Up on the top of the campsite hill, Cundy looked around with a worried face. Even after waiting for another ten minutes, there was still no sign of the captain’s arrival. If whatever possessed Bindon wasn’t truly defeated by the gunshot, he didn’t want to be somewhere it could easily find them.
Standing behind him and watching the other side of the hill, Roth was similarly impatient. Even if Holl did show up quickly, it would only temporarily help to their group. If he could draw a boat that they could sail away on, that would be much more useful.
I probably can’t sneak a chance to try it, though. Cundy seems to be keeping an eye on me, too…
Just as the thought was running through Roth’s mind, the crewmate behind him opened his mouth and shouted.
“Holl!”
Roth quickly whirled around and looked over, seeing a haggard-looking captain walking up the hillside. His hair was still covered by his captain’s hat, but the side of the hat was slightly pushed in.
“Are you alright?”
The captain nodded, then looked back at the forest behind him.
“I heard a gunshot, did you encounter the thing possessing Bindon?”
Cundy nodded and started recounting what he’d seen, starting from shortly before Bindon showed up.
“I’m not sure if it truly killed that thing… if it can possess a human like that, it might not die, even from a gunshot to the head.”
“Mm. We will continue together until we can escape from the island. I don’t believe there is anything else here for us. It should be clear at this point that there is probably no lost crew here, right?”
Holl looked around as he spoke, and Roth could now see a revolver similar to the one Cundy was carrying holstered alongside Holl’s belt. He was about to open his mouth to question the duo as to why they’d lied about having stronger weapons, but he quickly caught himself.
If they didn’t like his questioning, would he still be able to leave the island alive?
The scene of Bindon’s head splattering all over the forest floor replayed in Roth’s mind, and his stomach started to turn in unease.
“I need to use the bowl… or anything else.”
Roth ran off behind one of the nearby trees, and the sound of vomiting started coming from his location. Holl shot a concerned look over at Cundy, but the crewmate shook his head.
“He should be fine. He saw the gunshot and threw up a bunch down the hill… this is probably just from that.”
Behind the tree, Roth hurriedly unturned the sheepskin map and grabbed his pen out of his backpack. He didn’t really have anything left to throw up, so he wasn’t worried about getting anything on it. His first few gagging sounds weren’t faked, but he was definitely playing it up to have a chance to draw a ride.
Focusing on a spot near the shore that was visible from their position atop the hill, Roth zoomed way in on the map and touched his pen down to the paper’s surface.
A boat, I need a boat.
He was a mapmaker, not an architect, but he did know what boats looked like. A strange heat started to build in his hand as he drew a small craft roughly the same size as their old fishing boat, and when it was finished, Roth lifted his pen up from the surface of the map.
Suffocating darkness rapidly charged into his vision from every direction, but he fought the sudden need to faint with all his might. It wasn’t nearly as strong as before when he altered the river, and he barely managed to hold on. After a few seconds, the fainting disappeared, but Roth could still feel an intense weakness in his limbs.
His stomach started burning with hunger.
When he looked back down at the map’s surface, though, he was severely disappointed. In the spot where he tried to draw the boat, there was a change.
Before, there hadn’t been any depth markers in the area. He didn’t have any way of knowing how deep it was, after all.
Now, there were, and the spot where he’d just drawn the boat in was right where the shallows around the island started to drop off.
Really…? Well, shit. I might not be able to draw us a boat to get out of here. I wonder, though… did my drawing that cause the island to start dropping off there, or did it already? Probably the latter.
All around the spot where he’d drawn, there were depth lines showing the depths. It was quite different from when he tried to draw on land, and everything he sketched that was incorrect refused to stick on the scroll.
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Now that I think about it, there were a lot of places on the map that had depth markers, even some of the deepest areas of the lake. It was more than what official maps had… Did the previous owners of the map discover this too, and used it to map out the entire lake?
It sounded doubtful to Roth. The area he’d just unveiled was only a dozen meters in diameter max, and just finding that had nearly caused him to faint. For someone to map out the entire lake- the largest freshwater lake on the planet- at that pace, it would probably take thousands of years.
“You alright back there, kid?”
Roth could hear Holl’s voice getting closer as he spoke, prompting the young man to hurriedly tuck the map back into his pack and stand up.
“Yep, I’m fine now. I don’t have much left to throw up…”
Roth’s stomach groaned in agreement, having been irritated by whatever Roth was doing with the map.
Holl looked at Roth oddly as the young man pulled out a strip of jerky and started gnawing on it. He’d seen plenty of people throw up on ships before, but someone eating immediately afterward was not something he would ever expect.
“Captain, there’s a ship!”
Eh?! Did it actually work?
Roth and Holl both ran over to where Cundy was standing and looked out toward where he was pointing. It wasn’t where Roth had been drawing, and the ship definitely wasn’t the one he’d been trying to draw.
Similar to the old shipping boat they had arrived on, the boat had sails. It also looked like it was made from wood, but that was about where the similarities ended.
While the old fishing boat owned by Holl was definitely out of date, it was still something that somewhat fit the times.
The ship slowly gliding toward the island looked like something one might see in a museum. Two thick masts rose from the deck, lines of rigging and two limp sails hanging from them. The ship was painted white and green, but the wear from sailing in the water for some period of time could be seen on its hull. There were a few faded letters on its side. "Algo."
“That looks like an old ship… heck, I think I’ve seen one like that before, in a museum.”
Holl rubbed his chin as he raised his binoculars to see it better.
‘Hell, that thing looks like a model replica of a ship from the early 17th century. I don’t know who’s crazy enough to take one of those things out on this lake, but I’ll take it.”
While Holl was talking, Cundy ran over to the fire and uncovered a few embers that’d been buried the previous night. He tossed all of their remaining firewood onto the waking fire, hoping that the smoke produced by it would capture the attention of the topsail boat drifting slowly toward the island.
“It looks like it’s already heading for the shore. If we make it down there in time, we should be able to escape from the island.”
Somehow, Roth felt like he could almost hear something like regret in Holl’s voice. Just like the guns, though, he just brushed it off. The sooner he could get off the island- and then the boat afterward- the better. After his experiences the past few days, he didn’t plan on rejoining Holl’s next expedition into the waves.
I just want to make it back home ali-
BANG!
Both Roth and Cundy jumped at the sound of the gunshot, and the other crewman quickly withdrew his own weapon and turned to face whatever Holl was shooting at. On the side of the hill, a cute little black rabbit dodged toward a tree.
Bang! Bang! Ba-ba-bang!
A flurry of shots ripped through the air as both of Roth’s crewmates unloaded their revolvers at the cute, innocent-looking little animal. A chunk of black mist was blown off it as it reached the top of the hill and dived into their campsite, but the coast still wasn’t clear for it.
After emptying every shot his revolver had, Holl swiftly reloaded it in just a matter of seconds and raised the gun again. Cundy was only a few seconds slower.
“It’s still alive.”
After a pause just long enough for both men to reload their weapons, the rabbit charged back out from their camp, heading straight at Roth.
He was the closest one to the rabbit, only a few meters away from it. It didn’t really matter.
Even with the rabbit’s unnaturally quick speed, it couldn’t dodge the hail of bullets that rained down on it. The fluffy little critter exploded into a cloud of smoke almost immediately after it left the shelter, pulverized by the bullets. It still wasn’t the end for it, somehow.
The rabbit’s gold-crowned head rocketed out of the cloud of mist, much too fast for anyone to react. Just as it was about to hit Roth, a light started to glow behind the young man’s back. A terrifying scream echoed through the campsite as the rabbit’s course was forcefully changed, and the golden emblem on its forehead started glowing brightly.
More black mist started spilling out of the rabbit's head as the golden emblem forcefully ripped itself out of the rabbit, then flew through the air and burrowed into Roth’s skin.
It left the rapidly dissipating black rabbit head to fall limply back into the muddy dirt, where it was promptly shot again by Holl.
“It got the kid!”
Holl held up a hand to stop Cundy.
“He’s fine. That golden emblem wasn’t something bad.”
Cundy kept his gun at the ready as he watched Roth start twitching and fall to the ground, unconscious.
“What the hell do you mean? He’s going to be possessed too!”
“Didn’t you see the light?”
Holl pointed at Roth’s map.
“The kid will be fine. If anything, he’ll be a much better crewmate after this.”
Cundy still looked like he wanted to argue, but he closed his mouth and decided to trust Holl.
“Do you think that thing is finally dead this time?”
“I don’t plan on sticking around long enough for us to find out. Carry my pack for me, I’ll carry the kid. I don’t want to miss the ship.”
Cundy kept his gun at the ready as he walked over to investigate where the rabbit had hidden in their campsite. There was nothing out of sorts there.
As he gathered up the blankets and started stuffing them into one of the backpacks, his hand brushed against something hard within them, and a shudder ran down his spine. A moment later, his expression calmed, and he stuffed the object into his backpack.