When the shatterblade failed to form in my hand I stared down at my empty grip, a look of obvious shock on my face. The ever reliable tool that had often saved my life was like a third arm, I never even thought about where it was because I knew it’d always be right next to me.

I stood up and ran toward the waters of the ocean, sand kicking up in my wake, while I sought out with my mind. Desperate for any sign I began a steady search north and south, while I tried to call the shatterblade to me.

I’m not sure how long I tried to regain my lost weapon, but by the time I collapsed to my knees the sun had long since passed the apex of its path. I heaved in air while I recovered from my frantic and fruitless search, feeling for the first time in a long while the embarrassment that comes with acting like a child.

There was no question I should have known better, if I could not feel nor call the shatterblade it was long lost to me. Out there in the ocean, perhaps eternally lost in the seas with only fish to accompany it. No matter what happened in the future nobody save for myself would ever be able to use it.

But first I had to get a hold of my senses, if Sciroco had seen my actions he would’ve disciplined me harsh enough that sitting would be impossible. I studied the sky and attempted to gauge how much time I had before night would fall.

I closed my eyes and breathed in deep, keeping my mind clear. As I had done in the past I sought out Taryn with my mind in an attempt to see where he was. What I encountered was a black wall, there was nothing for me to sense or connect to.

It was a response that made me immediately want to cry. The loss of the shatterblade had been like having an arm removed, but if Taryn was gone…

“No!” I almost yelled at myself. “Stay focused! Survival first, worry later!”

“Shelter, fire, food, water,” I muttered to myself almost like a mantra. Those four were the most important if I wanted to survive in this unknown land.

First I would focus on fire and shelter, if I was caught in the dead of night without light or heat I would die. Already my body was soaked, my ragged clothes so waterlogged that they were actually dangerous to keep wearing. Before I started tearing my clothing off I approached the jungle, trying to keep my movements on the sand as quiet as possible.

At the fringe I found a few branches from some of the smaller trees and gathered up a bundle. When I returned to about the midpoint of the beach I set up a crude set of shelves. My workmanship would have easily made a proper craftsman weep but to me it was more than enough.

A short while later I had already stripped all my clothes and placed them on the shelves, leaving them to bask in the light and hopefully dry out prior to dusk. With that potential danger out of the way I once more returned to the jungle, picking out a variety of both small and large pieces of wood.

If there had been one thing I had learned well in my legionnaire training it was how to create a fire and shelter. The Legion emphasized being prepared for any situation, whether it was combat or otherwise, and so I already had a rough plan for how to create my shelter before picking up a single piece of wood.

It was a shelter, there was no argument about it, but it barely worked in that regard. It was a skeletal frame of wood with some tree branches covered in leaves for a wall. The sunlight that beat down on me was kept at bay along with the strong wind that filtered in over the ocean. To that end it was a success, though I planned to work on it the next day if time allowed.

I then worked on crafting a pit out of the sand, a place that I could prepare my fire. The fire pit was placed between my shelter and the jungle, I had learned the hard way in my training that I needed to take the direction of the wind into account when picking a spot. While I worked at starting a fire I recalled the many failures of my past from which I had learned.

The blisters, the splinters, the laughter as the legionnaires mocked me, thanks to that I now had a fire of my own. Even though the sun was still up and there was enough warmth on the beach for me to be without clothes I started that fire. Some would consider it insane to do that, but one of the lessons a legionnaire had learned encouraged me to keep that fire alive.

At one point in the past while I talked with a fellow named Nale he remembered a day when he didn’t have a fire at all. The sun had set and he had all of his wood, so he tackled the task of lighting that fire. By the time the sun came back up he was still trying to light it. Even a trained expert could fail to do a simple task if luck wasn’t on his side.

So while I surveyed my work I had a distinctly large amount of pride, even if it looked pretty roughshod. While the smoke billowed up out of the fire I placed my hands on my hips and smiled wide, basking for a moment in a self-congratulatory feeling.

Which was when my stomach started to grumble.

I couldn’t help but feel the creep of embarrassment at that noise, while I touched gingerly at my bare stomach with a hand. The last time I had eaten was before the pirate attack, the day prior a little past midday.

A quick survey of the area was all I needed to know how bad my current food situation was. While I could see a few small crabs as they scurried across the sands there were no other obvious sources. Even if I dared to go into the jungle and forage I knew nothing of the plant life, for all I knew everything was poisonous to me.

That left for me the ocean, and all the fish that lay within. I had no tools to catch the fish, so I instead looked to the jungle for help in that regard. After a while of searching through the various refuse that littered the ground I found two rocks and a long stick.

I did something I never care to do in that I picked up one rock and threw it hard against the other. Over and over the two rocks struck each other until finally the one on the ground broke, tossing a few pieces all over the sands. Worried a chunk of rock might have cut me I gave a check over of my body, though I found no injuries.

“Alright, good job,” I told myself, not wanting to get discouraged.

With some sharp edged tools I could now work on making a fishing pole, a two-pronged spear which I hoped would let me impale a few of the aquatic fellows. However I was exceedingly hungry and those small crabs that skittered across the sandy beach kept attracting my attention.

Until the sun went down I spent most of my time chasing after those darned crabs. Though I caught a few of them, and promptly killed them with my stones, most were too fast for me to get ahold of. To make matters worse they snapped at my fingers, though thanks to that it made me feel better when I ate them.

When the sun became obscured behind the wall of the jungle I chose to give up on further work. It would be dangerous for me to try and enter the ocean at night, for all I knew a deadly monster might lurk off the shore. So with an unfinished spear and a few sharpened chunks of stones for defense I huddled into my shelter.

It was not an easy task to fall asleep that night, as the sounds of the jungle started to intensify while the shadows only grew longer. By the time my eyes closed I had refueled my fire multiple times, afraid that in my slumber it would go out.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Movement woke me in the middle of the night. By pure reflex I picked up the stick near me and pointed it in the direction of whatever had woken me, eyes blurry from the sleep that still clung to them. At first all I could see was a black blob squatted down next to the fire I had created.

“Calm down, Lily,” came a familiar voice in response to my actions.

As my vision started to become clear I realized that it was a man draped in tattered clothes. The silver hair, the green eyes, and the familiar sight of a sword strapped to his side all brought a smile to my face.

My eyes widened and I tossed the stick to my left, clambering out of the shelter in a hurry. “Taryn!” I cried out with joy as I ran to him and wrapped my arms about his wet body. “I was afraid you’d drowned!”

Taryn stiffened at my reaction to his arrival, caught off guard by how happy I was. After a little bit he relaxed and wrapped one arm around me, as though to reassure me that he was actually there.

“I thought you could sense me?” Taryn wondered aloud.

It was a fact that I had told him about after Alise helped me to realize what had happened. A side effect that had developed in my fight against the dryads, I couldn’t not inform him that I could peek through his senses and feel his presence. Sometimes I was even able to hear or feel without meaning to, which often proved to be a bit of a distraction.

“Not before I fell asleep, there was just an emptiness,” I replied, turning my face to peer at the small fire.

“Ah...probably because I was unconscious,” Taryn moved a little to pick a few pieces of wood from my wood pile, tossing them into the flames. “When I came to it was already night and I could see the smoke and fire.”

“I’m surprised it took so long!”

Taryn gave a small laugh at that as he tried to turn his attention away from me. I could feel a strong sense of embarrassment through our connection, plus another sensation that continued to grow with every passing second.

“The main mast fell on me,” Taryn mumbled.

“What?”

Taryn rubbed at his eyes with his left hand. “The main mast of the ship fell on me. By the time I came to I was on the beach to the south of here.”

It might have been a bit rude of me but I started to laugh at that. “The main mast,” I giggled to myself, basking in the warmth from the fire pit. “You can kill monsters but you can’t handle a piece of wood!”

“I was distracted,” was the lame comment from Taryn. “Besides that, we’re on the western continent aren’t we?”

I pushed a little away from him and stared in the direction of the darkened jungle. From within the depths I could barely make out a multitude of noises, all of which were utterly alien to me. So far nothing had crept out and tried to murder me, but I figured it was merely a matter of time.

“Yes. Alise never brought you here right?”

“No Plague, no Nixi, so no point,” Taryn glanced at me. “Did the Legion ever teach you about it?”

“Only that some legionnaires get stationed at Vexxon’s Landing,” I struggled to remember all of the details. “I think it had to do with protecting the merchants who trade with the locals?”

“Landing, a port? Maybe we can go there and find passage back home.”

“We’ll need to head north, maybe cut through the jungle.”

“No,” Taryn immediately cut down that idea. “We don’t know what’s in there. If there’s something poisonous you’ll end up dying.”

“So we stick to the beaches?” I opted to not talk about how his immediate thoughts went to my health. “I’m not sure how long it’ll take us to reach the port.”

“You should get some more sleep,” Taryn suggested to me, while he kept his gaze locked onto the fire in front of him. “I’ll wake you if I need you to take over for me.”

“Alright,” I slowly detached myself from him, immediately feeling a chill as the moisture on my skin caught the night breeze. “Make sure you do that! We don’t need you falling asleep in the middle of a fight.”

“Sure.”

As though dismissed by that one word response I walked back to my makeshift shelter. With a worried glance over my shoulder I looked at him once more, noting that his eyes were already half-closed from fatigue. It was with a good deal of difficulty that I slipped back into the shelter, knowing that I stood no chance of getting Taryn to actually listen.

Once more I closed my eyes and surrendered to the need for more sleep.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

The first thing I noticed when I woke up were the splinters of light that pierced through the various small holes of my shelter. The second was the warmth of another body, as Taryn had taken up a seated position in order to block off the entrance of the shelter. While I stirred he didn’t move, his breathing ghostly quiet.

That was when I realized that a light cloth covered my body, my tattered shirt that I had left to dry the previous day. I studied it and noted the numerous holes in it which would prove worrying when we reached the town. For now it would at least help to keep some of the sunlight off of my bare skin.

While Taryn continued to sleep I slipped past him and out into the open sun. The fire pit smouldered as the flames had died off at some point in the last few hours, a mere wisp of smoke being produced from the embers. In the sky the sun was still at the start of her journey, so I had plenty of time before I’d need to worry about the midday heat that would inevitably come.

I tossed my shirt back onto the makeshift rack I had crafted for drying my clothes. While it would have bothered most women that they were naked around a man I was far too accustomed to it. The legionnaire training had placed in me a certain lack of shyness, though there was of course one person who had managed to easily overturn that recently.

Though I could only guess it was because he pointed out something that I at the time didn’t quite want to admit to. I turned to look at the shelter for a moment, a small smile on my face, before I returned to working on my fishing spear. With the renewed energy from sleep and the boosted morale I finished the work in short order.

Without a word to Taryn I ran toward the ocean, relying more on my foot strokes as one of my hands was occupied. Into the depths I dove, keeping toward the shoreline so that the sunlight could illuminate where I was.

The water was clear enough that I could make out every detail of the bottom of the ocean. Small crabs and a few starfish littered within my immediate vision, while groups of fish swam about. My entry into the ocean did little to disturb them as quite a few didn’t even react to my presence.

I’ll admit that I did a pretty atrocious job at first. I completely underestimated the difficulty of using a fishing spear underwater, and so for the first hour straight I spent more time flailing than getting anything done. However I managed to start to catch a few and once I had acquired three I returned once more to the beach.

With my latest catch in hand I emerged from the ocean, stopping to scoop up the other two I had previously tossed onto the sands. It was hard enough to swim around and spear a fish when you had one in your hand as well. When I straightened back up, fish in hand, I noticed a presence ahead of me.

It was Taryn, he stood there with one hand on the hilt of his sword. In his other hand he held my shirt, offering it in my direction, while he looked off to the side. “Good morning,” he commented as he attempted to avoid staring at my naked body.

“Morning, I got us some breakfast,” I replied as I walked right past him. “Don’t be an idiot, I’m not putting on clothes when I’m wet.”

The look that Taryn gave me in response to that comment was one of confusion, as he stood there confused and continued to offer my shirt toward me. The mixture of emotions that I could feel from my link with him almost made me start laughing, though I managed to keep a straight face as I prepped the fish for cooking.

It would be a simple strategy of impaling the fish on sticks and then placing them over a fire. I had the fire going again in little time thanks to the embers in the fire pit, and so the smell of cooking fish soon filled the air around our small campsite.

Taryn soon gave up on trying to get me to wear my clothing. Out of the two of us I had already seen him completely naked before, after our first combined fight against the Plague. To me this was a good chance to help even the playing field. He continued to regret what he had done to save my life from Nixi, a belief that I wanted him to get over as soon as possible.

He was such an idiot.