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Chapter Four

After quite a long tussle in the ocean, eventually Priam woke up to blurry surroundings and Lina, still unconscious. The boat was now sailing without any guidance, following the sea's currents. He blinked a few times to get adjusted, and slowly rose to his feet, only to topple again. He blinked several more times, then decided to poke Lina to see if she was awake yet.

"Lina," he said in a surprisingly cracked and dry voice. "Oi, don't tell me you're dead yet."

Lina's eyes fluttered slightly, but shut closed again. She mumbled something Priam couldn't hear, then reached for her tomes and clutched them tightly in her trembling hands.

"Are you going to say something I can hear or not?" Priam said in a demanding tone.

Lina's response was a grunt and an offensive hand sign in Jugdral. Then she eventually pushed herself up, rubbed her eyes, and gave Priam an evil glare.

"What w's that for, git?" She murmured with an edge of almost undetectable anger and a heavy Judgral accent in her voice. "Was takin' me a nap, I was."

"I think what we should do is find out where the hell we even are. Then we can sleep." Priam gestured to his leg. "And my leg's broken, or something. I have no clue. I can't walk, for sure."

Lina got up groggily, and her hands flew to her hips, and she spoke in a crackled voice with so much Judgral slang, Priam almost couldn't make out her words. She always spoke like that when she was mad or incredibly nauseated. "I can't do a damn'd thing 'bout that. I ain't a Cleric. Now pick y'rself off ta floor 'n' walk."

"I just told you I can't."

"Then what?" She put on something that looked somewhat like a smirk. "Y' want me ta carry ya brid'l-style 'n' all ta safety?"

Priam shrugged. "Hey, if you wanna do that, I'm perfectly okay with it."

"Ya git," she rolled her eyes. Her knees were buckling slightly, and she leaned on Ragnell, which was upright in the cracked floor of the boat, clutching it with those unimaginably pale and bony fingers of hers. "T'was a joke."

"Are you nauseated?"

"Y'know way back home, I said I ain't seen a vessel?" Lina said as she pointed in a random direction, referring to Ylisse as home. "T'was b'cause I'd me a serious case of nausea if I's on a boat."

"So... you have seasickness?"

"I'd say." Lina quickly fell and vomited next to whatever wreckage had survived the beastly storm, then wiped her mouth in disgust. "Ain't been this way since I'd sail'd from Kingdom Thracia t' home."

"I can barely understand you, with all your Judgral slang kicking in." Priam picked up a not-puked-on shaft of wood, and aligned it with his foot. He then ripped off his hairband, and tied the bunch together to make a makeshift cast. He then managed to hobble back up and limp to Lina. "Now are we going to find out where we are, or sit here, bawling our eyes out because we can't ask directions?"

"But take y'self a look, Priam," Lina pointed out in front of them to a towering steeple. "All the eyes can see's a rod t' the heaven's."

Priam looked around and suddenly paled.

"S'wrong? Cat gotcha tongue?" Lina said, and leaned on his shoulder. The boat shuddered to a halt, but the two didn't notice.

"...Lina?"

"Mm?"

"...Did you bother to notice all of the wreckage here?"

"Wreckage?" Lina said in a much normaler voice, and blinked. "Well, no, but- oh, sweet Naga, that's a lot of ships."

The soil, which first appeared as healthy, was oozing with blood from other ships. Where the boat had plopped itself, water, sand, and blood mixed to stain the boat and keep it in place.Wood was lodged deep into the ground, and bones.

And oh, there were so many bones.

Lina yelped weakly and clutched Priam's shoulder. "T-Those are people, right?"

"Yup." Priam looked up at the giant steeple, its towering height mocking the two lost travelers. "We are most definitely not safe here."

Lina's eyes widened. "There is tale of an island, long ago, used as a base to resurrect dragons. A steeple, climbing to the heavens marked the Dragon Gate."

"We're in Elibe, all right," Priam said. "But we're on Dread Island. Valor. A point of no return."