The Gate Traveler-Chapter 462 B7— 42: The Head in the Sand Approach

On our way to the other side of the island, we found a naked body half hidden in the sand. It lay on its front, limbs loose, the muscles defined under a layer of dried salt and sand. Long tangled hair spread around the head like seaweed, and the skin was black. Not African black, which is really dark brown, but a true, ink-deep black. When we crouched closer, I noticed two stubby black horns peeking through the hair.

We turned it over and saw it was male.

I cast Diagnose to determine whether it was a person or a creature, since the horns threw me off. The spell gave me the most unhelpful answer possible: he was dead. I let mana flow into the body and examined it the wizard way. At first glance, he was human, only with a few key differences. The horns were one, but his heart was on the right side. Two sharp fangs rested against his lower lip like something out of a vampire story. His stomach sat lower in the abdominal cavity, and his small intestines were shorter, the layout more like a predator than a herbivore or an omnivore.

"I think he's human," I said.

"That's obvious," Mahya said.

We carried him out from under the trees, and once the sunlight hit his skin, I saw it wasn't ink black, but a deep midnight blue. For a moment, I studied the color, unsure what to make of it, then shrugged. It didn't matter.

After a short deliberation, I streamed mana down my legs and pushed the sand. It resisted, moving nothing like earth or stone, yet it still obeyed the Earth element. I had to find the right approach before it gave me a proper hole. I carefully lifted the body, lowered it into the pit, covered it with sand, and said, "Rest in peace."

Mahya and Al watched in silence. They didn't comment or add anything to my sendoff, but their quiet felt respectful.

The closest islands to us were all mountains sticking out of the sea, jagged peaks rising straight from the water like teeth. We usually skipped those, and seeing them so close reminded me why. I lifted off and flew below the cloud cover, the air thinning and tasting faintly of salt. From up there, the ocean spread out in a wide blue sheet, broken only by the pointy mountains. About seven islands away, I finally spotted another flat patch of green, a proper island instead of another vertical cliff.

When I touched down again, sand crunching under my boots, I said, "It'll take us about a day to reach the next good island if we use the motor and the sails."

"Straight line?" Mahya asked, squinting toward the horizon.

"No. But the distance between the islands is big enough that we won't have trouble at high speed. It's a big one, too."

We reached deep water with the e-foils, and Mahya took out the boat. It looked rough. The hull wasn't broken, but heavy dents covered the sides, and one sheet of metal was missing. The back deck furniture had lost all its cushions, and one bench was gone entirely, along with the board it had been attached to and a section of railing.

Inside, everything that wasn't nailed down had slid or rolled across the floor and now lay scattered in piles mixed with glittering shards of shattered dishes. Every cabinet in the galley stood open. The stovetop had torn free from its place and now hung by the gas line. The cabins held less broken glass, but the same chaos, along with thirty centimeters of water on the floor. The only real breakage there came from the mirror in my bathroom. In that case, the water might have been a blessing and prevented more serious damage.

I tried to channel Restore at the boat to make up for the missing pieces, but nothing happened, despite Mahya giving me permission.

"We'll need to return to the island and make the missing pieces," I said.

Mahya stared at the horizon, lost in thought. I touched her shoulder to get her attention.

"I have an idea that might work," she said. "Instead of casting Restore at the boat, try casting it at the core."

Her idea turned out to be a good one. I channeled Restore into the core for less than a minute when Mahya called down from above. "It's working. Don't stop."

It took us a full day to put the boat back to rights. At first, I considered using the Restore spell to fix the broken dishes too, but then shook my head, tossed them overboard, and replaced the breakage with new sets. Thankfully, I still had enough left from our shopping on Earth back when we'd spent the drug money.

The cabins presented another problem. Since I'd fixed the boat, the water had nowhere to go. I connected to it and walked it up and overboard. That was the only way to describe it. A long stream of water flowed from all the cabins, up the stairs, through the salon, to the back deck and over the side. Mahya and Al watched without saying a word, and I walked beside the water with my head held high. They needed to see that wizards weren't only weird, according to them, but also useful.

With the broken pieces tossed overboard, the scattered items back in place, the stovetop secured in its original spot, and the cabins dry, Al and I cast Clean on the whole boat and went to sleep. Mahya chose not to sail at night, so she dropped anchor and stayed by the helm to keep watch in the dark. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

I was almost right. It took us more than a day to reach the island we aimed for, but mostly because we chose not to hurry. We arrived in the middle of the night, right in the middle of my shift. I could've used my water affinity to check for underwater rocks and guide us to shore, but it was easier to drop anchor and handle it in the morning when the sun was up.

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Just after sunrise, I looked up from my book and saw a group of people rowing toward us. They looked like the man we'd buried. Long hair and dark blue skin with hard muscles. All of them were naked. They stood on narrow boards with pointed fronts and cut through the water with long paddles at unbelievable speed.

One lifted his arm and shot a fireball at the boat.

What the hell?

Another one did the same. Then a third. The first fireball flew toward the boat and burst across the water near the hull.

That was enough for me. I reached down with my water affinity. The sea answered fast, and the surface heaved. A wall of water rose under their boards and threw all of them into the air. They hit the water hard but came up again and swam toward us with even more force. They kept throwing fireballs, and one of them threw icicles. The boat rocked. One icicle hit the railing and cracked.

"No, you don't," I said and shot lightning at the water. The strike hit right in the middle of the group. Lines of lightning spread through the water, all the attackers went stiff and sank without a struggle.

Mahya walked out and stood beside me, jaw tight. Rue followed, tail stiff. Al stepped up on my other side. None of them spoke. They watched the waves roll over the spot where the bodies went under.

Then two shadows moved beneath the surface. Both shot upward at once. They broke through the water and threw fresh fire at the boat, eyes wild. Mahya lifted her rifle before I even reacted. Two quick shots, and both bodies fell back into the sea. The fire died with them. The water settled. We stood there together and looked out at the quiet surface. The boat creaked.

"What the hell?" I finally said.

"Idiots," Mahya said, shaking her head. Her fingers tightened on the rifle for half a second before she stored it.

Al shrugged and turned back inside, boots thudding on the deck.

I thumbed the ignition, and the engine started.

"What are you doing?" Mahya asked, eyes on me.

"Sailing to the next island."

She pointed toward the island we'd just reached. "They attacked us. We have the right to check for loot."

"And if there's more of them?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

"You handled them like kittens. Don't worry."

I rubbed my face and let out a long breath. "I'm not worried about our ability to defend ourselves. I'm worried there'll be more of them and I'll have to kill them."

Mahya put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. "They attacked first. Don't feel bad about it."

"Yeah, but we kind of invaded their territory. They might've been protecting themselves. Besides, all of them were men. What about the women and kids?"

She fell quiet for a beat then hummed. "Yeah. I see your point." She took out her sword and vanished from sight.

"What are you doing?"

"I'll check what's happening on the island and come back."

I slumped into the seat and watched the horizon while the engine idled.

Mahya came back about an hour later. She flew in, visible, and when she reached the boat, she didn't land. She rode the sword in quick zigzags over the water and shouted, "You have to see this. Come with me."

I pushed into the air and flew after her. She shot ahead fast, slicing over the water toward the trees. I stayed on her tail until she slowed about a hundred meters from the shoreline. She dropped into a small clearing. I dropped beside her and took in the scene.

We stood in the middle of a rough-looking camp. Tree trunks lashed together with vines. Stones shaped into crude blades. Scraping tools scattered nearby. Fire pits filled with half-burned wood. Patches of trampled grass where people had slept.

Mahya walked forward and pointed. "Here."

I followed her to the far side of the clearing. A mound of bones lay piled in a loose heap. The bones were blackened and looked too familiar. Skulls, hands, ribs, and hip bones. I lifted a thigh bone. They cracked open the bone and scooped out the marrow.

Bile rose in my throat. "Great," I said quietly. "So they weren't just defending their territory."

Mahya nodded once, her expression grim.

I let the bone fall back onto the pile. It hit with a hollow clack, making the whole thing feel worse.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I thought you should see it."

"Let's go," I said.

When we told Al, he asked, "Where did they obtain the spells?"

I shrugged. "No clue."

Mahya looked at me. "Did you check for dungeons already?"

I nodded. "Yeah, nothing."

It took me a few days to overcome the shock and the disgust. I stopped feeling bad about killing them. What stayed with me was the strong revulsion that came with the idea of cannibalism. In Zindor, we saw slavery, abuse, and neglect, which, if you look at it objectively, is worse. A person is alive and continues to suffer day after day. Being eaten is simpler in a way. You die, and whatever happens to your body afterward isn't your problem.

Even so, this felt different. It stuck in my mind in a way I couldn't shake off. I kept trying to reason it out, but the revulsion stayed, and I had trouble coming to terms with it. Even now, while I write this in my diary, the memory gives me shivers. Eventually, I stopped trying to make sense of it and just accepted it as another thing I'd seen during my travels. Something I couldn't change and wasn't meant to change.

It wasn't the first time I'd stayed out of a bad situation, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

We continued swimming, skiing, and sailing between the islands. For the first couple of weeks, we stayed subdued, but we slowly shook it off and returned to our normal mood. I kept collecting crabs for Rue. Al collected plants now and then. We found more exotic fruits and skipped two islands with populations.

After that island, I always flew ahead first. If I saw people, we skipped it. When I checked, I didn't look closely enough to figure out whether they were cannibals. Killing an entire population, or even part of it, felt wrong. Knowing for certain that they were killers and people eaters felt wrong too. So I went with the head-in-the-sand approach. I checked for people, and if I saw them, we moved on to the next island. What stood out, and what I found strange, was that those islands also had only men. I didn't see a single woman or kid.

We had two more bad storms. One caught us on an island, and we were inside before the first drop of rain. The second storm rolled in while we skied toward the next island, so we turned back. That time, the first drops caught us outside for a few minutes, but that was it. After the second storm, once we understood they weren't rare, we stopped sailing in a straight line toward the continent. Instead, we jumped between the closest islands, even if they were the tall vertical mountain islands. That way, the storms couldn't catch us out in the open. Rue loved this new plan, since those islands had more crabs. By then, my Storage had over a thousand, and the number kept growing.

Finally, after another two months, and about five months total on the islands, we were getting close to the continent with the Gates. I held my fingers crossed that the cannibalism was only an island thing and that the society would be more advanced. Mahya wasn't that optimistic. Al didn't care.

We stopped on the last big unpopulated island before the continent for a week. I had a lot of crabs to smoke, Al had potions to brew, and Mahya had metal to bang on. Rue, of course, spent most of his time eating, zooming across the water or through the air, and occasionally napping. Once we had handled everything we wanted to, we had a brief discussion and decided to fly to the continent.