Note: The narrator is Jace.
The Lone Castaway
Hello stranger, you came in at the right time. Come sit down and have a drink for I'm about to tell the tale of my voyage to the city. I was twenty-five when I left the plains of Daen, I bought my way onto a ship that was destined for the Regalian Highlands. When I boarded the ship, the crew members all gave me a look that I couldn't explain if I tried. When we set sail the and the crew finished their duties for the day, they came up to me in a large group. One of the sailors asked why I wanted to leave Daen, I told them I wanted to get away from my tyrant of a father. Eventually night fell upon the seas and the crew went down below the deck, myself included. We spent hours either telling stories or playing a card game. By morning, we all went onto the deck and they did their daily duties, while I often went to the bow to look out at the calm waters. When the crew finished their duties for the new day, one of them had a "brilliant" idea of challenging me to a fist fight with a wager involved. The wager, fifty regals to the winner payed by the loser. I'll keep the bout short for it was a three hit fight, I hit him twice and he hit the floor. The sailor got up and said that I hit really hard for an Avanthar and he gave me the fifty regals promised. I chuckled and told him that I worked as a blade-for-hire since I was sixteen. Days and nights went on, and they all seemed so quick until one particular night. This particular night, there were black clouds over head which we all thought were nothing. Moments later the rain came pouring down upon the sea and the seas grew violent my the minute. Within an hour, the ship below me had ripped apart by the seas and the lightning from the storm. I was thrown into sea and rendered unconscious as my head hit what had remained of a row boat. When I awoke, I found myself on this island. Immediately I started to work on a small raft to get me out to sea. Unfortunately that raft broke underneath me as the tides were too strong. When I washed up on the shore I had just left, I felt my chances of getting off that island were next to none. I spent weeks trying to make a raft that could withstand the tides but my efforts were all failures. Months had gone by and I found myself seeing these illusions of friends, family and ships. With every illusion, I found myself slowly falling into the grasp of insanity. There was this one day on the island where I saw a ship, I knew it was an illusion so I dismissed it as soon as I saw it but something about this ship was off. The ship had grew closer within a few minutes. Again I had dismissed it as an illusion but the ship grew ever closer to the shore. Once the ship was within rowboat distance, I saw three men descend in a rowboat and that was when I realized the ship I had seen wasn't an illusion. When the men dragged their rowboat on the shore they noticed me walking toward them, luckily one of those men was an old friend of mine. When I finally approached them in my castaway appearance, my friend asked "Jace, what happened to you?". I told the three and their crew what had happened to the ship I was on. The sailors on this new ship were kind unlike the previous one. The first few nights on that new ship, I didn't sleep. The days I spent on the island had corrupted my mind and I found myself still seeing the illusions that had haunted me while I was there. Eventually I did get some sleep but I often woke up with the nightmares of the island. After a few long weeks of sailing, the ship finally landed in the highlands and I thanked the sailors then departed going my own way. That's my story stranger, I'm glad that you gave me some of your time to hear my story.
