>>6308914“Alright, you two find anything?”
Remu sat atop a tree branch, a few meters above the ground. She observed the camp intently from afar.
Jerb on the other hand was rummaging through the spilled contents of a previously intact box. The lid he had pulled off lay there, shattered.
“No, boss,” he said tersely.
“You pissed at something?”
“Thought I smelled food, but it’s just weird jars.” He held a glass jar, opaque from whatever its contents were.
“That’s probably food, Jerb, you— no don’t put it in your mouth, you have to open it.”
He promptly smashed the thing on a nearby rock, revealing some kind of honey-like substance.
I decided to ignore his antics and focus on more productive matters, comforted by the large cache of food that he had discovered.
“Remu, how about you?”
“Well, from up here, there’s nothing weird about this place. Other than the fact it’s wet.”
“The fact it’s wet?”
For some reason, that last bit of dialogue irked me. A single word came to my mind.
Bendis. The king of bad dialogue. The king of bad dialogue? Yes the king of bad dialogue.
Remu pointed down to the dirt, and to my surprise, she was right. There were segments of wet dirt forming trails through the camp.
“So, skinny dipping ghosts sauntering around the jungle. Interesting.”
Ham tossed me a tarp from one of the tents.
“Smell it.”
I gave it a whiff. Then I shrugged.
“Doesn’t smell like apes.”
“You’re asking a bit too much out of my sense of smell, but yeah now that you mention. It smells like saltwater. Then again, we’re right next to the ocean so...”
The remainder of our time there went well, if a bit uneventfully. We gathered the intact crates and organized them neatly.
Most of it were general provisions, gear useful for expeditions in land and sea, ropes, clothing, alcohol, enough food to last us for months, and a lot more assorted loot. Nothing out of the ordinary, however.
Though found nothing special, Ham once again noted the absence of his people’s coat of arms.
-
Back at the beach, I decided to inspect the coast and the rocks before we took a single into that damned ship.
First, the coast ahead. We walked as a group, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
It was boring. Dull, really. Just a beach. At least it was calm, and the salty sea breeze did wonders for my breathing.
“Hey, you think it could be some kind of help, you know?” asked Remu, keeping her voice down and discretely pointing up.
“Ah, divine assistance you mean? Yeah sure, then again you’d think they’d be clear about it.”
Unless it wasn’t from the goddess. That gun and the rest of it didn’t come from her, after all, so other entities could be interfering.
For what purpose, though?