Chapter 503: Island of Swirling Mists
It took us several hours to reach our destination - or at least, that was my best guess for how long had passed. I quickly realized that routes between the cavern our ocean resided in and the surface were rare, and without the odd glimpse outside or a time keeping piece, it was actually quite hard to tell how long we had been sailing. I decided we needed to trade for a way to keep track of time whenever we had more resources, but that was a matter for later. For now, I concentrated on the island itself.
The island was covered in thick, heavy fog and mist. It was surprising to me just how dense the fog was - it felt like the island itself was a heavy, deep shroud of fog and cold. I didn’t like the mist - it blocked my sight, which really wasn’t helping my anxiety about not being able to check our surroundings for threats. I almost instinctively tried to reach for my soul-sight, to see what lurked within the dense mist, but I managed to stop myself at the last second. If I actually activated my soul sight, I would regret it.
The boats came to a stop the moment they reached the beaches. I leapt off of the boat a moment later - I had no qualms about being one of the first to depart, with so little of our cobbled-together clan being combat ready. I hefted a sword that one of the adults had managed to get from the city of plant people in exchange for a day of labor. I didn’t love being forced back to swordsmanship, but I still remembered all of the sword drills Sallia had run me through during our first few lives. My memories were fuzzy now, since so long had passed - but I could still wield a sword competently in a fight. It was still enough to put me in the upper tier of our combatants, sadly.
The other adults and children began to disembark from the boat, one after another. Once everyone got off of the boats and stood on the sandy beaches, all but two of the boats turned around and began to make their way back towards the city of the plant people. I was more surprised by the fact that two of the boats stuck around - clearly, they were intended to serve as some kind of gift for us. I was actually very relieved to see the two boats. They would make it far easier to trade supplies and goods, once we had our colony established and we were starting to produce goods.
“So, do we spread out into smaller parties, or stay as one big group first? We obviously need to scout out the area first, but how are we doing it?” asked one of the [Spatial Mages].
“We should split up into smaller groups of five people, I think, and then have all the kids sit back? We should also keep some adults near the children, in case monsters attack or something goes wrong,” said Sallia. I saw several of the adults glance at her, before they nodded.
“I don’t see a reason to object. How about we have ten groups of five scouts each? All of them should travel half an hour in a chosen direction, and then head back when they either spot something interesting, or when time runs out?” Said another adult.
“That sounds good, but how are we supposed to keep track of time here?” I asked, since I had already noticed the lack of timekeeping devices here.
“How about we each make a torch, and when it burns out we head back? I know we have [Fire Mages] for actual lighting, but we could use torches as rudimentary timekeeping now that we can’t see the sun.”
That seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan to me, and after nobody objected, Felix and a few of the adults started putting together crude torches. They wouldn’t be the most accurate timekeeping devices ever, but they would work well enough.
After that, the group started to rapidly rearrange itself.
Several of the adults from our group start to gather into a kind of protective bubble. They situated themselves near the outer edges of the bubble, and started herding the less combat-ready children into the center, with stronger children packed in between the outer and inner layers of the bubble. I tried not to grimace as I realized just how combat ready we weren’t. Nine hundred children, about a hundred adults, and about fifty sets of armor and one hundred and fifty weapons. Far from the ideal troop composition to keep a group safe and secure while we figured out what the hell was on this island with us. Worse, half of the adults were about to go on a scouting mission, and while that was clearly important, it definitely made it hard to feel secure.
After that, the adults worked out who was going to scout and who was staying behind to protect the group. The people who had better portal-related abilities, in particular, volunteered to scout - largely because they could teleport back to us and report if something went wrong. I also noticed that Sallia, Felix, Anise and I were excluded from the scouting groups - much to my surprise, since I would have expected Sallia to be excited to explore a totally new environment with new monsters to fight and kill. However, my friends instead stuck around to keep me company.
After the groups were arranged, the adults departed for the mist, while the rest of us watched the torch we had lit and awaited their return.
It only took half of a torch for the first [Spatial Mage] to return to the group. When he returned, he was covered in blood and heavily panting. I blinked in surprise, and immediately rushed towards him to inspect his injuries. Luckily, it didn’t look like he was about to die. He had several wounds, but they all looked like small, surface level wounds.
I instinctively tried to read for my essence, to heal him - before I cut myself off. This was more frustrating than I had expected.
Finally, the [Spatial Mage] caught his breath.
“My group ran into trouble. We hit some kind of sand that we sank into, as though it were water,” he said. “They’re filled with some kind of flesh-eating insect? The insects are tiny, and I didn’t get a very good look at them. But the sand itself is a big threat. If you step into it, you plummet downwards and lose any sort of traction to wriggle out. The sand also has some kind of property that interferes with magic in it. The more sand is touching you, the harder it is to get a spell off. It took me nearly a full minute to teleport the rest of my group back to stable ground, and then I teleported myself the rest of the way back here to carry the news. If you fall into the sand, it’s hard to do anything except flail helplessly.”
I frowned. Flesh eating insects, hiding in what sounded kind of like pits of quicksand, with magic suppressing properties? That wasn’t exactly great news, especially if we were supposed to build a new home on this island. It was much better than powerful, mobile predators, such as giant magic wolves or something - but it meant that any of the kids who weren’t careful might end up getting stranded and then devoured alive before we could find and rescue them.
A moment later, I revised my thoughts. A few powerful, mobile predators might actually be less troublesome, at least long term. Once we wiped them out, we would have had the island to ourselves. However, constant pits filled with swarms of flesh eating insects would be way harder to root out of the island’s ecology.
“Did you notice any signs of other threats or predators? The flesh-eating insects have to feast on something regularly, which means there are other landbound animals in this area,” asked Felix.
“Not yet. We’ve only confirmed the existence of the sand pits and the insects before I teleported back here.”
My lips thinned in annoyance. So we were still nearly blind, although now we knew to watch our feet. That was some information, but it was far from enough.
“Any other info? Plants, other threats, terrain?” I asked.
The man frowned. “I saw trees, or at least something that looks like trees. They glow a little bit, and they seem to drive off the influence of the mist - but not very well. It’s still very hard to see, especially the deeper parts of the island. I didn’t see many other crops or plants, at least so far. The trees looked like they might have fruit on them, but I’m not sure if what I saw was actually edible or not.”
I longed for my healing magic. If I had access to my healing magic, there wouldn’t be a need worry about eating poison by accident. I would just eat one, and if I got sick I’d heal myself and report that they were no good.
“If we at least know the first thing to be cautious of, once the other groups return we can try to figure out whether there are any directions without those pits of flesh-eating insects,” said Sallia. “It would be pretty dangerous if one of the kids fell in and we couldn’t dig them out in time.”
Right after she spoke, another portal dumped a second [Spatial Mage] back into the center of the group. It was an elderly woman this time, and while she didn’t look much worse for wear, her ankles and feet were still rather swollen with bite marks. She reported the same thing the first scout had encountered - pits of sand filled with flesh eating insects.
Another three minutes later, the people from another group of scouts returned, and reported the same thing.
As people started to return, I felt the urge to rub my forehead in frustration.
Nobody had died, luckily. Being able to teleport out of the sand pits was a great way to handle getting caught by these nests of flesh-eating insects. However, that was about the only good news. Several of the adults who had ventured out to scout were now injured, and every single group had reported running into pits of flesh-eating insects. Evidently, this wasn’t a problem we could avoid by travelling in a specific direction - no matter what, we would have to find a real way to handle these pests.
On the other hand, sitting around also wasn’t an option. I sighed, before I decided to speak up.
“It doesn’t look like there’s a way to avoid this hostile terrain just by travelling in a specific direction. We’ll need to watch our step carefully as we travel - but we need to move further inland. At the very least, before tonight, I want us to identify a source of water, scout out a few potential food sources, and some potential spots to set up a real camp and try to build a village,” I said. “We only have a few days of food and water, and if those run out, we’re dead. Also, if things look safe, we can start installing a few embers in the center of our village. Maybe get a few kids some Sparks, if they’re ready for it. We’re going to need all the hands we can get once we start exploring further out.”
I saw several more of the adults nod at me. Since we now had a rough idea what the immediate terrain looked like, we started moving deeper towards the center of the island.
It only took a few minutes before we ran into our first quicksand pit. One of the kids suddenly plummeted into the dirt, and then started screaming a few moments later. A few other kids tried to grab hold of his flailing arms and pull him out - but instead of pulling him out, they started to slide towards the quicksand pit themselves.
A moment later, Sallia hopped over, then used her barrier magic to create a platform she could stand on that wasn’t dependent on physical geography. She heaved, and one groaning, bleeding kid was dragged back out of the sand pit. I leaned in closer to the injured kid, and breathed a sigh of relief.
It didn’t look like he was too badly hurt either. It clearly took a while for the flesh-eating insects to do real damage. They were still a threat - but as long as we kept our wits about us, they probably wouldn’t kill anyone as long as immediate action was taken.
I also got my first glimpse of the little carnivores hiding in the quicksand pit, since two of them were clinging to the still-groaning boy.
They looked like miniature scorpions, if those scorpions had gained three more tails and eight more legs. They looked like little, wriggling balls of spikes, teeth, and spines. It took me a few more moments to realize that the welts and teeth marks on the boy were starting to swell up a bit, which made me much more nervous. Was he having an allergic reaction? Were they poisoned? I glanced at the [Spatial Mage] who had scouted earlier, and noticed that his skin still seemed fine and decidedly un-poisoned.
Perhaps he had a high enough [Vitality] stat to suppress the poison, if this was a result of poison and not allergies?
While Sallia cut down the two little balls of spikes and hatred, I pulled myself out of my guild at being unable to use healing magic at the moment. Instead, I rushed over to the boy. After all, I hadn’t spent so much time in the medical field without at least picking up a few tricks, and while I couldn’t do magic healing, I could still do perfectly competent mundane healing. I made the kid lay down, and got a few other kids to help me fashion a makeshift stretcher. If he was moving around a lot, his heart rate would increase - which would also speed up the spread of any poison in his body. After that, I got a few bandages together, and used them to get some pressure on the area around the bites and stings - enough to keep the poison from spreading as quickly.
Then, I checked the wound area itself. There weren’t any obvious stingers or venom sacs to remove, so I took a bit of water to wash the wound out, and then checked the boy’s heart rate, breathing, and other vitals. I didn’t find any signs of other problems, even though I had been working on treatment for a few minutes, and so I decided he was as stable as I could make him right now.
“Good work,” said Anise. She gave me a solid grin. “Is he all right?”
“I think so. I see a bit of swelling, but it seems to have already started to stabilize, and I don’t see any signs of other major issues. I suspect that whatever venom these things are carrying is irritating, but probably not lethal.” I shrugged. “Well have to keep an eye on him for sure, of course. But that’s my current assessment.”
The other adults and children nodded after I spoke. Then, two adults helped hoist the kid in the stretcher up, and we got moving again - more slowly this time, to make extra sure nobody else fell into a sand pit. We had much more success moving through the area this time, and after about another half of a torch’s worth of time, I finally saw the trees the [Spatial Mage] who had scouted ahead had found.
Instead, as I looked at the little tree line in the distance, I immediately realized that we weren’t alone.
Dozens of gleaming red eyes peeked at us from the fog bank surrounding the tree line.