Dawn- An age of Darkness

"Land ahoy!"

I looked around and there was an island in the corner of my vision. It had been three days since I came abroad the Andromeda. But the crew was rather nice to me. I still couldn\'t believe these guys were ruthless pirates.

"Be careful. These islands are supposed to be rather scary places." The old man was beside me and he kept on warning me. I got the picture, so I nodded and kept my eyes open.

The ship stayed at a distance from the reefs and we went to the island on small boats. I didn\'t see any fish in the area. There weren\'t any birds or animals in sight either. It was odd, as the flora was basically overwhelming everything.

"Yarr! I wanna slice some throats!" Gack was as loud as ever. The guy didn\'t know when to stop. It was kind of ironic though. He was going on about throats from the moment I got on the ship but I\'ve never really seen him slice anything.

It was a weird island, rather small. Maybe a hundred meters in length. But the forest was denser than the insect zone back on the island I was stranded on. It brought back memories. I instinctively stayed close to the gang. Apparently seven pirates- myself included- came ashore. The old man stayed behind. Among the crowd there was one bowman, and the rest of us were melee fighters. The bowman kind of looked like an elf and had his face covered. He was also the one who\'d corrected me about the distance of Alfeime from Moire, back on the ship. I paid no attention though. I had no reason to.

For some reason Brend was following me like an apprentice or something. It weirded me out, so I tried to distance myself from him. I failed.

It took a few hours but we finished scavenging the whole island. It was really odd. There wasn\'t a single bird, let alone animals in here. Even insects were a rare sight. It did relieve me, but it also made me stay on the defensive.

"Don\'t these fruits look awfully delicious?" One of the pirates were about to pick a bright red fruit. It was like an apple but bigger.

An island without animals but has plants. The plants have sweet looking fruits…. Wait… doesn\'t that mean? It didn\'t take long for me to figure it out. "They ate all the animals!" The plants too must have been carnivorous. Maybe that was why there weren\'t any animals here. It wasn\'t all that implausible. After all we were in a world where, corpses roamed around hunting the living. So man eating plants weren\'t a surprise.

"What are you mumbling about?" Apparently he hadn\'t heard me and picked up the large apple without a delay. I had a bad feeling about this.

Nothing happened and he walked away. What the hell?

I sighed. It was best that I was wrong. Just this once I felt glad that I was wrong. I wiped off the beads of sweats from my forehead and was pleased.

"Look out!" The bowman shouted and fired an arrow before my eyes could react. The plant had waited for the pirate to turn around and then strike. I hadn\'t even seen it coming.

The arrow hit the plant and it screeched uncontrollably before falling to the ground. The bowman was using a crossbow. I didn\'t think an arrow could do all this much though.

Just a second later, and all hell would have broken loose.

"Thank you! Thank you! I thought I was a goner. I should have listened to you Daarc!" The man thanked me and the bowman.

How the hell do you know my name? For the record, I didn\'t know any of their names apart from the three pirates I always ended up talking with.

The plant monster\'s screech was the signal, and the whole forest erupted with monsters. There were monsters everywhere. "Well this just got interesting," Brend\'s eyes were like glass.

My eyes twitched and I prepared myself. But before I could react, Gack howled and went around slicing everything in his path. The guy was really fast. The bow-man was something too, but this guy was in a league of his own. No wonder these morons are so laid back. I got the taste of their power first hand. They were powerful and there was no doubt about it.

We didn\'t sit around and waited for the plants to eat us either. We stole their fruits, murdered them, and then ran away. Although that made us look like villains, we didn\'t have much of a choice. They were monsters and on top of that, they were the ones who attacked us. So they didn\'t have the right to complain, not anymore. And besides, we were pirates. Although I still hadn\'t accepted the reality that I was one. The thought only made me sigh harder.

We were back at the ship. "WOO! Quite a haul, eh mateys!" Gack was looking mighty happy. I suppose his scary nickname did do him some justice.

The fruits, in particular, were no doubt of top quality. They tasted amazing and after eating, we fell on the floor paralyzed. A fitting end. The old man was laughing from the corner along with the captain. They were eating the fruits too, but nothing happened to them. After a minute or two, he came close to me and whispered. "Told ya, it\'s a scary place." I wanted to punch his teeth out.

If I wasn\'t paralyzed, I\'d have literally demanded a duel with him or something like that. The paralysis lasted till the afternoon, and afterward there was only laughter. These pirates hadn\'t learned anything. They were nothing but cheers and merry. I had to resign to enjoy this too. I couldn\'t bring myself to hate them.

Eventually, evening came and the waves drifted. We were back to our usual position. My mind swayed and a particular memory bothered me.

"Say, old man, what if I told you that the undead were in pain?"

"I\'d believe you." He replied without looking at me and without a shred of doubt. Did he really believe me or was he just being nice?

"Huh?"

"I\'d believe you." This time the reply was rather soft.

I got the feeling that he knew something. So I didn\'t really press him. I didn\'t really feel like it either. Even if my theories were correct, would it really matter?

"Do you think monsters have intelligence like us and can talk?"

"I dunno. Never talked with one. But that\'s not what you\'re asking, is it?"

I smiled and didn\'t say anything. The first night I spent in this world, I\'d learned a lot of things. And before killing that goblin, it really spoke human words. It could have been just because of this curse that I could understand it, but even so, it was painful. And that night, the undead of the siren thanked me. Maybe they weren\'t what we thought of them. Maybe things were different. But in the end, did it really matter?