The Lost Arcane

Aboard the airship Impeccable Manners, Elias Oliphant spied a coy looking spit of land on the horizon. The Mermaids were right, it was real. Months of island hopping, the lonely nights camped above coral reefs in the vast ocean to the south of the Sovereign coast had finally paid off. Scuttling about the open gondola of the Impeccable, Elias set about drawing in the lifting sails and prepared for landing. The Impeccable, its buoyant envelope no longer supported by the updraft catching sails, began to descend to its rather modest passive lifting height as it approached the island. An island previously only assumed to exist. A ruined enclave of the Olds, a civilisation of humanoids that recently became of great interest to the scholars and explorers of the world. Explorers like Elias.

As the finer details of the island began to resolve in Elias' telescope, a strangeness to the place became more and more apparent. A long and thin shaped lump of rock and sand running West to East, with a perimeter of trees surrounding an interior clearing, bisected by the depression of an evaporated lagoon. Elias saw though, that this tree ring only remained verdant West of the lagoon. The entire East of the island looked totally barren, and fully alien to Elias. Tree trunks remained, but as blackened sticks, eventually giving way to a pockmarked landscape of darkened, glittery sand. In all it would take less than a day's walk to circumnavigate, hardly befitting the grandiose legends surrounding the Olds, but the place sat oddly in Elias' mind as he approached. He readied his bag and grabbed his explorer's carbine.

The Impeccable now awkwardly bobbing in the air above the shoreline, Elias looked for a spot to fire the pneumatic anchor. While scanning the beach for a good bit of crag or rock pool for a firm hold, he spotted several figures down on the sand. Initially surprised at any company, he relaxed upon seeing they were only a trio of mermaids. Though they would have clearly seen his approach, and were well aware of the mechanisms of human airships, Elias still called out to them as he launched the anchor as a token of courtesy, bracing them for the loud shunt, whistle and crunch of its action. Down from the Impeccable, and with the carbine slung over one shoulder, Elias strolled up to the three on the beach. They were all huddled around a pit fire in the sand. Elias recognised them as the same sort of Reef Mermaids he'd been in contact with over his voyage. Blubbery bipeds with grey mottled skin who make their home in the shallow coral structures across this part of the ocean. He didn't recognise these individuals, but Reef Mermaids weren’t overtly hostile to humans, and decided to properly introduce himself. For the Reef Mermaids, who use a combination of clicks, ultrasonic whines, and the occasional bit of sign language to communicate, Elias speaking was to them what a man talking through a trombone would be to Elias. Still, they did turn and greet the curiosity on the beach walking toward them.

"Good day to you all." Elias said.

The mermaids silently looked at each other and signed the gesture for 'hello' that Elias had come to recognise. They then quickly returned to their business with the pit fire.

“I say, is this the island I’ve been searching for? Island of the Olds?” Elias asked, hoping not to be given the cold shoulder again by the trio. While the other two remained their backs to Elias, the youngest of the three did turn and respond, putting down what Elias noticed was a human book, freeing their hands to sign.

“We’ve heard about you. Gentleman explorer going up and down the reefs chasing legends.” The young one said, not opening their mouth.

Elias assumed they were male, but only based such an assumption on the fact he himself was too. He stroked his beard and looked at the young mermaid, inspecting their blubbery, hairless skin, free of the scars seen in the older ones he’d met.

“Well young one, am I just chasing legends, or is this really the hidden site of the Olds?” Elias replied, firm yet still polite as he was.

“It is, you would have seen from your air canoe. No legends here though, only curses. There is no value in there.” The Mermaid said, pointing a slender, webbed index finger toward the wall of trees up the beach.

“If this place is so worthless, why are you here?” the man asked.

The young one moved their face in a way that Elias had come to recognise as a smile.

“Deposits in the crag here are good for making wetfire.” The Mermaid said.

One of the older ones let out an uncomfortable screech. Mermaid for ‘shut up!’.

“Stop chatting with the ashy colonial and help us with this!” They continued.

Elias saw perched atop the pit fire was a set of ceramic instruments. Akin to the chemistry set he’d played with in his youth, except crafted out of polished coral. Wetfire, the fuel that let the mermaids metalwork underwater. Though Sovereign chemists had tried to steal and replicate the formula, they could never get it to burn as hot and for as long as the mermaids did. Making it was one of the few things they came ashore for, and during his travels, Elias had seen the reef cities attempt to make it under the sea, their first steps toward fully aquatic life. Abandoning their relationship with humans and the land entirely, instead turning toward the Ocean Mermaids and the Octopodes. Though he thought it a shame, Elias could hardly blame them. The Sovereign wasn’t interested in any mutually beneficial relationships between humanoids, and Elias knew the whole impetus of his mission here was to continue to push such an imbalance. He turned back to the young mermaid.

“You say it’s cursed, lots of places are cursed. Is it dangerous?” He asked.

“Of course, and it’s not worth it either, nothing in there you can take with you. The Olds made sure of that.”

“How do you know so much, young one?” Elias responded.

“Yours aren’t the first people to go in. All nations have tried before in the past. We were the first, many tides ago, and now your upstart Empire is the next in line. We know who you are, the Sovereign’s flag is quite visible on your canoe. In there, the air, the soil… It’s sour. If you go in, we’ll have to leave the island. But you won’t.” The young one said.

Elias knew they weren’t wrong. If the Mermaids thought there was anything to be found on the island that would benefit the Sovereign, they wouldn’t let Elias get this far. Mermaids weren’t antagonistic, but they weren’t stupid either. He glanced back at the tree line and paused for a moment. He had been in cursed places before. Malevolent forests and deserts, the places themselves alive and who enact their vicious will on unsuspecting outsiders. He had survived those with little more than cocktail party anecdotes to show for it, and so had little fear of one small spooky island. For all the young mermaid’s protest, Elias still had to see for himself what was in there. He cared little for the motivations of the Sovereign, insomuch as they kept funding his expeditions, but there was a personal drive to see. An innate curiosity that wasn’t quenched by the fearful warnings of a sea person some years his junior. Yes, no one else had managed to explore the island and live to tell the tale, but they didn’t have rifles or carbon steel bayonets. He did have to admit though, that there was something different about this place. Something that set it apart from any given haunted land. It didn’t feel like a place where the primal, ethereal beings of this world usually resided, and he recalled his unease from atop the Impeccable.

Elias turned back to the young mermaid.

“What’s your name lad?” He asked.

The mermaid let out a odd sequence of clicks that just skimmed the upper limit of Elias’ knowledge of the language, roughly meaning ‘one who might work with sea shells’.

“Well, Shelly, you know we have our own wetfire too.” Elias said, reaching into an inner pocket on his linen jacket. “It doesn’t burn underwater for very long, but in the sky it is quite bright and can be seen for some way, even in this sunlight.” He continued, having pulled out a brass snub nose firearm from inside his jacket pocket. “You say you’re leaving the island the moment I step past the trees. I say you see a second sun in the sky, and perhaps you come back and see what the fuss is about.”

“Why?” The young mermaid asked.

Elias, caught off guard by the question, tried his best to hide the attempt at hedging his bets just in case the island really was as dangerous as he said. He clumsily appealed to the youth’s sense of curiosity and adventure, going so far as to invite them in with him and as first mate on the Impeccable. Shelly said nothing, but his body language implied some amusement at Elias’ words.

Elias left the mermaids on the beach, and started up toward the tree line marking the interior of the island. He bid them a polite enough farewell, but he could sense the distain emanating from them, except Shelly. Shelly even waved him off, which took Elias by surprise as mermaids didn’t wave. He pinned Shelly’s liking of him on the curiosity of youth. The young crave the novel, and Elias, in his airship, in his clothes, in his brazen desire to explore a cursed land, was especially appealing. He even wondered had the older ones not been there, if Shelly would have journeyed into the island with him.

He put these thoughts out of his mind and focused on his surroundings. The trees around him were stout and low, but with a thick canopy that blocked overhead heat and light, save for intermittent streaks of sun running across Elias’ own sweat stained linen. It was humid under the trees, and the ground was littered with leaves and obnoxiously protruding roots. As he moved through them and toward the interior clearing he saw from the Impeccable, Elias laid eyes on his first truly discomforting sight on the island. In front of him, interlaced with the trees themselves, was a line of worn, black quartz stakes. They came up to about face height and were pointed diagonally toward Elias as they came out the ground. There were rows and rows of them, stretching further inward toward the clearing. An unsettling, jagged forest of stone that yielded no clear path through. They seemed eroded and battered and immensely old, but their intent was still felt by Elias: Stay away. Beyond them he could see the clearing, and in it a slew of ruins strewn across the land. He inhaled sharply, and moved through the quartz. As he did, his boot caught on something heavy. Elias crouched down to inspect the object, as it felt denser than some loose stone. It was a lump of the black quartz, which Elias assumed broke off from one of the poles. Picking it up, he noticed it was smooth, and on closer inspection realised it had been worked to resemble a flat palm. Time had smoothed it to something almost unrecognisable, but he could still see the sharp indents between what were meant to be fingers. Five fingers. Well, four and a thumb. It was a left hand, a human left hand. Not Mermaid or Goblin or even ancient Elf. Looking around at the others, he realised the hand was meant to sit at the end of these stakes in the ground, and slowly began to see that each of these jutting pillars of crystal had what were meant to be a flat palm at their end. A flat palmed arm jutting out the ground exactly at Elias’ face. He could take a hint that perhaps he wasn’t wanted here, but that wouldn’t stop him. He didn’t stop his suicidal dive into the Fractal Woods to the north of the Sovereign lands some years ago just because some infinitely repeating, uppity tree told him to leave, and so a few passive aggressive hands wouldn’t stop him here. He pressed on to the ruins.

The leather strap of his carbine had begun to irritate his shoulder, so as he walked the dry dirt of the inner clearing, he held the weapon in both hands. As he got closer to the ruins he felt the texture of the ground underneath him change. Looking down he could see what was left of a brick road between old mosses and grass. So far, excluding the hands, the ruins seemed quite typical of the Olds. Brick and ceramic constructions, occasional use of crystal pillars here and there. Trapezium shaped buildings, their outline only assumed by what was left of their walls. Elias seemed disappointed. He knew that the Sovereign would be too. He wasn’t here for old pottery or quartz carvings. As much as a revelation as it was that the Olds were possibly humans like him or anyone in the Sovereign, the politicians weren’t interested in such inconsequential academic pursuits. They wanted artefacts. They wanted weapons. They wanted the mythical ‘Pink’.

No one really knew what Pink was, except that record of the stuff pops up again and again in various cultures contemporary with the Olds. Elias, and any other historical scholar worth their salt, remained sceptical of the legends that it was what powered their society, but the importance of it in Olds culture could not be ignored. Neither could one ignore the rumours circling around academia that the Sovereign had found a cache of Pink, which apparently now fuelled their recent feverish interest in archaeology. Elias walked about the ruined settlement. It seemed to be the remains of a small community, or at least a well manned outpost. He noticed no signs of fields or places to grow food, and while it was plausible the islanders relied on fishing to survive, he theorised that an extensive shipping network must have existed at the time to support the island, bringing it material, people, and food.

Seeking refuge from the hot sun, and an unshakable feeling of being watched, he strolled toward one of the larger and more intact buildings in the hope to cool down. He walked, feeling an oppressive quiet build in his mind. He felt thirsty, and since moving past the perimeter of hands he had been acutely aware of a persistent metallic taste in his mouth. While until now he hadn’t seen anything particularly supernatural, he could feel something was wrong around him. He affixed his jungle knife as a bayonet on the carbine.

As he continued toward the large arched entrance of the intact building, the quiet in his mind was sharply broken by the sound of a loud crack and exploding masonry to his side. He scrambled to the ground, adopting a crawling sprint to what remained of a low wall by the road, a stone’s throw from the building itself. Several more cracks echoed across the island, whizzing past his head and smashing into the thick ceramic wall he hid behind. Heart pumping, he exhaled through the smile he had at still being alive. He sat and leaned back on the wall, one shoulder close enough to the edge to feel the breeze. Fumbling in his bag, he took out a square mirror, and jammed it into a notch at the end of the carbine’s barrel. He slowly edged it out to his side, hoping to glimpse his attacker. He caught the outline of a humanoid silhouette set amongst some ruins on the other side of the road before the attacker fired again, bullet punching through the mirror and shattering it to dust. There was silence for a moment, save for the ringing now building in Elias’ ears. It was broken by a guttural sound coming from the direction of the gunfire.

“First magazine is free, human. If I see you again, you won’t be so lucky. Be gone from here, this is my claim!” A voice called.

While they spoke a human tongue common to the Sovereign, it had a peculiar accenting that Elias had come to recognise over the years as an explorer. They were a Goblin, and no doubt here for the same reason as Elias. The goblins, their empire on the continent to the east of the Sovereign, were just as despotic as any human politician back home. Over the past decade both nations had sought to expand, modernise, and arm themselves, fuelling a rivalry that had now metastasised into a hostility only one bad decision away from war.

Elias found he recovered his composure quite easily from behind the wall. He hadn’t expected the threat the island truly posed would be such a mundane one. Still no less deadly, but in all honesty, he had expected a brush with something a tad more existential during his visit.

“You understand, good sir or madam, that if I am to leave this island, I must eventually stand up from behind this wall. I take it you would grant me the courtesy of not shooting me then?” He yelled, while still trying to maintain the level of elocution his upper-class education had instilled in him.

He heard no response, and after some time poked the tip of his carbine out from behind the wall. No gunshots. He lurched upright and peered out, scanning his surroundings for his attacker. He saw no one. He turned back and made for a large intact building adjacent to the wall he had been hiding behind, wondering if there was truly such a rush to leave as the goblin said. After all, they very well wouldn’t see him if he remained indoors.

Looking around, he realised the Olds didn’t build true windows but had instead put slits along where the high walls met the ceiling, providing a modicum of light and let the air circulate. It was cool as Elias drew deeper into the building. The entrance arch led directly into a great room, in which Elias spotted smaller arches leading off into other chambers. Elias didn’t find much he hadn’t seen before at other sites strewn across the Sovereign and its peripheries. In fact, the building looked even more sparse than usual. As if it had been deliberately abandoned or already raided by the irritable goblin outside. Guessing, he thought the place was a communal living area, with the great room being a common area, and the smaller rooms branching off being individual bedrooms. Exploring the smaller rooms, he found nothing much else except more disappointment. That was until he entered a room with a curious feature on the wall. Carved decoration wasn’t something the Olds were known for, so it struck Elias that this room had something etched into the wall. The artwork was unremarkable, and Elias had trouble deciding if it was something fully abstract or a stylised attempt at the written language of the Olds. Within the artwork though, hid a set of subtle, deeper notches, implying a small rectangle in the back wall. They seemed easily missed, and Elias would have missed them himself had he not been scrutinising the carving as much as he was. He tapped a part of the wall and realised it was hollow. His heart jumped, and he quickly felt around the notches. Upon realising that he could hook a fingernail under one of them, he applied a bit of pressure, dislodging a tile from the wall and revealing a small hidey hole behind. Elias reached a hand inside, and found a small, well preserved box. It was metal, either silver or platinum, and hinged. Elias thought it a jewellery box. Opening it, he saw inside was a selection of glass vials, topped with clay plugs. Elias’ eyes widened upon seeing the contents of the vials. A fine, pink powder lay inside, glowing slightly, and radiating an intangible call toward him. This was Pink. He was sure of it. The catalyst for magic, lost for millennia, in his hands. It must have been for personal use, a private stash hidden for a rainy day that never came. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but enough to impress the Sovereign and get more funding for future expeditions. He could leave the island now, and that goblin in peace, if he wanted to. As he went to tuck the box into his bag and made his way out, he spied it had a false bottom. Underneath a lacquered piece of wood, Elias popped out a book. It was in pristine condition, and full of the writing and numbers of the Olds. Though it was presently incomprehensible to him, he skimmed through pages of indecipherable words, and came across a set of drawings. A drum, an unsettling diagram of a hand not unlike those he had seen in the treeline on the way in, and a drawing of a gangly four limbed creature with a single large eye for a head. Elias’ instinct told him this was something both of immense importance, yet also something no one wanted found. Perhaps a diary or manual. Out from the false bottom, he slid it beside the box in his bag. Through the corridor back to the main hall, Elias felt a tingling sensation on his hands. Upon looking down at them, he saw his palms and fingertips had mildly discoloured a bruised purple where he had held the box. Unconsciously he rubbed at as if it were paint that had smudged on his hands. The colour remained on his palms, and the act of rubbing did little but spread the sensation across his entire hands. He poured a modicum of water across his hands, giving a slight cooling relief before setting off again.

As he went back outside in the clearing, he felt a return of the oppressive quiet. He looked around himself, and though he saw nothing, he filled with an anxiousness to return to the Impeccable as fast as he could. It was past midday, and with the sun no longer overhead, he caught sight of his shadow trundling along beside him, only now just separating from the oblong shadow cast by the building. It was then he saw another shadow. A figure on the roof, armed. Elias quietly raised his hands to his head.

“A Goblin rife holds six rounds, correct? I counted only five earlier. Will you keep your word that I am owed another warning?”

Elias heard no response save for the sound of the dextrous humanoid sliding down the sloped trapezoid wall, boots crunching shrub and dirt as they walked toward him. Elias saw the barrel of the rile in his periphery as his assailant stood behind him.

“Turn, presumptuous human.”

Elias complied. Though the afternoon sun caught his eyes, he made out the figure in front of him well enough. The goblin came to just above chest height, standing a few paces from him, brandishing a stout rife made of dark wood. Elias knew his goblins better than mermaids, and realised this one was female, feminine features being similar across goblins and humans. She had skin that was an olive green with dark spots, and her pointed ears poked out from a bob of jet-black hair. Only her head was exposed, being clad in a suit of waterproof rubber and copper piping that gave credence to the rumours that these industrious humanoids had working, self-propelled, submarine ships. She scanned Elias up and down, spying the discolouration in his hands.

“You found something, eh?” She said, gesturing her rifle toward the man’s raised hands.

Elias smirked. Though facing the business end of a high calibre weapon that could render his face to jelly, he knew this girl was in no hurry to kill.

“Pink, my dear. Vials enough for both of us if you were feeling charitable. Mind the box, use a cloth.” He said, pointing to his bag with his eyes.

The goblin mercenary squinted in disgust and moved to Elias’ side to pilfer his shoulder bag, one arm still trained on him. Reaching in, she found the metal box. Holding it in her rubber clad hand, she muttered something to herself in her own tongue before turning her attention back to her hostage.

“You can have your warning, human. I will have this. Now, back to your airship before I change my mind.”

“Agreed, miss?”

“Minza. Now get lost.”

Elias complied. Though he had lost his main prize, the sea around here was vast. Her submarine ship would need to surface for air and food at the limited number of reefs on the way back to her empire, where he could easily reclaim what was his. Besides, he still had the diary. Assured that it would all eventually work out, he stepped back from the goblin with the rifle in preparation to turn towards the treeline when something caught his eye. Something moving in the distance. Elias had finally found the source of his unease on the island. Far from the mundanity of an armed goblin, he saw approach them something undeniably sinister yet not unfamiliar.

Lumbering towards him was the creature that had been so crudely rendered in the diary. Though it moved like a living thing, it had a shine on it not unlike the black quartz found throughout the island. It was easily twice the height of Elias, walking upright on long tentacle-like legs with no obvious joints, with similar arms that ended with large hands akin to the stakes circling the interior of the island. Perched atop its slight torso was a sphere. An unblinking, crystalline eye, with dilated pupil trained exactly on Elias. He pointed, calmly trying to alert the goblin so as to not get himself accidently shot.

“A Being. Run!” He said with great urgency, before unslinging his carbine.

There are few words that inspire a common response across humanoids, but ‘Being’ was one of them. Mentions of the ethereal manifestations of the planet were always taken seriously. Even if their intentions were not overtly hostile towards humanoids, they would be inscrutable enough to likely cause harm. The goblin Minza turned to see the walking eye, which had now stopped. Elias expected it to scream, though instead it silently stood, staring at them. As he readied his carbine to take aim, he felt the air become unbearably hot and the shrub on the ground started to crisp and sear. The heat was coming from the eye, its stare turning to an invisible, scalding beam. He managed to land a few ineffective shots that did little more than chip at the glassy form of the walking eye before he grabbed the goblin by the arm and made for the treeline. As they ran, the earth behind them became blackened and scorched, the eye now breaking into a gangly run after them. Vaulting over tree roots and dodging the crystal stakes, he made for the Impeccable. The small forest around them began to smoke and light and was ablaze by the time they cleared it and were onto the beach. His ship was still there, gently bobbing in the wind, the long rope ladder awkwardly dangling down from the gondola. True to their word, the mermaids were nowhere to be seen, the only evidence of their presence being a small depression in the sand a little way up the beach. Elias, gentlemen, urged the women to climb the ladder ahead of him, which coincidently meant she would not run off to her submarine with the Pink. Minza, having little choice at that moment, awkwardly ascended while Elias turned his attention back to the treeline. The fire had considerably spread, oily palm trees throwing up a heavy smoke into the air. He knelt, carbine trained, waiting for the eye. He had time just enough to reload before it came bursting through the flames. The explorer carbine was not an accurate weapon, instead relying on its high round capacity to see off foes. Elias got off nearly all ten rounds as it walked through the burning trees. Most landed on the eye itself, making visible chips. It did not flinch, and instead turned its gaze onto the airship. It took little time for the eye’s heat ray to ignite the supremely flammable lifting gases in Impeccable’s envelope. Minza was around halfway up the ladder as the ship lost buoyancy and it came crashing down onto the beach. She jumped, the shallow water and soft sand breaking her fall. Elias, having no time to reload, realised he had his flare gun still nestled in his jacket. The eye had moved to dodge the crashing airship, and Elias took that moment to draw his flare. There was a whistling sound as a white-hot ball erupted from the brass barrel of the gun. It spiralled towards the Being, hitting the blue iris before ricocheting upwards into the sky. The walking eye staggered backwards, apparently hurt. They ran, across clumping wet sand down the beach. Minza was looking for a way back into the interior to cut across the island and back to her submarine. The fire had spread to one half of the island’s tree ring, and the two could find no way back into the interior that was not engulfed in flame or smoke. Elias and Minza reached the desolate side of the island, the eye still giving chase, but a good ways behind. Soft sand had turned hard and glasslike as they cut across the beach and into the evaporated lagoon. The metallic taste returned to Elias’ mouth as they entered the barren landscape, mostly flat save for a small ridge a little ways ahead of them. The two of them, drawn to it as the only landmark in view, oriented their run towards it. The ridge was little more than a modest sand dune, only hardened somewhat, unlike all the other lagoon ground.

“Your submarine, does it have room for two?” Elias asked, now able to think in the reprieve they had from the eye.

Minza, trotting slightly ahead of the man across the modest ridge, stopped. She turned to face him, her hesitation to speak being all Elias needed to understand her intention.

“I wouldn’t let this place be your grave. I hope you weren’t going to let it be mine.” He said.

Minza did not have time to argue, but Elias did. His airship was gone. He had no Pink, and even if he were to best the eye, he would be marooned here. Why not argue? A gentlemen may sacrifice himself, but he would not stand to be left to die.

“Human-” Minza began, before a scream rattled through her bones.

At the edge of the lagoon stood the enraged eye golem. Though over a dozen yards from them, charred pockmarks on the milky white eyeball were easily seen, as was the chip that had turned to a crack running across its iris. The two had no idea how a creature with no mouth could make such a noise, and had little time to contemplate as it broke into a frenzied sprint. Minza, realising the human was transfixed on the movement of the creature, turned to run again, before being grabbed by him.

“You’re dead if you run.” He said, readying his carbine, but not for her. “A volley on the eye and it will crack.” He continued, coming to kneel in order to steady his aim.

Minza, weighing her options in an instant, came to kneel beside the human. Even if it took minutes for the eye to finish him off, she could not outrun it across the breadth of the island. The walking eye, now running, seemed to keep its ocular piece stable as it strode towards them. It broke into a gallop, almost on all fours, flinging glittering clumps of what was not quite glass, yet not wholly sand, behind it. Still, even with this frenzied stride, the eye had a motion not unlike a cavalryman atop a steed, bouncing only in the subtlest of ways. Elias called out the pace of their fire, one shooting while the other cycled another round, the rhythm of their shots becoming a metronome of cracks that echoed across the island. Luckily for them both, their aim stayed true. Bullets whistled through the air and pelted the quartz sphere. Though the eye was quick, it was not smart. It made no attempt to jink or zigzag across the lagoon, and the heat ray was not enough to disintegrate supersonic lead before it struck their target and shattered it to fragments. At once it collapsed, not a stone’s throw from the ridge, the golem’s eyeball now nothing more than a jagged set of spikes ending abruptly where arms met torso. Elias stood, cheering in triumph.

“Ha! The mighty beings of the earth fall at the feet of the human spirit!” He cried.

Minza gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look.

“Humanoid spirit. Of course.”

She surrendered a smile to him, small sharp teeth peeking between her lips.

“You never gave me your name human.”

“Elias Oliphant, miss Minza.”

“Well Elias.” Minza said, mispronouncing his name. “My submarine is across the lagoon. It will be tight, but there is room.”

Minza pointed across the flat landscape, taking in the cracked and shining earth, the blackened trees.

“Do you think that thing did this?” She asked.

Elias was unsure. He looked back at the fallen golem, slumped in a heap by the ridge. It nearly made it, and frankly Elias thought it a fluke they managed to fell it before it reached them and ripped them apart. He could already feel the heat of the eye on him as he fired his final rounds. He turned away from it, and saw something buried in the ridge. He got on his knees, and began to brush away the sand with his hands. After a short time he uncovered a large disk shaped object that to the touch felt as though it sat uncannily between a metal and a ceramic.

“I say, it looks like the drum.” He muttered to himself.

He called Minza over, who had gone to inspect the corpse of the golem. As she walked toward where Elias was now kneeling, something caught her hip. The pressure was light at first, then harsh and crushing as she realised it was the outstretched arm of the golem. Its fingers dug into her left hip, though struggled to find true purchase on her suit of rubber. She screamed, and took a knife to her suit, ripping it enough to separate herself from its grasp. A hole was left in her suit, and the pouch containing the Pink box fell to the ground as she excised herself from her attacker. The being was not yet dead. It blindly staggered to its feet, leaning forward, long arms combing the sand for its prey. Minza took a step back, the vibration of her movement through the sand being enough for a quartz arm to find her leg and take hold. Elias got to his feet, running toward her. Out of ammunition, he charged, knife affixed at the end of his gun. The eyeless golem dragged Minza to the ground. Long digits crawled across her body until an index finger found her head. It pressed against her skull, pushing it into the sand as it gave way under her. Minza felt the pressure on her face, desperately swinging her arms in a feeble attempt to fight back. Elias had closed the distance, still none the wiser on what he could achieve. Spying the Pink box coyly poking out of a rubber pouch, he abandoned his bayonet charge and instead hurled the metal oblong at the golem. He aimed for the crystal spike where its neck might have been, Elias making the unconscious observation that it might somehow hurt it more. He was proven correct as it recoiled when struck by the box, as if one were to smack an exposed nerve. It released its hold on Minza as it reflexively reared up to protect its wound. Minza scrambled away, thanking the stars the soft sand of the ridge buckled under the pressure, and not her head. Elias felt the metal taste again, this time stronger than ever. He looked down at his tingling hand, and saw it smudged in that fine substance. The Pink. It was in the air around him. He looked over to Minza on the ground, and saw her covered in a faint cloud of the stuff. She felt a peculiar feeling come over her. Reality seemed to squash and stretch. Colours became brighter, and she felt like the front of her head was somehow opening up. Elias watched as she scrambled back somewhat. She was wide eyed and despondent, the golem now recovered and lumbering toward her.

“Minza!”

The sound of her name, spoken through a fumbling human tongue, brought her back to a lucidity enough to react. She saw the long-limbed golem approach and had an instinctive urge to raise her hand. Pinpricks of sensation turned to sparks that warped the air around her fingers. As she looked upon the creature in front of her, she felt her desire to be rid of it somehow carried more weight into reality, as if her will was leaking out of her mind into the world around her. She focused this desire, and all at once the sparks jumped off her hand and lunged toward the golem. Thick vines of refracted air wrapped and ripped at it, until the creature was rendered to black grains no bigger than the sand around them.

Minza lowered her hand, reality returning to a baseline she was more familiar with. Elias had watched the whole thing from a few paces back, silently seething. Magic. Real magic. The first seen in millennia, and it’s from a bloody gobbo, he thought snidely. That wouldn’t do to be told at a cocktail party. Pushing down his jealousy, he walked over to the girl. The cloud of Pink had dissipated into the air, the vials now all smashed to shards. He offered a hand and helped her to her feet, forcing a smile.

“Jolly good show lady Minza. Pity about the vials.”

“Speak for yourself, what a discovery! I must get back to the Akadem and let them know all about this.”

“Right, your submarine.” Elias said, and then had a thought.

“Lady Minza, might I ask that before we leave, I inspect the wreckage of my airship. I must see if my maps and journals are intact.”

The goblin obliged the man, and once again they crossed the island. Out the lagoon and up the beach, Elias saw what remained of his airship. Though it had quickly gone up in flames, crashing into the surf and sand had doused it enough to keep a good portion of the gondola in one piece, if soaked. Elias worked his way through the charred metal skeleton, going in-betweens thin sheets of Sovereign light metal and down to the gondola, wedged between two rocks. His map was there, but that wasn’t truly what he was seeking. A few paces from the shore, he managed to find what he was truly looking for. He heard a call, and waved his arm in response. The mermaid Shelly was there, bobbing in the water, before swiftly darting up and onto the beach. Elias had a hope he would return, but no hunch that he would. Fumbling toward him through the wreckage, he shook his hand in knee deep water.

“You are a gentleman Shelly, a true explorer. A compatriot, through and through. I say, once we are back at the reef, would you aid me in getting passage back up the Chain to the south coast?” Elias went on, not letting go of Shelly's webbed hand.

The mermaid had no option but to accept the desperation of the man in front of him, who seemed positively overjoyed at his mere presence, let alone when he made a click in agreement of his request. Elias was indeed happy. With the vials now gone, he had little to gain by travelling with the goblin to the United Tribes, except risking being branded a traitor or spy, and possibly losing the diary to her. Still, he would be lying to himself if he did not feel a degree of kinship toward her. After all, nearly sharing death at the hands of an unknowable being tends to bring people together. Elias knew that more than most.

“Lady Minza, thank you for your offer of passage. If you will still have me aboard your submarine, I ask only to go as far as the reef city. There we might part ways toward our own nations.”

Minza looked almost disappointed. She placed a hand on her exposed hip, her mind still open enough to know he was hiding something. Only a suspicion, she agreed without hesitation, and made off to the other side of the island to bring her sub around while Elias gathered up what remained of his possessions in the wreckage of his airship. Enough of his maps had been spared that he would still be able to show his journey, along with his tools to record the island’s latitude and longitude. The Sovereign might be disappointed in him turning up empty handed, but he would be off the hook so long as he could tell them where to look. He chatted with the mermaid as they waited for Minza to return, Elias already spinning his experience into an exciting yarn, subtly omitting any reference to the Pink.

“No value then?” Shelly asked through the motion of his hands, Elias knowing rationally that while one cannot sign smugly, he had managed to do so.

“I’m afraid not old chap. I guess you and yours were right after all. Only thing that was in there was my death, which I am happy to leave behind me.”

Shelly questioned Elias’ description of the Being they encountered, telling the man that he had never heard of a Being described in such a way. Elias was impressed with his knowledge of the ethereal and didn’t disagree. Beings were indeed dangerous and took on many forms in the dark corners of the world, but this one was quite different. It made no effort of contact. No parlay, and no attack on the psyche of either Elias or Minza. It simply wanted to kill and kept trying to do so until it was reduced to dust. Elias recommitted himself to investigating the diary.

The conversation between the humanoids came to a lull just in time for Minza’s submarine to surface off the beach, where the sand drops off into the deep rock of the sea floor. It was a dark, angular thing, a top sliver only visible above the surface of the ocean, sloshing about in the surf. A dome shaped hatch popped open and out climbed Minza, awkwardly coming to a stand atop it. Elias confirmed where he might find Shelly in the reef city, before asking one final favour of his aquatic friend. Minza watched, with some enjoyment, as the two worked to push the ruined gondola out of the rocks and toward the sub. Once afloat, Shelly pushed it toward the submarine while Elias paddled with the butt of his carbine, though Shelly’s powerful flipper-like legs provided the vast majority of locomotion. He bid Shelly goodbye for now as he descended the hatch after Minza, and the humanoids slipped below the waves in their own way.