(Maldred POV)
A fresh breeze blows into my face, a pleasant change from the scorching sun in the cloudless sky. However, the heat seems to bother the fisherman little.
It's now the seventh day since I hired a fisherman to sail me to the Northern Isles. Aside from the fight between two giant sea snakes, which we avoided by taking a wide berth, the crossing was extremely uneventful.
Not a single other ship, no sea monsters, no storm. Just endless blue sky and endless blue sea. And according to the fisherman, we still need another five days. Ugh.
I know that most people who sailed these waters were not as lucky, but I didn't want to die of boredom either.
I stared at the horizon, hoping to spot something, anything. As I let my gaze wander a bit to the east, a dark dot caught my eye. When we sailed a bit further, I squinted to make out the silhouette.
An island? But we should still be far from the Northern Isles. And as far as I know, there is no larger island between the mainland and the Northern Isles.
"Hey! Are we there already or what?" I said to the fisherman, pointing to the island in the distance.
His confused expression when he followed my finger showed that he didn't know about this island either. Hmm. That piqued my interest. A possibly unexplored island.
"Bring us closer to that island!" I shouted excitedly.
His face instantly paled. "Sir, this is an unknown island. And look at the seagulls." He pointed to the sky, where a flock of seagulls flew over us in a V-formation.
"One side is longer than the other, and there were 13 herring in my catch this morning. All bad omens, this island will kill us!"
I rolled my eyes. Sailors and their strange beliefs. Divination should be left to the professionals, like me, for example!
Well, I don't know any divination spells, but it would be easy to learn them. Really!
Anyway, under my constant nagging eventually, the fisherman brought us closer to the island.
As we approached the island, we saw something that only confused us even more. A huge bustling harbor with many ships at the docks and piers. From the smallest rowboats to the largest galleys, the kind only available to royal navies and larger churches.
An obviously inhabited and heavily visited island of this size should be largely known. Why isn't it marked on the maps? What secrets do you hide? My explorer's heart beats faster.
"Pass by the harbor and drop me off a few miles up the beach."The fisherman followed my command.
Almost no one paid attention to us as we sailed past the harbor. As I jump out of the boat and wade through the shallow water to the beach, I want to turn around and thank the fisherman, but he has already turned and fled.
Coward. But what do I care.
This island is not normal, I can feel it. The dense forest in front of me draws me in magically, and I take my first steps into it.
"I will extract from you everything you hide."
And thus begins the probably most absurd of my adventures.
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Finally Chapter 1
The next chapters are gonna be also Maldred POV
I only found out about galleasses today, they are a mix of galley and galleon, sailing and ruddering ship.