The next day dawned with the brightening of the sky shining down on Kaelen.
"How the hell is there always light, but I can't see a damn sun anywhere?" - He paused for a moment before groaning and getting up.
"This is the nightmare spell, for god's sake; nothing here is normal." - He grumbled and began to walk around the wreckage.
It was a lot easier now, as he could focus solely on his surroundings rather than the enemies that needed to be killed. The place was quite large, like a small island made of broken wood.
'I wonder how all this wood got here?'
Kaelen wondered to himself, "The first nightmare was supposed to be a moment of the past that one would be transplanted into by the spell, but Kaelen was in his own body..." Perhaps the being that had brought him here had chosen others before.
'But then how many must there have been... If I was given a single little raft, then how many must have washed up onto this island to form it?
He racked his mind trying to think of a number but after walking for a bit there was something that he found out that added to not only his confusion but his fear too.
There was a tiny boat that sat at the opposite end of the island from where he had sat. It looked like a life boat that was formed that was fashioned out of wood too, the boat was appreciated because Kaelen was planning to make one himself.
The problem was what was in the boat.
There was a corpse; this corpse wore old, tattered clothing that was worn down by time and the weather itself. The corpse seemed to be rotted the same as the rest of the forsaken, but this one seemed to be different. Why?
Because there was a shard of wood stabbed straight through its heart.
'What the hell is this?'
He felt an innate sadness looking at this corpse, and he could not explain why; perhaps it was because he felt this could happen to him too.
"Sorry, man, but I need the boat."
Kaelen sighed as he moved behind the corpse and slipped his hands under the arms of it, the clothes or rather what was left on it was enough to keep the mangled corpse intact.
Slowly he pulled the body down off the boat and left it at the side and took out one of the wooden shards to gut the body and take the shard. The shard was the same as all the other forsaken aside from the fact that it had a deeper shine.
Kaelen felt it almost instantly; there was a more concentrated essence in this shard. It was the shard of an Awakened being.
It was unfortunate he didn't have enough time to take the shard from the awakened beast back in the 'Mud land' but right now, he had one in his hands.
'I'm saving this for later.'
The shards emitted an almost insignificant amount of light, but when you have nothing, anything will do, and this shard was a lot brighter than the dormant shards.
Sigh
How many times had he sighed today alone?
'What is this place? How do I get out of this nightmare?'
He was about to sigh again but stopped himself and walked over to the boat again; this time he noticed something in there. Something that the corpse had been covering
It was a bag of sorts.
Kaelen allowed a smile to grace his face after a while now; he had a way to store a bit of food and even a place to keep his light shard, but after taking the bag strand into his hand in order to lift it...
The bag disappeared into sparks.
[You have acquired a memory: Seafarer's Satchel.]
'Huh?'
Kaelen instantly summoned his runes and focused on the memories.
Memories: [Hunter's Mark] [Seafarer's Satchel] l]
He smiled and then looked at the runes of this new memory
Memory: [Seafarers Satchel l]
Memory Rank: Awakened
'Huh... nice, my second awakened memory' - He whistled as he continued to read.
Memory Tier: I
Memory Type: Tool
Memory Description: "...It came and they all died. No, it was worse. My crew, my friends, they all went mad... they tried to kill me in their madness... we were going to the north. I was going to see her again, but how could I bring them to the land? To bring them and their madness to kill their own families? No. I have to crash the ship... I have to kill myself too. I miss her. What will she think? She gave me her favorite satchel, and I promised to return it... but I must do this... I leave my essence here in this bag that lies as empty as my heart."
Woosh
There was no sound other than the sea breeze.
Kaelen turned from his standing position at the lifeboat and turned to look at the corpse again, then he turned to look in the direction where the other forsaken were left.
He knew the answer now; he knew how many had come and how they had come here; he knew where to go and also what to do as well.
'Rest well... All of you'
He placed the core into the bag and watched it almost disappear. He had already guessed the use of this memory from its type and general appearance but it was still quite magical, not that he was in the mood to appreciate this.
'North...'
The hint was there in the description; he would need to go north.
After a few minutes of looking around and finding 2 planks that they could use as oars, and after pushing the lifeboat into the water, he hopped in after.
The boat was very ugly, if one could use a word to describe it. It seemed to have been made on the go, and it also smelled because of the corpse that had been lying in it for God knows how long, but that only made Kaelen's mood worse.
When that seafarer, maybe he was the captain, had crashed the ship, he must have had to avoid his friends and watch them in their maddened stare all while making this very boat, but judging by the obvious stab to his heart, the captain did not get killed.
He killed himself, and there could only be one reason if he had done so. He too had become corrupted, and in his last moments he must have chosen to end his life amongst his crew rather than become a monster that would harm whoever he was going to see.
"Thank you."
He whispered as the shipwreck island disappeared out of his vision as he continued to row.
The rowing became a rhythmic torture after a few hours, and he was slowing down, and thankfully the reason to stop came soon after.
The first attack came from below. A pack of nightmare creatures that looked like a cross between a manta ray and a starved dog. Its body was gray and slick, while the veins in its body showed through, pumping the visible black blood through that disfigured body; they emitted a high-frequency vibration that made Kaelen's ears ring.
Kaelen didn't panic. He dropped his oar and grabbed another broken plant he had salvaged, this one far more jagged.
As the first Skimmer leaped, its needle-teeth snapping inches from his face, Kaelen drove the wooden spear through its skull. He didn't stop there. He used the momentum to heave the corpse into the second skimmer, knocking it back into the dark water.
[You have slain a Dormant Beast: Pale Skimmer.]
[You have slain a Dormant Beast: Pale Skimmer.]
'Fitting name, ugly bastards...'
Three more rushed the side of his makeshift boat, but Kaelen had grown accustomed to violence by now, and he now fought with a feral intensity.
Humanity's greatest trait was its innate ability to adapt, and for Kaelen, he was especially adaptable; it was a trait ingrained into him from the time he was 5 years old.
His mother was a very outdoor person, and she seemed to want to pass that onto him, which he took with open arms.
He killed the third by snapping its neck against the hull and the fourth by plunging his hand into its throat and ripping its entire tongue out as it tried to drag him over the side.
The fifth Skimmer, seeing its pack decimated, made that annoying sound and turned to flee. It dove, its thin tail splashing Kaelen with the water as it darted away into the dark depths.
A red haze descended over Kaelen's vision.
"Whatever you give away today, or think or say or do, will multiply about tenfold and then return to you."
It was a principle of the world, so how did the bastard come to attack him and now try to run?
"Oh no you don't!" he screamed, his voice cracking. "None of you get to leave!"
Without thinking—ignoring the fact that he was in an unknown sea—Kaelen leaped.
He cut the water like a knife, and he swam with a frantic, predatory strength, his eyes fixed on the silver glimmer of the escaping beast.
He caught it ten feet down. He wrapped his legs around the Skimmer's slick body and drove his wooden spike into the back of its head again and again. Bubbles of black ichor clouded the water.
Only when the creature went limp did Kaelen realize where he was.
He was submerged in the lightless abyss, his lungs screaming for air, surrounded by the sea exerting a slight pressure. He dug his hand into the creature's corpse and ripped out the shard, and then he swam upward instantly.
He hauled himself back onto his boat and lay on the deck, shivering violently, his fingers still clutching the shard and the other set holding the spike.
He used the oar to pull the dead creatures close and threw them onto the boat.
He grabbed his oar and began to row again, his eyes fixed on the horizon. He didn't care about the cold. He didn't care about the monsters.
Kaelen rowed and rowed for hours.
Eventually, as he rowed, he noticed the sky start to dim. It was earlier than yesterday.
And this time the sky had not descended into darkness; rather, it was a dark gray, and soon after the first drop came and then the next before it started to pour.
He raised his head and took in the rain.
'This counts as a bath, right?'
He laughed to himself, feeling a little bit mad.
'Well... the show must go on'
He then picked up the oars again and rowed.
Rowed and rowed and rowed some more.