God's Forsaken

Chapter Seven

Once the sea filled the horizon, the assassin brought a crate up on deck and set it beside the mast. He sat down on it and reclined against the mast to wait for the small crew to gather around. Ozresbet, with a cup of jungo in hand, plopped to the right of the crate. Keen-eyed Vipa stared at Michel's skull as if to extract his thoughts telepathically. Sainh flanked Michel's left as a fur ball rubbed against her legs. Somehow, she managed to find a trio of pebbles to spin over her hands.

"Alright," said Michel. Steady breathing soothed his mind long enough to focus on the task at hand. "Let's get the first question off the table. Three years back a person hired me for a job. No, I'm not going to tell you who he is. He arranged for a certain someone to die at sea. He believed that death to be fact until a ghost's letter arrived. Whether it was a cruel prank or the real deal is hard to tell. My client felt it to be a threat and hired me. When I heard the letter's return address was from Tragun I didn't believe it at the time."

"Didn't believe the stories?" asked the vampire. Truffle left Sainh's leg in favor of Vipa's lap. Giddy giggles escaped her as she patted the cat.

"I was aware of the danger, but it was one of those things you never think about." Tapping his head, Michel's rueful smile explained everything. "It's a moving island. What was I supposed to be afraid of? Beyond that, not all myths and legends about the divine are true. It was once said that the planet was made from the flesh of a monster. Than the High Clergy declared that this to be fault when it became clear what the earth made of." That earned him nod in agreement. The High Clergy, a group of people in charge of the Freudan faith, decided what was proper way to serve Druad and his people. Periodically decrees of faith held little political sway. Michel knew a plenty of people who would hang themselves if the High Clergy demanded it. Though base on Vipa's frown, she didn't seem to follow the High Clergy's word.

Truffle jumped out of Vipa's lap and strolled over to the assassin. The cat, meowing to be picked up, coiled around his legs. Ignoring the feline, the angel kept talking.

"As with Vipa, I had trouble getting any sailor to take me to Tragun. Part of it was that no one wanted to be near it. Another reason was that few people seemed to know where it would appear. So I did a little research into those sightings. Sainh, the map?"

Vipa's fidgeting muscles made it hard for her to hold still as Sainh handed over the map. Reaching to his right side, the assassin opened his suitcase and took out a pencil. His elbow pinned down the map corners. Dusty memories awakened with a jerk. After several seconds of smothering unpleasant thoughts, he started to mark the page with 'X''s.

"That island did not stay in one place," stated Michel. Vipa and Sainh crowded Michel's right while Ozresbet came to his left. The damn cat refused to remove itself from his legs. "It had been sighted in almost every part of the Barrol Islands region. The first time I looked at the evidence the sightings appeared to be random, as if the force of nature could pop out at any point in time. Yet, I found a pattern."

"You did?" Sainh stared intently at the abundance of X's, but the dozens of X marks meant little to her. She lacked the weeks, and months of book learning Michel endured just to figure it out. Age had dimmed his knowledge a bit, but he remembered well enough to stack the X's in one particular spot.

"It took me three months of research to get something useful. I traveled from library to library. Sometimes I interviewed what few survivors had been lucky enough to survive an encounter with the island. Newspapers, history books, and ancient myths became my friends. I started noticing a trend. While Tragun had been seen all over the Barrol Islands, it had never once been reported outside them. For some reason, it stays in the upper portion more than in the south." The X's started to fall heavily between two islands. "As you all should know, the Barrol Alliance is dived into the Western, Central, and Eastern region. Nearly a two thousands sighting occurred in the Eastern region."