Adrian Vale, Scholar and Interpreter

Adrian Vale came to with his mouth full of sand and the distinct impression that someone was trying to break his ribs.

A wave rolled over him, cold and heavy. He coughed, spat seawater, and scrambled onto his hands and knees as the surf dragged at his legs. Before he worried about whether he was injured, he reached for his satchel, which he had been carrying over his shoulder.

Gone.

“My books.”

The words emerged as a croak.

He dashed towards the water.

A dark shape bobbed between the rocks, half submerged, its leather cover flashing briefly beneath the foam.

Adrian lurched after it.

Another wave struck him sideways. He went down hard, scraped his palms against the jagged stone, and came up gasping. The satchel was drifting towards a narrow cleft between two rocks, where the current would carry it out to sea.

“No. No, no, no—”

He threw himself forward and caught the strap just as it disappeared beneath the water.

For several seconds, he clung to it with both hands, while the surf tried to tear it from his grasp. The retreating wave deposited him in a shallow hollow between the rocks.

He lay there, coughing and shivering, with the satchel clutched against his chest. He cried with relief. The treasure inside was more valuable than his life.

Three years of work. Three years spent deciphering fragments of inscriptions and obscure texts that had been seized during the campaigns to exterminate the orcs and goblins. Months of correspondence, copied texts, painstakingly assembled comparisons. Notes that existed nowhere else.

Adrian fumbled with the fastening.

Inside, his notebooks lay in a sodden heap. Loose sheets had become translucent, their ink bleeding into the fibres.

For a moment, he could only stare. Then the tears of relief turned into hot tears of despair.

At the Collegium, he had been told that fieldwork would test his mettle. His patron had assured him that the expedition would be an excellent opportunity to distinguish himself. They had remarked, with a thin smile, that if he could use his language skills to play a decisive role in helping the Navy’s expedition track down and permanently exterminate the orcs and goblins, that would bring him to the attention of important figures. He might receive a scholarship, or perhaps even a professorship at the collegium.

And now all of that had literally gone down the drain.

What on earth am I supposed to do now?

Then he remembered the ship.

Adrian looked up.

The sea stretched before him, grey beneath a low ceiling of cloud. Waves smashed against a line of black cliffs farther along the coast. Beyond them, the water rose in mountainous swells, white foam bursting against stone.

There was no ship.

He turned his head sharply, wincing as pain flared through his neck.

Nothing.

No sails. No boats. No distant cries carried across the water.

Only the sea, the rocks, and the heavy rain.

He tried to stand and immediately dropped back onto one knee. His right leg trembled beneath him. His head was aching as if someone had driven a red-hot nail into his temples.

The last thing he remembered was the deck tilting beneath his feet. Men had shouted. Adrian had grabbed the railing, lost his footing, and seen the sea rushing upwards.

Then nothing.

He searched the horizon for other survivors. He waited for a signal. A call. A horn. Anything.

The only answer was the thunder of the waves.

Only then did he allow himself to consider the obvious.

He was alone.

And unless the ship had somehow escaped the cliffs, no one knew where he was.

A cold, unfamiliar feeling settled in his stomach.

Adrian had prepared for the expedition by spending weeks studying the reports and filling notebooks with observations and hypotheses. None of this work had prepared him for what to do if he were to become stranded.

He looked at the land behind him.

The beach was little more than a narrow strip of shingle trapped between the sea and a steep wall of dark stone. Beyond it, the ground rose sharply into tangled vegetation. Broad leaves glistened in the rain. Thick roots gripped the rocks.

The forest was eerie. He thought he could hear something moving within it.

Adrian closed his eyes briefly.

He wasn't an adventurer, but he had read about adventures. Could that knowledge be of any help to him?

He employed the only strategy he had learned: logical thinking.

He needed shelter. He needed fresh water. Above all, he needed to find a way to signal the fleet.

The forest offered the only plausible route inland, but the thought of entering it filled him with an unease he could not quite explain. Every instinct told him to remain on the open shore, where a rescue party might find him.

Yet he had to move.

Adrian took one last look at the sea, then limped towards the trees.

That was when he noticed the footprints.

They were pressed into a patch of wet sand at the base of the cliff, partly obscured by the retreating surf. Small footprints, he thought at first. A child? Then he saw the deep impressions of the toes, the unusual spacing, the way they approached from the forest and ended just short of the waterline.

Adrian stared at the marks, his scholarly instincts briefly overcoming his fear. The shape suggested a bipedal creature, perhaps smaller than a man, with long toes and a narrow heel. He leaned closer, trying to determine their origin.

A twig snapped behind him.

He froze.

Slowly, he turned his head.

Between two broad-leaved plants, a pair of yellow eyes watched him from the shadows.