Page 48 of Virelai's Hoard
Her eyes were seeing lush vegetation, clear blue skies peeking through the branches over their heads, and faint ripples in the air as the warmth of the joint brother suns beat down on them. But her other senses? They screamed at her that this was allwrong.
“I do wonder why it’s called Wraithspine,” Venn said. His voice broke the eerie silence that had settled around them, and Sable suddenly realized what the issue was, why this felt off. Where were the birds? The insects? The critters? Everything wassilent. “Ain’t seen any bones around, or anything like that. Everything’s so… green. Right? I love the ship, but damn, does this make for a nice change.” He inhaled deeply.
Even just seeing that made Sable want to gag. Did he not smell it too?
Venn reached out to rub a leaf between his fingers. He frowned down at it and let it slip through after just a moment. Whatever his confusion was about, it disappeared in a blink as he spotted something further down the path.
The man grinned like a kid on a name day morning and shoved past Sable. “No way.”
Sable followed him, her steps faltering at the sight of a towering fruit tree. She’d never seen one so plentiful. Even the thick branches bowed, straining under their weight and number.
Venn reached up on his toes and plucked a big, fat pear from one of the low-hanging branches. His grin widened as he held it up to the rest of them. It was almost too big to hold in one hand. “Fruit!” As if they weren’t alreadyseeingthat. “Forget the fucking rum. We could bring rations back to the ship. The captain can’t beat fresh fucking pears for dinner!”
As he said that, he unshouldered his backpack and shoved the pear in, then grabbed on to a thick branch and reached up for a handful more. It cracked under the added pressure.
“Wait until Draven sees this. We should keep an eye out for more of these trees. Maybe we can stay around the island another night and come back with more bags in the morning. Surely it’s worth the delay?”
The other pirates didn’t move during the whole thing. Sable’s own feet rooted in place as thewrongnessreached a level that shook her to the core. The worst thing was, she couldn’t pinpointwhy. So she stood by, silent and frowning as Venn stuffed his bag full of the things.
Didn’t they have something more important they were supposed to be doing?
When Venn got his hands on a particularly juicy-looking pear, Sable’s body reacted before her brain did. Her arm flashed forward, and the tip of her machete rested against Venn’s throat. “Don’t!”
He froze, mouth wide open. The pear slipped from his hand and thudded on the ground, slowly rolling away. His muscles didn’t as much as twitch, only the whites of his eyes showing as he stared at her in shock. Eventually, his mouth clamped shut on empty air.
Sable let her arm fall back at her side with a sigh of relief.
It was only then that Venn dared to speak. “What the fuck, Sable?”
“Yeah, Sable,” Thorian said from behind, raising his eyebrows. “What the fuck?”
Sable worked her mouth, but words weren’t coming out. It was an overblown reaction, she knew. Unjustifiable. But she made herself square her shoulders and go along with it. “Rule number one,” she snapped. “Don’t eat weird shit from famously cursed islands.”
“It’sfruit, it’s not weird-”
She cut Venn off with a glare. “I’m not gonna be the one telling Draven you died poisoned under my watch.” She pointed her machete at the backpack at his feet. “We’ll have these looked at by Boarley once we’re back on ship, but until then, no one eatsanything.”
It didn’t take the look on the other pirates’ faces to realize she was sounding ridiculous, but she turned from Venn with a grunt and strode away.
“I thoughtCallawas losing it,” Venn grumbled behind her, his voicejustloud enough to be heard.
The leather of her weapon’s handle creaked under her grip. They moved forward.
Soon, the path split. Uphill, just visible through the thick foliage, peeked the crumbled walls of a stone ruin. The other path sloped downward to a shallow ravine filled with mist.
Sable faced the ravine, and a sense of dread crept up on her, making her skin crawl. It was all she could do not to stumble away from it. When she glanced back to where they came from, a cold shiver skittered up her spine. The lush greenery looked too alive now, like it was just waiting to swallow her whole. The only path that felt like nothing at all was the one leading uphill.
So the ruins it was.
The hike there was brief and spent in oppressive silence, save for their boots thudding against the tightly packed earth, where thick roots poked through and intertwined in an approximation of stairs. Soon the hill evened out, and the trees opened up around them. The ruins faced a rocky cliff, and the breeze morphed into a sharp wind that fluttered at their clothes. The place looked ancient. Some sort of temple? People used to make offerings to the sea, if the old stories were to be believed. For all the good that did them.
“I’m telling you, this island’s cursed,” Ignatius grumbled as he squinted ahead.
The jungle cleared around the ruins, but thick vines sprouted from the ground and clung to the walls, as if wanting to bring the stone back into the earth. Moss covered the stony pavement and lower walls in big patches, but as Sable approached, she made out deep carvings on the crumbled walls, untouched by the passing of time or the exposure to the elements. She reached out to gingerly touch one of the symbols. It must’ve been a word, but it was no language she’d ever laid eyes upon. As her fingertips made contact with it, a gentle buzz spread through them, and her hand flinched away. With a steadying breath, she pressed her palm flat against the stone, and realized the vibrations were coming from the wall itself–as if it were… alive.
That thought was all it took for an insistent itch to settle between her shoulder blades, as if someone–or something–was watching her. She tried to roll the sensation away. To no avail. This place creeped her out, but she would not let it show.
“Ignatius,” she called.
