Mactan: Prologue

Prologue: Dimenticato - The Forgotten

And for what, pray I ask of you, does a man perform incredible feats that are neither expected of him nor necessary for his preservation? Glory? Reassurance of his competence? Deluded grandeur of predestination? One can only wonder, for it is often that history remembers outcomes - but rarely intentions.

May 18, 1524. Malta.

This morning I woke up to the beating of my own frailing heart, clashing with the steady dripping of the tiled roof above my head. Rain comes and takes its toll on the human spirit. And though I am but in my thirties, my body groans and creaks just from rising from my cotton-mat bed as though I have been on this earth twice as many seasons. This enervation - it's almost nostalgic longing for my youth-filled days.

My name is Antonio Pigafetta, born of the affluent Pigafettas of Vincenza. I am a catographer, an astronomer, a geographer, and a linguist. Today is the second month that I have spent in this well-fabricated prison of invisible steel bars and political restraint.

I live in this room a guest to the noble duke of Florence, but the time I spend here is time spent as a captive of my own country. Outside the large oak doors are guards - to guard me or to prevent me from running away, I am not sure anymore - along with many other things that I've lost faith in.

Now I'm writing this personal account of the greatest story I've come to witness, this day, with the crudest of writing implement in hand and only the most diluted of ink. It pains me to share such a story in such form but I believe I have to put this into writing by any means.

Beside me is a window overlooking an old world gradually being changed by shifting powers, and beyond that, a blue sky encompassing a new discovered world unfolding before our very eyes. To my side, a golden cross full of scratches and an sizeable earring - testaments to the idea that though the world may change there are standards that will forever remain -

Virtues.

And men who will go to lengths unimaginable to uphold them.

This is my tale to tell, as a legacy of what I know.