Roth dreamed.

He was a small body, hidden beneath a small, low-lying bed. A few rough blankets hung over its side, blocking most of the dim candlelight that reached his body. The floor beneath him was wooden, and creaked weakly as the gravity around him shifted.

Where-

The creaking of the boards beneath him changed in pattern as a pair of footsteps stressed the deck a few meters away. Roth tried to twist his body around, but he was stuffed so soundly beneath the hard bed that he could only twist his head.

Even just the small movement he was capable of felt odd. Unfamiliar, like he wasn’t in his own body.

“Where are we?”

A voice with a mild accent. Roth associated it with ‘French’, but most people in this world would call it a ‘Catal’ accent. The folks from Marie island would be able to further narrow it down. It was the voice of Jean Farsue.

“I still have no idea… I followed what you said and continued on southeast, but we were thrown way off by the storm.”

Anpo’s voice, and he sounded worried.

What is going on? I think I can hear him turning the wheel… my position, then… am I underneath the bed in the corner of the wheelhouse?

Roth tried to shift around again, but his body wouldn’t budge. A sudden wave of dizziness washed over Roth, and his head began to spin.

“Jean, are Alisa or Roth doing any better? It’s been four days already, we need them to wake up…”

Roth’s ears perked up as he heard his own name.

“... Still not responding. I don’t know if Alisa will mak-...”

The entire world around Roth seemed to be spinning as the dizziness swamped all of his senses. It felt like he was falling backward, out of an odd dream. Biting down with his jaw, Roth tried to hold onto consciousness to hear more of the conversation. He’d already missed a chunk of it by the time he managed to steady himself enough to hear more. Anpo was speaking.

“Their relationship? Just before the storm, ...”

Roth’s consciousness cut out again, midway through the sentence. The sensation of being watched joined the dizziness as his senses faded out. As everything faded away, Jean’s voice was suddenly very close.

“One of Alisa’s dogs? I didn’t think she still…”

-

-

“Roth?”

Something softly pressed against his shoulder as the voice spoke again.

“Roth! Wake up!”

He slowly opened his eyes, squinting them to shield from the bright light of a fire a couple meters away. Memories flickered in the flames. A town burning down, gunshots. The life fading from Holl’s eyes.

“Aah!”

Roth tried to jump away before he even fully woke up, but his forehead immediately collided with someone else’s. There was a thumping noise as the other person fell back against the wooden deck, then another as Roth’s random struggle sent him falling from the hammock he was resting in. A sharp pain shot through Roth’s shoulder.

More recent memories re-entered Roth's mind.

I’m not back in town anymore… there was a big storm, we barely got the sails down. After that…

Roth glanced around the room he was in currently. There were a few empty hammocks hanging from the ceiling, and a bunch of wooden boxes lined the sides of the room. In the center of the cabin, there was a large fire filling the entire area with a stifling heat. The entire space swayed faintly as he looked around and recognized the space he was in. It was the main crew’s space on the First Light.

“Ow… That hurt.”

Roth glanced up at the figure who’d been standing over him when he woke up. Alisa was on her knees, tenderly rubbing at her forehead. Jumping up against her side, a small snow white dog was trying to climb up to lick the injury.

“Alisa?”

The girl shot a glare at Roth as she gave the puppy a comforting pat on the head.

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In that dream I was just having… Was it from the puppy’s point of view? I think I was underneath the bed in the wheelhouse, and Jean saw me at the end.

Roth frowned as he tried to remember everything that he’d overheard during the dream. He looked back up at Alisa, then stood up and walked over to her. She looked a bit more pale than usual, but aside from the fresh bump on her forehead, he couldn’t see any injuries on her.

In the dream, Jean said something about Alisa not making it, but she is awake and healthy. It felt awfully real to be just a random dream, though.

“Ehm… why are you staring at me?”

Roth shook his head, then looked down at the back of his palm.

“How long was I out, and are we still at sea?”

Alisa nodded as she responded, “Six days, and yes. I just woke up yesterday… I guess I’m a lucky one.”

She looked around the cabin that was completely empty of people aside from them.

“Almost everyone is dead.”

“What?”

Alisa opened her mouth to speak again, but before she said anything, there was a creaking noise at the side of the room. The door of the wheelhouse was pushed open, and Anpo stepped out.

“Alisa, has- Ah! Roth, you’re awake!”

The young hunter man ran over to Roth, then pulled him into a hug. Roth was too surprised by the random approach to even try dodging it, and his shoulder ached in pain again. Two more figures poked their heads out from the wheelhouse as Roth awkwardly patted Anpo’s back.

Jean only looked for a moment before turning his attention back to the ship, but Jaren walked into the cabin. He paused for a moment as Anpo released Roth from the hug, his eyebrows furrowing.

“We drifted into a red zone after the storm.”

Jaren’s voice was flat and cold as he strode over to Roth, taking Anpo’s place and pulling the young man into a hug once again. Jaren continued talking in his stiff and dead tone as he copied how Roth had patted Anpo’s back.

“Including the two who didn’t make it back inside after the storm, four of the hunters died from the cold. Two days ago, everyone in the cabin who didn’t have a Regard grew sick and died. I, Anpo, and Jean were in the wheelhouse and survived. We brought you and Alisa in when Jean noticed the sickness spreading.”

Jaren released Roth from the hug and took a few steps back.

“We should be further south east from where we were before.”

Somehow, the disturbingly unbothered tone of Jaren’s voice helped pad the meaning of his words. They barely escaped with their lives from the town, then once again from the storm. After that, they drifted through a red zone and almost everyone else died to an unknown sickness.

After being released from the hug, Roth questioned the two hunters more about what happened while he was asleep. The ship was still in a usable state, and they’d managed to get the sails back up once the storm died down. With most of the hunters dead now, though, it would be difficult for the tiny remaining crew to do anything in a timely manner.

Even if there wasn’t a blizzard outside, the temperatures were still below freezing, and the deck was eternally covered in a thin layer of clear ice. It was part of the reason that when Jean realized that there was something wrong with the surrounding ocean, they couldn’t avoid it in time.

Jaren walked over to where there was still a large fire blazing in the center of the cabin while Roth, Alisa, and Anpo headed for the wheelhouse.

If we sailed through some kind of dangerous area while I was asleep, I guess it does make sense why we were the ones to survive. Anpo and Jaren are young, Jean was probably the most fit out of all the remaining townsfolk. Alisa and I both have Regards… hers is still crippled back to Base right now, though.

Jean Farsue was manning the wheel as the group ducked into the room, and he gave a warm smile as he saw Roth heading toward the desk. Roth thanked him before reaching down into his pack that was still set next to the bench. Just before he could grab it, Alisa plopped down on the bench next to him. She bent down like she was also trying to grab the map, but instead snatched Roth’s hand, then tapped her index finger against the back of it.

Huh? What is she trying to say? Something about the puppy? Hmm… I think I should ask her about the dream I had.

Alisa moved her finger to tap on the map, and the confusion in Roth’s eyes cleared up.

She’s still wary of the others? Why? We’ve both been asleep for the last few days, if they wanted to do anything to us, they would’ve done it then. Besides, it would be incredibly stupid of them to while we’re still lost on the sea. They still think that my map stuff is a skill, not the map being an artifact…

Roth glanced over at her as he laid the map out on the table, but decided against saying anything. He didn’t know enough about this world and the people in it yet, and Alisa wasn’t the first person who’d warned him to be careful with trust.

The map was still in the same position as when he’d left it, but now the small cursor denoting his position was completely gone from the paper. When Roth’s hand, holding his pen, approached the map’s surface, it began to sketch the boat’s path automatically. Luckily, the arm he normally used to write wasn’t the one that was still aching with pain every time he moved his shoulder too much.

When the storm hit, they were thrown almost directly east. Some time after the movements became less chaotic, the ship angled directly southeast and sailed on. Roth frowned as he saw series on increasingly shallower depth numbers roughly 2/3rds of the way through the journey, just before the ship took a sharp turn and headed directly north for a time before returning to the original course.

When his hand finally caught up sketching the boat’s path over the time he was asleep, the cursor was once again in the center of the map.

Alisa rubbed her chin as she looked over the map.

“I think we’re probably closer to Tarth than Losten Island, now.”

Nobody had anything else to add, and Roth pressed the pen against the paper once again in hopes of randomly marking an island.

Five marks… ten marks… random depths of the seabed were revealed to Roth. Anpo watched from the other side of the desk, and the still unnamed puppy butted its head against Roth’s leg as he continued making more marks until Alisa scooped it up.

On Roth’s fourteenth mark, almost dead southeast, he got something completely different. Instead of there being a depth marker, there was a straight line. One more mark revealed a second line perpendicular to the first.

“It’s a wall! I found an island with buildings!”

Roth placed down another five marks before pausing. He spread them out a bit more, and one of his lucky marks revealed an identifiable part of the city.

“It’s Tarth! That’s definitely one of the sky bridges!”

Sky bridges?!