Chapter 4:I've Lived a Lie
1156 Words
Draven casually placed his hand on my shoulder, making me jump slightly, remembering how roughly I'd been treated on the previous ship. With a relaxed air, he sighed.
"That's what we call him, he's a bossy one," he said, disinterestedly.
They were acting too casually while I was there; even Draven didn't remove his hand from my shoulder.
"Did you decide something?" he asked casually.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Kael sternly approached Draven and removed his arm from my shoulder, then slapped his hand away, as if scolding him.
"Don't be rude," he said, and when he spoke, his voice sent a shiver down my spine, a deep feeling I couldn't explain in simple words, but I tried to remain calm.
Selene quickly approached and pulled me by the shoulders, moving me away from them both. "Don't pay them any attention, they're men and they're brutes."
I wanted to laugh, but I was too distraught by the feeling I had just experienced. It was as if Kael possessed something my body could identify, but I couldn't yet.
"So, do you know where you plan to stay?" Selene asked me.
I raised my eyebrows. "Honestly... I have no idea where we are," I said, looking at the vast sea surrounding us, with no islands in sight or anything to help me identify our location. And I couldn't cast a location spell in front of them right now.
They all looked at me, and Lucien frowned as he took a step, stopping a meter away from me.
"How did you end up in the middle of the sea?" he asked.
I hesitated for a moment and then said, "I was shipwrecked. The ship I was on... was attacked by other pirates. I jumped into the sea so they wouldn't kill me, and I thought I was going to drown. I don't know how I woke up where they found me, or why they found me."
"Do you remember where you were shipwrecked?" Lucien asked me.
"I haven't been able to find my way since I was kidn*pped a year ago," I said, frowning.
"Who kidn*pped you?" Draven asked, approaching me.
"Pirates," I said coldly, giving him a stern look.
Now, I felt uneasy while the pirates who were here, who seemed to have rescued me, were now interrogating me, as if I had asked them to bring me on this ship.
There was a brief silence, but then a cough was heard. I turned to look at Ronan.
"We're near the Pale Sea. If you look over the side, you'll see that the water around the ships is red; that's characteristic of this sea."
"Do you need a map to get your bearings?" Selene asked.
I nodded, and she quickly moved inside to the common room, and everyone else followed her, except for Kael, who stayed behind to steer the ship and watch the deck.
Looking at the map, I couldn't recognize anything around me.
"Do you have a bigger map...?" I asked.
Selene searched and ended up finding a giant map, where I could see a large part of the nine oceans. The divisions of each one, the locations, and everything else were visible, and I finally located a coastal city—what must have once been one, at least.
Looking at it more closely, I could see that we were almost two months away from what used to be my village.
"The Earth is 90% ocean, with two main continents and the rest mostly islands," Selene explained, seeing my confusion.
I was speechless. "This can't be right. This isn't what they taught me in school."
"Schools don't want you to learn the truth about the world," Ronan said, arms crossed.
I frowned and placed my hands on the map, or rather, on the table, trying to find some support before I got dizzy.
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking Ronan in the eyes.
He sighed, a tired, broken sigh, but the severity in his eyes didn't change an inch.
"This is the true map of the world, the real reason why humankind is so afraid of the sea, its creatures, and its sailors. The leaders, they all know the truth, and they hide it."
"Why would they do that?" I asked, almost in a whisper, as I looked at Ronan and could only imagine what my face looked like at that moment.
"Because they don't want people to know the true treasures of the planet," said Lucien, his posture firm and his arms crossed. "We know the truth. We pirates and those of us who sail these waters are aware of the lies of the powerful governments. That's why they always try to demonize pirates so that no one knows the truth."
At that moment, the confusion I was feeling transformed into a mild anger. I looked at Lucien sternly.
"The pirates I knew were demons," I said, in a tone so dark that it even surprised me.
"So what are you waiting for? Do you want us to drag you back to your lie?" Lucien asked, holding my gaze.
At that moment, I felt a strange pressure on my shoulders, as if the weight of our gazes were physically real. I looked away and pressed my lips together, thinking.
"Where are you headed...?" I asked, my tone softer.
They looked at each other, and Selene finally stepped closer and pointed to a spot off the map.
"We're going to the uncharted reaches of the sea," she said.
I felt my heart pound harder than usual and let out a stifled sigh, as if I'd been holding my breath for a long time.
"Is that possible...?" I asked, or rather, whispered.
"Legends say so, that at the far reaches of the sea, there's an island..."
"Selene," Draven said finally.
"Let her choose," she said and continued, "Legend says that many years ago, when the earth was forming, a star fell from the sky. The star was capable of granting wishes; it could grant people their greatest desires and answer questions that no one else knew the answers to. It had incomparable power."
"But that corrupted the first human beings," Draven continued, "in general, all creatures. The first corrupted humans became demons, while many of the creatures became the sea monsters that exist today."
"It is said that because of this, a powerful sea witch hid the star on an island that didn't appear on any map and enchanted all the surrounding places, hiding it from human beings forever," Selene continued.
"That's where we're headed, to the star," Lucien concluded.
I looked each of them in the eye; I was absolutely certain they were crazy. They couldn't just think about going to a place they didn't even know existed. Besides, if it did exist, it would be teeming with curses, monsters, and things impossible to overcome.
"So, where are you going?" Selene asked again.
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