Chapter 24: Dove? |
On the table sat a snow-white dove, resembling a finely crafted marble sculpture, adorned unusually with a brass compass around its delicate neck—a compass for which Duncan had diligently searched throughout the ship. Nearby, the dark sheen of an obsidian knife captured his attention. The bird maintained a dignified pose, as if posing for a classical painting.
Surprise and confusion marked Duncan’s face, met by an equally puzzling expression from the dove. Interpreting a bird’s facial expressions was a daunting task, yet Duncan felt he understood the bird’s penetrating gaze. He could read its complex expressions and sensed a strange wisdom in the slight redness of its eyes. The dove’s emerald eyes focused sharply, one eye tracking Duncan’s movements while the other moved erratically.
“A… dove?” Duncan broke the silence, his voice tinged with confusion and a twitch at the corner of his mouth. His mind flooded with questions—why a dove? What purpose did it serve here? Why was his compass around the dove’s neck, and what role did the knife play in this bizarre scene?
Would anything normal ever happen on this extraordinarily strange ship?
As Duncan’s mind buzzed with questions and speculations, the previously pensive dove snapped back to reality. It nodded in a surprisingly human-like manner and paced a few steps on the table, leaning toward Duncan. Stretching its neck, it let out a loud, resonant “coo.”
Duncan silently stared at the bird, iconic images of pirate captains with their avian companions flashing through his mind. He glanced down at his own captain’s uniform and murmured, “It’s true that a captain often has a bird, but it’s usually a parrot… What’s with the dove?”
To his astonishment, the dove bobbed its head as if agreeing, then spoke in a strangely mechanical female voice, “Transportation complete!”
Duncan’s thoughts and mutterings halted abruptly, and he nearly choked in surprise at the talking dove.
He remembered his first day on this ship, when he had encountered a talking goat head in the captain’s quarters. No longer a newcomer to the Vanished, the peculiarities of this world barely fazed him now. However, the talking dove momentarily caught him off guard before he regained his composure. A serious expression settled on his face as he conjured a faint, green, ghostly flame in his hand, his gaze fixed on the dove. “Where did you come from?” he demanded.
Duncan: “…?”
A flicker of confusion crossed Duncan’s face, followed by a deeper wave of uncertainty and amazement. The term “system administrator” used by the dove was completely out of place in his current world. It was nothing like the language of the talking goat head, Alice, or the shadow-cloaked cultists, but rather something Duncan, an Earth native, found familiar.
Unaware of the change in Duncan’s expressions, the dove pecked at its immaculate feathers, adjusted the brass compass around its neck, and strolled around the table. It paused by the obsidian knife, nudged it towards Duncan with its claw, and declared in the same robotic female voice, “Take this solar-powered battle axe and embrace the glory of combat!”
Startled, Duncan stood up so abruptly that his chair toppled over with a loud crash that reverberated through the room. He gazed at the dove, bewildered and amused by the absurdity of the situation.
This dove surely couldn’t belong to the Vanished or this bizarre world!
The words it spoke were comprehensible only to “Zhou Ming”!
The loud crash of the chair likely echoed outside the captain’s quarters. Soon, Duncan heard the mental voice of the talking goat head, “Captain? Are you alright?”
While maintaining his intense gaze on the dove, Duncan responded calmly, “I’m fine.”
“Miss Alice has arrived and wishes to see you. Should I…?”
“Handle it,” Duncan cut off Goathead.
“Yes, Captain.”
Duncan sighed and glanced briefly at the door leading to the chart room.
This Translation is hosted on bcatranslation.com
Goathead continued to nag Alice, and despite her attempts to leave, she was repeatedly thwarted. Duncan felt compelled to intervene, but decided to let Alice manage a little longer while he focused on more urgent matters.
Taking a moment to collect himself, Duncan settled back into his chair, ready to engage in a normal conversation with the odd dove on his desk. But as he prepared to speak, he noticed something he had previously overlooked.
A slender thread of ethereal fire, as fine as a hair, extended from the ghostly green flame dancing between his fingers. This thread of flame stretched about a foot before dissipating into the air.
Mirroring this, a subtle haze of the same ethereal flame enveloped the dove. The ghostly fire nestled within the dove’s white plumage, extending outward and fading into the air similarly.
With a crease of concern on his brow, Duncan raised his right hand. With a mere thought, the dove perched on the table vanished into thin air.
The moment passed, and the dove reappeared, this time perching on Duncan’s shoulder. It busied itself by pecking at his hair, issuing a loud “coo.”
With a flick of his finger, Duncan returned the dove to the desk. The brass compass hung around the bird’s neck, its polished surface reflecting the ethereal green glow of the flame.
Frowning, Duncan mused aloud, “…Could this be connected to the brass compass?”
He now believed strongly that there was a specific link between him and the dove, a bond even stronger than the one he shared with the Vanished. This might explain the dove’s knowledge of things uniquely familiar to him from his past life on Earth. Yet, the true reason for the dove’s sudden appearance remained a mystery.
Duncan eyed the peculiar brass compass with suspicion.
The string of events—from his experiments with the ethereal flame, to soul projection and corpse possession, and now the odd behavior of the compass—seemed to converge on this object.
With a moment’s hesitation, Duncan reached out to remove the compass for closer inspection.
The dove remained passive, not trying to evade him. However, Duncan’s fingers passed right through the compass as if it were an illusion, brushing only the soft, downy feathers of the dove’s chest.
Amused by Duncan’s futile attempts, the dove hopped twice in place and squawked, “Today is KFC Crazy Thursday, V me 50…”
Duncan, with a twitch of his eye, tested the compass several more times, struggling to accept the reality before him. Eventually, he had to admit that the compass was no longer tangible. It had transformed into an illusion, irremovably bound to the dove—an illusion that could not be touched or removed.
Could it be that the dove was the true manifestation of the brass compass?
A flurry of theories raced through Duncan’s mind, many so fantastical that even he found them hard to believe. The only certainty was that the dove’s emergence was deeply linked to his experiments with the brass compass during soul projection. These encounters might have altered the compass’s physical form.
Perhaps this was an intrinsic property of the brass compass, a fundamental characteristic of this “anomalous object”, or it could be considered a “payment for its use”. As for the peculiar behavior of the dove, it was not an effect of the compass but a direct result of “Zhou Ming,” the Earthling.
None of these theories could be definitively confirmed or refuted at the moment, unless Duncan discovered a comprehensive guide to the unusual objects aboard the Vanished.
For now, his main concern was how to handle this supernatural dove.
After pausing briefly to think, he decided to give the bird a name.
“I think it’s about time I gave you a name,” he said, tapping his finger against the desk as he spoke to the bird. “I have a feeling you understand what I’m saying, right?”
In response, the dove tilted its head, its small emerald eyes sparkling as it looked at Duncan. “Ai?” it asked in its mechanically inflected voice.
Comments 5