28 Arrival at Fire Island

For the rest of our days traveling to Fire Island, Ichina was able to somewhat teach me how to control mana. Day one ended with me successfully centering my mana in my hand. It took a few hours and a some late night training, but I was able to do it in the end. Ichina says that it took her a week with two hour sessions in order to learn how to center her mana. However she keeps on bragging that she could center her mana in multiple areas at once.

Enter day two, I spent half of the day attempting to center my mana in multiple areas like Ichina. A god has to have bragging rights, am I right? It didn't take me long to realize that it was difficult. Possibly even impossible, but I did discover something with mana. I can decrease the size of the mana wherever I center it at. I was attempting to split it, but I somehow decreased the size. I asked Ichina about it, but she told me that she had no idea that you could even do that. She even attempted doing it herself, she was able to do it a lot better than I did.

Ichina told me that I should focus on fusing my mana and holiness together whenever I call upon my fire. Through meditation, I learned that I could increase my mana like I do my holiness. Combining them was not as hard I thought, to practice I would ignite my hand on fire. Then, I would center my mana on one of my fingers. I focused my holiness to attract to my mana, I was not successful with the first couple of attempts. I wasn't successful in most of my attempts. I lost count how many attempts I did to get it right, but by the time it got to that, it was already time to go to bed.

I would have been extremely bored this whole trip to the island if I wasn't training the whole way. Day three was mostly me trying to practice more and more. Ichina was either training me, reading my book on my God, or some book that I couldn't read the title of. We saw a few passing boats, many passed over us. Some waved at us, and one especially stopped for us. It was some old people asking us where we were going, we told them about the general island area.

While we were telling them about the island, they got more and more worried. They told us all about the dangers of the island, that there were demons roaming it. No sane man or woman were ever to go to the island. I didn't mind much, but Ichina was desperately terrified. I got her to calm down a bit, the old people even tried to calm her down. I never realized how scared she is of demons. Now that I think about it, I've never really seen any demons before. Soon after sharing some food and water, the old people waved us good bye and we sailed on toward the island, with the warnings looming in our minds.

*ARRIVAL AT FIRE ISLAND*

"ICHINA! I THINK I SEE LAND!" Azuka says with his foot on the edge of the boat, elevated from his other foot that stayed on the floor of the boat. He leaned in toward the island, inspecting it keenly, Azuka had never seen an island until today. The island had a small beach behind it was a cliff that overhung the beach. There seemed to be a dormant volcano to the far west of the island. Trees surrounded the inner parts of the island, stopping Azuka and Ichina from seeing anything past them.

BLONK!

The boat finally hit the island's shore, Ichina turns off the motor, opening it up and checking the fuel inside. "We have about another week worth of fuel. Hopefully we can go into the island get what we are- Wait. Azuka what are we doing here?" Ichina waited for an answer, silence, "Azuka?" Ichina closes the motor and turns around, Azuka had disappeared from the boat and into the Island. "Gheez we get to an unknown area and the man leaves the woman alone with all the luggage."

Ichina begins unloading all the bags out of the boat and onto the shore. After she finishes, Azuka walks from deep within the island, sweating from his heads to his toes, panting he desperately asks for water. She reaches in one of the bags and hands a bottle of water to him. Azuka drinks it with haste, emptying it within seconds, throwing the empty bottle on the sandy shores. Ichina picks it up irritated and placed it back in the bag. "Ichina, follow me I saw something up ahead that you might want to check out," Azuka said edging Ichina to follow him.

She doesn't budge, "Come on Ichina we should go~" Ichina doesn't budge only growing more and more irritated. "What are we doing here Azuka?" Azuka is speechless for a moment, but jumps at the question suddenly, "You have been on this boat trip with me for 3 days and you still don't know. How about we just relax and go check out what I found? Maybe we can get some actual sleep, on an actual bed." Azuka begins awkwardly inching toward the trees when Ichina asks her question again.

Azuka sighs, "I'll tell you on the way, you have to come see this." Ichina groans, but follows Azuka anyway. "So let me get this straight, you came here to steal from the grave of a dead God?" Azuka nods, "Yup, I need to prove to my master that I am the best thief ever," Azuka says with a serious tone in his voice. Ichina laughs despite the serious intentions, "You sound like your master is apart of the Thieves Guild or something." Ichina bumps into Azuka, who has stopped moving, she walks backwards as Azuka turns around. "That is because he is the Kennith McDove."

They both stare at each for what seemed like a short time, Azuka turns back around and starts walking again, leaving Ichina behind, slightly. She is stunned by the sudden revelation, but she regains focus and catches up to Azuka. "K-Kennith McDove?" Azuka nods, "Like THE Kennith McDove?" Azuka gets annoyed, "Yes, the Kennith McDove."

"Azuka! You were trained by a Guild Master! Not just the Guild Master, but the world's number one criminal Kennith McDove, who runs the Thieves Guild," Ichina exclaims with a mix of excitement and fear in her voice. "So what about it," Azuka asks slowing down his movements, crouching down. Ichina follows Azuka's actions, "Well Azu-" SHH! Azuka puts his hands on his lip shushing Ichina. He crouch walks over to the furthest bush, which had less trees in front of it, than any other bush. He signals Ichina to come closer, pointing down from the bush.

"Did you really just shush me-" Ichina stares beyond the bush in awe. There laid a village, with pitch black beings with horns roaming around the center of the village. They were only able to see the backs of the beings, having no idea how they faced looked. With no humans in sight, Azuka and Ichina both wonder if the creatures-no beings they were looking at were demons.