Isle Of Dragons

Arabian Sea

Charles was sprinting down the beach without his boots. His shirt was missing and his black pants were shredded from waist to ankle. His stomach, chest, and arms were ravaged with deep slashes and bloody punctures as if he had been attacked by a monstrous serpent with formidable claws. His feet bled from deep cuts caused by running barefoot through the island’s jungle and they were also calloused from third degree burns. Enduring it all, Charles ran for his life until he reached the safety of the ship he and his crew arrived on two weeks ago.

They had departed from Madagascar with priceless caches of exotic plants, insects, reptiles, livestock, gold coins, precious stones and four unknown relics carved by hand out of solid rock.

Their target was a rogue pirate ship fleeing capture from the Royal Navy. Charles and his crew held neither love nor any desire of cooperation towards the Royal Navy, they simply took advantage of fleeing ships which in the heat of evasion least expected to be attacked by more pirates.

The ship had marooned along the eastern sholes of the island and Charles and his crew of seventy-two men and women ambushed it from the north without mercy before the Royal Navy had a chance to get around the southern tip. They left none alive. They commandeered anything and everything of value, then set a fire deep within the hull which housed the barrels of gunpowder. The explosion was impressive and dense, offering Charles and his bloodsoaked crew the perfect opportunity to evade the pursuing fleet of British Navy ships before they could mount the horizon.

For five days, odd and gruesome accidents continued to befall the crew members. Derangement set it first, targeting the four men who handled the idols and relics they stole from the pirate ship in Madagascar. Once they were caught urinating and defecating in the water and throwing food overboard, Charles had them killed and tossed overboard. Others began peeling their skin from their own bodies and eating it. Others hung themselves from the masts and some just jumped from the ship, letting the ocean claim their lives. The food supplies and water reserves that remained untainted quickly disappeared as the ravenous mouths of those who remained tried to share a few loaves of stale bread, a bushel of red and green apples and two gallons of fresh water.

Charles, being the captain, desperately searched for land and a port to resupply but his dehydration made him delirious and he unknowingly steered the ship off course by hundreds of miles. His crew began to murderously turn on one another as they fought for scraps and droplets of rain water from the sails.

As the days passed by, and the body count of dead crew members rose, Charles saw a fuzzy mass of land appear on the horizon. Unsure if he was hallucinating from a severe lack of water, he had no choice but to steer the ship towards the mirage. Unfortunately for Charles and his skeleton crew, the island was real.

Fighting through the pain of dehydration and starvation, Charles and his nine remaining crew men, and lady, scoured the beach and nearby jungles for wild game and a suitable water source. Charles had no topography map to reference the island because his memory was eidetic. Memories and images replayed within his mind with tremendous clarity and precision, allowing him to stock his ships with more rum and ammunition rather than filling the cupboards with maps and ledgers. Unfortunately, he was having trouble identifying anything that made sense.

The island was completely alien, and yet resided within the well-sailed and heavily conquered Arabian Sea. It was an island that didn’t exist in Charle’s mind, which meant it shouldn't have existed at all. Yet it did.

Charles was a pirate who always knew where he was in the world, even when sailing into uncharted waters. So being lost terrified him more than anything else. And like any good pirate captain, he kept his fear to himself. They were in enough trouble already, he found no need to further burden his skeleton crew with more bad news.

After two days of eating insects, wild berries and small rodents, and failing to find a source of freshwater, Charles and his crew became lost within the thick trees and brush of the scorching hot woodland. Slipping into a hysterical state of panic, they all began to wander off deeper into the shadowy wildness of the jungle.

One-by-one, they disappeared out of sight. Charles yelled out with what strength he had left, trying to regroup his crew, but his calls fell on deaf ears, save for one. Emilia. Peaking at six feet, she was three inches taller than Charles yet was so thin her bones appeared to be popping out of her skin. Her lips were bleeding from being horribly chapped, her black hair stuck to her red cheeks from the layers of sweat and blood, and her eyes were sunk deep within her skull. Charles knew she was dying, and he knew there was nothing he could do for her.

As he sulked behind her, preparing to put her out of her misery, a rustling of leaves behind him caught his attention. As he turned around slowly, planning to see one of his crewmen step back into view, he saw nothing but the macabre features of the jungle. Mangled tree trunks, low hanging black vines with poison ivy tangled all around them. Thorny bushes, sharp undergrowth, fluttering bats, slithering snakes, and lurking reptiles which he prayed weren’t Komodo dragons. While on Madagascar, he saw what one of those dragons could do to a goat, as well as a human body. It was a fate he wished on no man or woman.

As he waited, he heard more rustling come from all around him. Spooked, he turned to Emilia to ask her if she saw anything. She was unable to respond because she was being violently dragged through the jagged ground brush by her legs. She was moaning in agony because she didn’t have enough strength left to scream, and Charles was unable to see what or who was dragging her.

Determined to save her, he ran as fast as he could into the unknown. The closer he seemed to get, the further away she became. Losing ground, Charles tripped over a downed tree branch. His nose cracked against a rounded stone and broke on impact. Warm blood seeped from his crooked nostrils, coating his lips and chin with crimson war paint. His eyes bulged from the pain and his vision glazed over with a permanent haze.

Refusing to die, yet prepared to, Charles stumbled to his feet and continued his search.

Pursuing a clear path of flattened grass and brush, Charles unsheathed his double edged sword and charged forward. Breaking and slicing his way through a dense thicket, his heart nearly gave out at the harrowing scene he willingly stumbled into.

The forest was excavated, clearly by humans, and the bodies of his fellow crew were arranged in the most vile of ways imaginable.

Three of the bodies, which were stacked on top of one another next to a large fire pit, were each missing arms and legs and their necks were twisted in severely broken positions. Three more hung upside from their ankles from a thick tree branch. Their abdomens were cut from throat to waist, allowing their entrails to spill and dangle to the moist, blood soaked earth beneath them. Two more were being skinned by a trio of dark-skinned indigenous humans who appeared to be lost in time and barred sharp incisors which crept over their bottom lips. Then he saw Emilia. Her body was violently writhing and thrashing as two Komodo Dragons feasted on her flesh and bones. She was barely recognizable but the dragons decided to save her head for last. Clearly they wanted Charles to know who they were eating in such a ravenous manner.

He tried to think of a way to save the bodies of his crew, but it was impossible. He was one man, a sickly, dehydrated man. There was no way he could fight a tribe of extremely fit cannibals and their army of pet Komodo Dragons. Slowly stepping back into the shadows, hoping his intrusion remained undisturbed, he stepped and snapped a chunk of fallen deadwood. The sound echoed with tremendous volume and the tribesmen, as well as the dragons all turned their blood soaked faces to stare him down. The humanoids stirred and cackled like wild hyenas which provoked the dragons to hiss and prod the air with their long, yellow, forked tongues and lick their curved, blade-shaped teeth.

Charles did the only thing he could. Run.

Wrapping his ankles around the mooring line, he mustered a divine rush of strength and eagerly ascended upside down until he was able to drop onto the top deck of his ship, The Sin Claire. Ducking behind a large, iron, broadside cannon, Charles waited to see if the army of unspeakable creatures emerged from the treeline. Which they did in a matter of seconds, and in much greater numbers. He ducked lower, hoping to remain hidden, but he heard one of the half-naked men scream something primordial which prompted the hundreds of Komodo Dragons to infest the shallow waters around the moored ship.

Poison tipped arrows and razor sharp spears descended upon the ship, as well as Charle’s position. The attack had begun.

He ran to the armory and grabbed as many pistols and long-rifles as he could, as well as a barrel of gunpowder as a last resort. He flew to the gunwale, and began firing hot lead into the frenzying crowd of indigenous warriors. A few fell, but his shots were instantly answered with barrages of arrows, darts and spears.

Quickly spending the ammunition for the rifles, he switched to two out of the six pistols he managed to outfit himself with. He stood by the bannister, and fired round after round, finding flesh with some but sand with most. Once a few of the soldiers began climbing up the ship’s exterior, he retreated back towards the armory to reload.

The first tribesman to reach the top deck was short, yet muscular and had long flowing black hair which covered half of his tattooed face. His clothes were primitive, yet decorative and rich with secrets of an unknown culture. He was armed with a bow and a snakeskin quiver strapped over his shoulder. A pair of long, curved daggers rested on each side of his waist and a necklace made out of Komodo Dragon teeth dangled from his neck. He sniffed at the air, as a predator stalking prey would do, and honed in on the door Charles was hiding behind.

Charles finished loading his rifle while two more, similarly dressed yet bigger and scarier looking indigenous soldiers slithered over the top rail. They fanned out and silently surrounded the armory's door and waited patiently for their prey to emerge from its hole.

Needing to control the situation, Charles made the first move. Kicking the doors open with his leaden foot, he fired his rifle at the largest soldier first, dropping the man with a shot through the chest. He rapidly switched to his pistols and fired off two rounds at the two others who were fleeing back over the top bannister. One got away cleanly, using the mooring line as an escape route, but the other one was struck in the backside of his skull while mounting the top rail. He fell back into the ship and Charles quickly lifted and used the dead body as a harrowing message to the others down below to stay off of the ship.

The message was received. The tribe cautioned back towards the jungle and grouped together to discuss their options. Charles continued to yell and shout profanity in a heated moment of victory then remembered that the sloshing waters below were infested with dragons. Wanting to enforce his message of no trespassing, he dragged the dead man’s body towards the crude gangway plank.

Being careful to avoid tripping over the downed bottles, cannonballs, ropes and slippery blood streaks, Charles pushed the body out onto the plank and made sure he acquired the tribe’s attention before plunging it overboard. The dragons converged and effortlessly tore the body into crimson chunks of flesh and bone.

The tribe cried out in anger and furiously re-engaged their aerial attack. Charles laughed and spat as the pathetic array of arrows, darts and spears fell shy of his perch. Claiming victory, he turned from the plank in search of one of those tumbling whiskey bottles.

A sharp pinch festered and burned at the base of his neck, and his eyes welled with anger at the sight of the first man he had shot in the chest holding a small blow gun to his lips while laying in a pool of his own blood. The poison spread with haste, icing his nervous system. He bobbled and slipped on one of the stolen relics they acquired in Madagascar which forced his momentum to carry him backwards until it was commandeered by gravity. Tears swelled in his eyes as he fell from the gangway.

He hit the warm water with force, yet could not move a muscle. The cruelest part of the indigenous poison was that it allowed the victim to experience everything before ultimately stopping the heart from beating. Which he did while being ferociously bitten, savagely ripped apart and depravedly eaten by hungry Komodo Dragons.