Day 1
Land inbound! Coast in sight! After a year of sailing the treacherous seas, we finally found another continent that we can settle into. From far away we can see large swathes of beach and cliffs, greeting us with a flock of sea gulls and gentle waves rocking the captain's ship up and down. At long last, our voyage was about to end, and our journeys will begin anew. Sadly, this is also where we are to part ways, whereas I wanted to leave the dangerous island of Valor for the sake of starting fresh, others have their own agendas. The captain and her crew will continue to set sail and set up a new band for themselves within the shores of the new world, not dissimilar to what they've done back home. The princess and the guardsman, well... It's complicated. However, they will stick together through their adventures, and hopefully things can work out between them. As for Lanaya? She's coming with me. No questions there. I can't just leave the kid alone, whether she wants to or not. Besides, even though I'm only her caretaker, I've grown fond of her company, albeit snarky.
Actually, to whoever is going to read this, you're probably confused if I haven't told you my tale myself. Chances are, I haven't even told the whole story. And I'll keep it that way, until the day where I will finally tell it to you in person. For now, I'll make introductions to you on paper. I am Janice, Janice van Aster from a land so far from here. It took us a year to get here, which I don't know if it's long or not, and I'm here to start a new life without the hassles of world-ending catastrophes. You see, Valor is a tumultuous place that's constantly under threat by many powers, but I digress. Right now, I am just a humble alchemist that's travelling the world. And with me are my many companions, and my ward, Lanaya, whom I adopted as my own and since then, she's someone that I can rely upon.
I can keep on writing about those I travel with in detail, but I feel that'd be too presumptuous of me. Perhaps, I'll write more about them in the future if I ever decide to do an autobiography. I hope you'll be satisfied with curt introductions instead, as for the first one is a Water Elemental named Ezra, and then there's Spike, an ice wolf from another dimension. There's Lizzy, the axolotl that can inflate to thrice my size, Flawet, a flower owl with no wings, and then Jillian, Lanaya's pet drake hound. These are the ones that'll be accompanying me and Lanaya, hopefully until we can settle down.
Anywho, we've already decided what we were going to do once we have reached the sands of this newfound land, and by the looks of it, we landed on the eastern part of it, according to the compass the captain had. Unloading our stuff out of the ship, and bringing out my companions from the lower deck (Sorry guys, we couldn't really risk any of you suddenly jumping out of the vessel), it was time for us to have our last day as a crew together. It was the final time we were ever going to be together for a voyage, so after setting up a temporary camp during the afternoon, and gathering whatever was left of our stock, we cooked up a feast that we could finally enjoy after quite some time on solid ground, and during the night we laughed and filled ourselves to the best of our stomachs. We cried, we cheered for the days that we shared from when we started till where we are now.
Good things have to end, unfortunately. When morning dawned, everyone gave their farewells, and after packing up, one by one we departed on our own separate paths. The captain and her crew were going to set sail once more to find a better spot for a permanent camp. The princess and her knight were going west, deeper into the continent where they can find a spot to call home. Lastly, for me and Lanaya, we were heading South, following the coast to see if there were settlements inhabited by people where we can find out where we are, if there were any people.
Fortunately for us, our first encounter with a social being happened sooner than we expected! But, it isn't what you'd think. We were hours into our walk, and Lanaya was constantly complaining about the heat until she shut up about it and rested on top of Lizzy's back, until all of a sudden, we saw some big object wash up on the shore. Being the curious one, of course I'd check it out, but once I got close enough, it suddenly disappeared. I was shocked, of course, and it took a moment for me that it didn't turn invisible; it was entirely gone.
Spike was frustrated at this, and it began to sniff around for where it might've went, but lo and behold it showed up in front of us. I panicked, but my first approach to things wasn't for my sword, but for my words. Kindly enough it introduced itself to us. In the form of telepathy, or something akin to it. I don't know if Spike could understand, or even Jillian and Lizzy, but Lanaya could hear it clearly even from far away. The thing was, that this 'object' was actually some sort of jellyfish. A large one that was coated in water, with appendages hanging out that acted as a head, with two others as sort of spiraling towers. Beneath it were its tendrils, big and eerily long and flexible, and it called itself 'The United Kingdom of Polypolis', or something along those lines.
What interested me was that it introduced itself as a kingdom. A Kingdom. It'd be one thing if something declared itself to be the king of the sea, but it's another when an entire organism considers itself to be a whole society. I'd find out later that it was indeed the case due to some mutation of sorts that allowed its cells to form egos and personalities, and this mutation was more so that this organism somehow found a way to harness the arcane, which made me realize that how magic operated here was entirely different to what we were accustomed to. Or, this creature was already intelligent anyway but its ambition started to grow once it had magic. Either way, this wasn't something that was based on the element the user could manipulate, but rather just the manipulation of the world around it in ways it can imagine. Something more akin to Lanaya's uncanny ability to use the purest form of magic. Something that I'll have to look into further.
Still, we got along well with our newfound friend. It seems like its purpose here was to find out ways to improve their society, and a solution to fix their food problems as apparently there were problems with its caste system (No wonder). Our objective for now was to find out where the fuck we are, so our goals were aligned. I can't help but feel that Poly is suspecting me of something malicious, but it's been only a couple of hours then that we met. We agreed to travelling together towards the nearest settlement, which Poly had noted was some sort of port city. They even told us about a city inhabited by sea life, which I'm excited to visit.
There was one issue, though. That coating that Poly has needs to be refilled, and Ezra, I thought, was the perfect candidate for it. There were some problems that I didn't manage to consider;
Ezra couldn't hear Poly. Maybe because Ezra is considered as an inorganic with no brain organ that she couldn't register whatever Poly was saying through our minds, but if we want to communicate something from Poly to Ezra, we had to do it ourselves.
Poly needed sea water at the very least. Anything without the minerals of water found at the sea, or even the ocean, it could be poisonous to it.
So that led to me accidentally causing rashes on Poly. It was a slight strain, but nothing a bit of adjustment can't fix. That was a good lesson to learn, and a good thing we found out earlier, too. Else, the situation would've turned more drastic. There were some hiccups between us and Poly here and there, and there were even some egos, I feel, that see our group as a threat. Not that it matters, so long as they're cordial and friendly for the time being. It's not bad making friends, even if they're suspicious of us.
With a newfound travelling buddy with us, we finally had a clear destination in mind: Korrig. A city close to where we were and one that was close to shore. No doubt that we'll find many things there, and we'll probably be there by the day after tomorrow at the latest. I'm quite excited to find out what this land will offer us, and I hope things would go smooth sailing as it is now.