Boats were pushed out towards the island, each holding ladders as well as the usual arms and shovels. Nikita took her role seriously, and went herself to scout out the nearby jungles for angry natives, but none revealed themselves. Deeper inside, Nikita knew that the real reason she took this role was so that she could be the first to tread on this untrodden land.

The Isle of Pezenat was simply mapped out by its shape. Terrain and woodland was unaccounted for on the map, only its location. The island was long since moved here, taken out of the ground from the centre of the Amazonian Jungle. Nikita looked up in wonder at its gloriously blue-green jungles and, rising like a phoenix in the distance, thin black smoke smouldering from the side of its huge peak.

“Come on lads!” she yelled, forcing a more piratical rasp onto the dulcet tones of her old voice. “The legend can’t be too far wrong,” she said to Jethro, now standing by her. “Somewhere on this cursed island is the gate to the other world.”