Mac turned and looked up at the voice. The sun was directly in his eyes at this angle and he had to hold up a hand to see clearly. A woman was standing in front of him. She looked short, around five foot five. She had an athletic body wrapped in tight leather. Dark brown leather pants and a greenish, sleeveless vest. She had a thick mane of wavy unkempt dark hair and dark eyes. She had a bow in her hand and he focused on the arrow which had a weird rounded blunt tip on it. He fell back onto his back. “Are you an Angel?”

She smiled at him in a knowing, flirty way. “Wellll… I have been called an Angel by many a man, but after getting to know me most call me a little Devil!”

She winked at him. He groaned and rolled over trying to lift himself. He let out a huge sob, the events finally catching up with him. The girl kneeled next to him and said, “Hey, it’s OK. You’re OK, I’m OK, We are OK! She gently patted him on the back.

He pushed her off and stood. “I’m not OK, my best friend was just murdered by an undead pirate. My ship was destroyed by a supernatural storm and rocky icebergs that shot out of open ocean. I’m definitely not OK!”

He started walking back to Sean to bury his body. As he dragged himself along he heard a warrior howl and looked over. A woman in full knight’s armor was smashing through a group of twenty or so undead with a huge war hammer. He looked at the woman and raised an eyebrow.

She smiled. “That’s Ashley. Don’t worry she is level twenty and there is nothing over level three here. She could kill hundreds of them.”

He ignored the comment and went in to where Sean’s body was lying. The woman looked down and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, he’s not dead if that helps you any?”

He glanced over and growled at her. “Really, Miss smarty pants? He looks plenty dead to me!”

She said, “Just wait a minute or two and you will see. I’m telling you he’s not dead, but he will wish he was sooner or later. Also there is very good chance that you will never see him again, so in that sense he might as well be dead to you. My name is Kat by the way not smarty pants.”

He looked over and uttered just one word. “Explain.”

She sighed and said to herself “For the millionth time… Listen closely cause I will explain this to you only one time. Believe it or not you have been pulled onto a magical island. There is a very high chance that you were a warrior of some kind in your last life. This led to you surviving the storm and being brought here. Most of the mundanes that were on board with you probably died unless they had a specific skill the island wanted. This land is called Aeternum.”

Mac snorted and said, “A magic...”

“Shut the fuck up and listen!” Kat cut him off.

“You can’t remember your old life right? A wall of clouds descended on your ship and busted it to pieces right? This happened to every human here the exact same way. The current theory is that the island needs a certain amount of souls to to suffer and bleed for it to create Azoth, but I think that’s a bunch of bull.”

He managed to spit out, “Azoth... right… What is Azoth?”

Kat chuckled at him. “Man you are going to feel so fucking stupid when you discover all of this is real. Azoth is a mineral with magical properties that can be found on this island. It’s a blue glowing liquid that can be used for all kinds of things. It’s also the reason we don’t die on this island.” She pointed down at Sean “Observe and learn genius!”

Mac looked down and could see Sean’s body start to disappear. He was slowly becoming undone in a blue hazy mist. Mac looked up with his mouth wide open in shock. “What the fuck? What is happening to him?”

Kat nodded with a wry smile on her face. “He is being resurrected. Right now his body is being transported to a spirit shine somewhere else on the island, but that is getting way off topic. There is no way to know where he was sent and this place is huge. There are thousands of warriors here and if you ever even meet him again he won’t be the same guy you knew before. Dying over and over changes a person you know?”

Mac’s mouth opened and closed over and over with the hundreds of questions he had. He could barely speak looking down where his friend had been just moments before. “Ok let’s say you got me. You said Ashley was level twenty? What does that mean?”

Kat rubbed her hands together and smiled. “OK now we are getting somewhere. This might be the only freaking thing good about this place. As you fight monsters... and you will fight. You gain experience and weapon skills. You will gain levels, of body attributes. Unless you come across a hidden cache of super rare treasure and become rich you will be fighting for your life on an almost daily basis. But it’s not all bad. Eventually you will become powerful and it feels so good!” Kat stretched out her body and grinned.

She went on. “There are towns and safe spots on this island, but you won’t be spending all day hanging out in a tavern, the factions tax the shit out of the towns and you gotta earn your keep.”

Mac asked, “Factions?”

Kat nodded, “Yeah factions. The rich and powerful who have been here for ages. They built towns and fight each other for power. It’s the reason I’m out on this damn beach, heh factions...I hate the bastards. There are three powers here. The Covenant, who I belong to by the way. Kind of a collection of people who believe in religion... it’s complicated. The Syndicate, They claim to want to crack the secret to the island, but they are more or less all about making money and hording it. And the real special nut jobs, The Marauders. They are a special breed. Mostly a bunch of psychos who get off on battle and killing everything in their path including humans.”

“There are always patrols down on the beaches looking for whoever washes in. We try to save them and help them get their feet off of the ground and recruit them to our faction. I have to come down here once or twice a month until I become high enough leveled that I am useful elsewhere.”

She grabbed Mac by the arm and pulled him. “Come on, there is a watchtower set up off of the beach. You can get food and water and tools there. They will explain specifics. You have to be a certain level to even make it to the nearest town.” She stopped at the skeleton he had smashed to pieces. “Pick up that sword and shield, you are going to need them. I’m positive you got no weapon mastery from swinging that bar. Drop that, it’s useless, more than useless, it’s a hindrance to your skills.”

Mac picked up the new weapons. You keep mentioning this mastery, what is it?”

She walked over and grabbed his by the arm. “OK now this is gonna really blow your mind. I’m gonna hold on to your arm so you don’t fall over and hurt yourself. You’re too pretty to fall on a sword and die heh. Now… I want you to close your eyes and in your minds eye I want you to concentrate and think of the words ‘weapon mastery’ Do it over and over until you see something.”

He lifted his eyebrows at her and smirked.

“Just trust me and give it a try.”

“I’ll humor you.” Mac shut his eyes and started chanting over and over in his mind ‘weapon mastery” A gridded box opened up showing a bunch of weapons. His eyes shot open and he almost fell over, but Kat held on to him. He looked over and she was grinning at him. “I told ya stud!”

Mac once again found himself gasping with astonishment. “What the hell was that? How is that possible?”

Kat sagely nodded. “It’s the island’s magic. You are filled with Azoth now. I think the island tries to make it as easy as possible for us to level, so it gives us tools like those charts you just saw. Do it again and look at the tabs on top. There is all kinds of great information you now have at your disposal. Maps, Attributes, Achievement bonuses...”

Mac closed his eyes again and looked at it. The weapon mastery tab had a bunch of different categories on it so he focused on that. One handed weapons, two handed, ranged, and even slots for magic weapons. “I have zeros in everything Kat.”

He opened his eyes to see her nodding at him. “Ya we get no help with unarmed combat or makeshift weapons. Start using that sword and shield and your skills will rocket up at early levels. The island wants you to succeed.”

He waved his arms all about. “What’s this all about? What’s the end game here? Why warriors and not… I dunno, scientists?”

Kat folded her arms across her chest. “Well that’s one of the burning questions everyone talks about constantly isn’t it? The real high level people on this island know a lot about that, but they are not talking about it. They want everyone to discover it on their own and come up with their own theories hoping that someone can add something important to the overall picture.”

Mac scowled, “Why don’t you just get a bunch of people and make them tell you all what’s going on?”

Kat stepped back from him and laughed. “Ohh, I’m starting to like your style man. The problem is, is that you have never met a level 60 warrior. You could take a whole village of people to confront them and they would laugh in your face and kill everyone there in minutes. Besides...The info is out there.”

He squinted his eyes at her. “What do ya mean?”

She said, “Scattered all over this island are books. They are bound to places that you have to physically travel to in order to get the information. It’s all part of the process. You see the deeper you get into the knowledge that these books hold, the more you want to know. You start to put together a personal library and start making sense of everything. The trick is though, that in order to get more books you have to travel further and further out into the island. Which means the monsters get tougher and tougher. And trust me, this place is huge. It’s a real grind. You need to constantly level and make yourself tougher. There are places still not discovered because the super high leveled people are tired of dying from going there. The pain is real man. It’s a mind killer.”

Kat’s eyes glazed over.

“I saw a man once that someone said was over a thousand years old. NO ONE could see his level he was so high. Barely looked human, primeval. He was huge, biggest human I had ever seen. Someone said he was called a cave man. A Neanderthal was the race he called himself. He lived way up in the northeast in a place no one else had ever been. Said he got his memories back after hundreds of years. He was way down here in the south because he heard there was a book he missed. Can you imagine? The man was hundreds of years old and he came lookin for a book, still searching...”

“There’s so much more about this place… It’s going to take you months before you even think you have a grip on it, then you will see something that blows your mind. I hate it here, but I’m stuck here, so I try to make the best of it. I wake up every morning and I thank the Gods for letting me be alive and eating delicious foods.”

“Let’s get moving, Ashley has killed everything within visible distance. We don’t want her to get bored or she will drag me into another dungeon run.”

They walked over to the woman. She was a skinny blonde wielding a war hammer that looked like it weighed more than her. She was twirling it around effortlessly like it was a baseball bat. “Hey… I’m Ashley nice to meetcha!”

“Hello, they call me Mac...”