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Late Evening - Late Winter - Year 24 : Just South of Ampelos

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*WOOSH* *WOOSH* *WOOSH* Disrupting the thick snowy clouds beneath us with every flap of my wings, Hera, Krystallo, and I followed Chioni under the bright night sky, keeping our eyes on the horizon as we started approaching the island.

Up until that point we had mainly discussed some of the more anomalous data she had showed us previously, bouncing ideas off one another as we flew, only getting more puzzled as we thought about it more.

However, once we finally started reaching the edge of the island, the conversations started shifting toward the island itself.

According to Chioni, the island was relatively small, being a few hundred kilometers wide and a little less than a thousand kilometers long, however, the entire time I was overlooking it with my aura, it felt as if I was looking over an aged sand bar.

No matter where I looked, I simply saw.. nothing... Outside of a handful of abandoned estates, the entire island was just a mound of shallow, sandy soil, with some thin forests of half-sunken trees, populated by nothing larger than a rodent.

To say it was an unusual sight was an understatement. "Is the entire island like this?" Looking toward Hera, thinking she'd know, I quickly found her staring into the thick clouds beneath us with a similarly puzzled look. -Huh?-

"Hm?" Glancing over, Chioni looked a little confused before finally realizing we were looking through the clouds with our auras.

"Ah-!" She rather quickly turned flustered.

"You must be talking about how lifeless the island is, right?

" Seeing us both nod, she continued with haste.

"F-For the most part, yes. The entire island is quite desolate. "

"What the hell?" Quickly tilting my head as I looked over the sandy landscape, my thoughts started racing, questioning why it looked like the island was eating everything on its surface before Hera finally spoke up.

"Chioni," Finally looking up from the ground, she shot her a puzzled look. "When did this island form?"

-What?- It was a question completely out of left field. "~What do you mean?~"

"~I mean that I don't remember this island ever existing...~" Responding with her divinity, she looked up at Chioni with a mix of worry and confusion.

But Chioni could only shrug in response. "As far back as we are aware. It was said to be rediscovered after the end of the Great War, though, if that's what you're wondering."

"W..What..?" Hera's puzzled looked quickly turned back to the ground. "What do you mean rediscovered? This island didn't exist before the Great War." Turning to me, her gaze sharpened. "~Did you or Bahamut make it? It looks almost artificial...~"

But I could only shake my head in response.

"~I don't remember anything about that, no.

.. Although I'm not sure how much to trust my memories.

..~" -She does make a good point though.

..- For the ground hundreds of kilometers from the coast to still be largely sand, unless the island was regularly slammed with tsunamis or hurricanes, it didn't make much sense.

Chioni was quick to continue without realizing we were talking though.

"As far as we were aware, this island has always existed, there just isn't anything here worth taking advantage of.

" Looking back toward the horizon, she continued more casually.

"With its extremely sandy soil, there is basically no local ecosystem or resources, and with the frequent earthquakes, building here is a really bad idea.

Even with small quakes, the sand will shift and slowly swallow everything on the surface, whether it's a huge building or a tiny tree. "

-What the hell?- It made sense considering this island was right on a major fault line, however, if I wasn't seeing it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it.

"An island that eats itself..." Looking at all the half-buried trees, and pushing my aura into the ground a bit to find millennia-old debris scattered about, it was honestly kind of breathtaking.

Once under the sand, the sand would just work as an island-sized grinder, reducing even mana-strengthened metals into nothing under the blend of pressure and friction.

"Yeah, it's been especially bad recently.

Over the last few years, there would be a smaller quake every few hours, and while it seemed to be abnormally often compared to historical reports, it has gotten exponentially worse lately.

Around a month ago, the entire island was just vibrating.

.." With a mix of fear and confusion contaminating her gaze, she paused. "It was a really eerie experience..."

My expression stiffened in an instant. -That's not right...- "How long did it last?"

"An hour at most. At the end there was one final, big quake, then it fell silent again."

-An hour...- Falling into thought, my mind raced.

"~You think it could've just been the plate slowly slipping then finally giving way?~" Hera was quick to try and bounce ideas off me as well.

-It could if the plate was shifting north...- But something about it just didn't sit right. -Something about that just.. feels wrong...-

"~The timing also lines up with the start of the storm. You think the sudden shift could have exposed a magma chamber and that's why the water is boiling so rapidly?~"

-That.. isn't a bad idea, but...- "~That doesn't explain the radiation...~"

"~But how do you know the 'radiation' isn't just superheated, mana-strengthened water molecules moving super fast?~"

"~That.. might be possible...~" -Especially if all the researchers are young...- Looking up at Chioni, my expression turned troubled, and I sank further into thought. I'd only be able to know once we got there.

However, as we started approaching the 'hotspot', and I finally managed to get a good look at it through my aura, a wrench was thrown into everything.

-It really is radiation...- Specifically, neutron radiation, the kind that validated the least likely running theory I had.

-Did the plates shifting really cause two hunks of uranium ore to collide and fizzle? -

The issue was that I never knew uranium to be able to form like that. Forming from the collisions of neutron stars, uranium wasn't something so easy to accumulate naturally.

As I pushed my aura into the water though, I had to eat my words.

Sure enough, about three kilometers beneath the surface, within the plume of steam that reached into the millions of degrees, I found trace amounts of fizzling uranium.

It didn't seem like Hera had picked up on it though, even as we landed between a number of small, stilted shelters on the snow-covered beach, her aura stayed mostly on the surface. "~Looks like I was right...~"

-Hm?- Following her gaze out into the colossal wall of steam a few kilometers off the coast, I tilted my head before realizing what she was talking about.

"~Ah, yeah, you were.~" Turning back to look at the group of younger researchers populating the beach, I looked at the blazing, radiation-acting particles of mana-strengthened water ripping through the air nearly a kilometer away from the majority of the visible steam with a mix of concern and fascination.

It wasn't much, but considering the oldest of the researchers I could see were old elders, it was quite unlikely they could pick up on it before the particles could weave through their crystalline scales and get absorbed by their body, so, just as they observed, their body temperatures skyrocketed before their scales felt anything more than warm.

"~Besides the fact that those particles are way hotter than what a magma chamber could get it, there is some neutron radiation and trace amounts of uranium in the steam, so..." Until I jumped in and got a closer look, we could only guess.

However, after introducing ourselves to the younger researchers, we felt one of the quakes ourselves.

*RRRRRRUMBLE* Feeling the entire island suddenly start to shift and slide to the side, my eyes instantly shot open.

"There it is." Speaking as if it was nothing, Chioni looked over toward another researched and asked him to document it. "A meter shift east."

Snapping my gaze to her, nothing but questions filled my head.

"Huh?" Eventually noticing, she tensed up. "Is something wrong?"

"What do you mean..? The entire island just shifted a meter!"

Not understanding, she quickly tilted her head. "That's fairly normal for here. Usually its only a few centimeters, but big slips like this happen too."

Feeling my brain shortcircuit, my eye twitched a bit before I turned to Hera, questioning if I was really going insane.

But she noticed it too. "That.. wasn't a tectonic plate shift... The island just.. moved..."

The thing was, this island was on the same plate mainland Bahamut was on, a huge plate that generally moved north or northwest. -Moving east makes no sense... Let alone by this much...-

It was almost like.. the island was alive...

But when I finally pushed my aura into the grand, digging through hundreds of feet of sand, and another few kilometers of sandstone, rock, and debris, I was greeted with a sight of the last thing I expected.

Going wide-eyed, the researchers around us all gave me weird looks.

Knowing it was serious, Hera spoke with her divinity. "~Did you find something..?~"

I was quick to nod, but another part of me was at a loss for words, unsure whether to really say it yet...

But no matter how I twisted it, the solid, expansive hunk of metal I was looking at could only come from one thing. "~I think...~" Trying to spread my aura out over the plate of dense metal, I expected it to only stretch for a kilometer or so, perhaps just being a large wreckage...

But the word large couldn't do it justice.

No matter where I looked, there was more.. and more.. and more.. even a dozen kilometers out... "~I think.. the entire island is standing on top of an Acardi ship... I think.. the earthquakes are the wreckage shifting...~"

Looking back out over the water, I felt the air suddenly turn thick. -Just.. what kind of wreckage is it to be larger than huge cities...-