The sheepskin canvas looked just as Roth remembered. The island was still on the map, positioned slightly left of the center of the canvas. Roth could see the small depth lines just off the coast of the island where he’d drawn on it.
If what I’m thinking is correct, then when I touch it again…
Roth withdrew one of his pens from his backpack, then paused.
I passed out the first time I tried to write on the map, and I’ve felt light-headed every other time. Even if I have some privacy right now, I should still be careful, and there are still other things I need to look into.
After setting the pen and map down onto the small single-sized bed, Roth pulled off his leather coat and lifted up his shirt, craning his neck to try and see the Regard on his back. With its position on his lower back, though, he could only catch a glimpse of the very bottom of it.
Golden lines threaded through his skin, fraying off into nothingness as they spread out. It looked like fluffy hair, but as a golden tattoo.
I can’t see… is it a rabbit?
Roth’s hand dove back into his backpack, hoping to find a mirror he didn’t remember packing, but he had no success. For a moment, he considered heading out to ask Holl and Cundy if they had mirrors of their own, but quickly gave up the idea.
Instead, he grabbed his spyglass and held it behind himself, then tried to look in the faint reflection on the dull glass’s surface.
It was still hard to see, but Roth could faintly make out a figure resembling an extremely fluffy rabbit.
Before, when I said I might look badass with a tattoo… Why did it have to turn out this way?
Not only did Roth need to endure being trapped in a world filled with Eldritch horrors and an impending war, but he even had to suffer having a fluffy golden rabbit branded on his skin for all of eternity.
I’m never letting anyone see this. Are skin grafts available at this time? If I can’t remove this thing, can I at least cover it up somehow?
Roth lightly ran his fingers over the mark, but it felt pretty similar to regular skin.
After a few minutes, he plopped down on the bed next to his map.
A golden rabbit. I thought Lia said that the lowest rank Regard anyone could have was a human one, but here I am with a prey animal tattooed on my back. The only thing rabbits are good at is reproducing, and I already know I’ve lost all hopes of action just by having this thing on me.
Roth looked back down at his map, trying to drive away his own hopeless attitude. He still had a cool map, wasn’t that much better than some stupid Regard?
Roth picked the map and pen up again, and as soon as the tip of the writing utensil touched the paper, Roth’s arm seemed to gain a mind of its own. This time he was expecting it, though, and wasn’t shocked when the island disappeared from the map’s surface.
This time, instead of just fading away, though, the map seemed to scroll rapidly south until it reached the location of Marie Island. Roth’s hand moved rapidly as it sketched out the shoreline he’d landed on, but it paused fairly quickly and didn’t draw the entire outline of the island.
It moved onto the detailed areas where he’d walked through the streets, but aside from his current housing and the first room of Raymond’s shop, there were no details inside of buildings.
Out by the docks was where the most unusual part of the map was. The Algo was highlighted with a faint orange light, and when Roth lightly tapped his finger on it, he was able to see a zoomed-in map of the ship’s internals.
None of the areas he hadn’t been to had any details, but Roth could still see a rough outline of the vessel.
After spending a few minutes playing around with the map and looking around the island, Roth leaned back in the bed.
“This island is definitely being corrupted by something… Even if it is more dangerous at the coast, shouldn’t there be another island up here in the north without some evil god cult?”
Lia said that the Quian are friendly, right? Why don’t we just go live with them?
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Now that the girl had resurfaced in his mind, Roth held up the map again and used his finger to trace the path he’d seen her walking after she left the ship. The map didn’t yet have any details in the direction he’d seen her walking.
If I can’t get Wilson to take me somewhere safer, I guess I’ll look into where she went first. She has a regard to, and she seems to know a lot.
Roth tucked his map back into his backpack, then pulled the coarse woolen sheets of the bed over himself and tried to fall asleep. It wasn’t too difficult, considering how tired he still was from the island.
-
-
“It is still here, be careful.”
A hollow whisper echoed in Roth’s ears, instantly jolting him awake. The young man sat straight up, his emerald eyes flickering around the room as he tried to identify the source of the whisper.
There was nothing out of place. The sun’s late-dawn light struggled to shine past the rafters and animal skin over the window, but it still provided enough light for Roth to see his surroundings.
I definitely heard a voice just now. Shit, is this the evil god here on the island trying to take over my mind already?
After looking around his room one more time and confirming that there was no one hiding under the bed, Roth turned to his backpack. He didn’t bother taking anything out of it, instead picking it up onto the bed and equipping his belt.
His knife was now ready in case anything tried to come for him, as was his old dented spyglass. The vision apparatus had saved him back on the island, and part of his heart already recognized it as an official secondary weapon.
Shouldering his backpack, Roth pushed open the creaky old wooden door separating his room from the main room of the house. Holl and Cundy were both already awake and sitting at the small circular table near the entrance of the house.
“Morning, kid.”
Holl snapped a chunk of hard bread off from the loaf he was munching on and handed it over to Roth.
“Wilson passed us some money before leaving this morning, but I want to keep saving it until we can afford a boat.”
“He’s gone already?!”
Holl nodded.
“Wilson and that girl stopped by early this morning and dropped off a few things before leaving. Right, the girl asked me to give this to you.”
Holl reached into his pocket, then pulled out a long silver chain. All of the tiny links were uniform in size and shape, and there was a small trident-shaped emblem attached in the middle of the chain.
A necklace?
Holl thrust the chain into Roth’s hand.
“It looks like those good looks of yours are finally paying off for us. We can probably sell this for-”
“Hey! I’m not selling it!”
Roth drew his hand back from his greedy captain, then he held the necklace up to try and get a better view of it. It was pretty dark inside the house, though, and there weren’t any new details he could make out.
Why would Lia give us a necklace… why would she give it to me in specific? There… there were some girls who would try to talk to me whenever I went to pubs. Is Lia like them, too…?
Roth quickly shook his head. Aside from the flame dancing mischievously in her sapphire pupils, Lia was the picture of temperance. Furthermore, Roth was still half-caked in mud from rolling down the island, and he knew that he looked and smelled like a wretch.
Heck, Roth was pretty sure he could see Holl and Cundy shying away from his stench even in the present.
Why would she give me this necklace, then?
Holl interrupted Roth’s thoughts by setting something down on the wooden tabletop. It was a small bar of soap that smelled faintly of lilacs.
“The first thing we need to do is find a way to make some money, and the second is to investigate this Enthenglem stuff. Wilson gave us enough money to survive the winter, but I don’t want to just rely on that. I have no plans of settling down here forever.”
Holl paused for a moment and pointedly looked up at Roth.
“Actually, the first thing we need to do is get you washed off, and the two of us next. Luckily,-”
Holl pointed over at a wood-burning stove in the corner of the room, the faint flickering of flames barely visible behind its metal cover.
“The water should be plenty hot enough. Kid, you’re up first.”
-
-
Fifteen minutes later, a shivering cold but clean Roth sat in front of the wood-burning stove. There were naturally no drains in the cabin, so the only place he could go outside to ‘shower’ was out in the freezing air outside.
After dumping the first bucket over his head and sprinting back inside, wrapped in a couple of blankets that’d been repurposed as towels, Holl and Cundy forced him to go back out with a second, slightly less warmed bucket to do a better job at cleaning himself.
They’d even passed him tho small bar of soap, not forgetting to mention that it was a secondary gift from Lia.
In the end, Roth had discovered a new goal for himself. Learning carpentry.
If running outside to wash in late fall wasn’t bad enough, seeing Holl stroll back in nonchalantly after washing, buck naked, certainly was. The privacy Roth thought he’d gained with the separate rooms of the house was all but an illusion. The wood stove was only in the main room.
Roth quickly moved ‘Learn carpentry and add a shower room onto the house’ towards the top of his to-do list. It was only just after 'Don't get mind controlled by evil island god' and 'Don't get mind controlled by Regard.'
-
The faint scent of the soap given by Lia hung around Roth, accompanying the metal necklace now draped around his neck.