the ground tip down. Again, what the hell? Wasn’t she planning to fight or something? Had she needed the sword only for some weird theatrics? But then she … changed.

And I was impressed. The girl straightened herself, her posture, her face, her eyes hardening as if she’d just became another person. She spoke. I didn’t understand a word, but her voice was calm and angry at same time, almost forceful, like a queen giving orders to her subjects. I had to give it to her, she was a good actress, and for a short while it seemed her performance was producing the desired effect. The two sailors suddenly looked even more nervous, glancing at each other behind Spear-guy’s back, saying something to him in a pleading tone. But Spear-guy wasn’t as impressed as we all were: he talked back to the girl, lifting his spear a little. I wasn’t an expert on the kind of stand-off we seemed to be having, but my money was on the man losing his patience and attacking soon.

A brief, somewhat angry exchange between the pirate and the sailors made the pirate angrier. He lifted his spear, leveling it.

Well, the girl’s plan to talk her way out of this had been good, the execution had been impressive, but it ended in failure. I shouldn’t have had my hopes up: pirates and slavers were unreasonable people after all.

The girl knelt down again, whispering something to Akela — to me — then stood back up. I didn’t understand her words, but I knew when someone was begging for help. It seemed it was my time to shine once again. I wanted to sigh.

‘Akela, move a bit closer to those guys!’ I asked the wolf, and he obliged.

He lazily trod past the girl and he sat when I told him to stop. Then the pirate lunged at us, jumping over the firepit, leveling his spear, just as I’d expected he would. The two other men hesitated, but I didn’t.

I could have just grabbed his soul, ripping it out of his body, but the sword was well within tentacle range, and I opted to use it. If anyone examined the corpse later — however little the chance of it was here — I thought it better if the cause of death was sword in the heart rather then an eaten soul. I coiled one of the little mana-coated buggers around the hilt, pulled it, and stabbed at the man’s chest as his leap brought him to our side of the firepit with some sort of battle-cry.

The sword pierced the man’s armour as I knew it would. I’d punched plenty of trees and rocks using all sorts of things I’d picked up, and I’d learned how much force I could and should put into a stab.

The man’s charge, along with his roaring, came to an abrupt halt. He stared at Akela wide-eyed, then he looked down at the blade sticking out of his chest.

I had no qualms about ending the pirate's life: I’d given him a chance not that long ago, but he had come back for a second round. If I let him go again, he’d probably be back tomorrow, possibly with even more of his friends

The men fell back, thumping over the pit, smothering the fire, sparks and ash flying up. The two sailors stopped in their tracks, gawking at their dead comrade, fear twisting their faces. Even the girl behind me stared in astonishment, gasping. I hoped I hadn't scared her too much.

I stretched out two of my tenties: I could comfortably reach the dead man’s legs, touching his teal coloured soul. Oh, why did humans have to have such tasty souls?

Two seconds passed, and the girl was still just standing there, gawking at the dead body. Well, maybe I had scared her too much. I pulled the sword out of the dead pirate’s chest as I continued nibbling on his soul, lifting the weapon up to the girl. Her attention snapped back to the present, and she was slowly lifting her hand to take it. The two sailors were watching her now, probably trying to decide what to do. They didn’t seem like they had any willingness to follow in the footsteps of the pirate, but they weren’t retreating either. I wished I’d been able to yell “just run you idiots” at them. Then it occurred to me that maybe one of my magic tricks would give them that kick in the butt they needed to make up their minds. The suddenly appearing sword seemed to have scared the sailors, perhaps a vanishing sword would do the same.

I put the sword back into Jack’s Room, just as the girl touched the hilt, hoping I wouldn’t have to bring it back out again. Her face twitched as the blade disappeared into thin air right in front of her, but other than that she didn’t show her surprise. If anything, she seemed to have resumed her queen persona from earlier. She was impressive. The two men on the other hand flinched. Hah! My plan worked.

And I finished eating my pirate-soul breakfast, nice and tasty.

The two sailors trembled, and I really thought they were about to run, but the girl spoke to them, her voice the perfect blend of sweet and foreboding you’d expect from any evil queen-slash-stepmother from any Disney cartoon. Perhaps if she was ten, twenty years older, she could have got that role as a voice actor, or in a live action adaptation, considering what a good actress she turned out to be.

Then, to my complete and utter shock, the two men fell onto their knees in front of the girl.

***

After some quick comparisons and calculations, it turned out I got roughly two-hundred thousand EXP from the pirate-soul, almost the same amount as I’d got from Jevan. I immediately re-visited my earlier idea of moving the decimal point, because even though I had a good mind for maths and large numbers, it was a pain.

So, starting again, I got 200 EXP from the pirate-soul. To reach Level 24, I needed around 920 EXP. I was a long way from that: I’d need to eat at least four more people to level up again, and … I’d just scared myself, didn’t I? Hm. Thinking about eating people so nonchalantly, as if it was the most natural thing … well … I decided not to think about it. Burying your head in the sand was usually a bad solution, but I had other things to worry about. Nonetheless it seemed there was no growth waiting for me in the foreseeable future.

The girl sat on a box, looking regal and imposing despite her dirty, tattered dress, messy hair and grimy face. I didn’t pay any attention to what she was saying to the two sailors groveling before her. She sent them away, maybe to do something, maybe for good, I didn’t know.

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As soon as the men were out of sight, her queen persona vanished, and she broke down crying. I couldn’t blame her: if this sort of thing had been happening to my old, fully human self, I would have done the same.

‘Welcome to my Misery Island, nameless girl,’ I said to her. ‘Glad you made it.’

Akela lifted his head from the girl’s lap, probably thinking I was talking to him. He then growled at the girl, and she resumed petting his head. It seemed that my job of giving constant belly-rubs was in danger, and I was oddly happy about it, even though I liked doing it for the lazy mutt. But that was secondary. I had a much bigger plan in the works, and now that I had a human, its feasibility had increased to the point where it was worth giving it a shot.

I waited for the girl to stop crying and to calm a little, then I began to draw my plans into the soil before her.

***

I couldn’t help but be impressed. In the course of a single morning, the girl had managed to turn the two sailors from her would-be-murderers into her minions. I didn’t have a single objection for being used as both the stick and the carrot — it served my plans as well. I kept the fire alive, I served them roast meat twice a day — which I quite enjoyed doing, actually — and every once in a while I had Akela growl at the sailors angrily, just so they wouldn’t get strange ideas, like turning on me or the girl. It worked, and Misery Island suddenly had a queen, an invisible enforcer-slash-cook, a lazy fur-ball and two loyal subjects.

The men obeyed the girl’s every word. When the girl presented my plan to them, they made suggestions as to how to build something more akin to a small ship rather than a raft. They were sailors, ships were their business, so it was natural they knew more about them then I did. I also suspected that the pair of them were just as keen to leave the island as the girl was, or I for that matter.

It was all well and good, but no matter how good the design was, we needed tools and materials for the job. We moved our camp to a small clearing where the rocky beach met the forest, and thus began our quest to collect every single piece of wood, crate, barrel, rope, canvas and everything else that had washed up on the western shores of the island.

***

The ship must have been a big one. Just the first day we collected so many broken planks and beams I though we could start work right away. Unfortunately we couldn’t, but on the upside, both the girl and the two sailors were sufficiently impressed by how much stuff I could store and transport in Jack’s Room. Oh, I was sure the little ant would have been smiling, had he been with us to witness the stupefied faces on the three of them as they watched me pulling plank after plank into his room.

Once I dumped the last of the crates and barrels onto the ground in our new camp, the sailors started opening them. I was really hoping for tools, nails, saw-blades and such. Instead we got wet and rotting food, clothes and trinkets that seemed to have been made of gold. Many of the crates were already broken, their contents lost at sea, but at least we found a single, large barrel that was still intact, filled to the brim with black tar or pitch. If I understood the drawings of the older looking, bald sailor correctly, it was a great find, and we could use to treat the wood and waterproof our ship. I was also happy to find a number of wooden plates and mugs, and a few, usable clay jars in a box.

The unfortunate absence of tools and fastenings, like nails or screws, really threw a wrench in the gears. The best idea any of us could come up with was to use the strong looking vines covering almost every tree of the forest, work them into ropes and manage with that somehow. I wasn’t sure how that would work, and neither were the sailors.

***

The second day of our newfound little kingdom came and went much the same way as the previous. We worked. And I listened. I was beginning to pick up a few words here and there, and on top of that, I managed to learn the names of all three of my human … uh … companions? Servants? Prospective food? I settled for companions.

The girl — if I wasn’t mistaken — was Krissy, or something like that.

The older looking, bald man was Kenta.

The other one, young enough to still have hair, was Tommy — a surprisingly Earth-y name.

I began to be able to distinguish words from each other — although their meanings remained a mystery — and I began to successfully guess whether their sentences were questions or statements, judging by their intonations. The language was becoming less and less alien. After two years without human speech, it was an overwhelming experience to hear them speaking. But as interesting and fun as it was, it didn’t help us with the problem of tools and nails.

***

The third day began the same as the previous two. By the time Krissy and the two sailors woke up, I had several skewers of brined and roasted meat waiting for them, jars of fresh water, and of course a whole boar-leg for Akela. They ate, then Krissy sent her subjects to carry on with their work of sorting through all the collected stuff, and to try and make ropes out of the vines in the forest.

Over the past two days, Akela quickly got into the habit of following Krissy around, extorting pats and belly-rubs from her as often as he could. Maybe he preferred his belly-rubs coming from someone he could see, but at least he was diplomatic about it: “Voice good belly-rub, Not-prey good belly-rub”. Luckily the girl was becoming wise to this scheme, and she turned out to be much better at refusing the mutt than I was. But at the same time, Krissy also seemed to have taken a liking to the wolf. Unlike the initial, terror-filled gasps she made when seeing him for the first time, the girl was now smiling at Akela whenever he rubbed his head against her.

Akela followed Krissy as she walked to one of the crates — one that contained a large assortment of clothes — and rummaged through it. She even found a few, painted wooden masks in the large box.

The masks looked interesting. My best guess was a fusion of ancient Greek and Italian renaissance theater masks. They were smooth, covering the whole face, the eye-holes large enough to maybe see properly while wearing them. One of them was a smiling mask, another was growling in anger, and a third was a sad, miserable crying mask. Considering this, I thought the clothes Krissy had removed from the box might have been costumes for stage actors rather than street clothes. Or maybe not. I didn’t know much about theaters back home, much less here.

Krissy set the masks aside and took the clothes she wanted. I sneakily pulled the masks into Jack’s Room. I couldn’t help it, there was something about their design I really liked.

Krissy headed for the nearby stream with Akela in tow. She’d been on the island for three days now, and I was beginning to wonder when she’d decide to clean herself a little.

Krissy looked around, but Kenta and Tommy were somewhere down the beach, and here in the forest, on the grassy bank of the stream, there was no-one spying on her. Except Akela and I. She set the new clothes down on a small rock and without taking her tattered, blue dress off, she walked into the water. She shivered, arriving at the middle of the knee deep stream. I couldn’t feel temperature, but I imagined it was rather cold. She knelt down, submerging most of her body, then dunked her head into the water. She rubbed her scalp, washing away all the gunk sticking to her long, brown hair. Then she stood up, the fabric of her soaked dress clinging to her as if it was glued to her body.

She was a good looking girl, no doubt about that, and I had no choice but to admire the beauty that was surfacing from underneath the grime and dirt, slowly revealing itself. She looked around again, somewhat nervously if I was any judge, then she looked at the new clothes she’d left on the rock. She then locked eyes with Akela. Krissy must have decided that Akela’s red-eyed gaze wasn’t a threat to her dignity, and she began to remove her old dress. She must have forgotten about the invisible tentacle monster in the vicinity.

She dropped her old dress it into the stream, shaking her head, letting the water carry it away. Well, I’d been told women liked to change their wardrobes from time to time, so who was I to argue or to stop her.

As I looked at the naked, shivering girl, washing herself with cold, fresh water, two realisations hit me, all at once. Firstly, I was now sure that my libido had died along with my human body back on Earth. I couldn’t say I was happy about this, and I felt like it deserved an official mourning period with candles, flowers, and perhaps a stone monument to its memory. Secondly, the fresh and vivid image of wet silk clinging to her skin gave me an idea how to build that damned ship without nails or screws.

The stone monument to my dead libido could wait: it was time for a new series of experiments.