Prince Gyllen Ch. 23.1

"You know, Min...this whole situation conjures to mind the Tale of Erik Blond-Beard, don't you think?" The prince remarked.

"Erik who-and-what now?" Min asked with genuine inquisitive in her voice, as though it was the first she had ever heard of the name.

"Erik Blond-Beard, Min..." Gyllen said, once more dispirited that the goblin did not apparently share in this particular division of his knowledge. "Honestly, don't you know anything when it comes to history? Of our own country, no less!"

"Hey, hey, don' be gettin' yer knickers in a knot over it, Goldie! Not all a' us had th' time t' spare on school, ya know." Min retorted, now sounding peeved that the blond made the effort to change the subject only to begin his whining anew. "Well, seein' how we literally got all th' time in the world for th' foreseeable future, ya might as well tell me th' whole bleedin' thing! Go on then. Educate me."

"Oh, very well...though it's been a good age since I last read up on him, so I may be mixing up some of the details." Gyllen said before beginning his impromptu lecture. "Anyway, Erik Blond-Beard was a well-known explorer and tradesman who lived in Snjórland about one hundred years ago. He sailed all across the world and visited many distant lands, with most regarding him to be the greatest seaman of the Northlands in his time, however he was equally notorious for spinning many a tall tale without the substantial evidence to reinforce them, and difficult to have accepted at face value. One day, during a period when he was dealing exported goods in Purvaja, he and his crew set sail through uncharted waters far to the east of the continental mainland following a bet with a local captain in order to see if he was skilled enough to survive out on a stretch of sea for an entire day where many feared leviathans lurked beneath the waves, or the world's end awaited just beyond the skyline. Well, Blond-Beard encountered none of these, but his vessel was caught in a sudden and terrible tempest, probably not unlike the one we went through ourselves, and the crew found themselves shipwrecked on what they believed was a landmass previously undiscovered by any of those in the west!"

"Without a ship to return them to port, the company took to traversing inwards into this new land where they endured many harsh conditions and encountered several bizarre creatures, trekking through an entire jungle similar to the one at our very backs before they finally came across a village of humans built amongst the ruins of ancient stone structures. The inhabitants were ebony-skinned, similar to the tones found in people of Dark Continent-descent, though with unique, intricate markings of stark white running all across their tall bodies, but the most unusual aspect about this community was that there was not a single man to be counted amongst their number!"

"Straight away, Erik and his light-skinned, all-male crew were viewed with suspicion by these villagers, and matters were not helped by the fact neither party shared a common language. The natives subsequently took the outsiders as prisoners for the time being until it was decided what should be done with them. Luckily for the foreigners, such a thing never came to pass as they and the villagers - over a laboriously long process - were eventually able to pick up on certain words and phrases the other group used between themselves, just enough for the sailors to effectively communicate that they meant no ill intent upon the local residents, that they had unwillingly found themselves in this unknown land through sheer misfortune and their only wish now was to return safely home."

"The natives, now aware the strangers posed no harm, agreed to assist them in their plight. Together, they traversed the jungle once more until they reached the sea again, and - through their combined efforts over the course of several lengthy months - were at last able to construct a brand new, fully functioning vessel that could fit and carry the entirety of Erik's crew all the way back to Snjórland. Farewells were then exchanged that very same day and the mariners departed with nothing but gratitude in their hearts, though of course, very few believed their story upon their return to their homeland, especially since they had no proof to the contrary other than a vessel very different in appearance other than the one he first set out to sea in, though that was dismissed as having simply been bought from a distant harbour after Erik's old ship had suffered irreparable damage. But even to his dying day, Blond-Beard continued to profess that the unknown country indeed existed, and claimed he would have readily returned had he ever gathered enough volunteers to once more risk the journey into treacherous seas of the far east, but such a thing never came to pass."

"...Hang on, that's it?" Min said after a brief moment of silence following Gyllen's closing sentence. "Doesn' sound all that interestin' t' me. Thought there woulda been a bit more action and drama t' it, if I'm honest."

"Well, I trimmed some of the fluff, but that's basically how the story goes, yes." The prince responded, disappointed he was unable to rouse any engrossment from the goblin after his talk, though continued on regardless. "The most fascinating part is, while many of Erik's exploits have yet to be verified, a handful have since his passing have proven to be true! He described the pharaoh tombs of Kemet and the dead palaces of Varman decades before information regarding such became so readily available in the north fringes of Occasus. For all we are aware, this could be the very same land where those mariners trod so very long ago!"

"Ah, I wish I had even half the sense a' whimsy you got, Gyl, I'll give ya that at least." Min replied, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head at the prince's conjecture. "Hey, mebbe yer this Blond-Beard bloke's reincarnation or th' like! Ya both seem t' have th' same interest in borin', ol' stuff!" The goblin guffawed at her own observation.

Gyllen merely sighed in acknowledgement, far less amused by the redhead's remark, although it was also in that same instance when he noticed they had covered a greater distance in their leisurely stroll than either of them had realised, having cleared past a gradual curve during their conversation which extended all the way around to the opposite side of the jungle's borders in relation to where the crew was still situated and unable to be perceived in the slightest through the dense vegetation. From this, the prince was quick to comprehend that it was certain he and Min were just as equally concealed from the pirates', especially Bonny's, equivalent viewpoints.

"You know, Min...if we were to enter the jungle right here and right now...I doubt the others would be any the wiser...so long as you were willing to keep such a thing a secret, of course." The blond began to alluded to the goblin in a hushed tone as if he were at risk of being eavesdropped by an unseeable third party, knowing that he may have held more sway with her in comparison to the captain from the longer time they had been familiar with one another.

"Yer really dead set 'bout goin' int' those bloody woods, arencha?" Min said in prompt response, seeing straight through his insinuations as clear as glass with fists on her hips and a clearly annoyed quality in her accent from his ceaseless insistences, but she soon let out a defeated sigh of her own as she shook her head. "Alright, fine!" The redhead conceded at long last. "But only for a short bit, alright? An' th' firs' sign a' danger, we're wastin' no time gettin' the Hel outta there, agreed? I'm honestly not too keen 'bout stayin' in there long meself..."

"Oh, thank you, Min!" Gyllen cheered in a raised voice upon her accede, shewing a smile for the first time since he had regained consciousness several days prior. "It's reassuring to know there's at least someone in this world who finds me trustworthy."

"Yeah, yeah, jus' don' breath a word a' this t' anyone, got it? Cap'll have me head if she ever finds out I let ya go swaggerin' about in th' bush..." Min said, this time being the one to quiet her own voice for no rational reason.

"Oh, I wouldn't even dream of it." Gyllen responded, knowing he may not have gotten off scot-free himself if such a thing would have came to pass.

With Min in tow, the prince approached jungle with a keen stride right up until he came to its edge where the soil met the sands, pausing in his tracks temporarily to first gaze into the mysterious wilderness. Although it was still early morning at this time and the sun shone strong over the shoreline, shadows cast deep and inky amongst the trunks of the tall trees as if it were already dusk within, however the colourful, abnormally large flowers sprouting from wild shrubs the tropical woodland contained appeared to almost glow against the gloom with their striking hues of scarlet, green and azure. The darkness of the jungle interior combined with the discernible echoes of unusual cries by (presumably) the indigenous fauna from deep within even as the prince stood at this peripheral zone now made him hesitant to advancing any further in spite of the suggestion to do so being entirely his own.

"Well? Go on then." Gyllen then heard the redhead goblin impatiently remark as she stood less than a meter behind, bringing the blond out of his awe. He took a quick look back over his shoulder to Min - who only made a half-vexed expression and an open-handed gesture with her palms turned upwards in response as if to wordlessly ask him what his delay was - before turning back to face the forest, slowly raising one foot from off the floor before quickly dropping it back down amongst the untamed turf within the perimeters of the trees with a gentle rustle before carrying the rest of his body behind. At long last, Gyllen now stood within the jungle he had become so fixated with over the past couple days.

Min's entrance into the woods was less ceremonial in comparison, walking forwards into the verdure as casually as if she were entering her own home, though she did have a little more difficulty traversing through the terrain considering the undergrowth reached up all the way to her waist.

"Lead on, Gyllen Gold-Pubes!" Min then crassly commanded in a tone and sweeping gesture of false grandeur, which the prince begrudgingly followed only if doing otherwise would defeat the purpose of his breach in the captain's mandate. Gyllen headed directly forwards for a little while, having no particular destination in mind, before he sharply turned upwards in the direction he saw the hills to avoid suddenly emerging on the other side of the wood and caught by every single last member of Bonny's band of pirates, not even daring to imagine the consequences the captain may impose on him if that was the case.

Entering the jungle was like entering a whole other world entirely, compounded by the surrounding atmosphere of exotic animal cries, strange insect chirps and warbling of unfamiliar birds pervading through the tropical flora, some stalks sprouting as high to be level with the prince's chest and further blooming flowers almost as big as his head with striking colours spanning the entire spectrum and sweet aromas wafting from their petals, beautiful in its untamed chaos. Gyllen and Min even happened across the crumbling ruins of what appeared to have been some sort of grandiose temple or palace at one point time (difficult to precisely determine from what remained of the foreign architecture), but now overrun with bright green creeper and moss, completely at the mercy of Mother Nature and seeming especially eerie being touched upon by shafts of sunlight penetrating through the dense canopy high above their heads.

"I think it's safe to surmise that this land is - or at least has at some point been - peopled." Gyllen postulated to Min, who could not care less given her lack of any real reply, though that did not prevent the prince from continuing his discourse. "It must be at least a century since it ever last saw use however, whatever purpose it once served. In any case, it does not look as if the civilisation who constructed it has remained in this jungle considering how much has grown around it at this time...still...I am curious to see if there are any more hidden relics of their existence nearby to be discovered." He tacked onto the end before beginning to wander further into the wilderness, Min making her chagrin known through a guttural hiss, partially due to concern that the crew may be starting to grow suspicious as to their whereabouts at this point in time, but primarily as a result of her own boredom.

Not far from where the ruins lay, the two were able to pick up on the distinct noise of rapidly rushing water amidst the buzzing concert that constituted the rest of the ambience, which Gyllen would follow with his ears led by his ever-increasing fascination of the foreign environment while Min followed in turn before they shortly came to the muddy bank of a wide river which ran straight through the foliage like a knife slicing through sponge. The waterway appeared to run for several meters in either direction (difficult to determine precisely from overhanging ferns and clumps of reeds obscuring the extent of its winding course amongst the trees), was too broad to leap over, seemed too deep to safely wade to the opposite side, and had a current too strong to swim across even if Gyllen knew how.

"I reckon this is as far as yer gonna get, Goldie." Min was quick to comment. "We'd best be makin' tracks backwise pronto. We're dancin' wi' fire as is for how long we've already spent in this place. An' ya don' even wanna know how th' Cap gets when she's right royally pissed!"

"I suppose you're right..." Gyllen said after he gave a laboured and sobered sigh as his expedition had been brought to an abrupt end by nature itself, turning to face the goblin. "Apologies, Min, I let my intrigue overtake my sense beyond what was reasonable. If any problems arise upon our return, I'll take full responsibility."

"Alright, but if we end up back in Snjórland wi' you in a full-body cast, don' say I didn' tell ya so." Min then also wheeled about her heels and began to walk back the way they had come, and Gyllen was about to follow when he heard an peculiar sound coming from behind divorced from the rushing of the river, an odd gurgling which forestalled him from proceeding onwards. The prince then cast a glance over his shoulder back to the waterway in reflex to see what may have been the cause, seeing nothing out of the ordinary for a brief second before next noticing a crop of bubbles appearing separate from the foam created by the rapids accompanied by that same sound before ceasing their spume as quickly as it had started. The prince then double-backed to the river's edge once again to investigate.

"Gyl..." Min growled through clenched teeth as she caught the blond returning to the river's edge out of the corner of her eye without even saying anything to her beforehand, her short patience with him fast approaching its limit.

"Just another moment, Min...I thought I spotted something unusual here..." Gyllen replied before her language would take a turn for the colourful as he tentatively trod upon the water's claggy verge, trying to avoid dirtying his boots too terribly as he leaned his upper body over the river to better peer into its depths.

"Yer gonna be takin' a real closer look when I shove ya in the damn thing in a minute if ya don' come away!" The redhead added, though she was ignored by the prince in his spontaneous investigation to see if he could spy the source of the frothing, but it proved difficult to see anything through the surface of the churning water.

Gyllen did not look for long however, assuming it may have just been the floundering of a fish or some other critter caught within the swirling currents, and was about to back away when, at the precise moment when he least expected anything out of the ordinary, a gush of water suddenly spouted upwards spraying the prince direct in his fair features and engulf almost the entirety of his head with enough force and fastness to startle him where he stood before naturally backing away only for the boy to carelessly slip on his heels in his haste on the mud beneath and fall straight down onto his derrière with a splat, staining the seat of his cream trousers brown as he looked up to then see it surface from the beneath the rapids.

It came shambling onto the bank on four boneless limbs each ending in membranous, fan-like flippers with its vaguely canid head nodding on an elongated neck further connected to a black, rubbery body dripping with water and slimy with algae. Two bulbous, glassy eyes on either side of what could only be loosely described as a face swivelled in their sockets to focus on Gyllen with narrow holes in place of where pupils should have been before it began lumbering closer to the prince, outstretching its neck as its tubular mouth gaped wide in a circular shape, to reveal a myriad of miniscule teeth which Gyllen could see lining the entirety of the dark, dribbling interior.

Time seemed to slow down for Gyllen as he struggled to regain his footing on the greasy muck in his panic-stricken hurry or even scramble backwards on his hands as he unwillingly watched, with nauseating intrigue, the bizarre beast encroach ever nearer to where he was stuck, the uncertainty of what it may do should its weird leech-like maw come within reach of where he was stuck leaving him near-catatonic with dread racing through his faculties at the speed of thought during the brief seconds between the monster's frightful emergence and the equally startling volley of javelins that were then lobbed from somewhere behind the prince without warning which struck the alien creature in the back with not a single one missing their mark. The beast let out a gurgling wail that practically pierced the prince's eardrums, prompting him to quickly cover his audial canals as blue blood oozed from its wounds before it finally collapsed lifelessly to the floor without another noise.

"Uh, Goldie? I think ya might've been on t' somethin' when ye brought up how people might be livin' in this place." Gyllen could then hear Min speak from behind a moment afterwards while he was still recoiling from the invertebrate's death howl, twisting his upper body half-around to face in her direction only to see her in turn looking to a collection of figures looming over the goblin and himself in a semi-circle formation where she stood and he still sat.

A group of dark-skinned and black-haired woman, ten in all, had approached the pair from behind the same path they had come to the river without causing so much as a slight stirring in the grass that would betray even the minutest trace of their shadowing, every one of them lofty in stature, fit in figure and long of limb, clad in simple wrappings that covered only their chests and their pelves, and wicker sandals woven from dried palm leaves that protected the undersoles of their feet, each of them holding either spears tipped with a shard of a deep purple - almost black - gemstone or pick-like implements fitted with ivory spikes that appeared as though it were once a fang belonging to some terribly enormous monstrosity. The most remarkable of their common attributes however were the intricately swirling, symmetrical streaks of stark white bordered by continuous dots of the same pigment which embellished - and contrasted against - much of the exposed areas of their mostly-bare, dusky-complexioned bodies: the length of their toned arms, the extent of their smooth legs from thigh to ankle, along the sides of their visible abdominals, and even on their cheeks to meet across the bridge of their noses just below their eyes.