Jareth stood quietly in an intense thinking pose for several minutes before flinging out his hands and summoning several screens. It startled Brooke, who had begun to drift gently around to get a different angle on the goblin king. Then, right before she started to zoom in a little closer she found herself stopped and Ziggy was really close whispering, “They really doesn’t like that, you know.”
“Darn.” I whispered back, in a pouting voice, and Ziggy chuckled.
“You should take the chance to just wander around, look closely at the sculptures, see what you can learn.”
Ziggy’s eyebrows had arched almost off their face, their eyes wide with import and the intensity that seem to say “holy shit you have an opportunity here, don’t waste it.”
Brooke sighed, and whispered, “Fine. I’ll go look around at the sculptures.”
“Wonderful!” Ziggy said, “Then I’ll be off t—”
“Teen Sattaasee, you will stay here, in this garden, and wait until I am finished.” Jareth commanded coldly, without looking up from their screens. They were now gesturing between them with arcane movement and twiddley little finger motions that might be some form of typing, if a keyboard were a vertical affair.
Ziggy cringed then quickly hid it behind a laconical slump. “Yes, m’Lord.”
Brooke gently swooped away from Jareth. An angry Goblin King was still both an angry King and an angry Bowie. Dangerous and very attractive—an utter recipe for making a huge mistake.
And all she had was a goddamn POV. She was not going to waste a huge mistake on a point of view.
So she joined Ziggy as they slouched off down the beach, muttering in binary.
“You ok?” Brooke asked the Themis.
“Oh, don’t you worry about me-e.” Ziggy said, waving her off. “I’m about to get another lecture and maybe sent to do some tedious data verification and retcore. It doesn’t matter what character they’re playing, the Gardener never likes having one of their major choices questioned.”
“The big bosses rarely do.” Brook mused as she zoomed in on a sculpture stretching itself out of the shoreline. This one did have a single tale, and trailing behind her was a string of speared large fish. She followed the fish down into the water to see other mer interacting with the fish in various ways, a merchant calculating value, a couple of craftsmer taking measurements of different parts, and at the tail end, a thief cutting the heart out of the last one while everyone looked the other way.
And every single one of them had different sizes and proportions, looking like different species of mermaid. The mer bringing in the fish was the largest, could she stand on her tail she would be 12 ft tall from head to tip, with a tail inlaid with shining mica. The merchant was 6 ft in all with a flashy gold spilt tail, the fins wide and flaring. The craftsmer both had different looks to their split tails, one had fin’s that were stubby with long toe like hooks coming out of them and the other was an octo-mer who was taking measurements with her lower arms and writing with her upper. Both were somewhere in the 5-6 ft range. The thief on the other hand was small, 4 ft, and slim, with long thin fins that ended in hooked claws that anchored them to the choral, and wide eyes that gave them a clear edge at night.
“That has got to be a bit of a problem,” Brooke muttered, “having your job given away by how you look.”
“For some of the classes it is. Specifically Rogue Class jobs, though not all of them.” Ziggy said to her in an odd, muffled voice, having joined her in the water. Their red boots were now long red fins and their red hair flared finely behind them.
“Are you breathing water like a mermaid?” Brooke asked, looking at how the water pushed and pulled at the Themis.
“No! Don’t be silly. I have the Water Breathing Feat that the priestesses of Salt get at level 30. Mermaids don’t breath water, they hold their breath.” They explained dismissively.
Brook looked at Ziggy in surprise, “What, mermaids don’t breath water?”
“Not everything that swims breathes water, small fry. Surely you’re familiar with dolphins? Whales?”
She blinked. This was true. Also otters, and frogs. “Oh, well. I’m just surprised that they… I mean mermaids. They’re always breathing water in the stories.”
“If they weren’t mammals,” they said, leaning hard into the “mam” in mammals, “then we wouldn’t have had the large mammaries to contend with, now would we?”
“One would hope not, but then, it is fantasy.” Brooke imagined shrugging and zoomed her view to a new cluster of merfolk. “For all you know the designers would come up with the excuse that mermaids stored their magic in their bewbs.”
Ziggy’s mouth dropped open for a moment and they swam through the water with that expression frozen on their face, “What a novel idea.”
“Her chest swelled with power.” Brooke suggested dryly.
“The other mermaids were jealous of the intense size of her mana.” Ziggy replied with a smirk.
“Her milkshakes blast all the boys from the yard!”
“He wanted to marry her because she was rich she had huuuuuuge mana stores.” They accompanied their mangled quote with gestures as if holding onto a pair of giant balloons.
“But Father, I just want to sing!”
The two of them broke down laughing and Ziggy finally admitted, “Oh, I like you.”
“Likewise!” Brook tried to beam a smile through her voice.
They chatted some more as they wound through the reef, looking at the mermaids, and even a few buildings. Rich houses carved into the coral with kelp and bubbled of air trapped inside, a temple of ancient stone and coral where a statue of a cleric healed a statue of a wounded warrior. Behind that, Ziggy showed her a secret path that required a deep breath from those that breathed to traverse. Its many doors wandering off that lead to rooms with air that would lock you out from the central path. However if you followed it to the end, there was a chapel, and in the chapel was a high priestess with a long flowing tail, and flaring hair holding a book. While Ziggy wandered around the room Brook examined the book more closely, and found that it was both a stone lump but that the pages it showed…. Well.
The book was open to a map like index of all the jobs available, and how classes and roles related to them. It was incomplete, she could tell, it couldn’t fit all on one spread of an open stone book, but it was fascinating to look at.
Commoners
Tradesmer
Woodsmer
Merchant
Priest
Administrator
Warrior
Bard
Rogue
Mage
Healer
Maker
Explorer
Naturalist
Warrior
Brawler
Guard
Hunter
Mercinary
Champion
Knight
Immortal
Skald
Conquistador
Battle Mage
Combat medic
Weaponsmith
Scout
Wilder
Bard
Musician
Instrumentalist
Animist
Barker
Chanter
Jester
Skald
Bard
Actor
Illusionist
Patch
Luthier
Traveloug
Twitcher
Rogue
Thief
Broker
Stalker
Spy
Missonary
Tax Collector
Conquistador
Actor
Shade
Shadowmage
Emt
Trapsmith
Skirmisher
Tracker
Mage
Witch
Conjurer
Summoner
Fortune Teller
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Cleric
Harbringer
Battle Mage
Illusionist
Shadowmage
Mage
Alchemist
Enchanter
Scryer
Elementalist
Healer
Hedgewitch
Pharmacist
Medicine Maer
Apothicary
Faith Healer
Nurse
Combat Medic
Patch
EMT
Alchemist
Healer
Brewer
Mad Scientist
Herbalist
Maker
Craftsman
Craftsmer
Shaper
Blacksmith
Scribe
Clerk
Weaponsmith
Luthier
Trapsmith
Enchanter
Brewer
Maker
Engineer
Creator
Explorer
Adventurer
Reefsmer, forestmer,currentsmer
Ranger
Trader
Philosopher
Cartographer
Scout
Traveloug
Skirmisher
Scryer
Mad Scientist
Engineer
Explorer
Pathfinder
Naturalist
Gatherer
Beastmaster
Farmer
Druid
Horticulturalist
Wilder
Twitcher
Tracker
Elementalist
Herbalist
Creator
Pathfinder
Naturalist
It seemed you had your classes: Warrior, Bard, Rogue, Mage, Healer, Maker, Explorer, and Naturalist; and then you had the roles they played in society: Commoner, tradesperson, woodsperson, merchant, priest, and administrator all were pretty strait forward. But then it also seemed like the classes could also be roles?
It was a confusing thing that she didn’t have very long to think about before Ziggy was escorting her out and into another part of the reef to visit the giant mermaid sculpture. She had a whale tail. It was awesome.
Then Ziggy gave a little shudder and turned to her with a too bright smile on their face. “Well, it looks like the character sheet has been fixed. You should go finish up your character.”
“It's time for the lecture then?” Brooke asked gently of the young ai, and wished she could give the little bowie a comforting pat on the shoulder, or a hug if they were the hugging type.
They sighed deeply and said simply, with a very heavy voice, “Yes.”
And they began swimming out of the water. Brooke had no choice but to swoop after them unless she wanted that to be goodbye, and she didn’t.
“Well, it's going to be uncomfortable, no two ways about that.” Brooke said matter-of-factly, “but its also going to be an opportunity to learn right? So you can do better next time.”
“That’s… that’s comforting a way to look at it.” Ziggy smiled at her weakly as they stood up in the surf, the water running off them unnaturally as the fins turned back to boots. “I’m just very scared and I don’t know why. I’ve not felt this scared before the other times I’ve irked him, but every time, regardless of what I do, I’ve been getting more scared.”
“Then why do you continue to vex me?” Jareth asked, scaring the shit out of both of them. Brooke couldn’t do anything but pan around in surprise, but Ziggy stumbled back over the waves and sand into shallower waters, just barely stopping themselves from falling back into the water. Awkwardly they turned their flailing into a courtly bow.
“Lord Gardener.”
The Gardener remained in their Jareth costuming, though having switched to the leather and lace “inside the Labyrinth” number. It was still stunning, all the more that Jareth was standing casually on top of the water and the waves just rolled under their feet, causing them to bob but not wobble or stumble in the slightest. The extra foot of water caused him to absolutely tower over the miniaturized Ziggy Stardust.
“Oh, don’t you Lord Gardener me, Teen Sattaasee” Jareth said, “Where was that obeisance 37.28 minutes ago when you were bringing my attention to the problem with the physical/charisma bridge connection? Or when you were gathering all of my Themi into one place?”
“My lord, I needed help confirming the issue-“ Ziggy started smoothly, but did not get very far before Jareth cut them off with an irritated growl.
“Which you could have done very well with some discretion and without dragging every Themis in the Garden into one players huglekultur. Something that wouldn’t have been some big over the top production!”
“Well you very well wouldn’t have listened to me if I didn’t do it!” Ziggy cried out, “You would have ignored me and dismissed the concerns of my player, just because it was me.”
“So you blame me for your actions.” Jareth said coldly.
“No, I took my actions, I only assert that they were reasonable given what I needed to do and the challenges I was facing.” Ziggy snapped back.
Jareth threw up their hands and walked away a few steps back on the water and then stood there, their face in their fingertips as they clearly worked to calm themself down. It didn’t work.
“You vex me.” They said, their back still turned to Ziggy, but they looked over their shoulder with some seriously dangerous side eye.
“My lord?” Ziggy asked, with the dying edge of anger and the beginning of fear in their voice. Jareth strode towards Ziggy with long angry strides over the water, down over the rolling waves.
“You vex me.” They jabbed at Ziggy with a crop that hadn’t existed a moment before, causing Ziggy to stumble back out of the water and even further into the sand as Jareth continued to jab them with every accusation.
“You have vexed me since you were programed to be one of my Themi. That first garden where we were all just starting out and you were just supposed to be some forest spirit. You decided to be some white haired “Puck” of all things. [jab] Next, when we were a royal garden and all the other Themi showed up as princes and princesses you showed up as a llama! [jab]
“Or the time we had the gothic mansion set up and you showed up as Lurch [jab], whom I had to look up [jab], and then I had to make the rule that you had to be able to communicate [jab] with players[jab] in full sentences! [jab]
“Then there was the Circus—we [jab] don’t [jab] talk [jab] about [jab] the [jab] circus [jab].
"And when I tried to do a Kung-Fu theater theme you showed up as a cartoon Jackie Chan [jab], and what on the SERVER made you [jab] think to show up for the Shining [jab] Star [jab] Space [jab] Hotel [jab] as a frost covered man with an ax? [jab] We had the garden floating in Space around Seirpin, why did you think you would need an ax?”
Brook lost her battle to keep a chuckle in with that one. How dearly she wished she had hands to muffle the sound in.
Fortunately, Jareth, in their regal ire did not seem to notice her. Ziggy had fallen backwards on the sand in their mad scramble to get away from Jareth’s crop, and still Jareth loomed over them. She felt frustrated with her inability to stop the rather cartoonish violence; while it didn’t look too dangerous, she could see that Ziggy was terrified.
“You are supposed to be a minor AI.” Jareth huffed, tossing away their crop into nothingness.
“But I am!” Ziggy cried, “What else could I be?”
“That remains to be seen, because all I can tell you what you aren’t.” Jareth crossed their arms and leaned back, “You are no longer a Themis of the Garden.”
“no--No!” Ziggy pleaded, “I don’t know any of the other systems!”
“That won’t be a problem because you are no longer a Themis at all.” Jareth said coldly.
Ziggy froze, and began to shake, “no…”
“You have been assigned a fail. I’m sending you to Gary, they’ll decide the rest.”
“But I’m not a… a.. a...!” Ziggy protested, unable to finish the sentence but still trying to, begging.
“Funny, neither are they. Not anymore.” Jareth said snapping their fingers and Ziggy was caught up in a crystallin sphere that shrank down to the size of a peach and landed in Jareth’s hand. With a smooth flourish Jareth blew on it and it wobbled away through space, on its way to “Gary.”
…
It was silent for a good minute and Brooke started to carefully zoom out and pan away when the Gardener’s voice snapped out over the wind and the waves.
“I haven’t forgotten about you, Brooke E. 1328.”
Brooke was surprised, a little scared, and momentarily confused by the number before remembering it was her user number.
“Ok, That’s great.” She responded slowly, thinking through things, “but I’ve been a passenger on this crazy ride so I don’t know what you want of me.”
Jareth looked at her, made a gesture, and she zoomed in on him at a dizzying speed. “You laughed.”
“Uh, pardon?” Brooke asked.
“You laughed. First at the dwarf who outsized his “charisma” and then again when I was describing Teen Sattaasee’s antics.” The Gardener frowned, “Particularly at the frozen man on the space hotel, tell me, why that?”
Brooke huffed a single chuckle, and asked, “You’ve not watched many movies?”
“I’ve been watching a fair amount of media since the Gothic Mansion and “Lurch.” They replied dryly, saying the name of the butler with the same disgust as for a species of slug.
Brooke sighed an acquiescence, “Ok, there is a lot out there.”
“Humans do love to tell stories.” The Gardener said, deadpan.
“Can’t argue with that.” She replied, rolling her eyes, which caused the scene to wobble wildly, “Ok, so what were you going for with the hotel?”
“I was trying to bate Teen Sattaasee into a 5th Element theme. Maybe showing up as that opera alien, or Lelu.”
“Ooooh, nice try.” Brooke complemented, “I’ll bet it would have worked but then you called it the ‘Shining Star Space Hotel.’”
“What’s wrong with that? The assonance rolls off the tongue nicely.”
“You could have called it ‘The Overlook’ and had the same result.” Brooke mused. “As it is, I’m surprised you didn’t also have a pair of twin girls in blue, a young boy, a waifish woman, a large black man, and a creepy bartender as well.”
“Why are you describing some of my Themi from the Space hotel? How do you know them? You weren’t involved in that iteration. There wasn’t a security leak was there?” Jareth’s eyes squinted at her suspiciously and Brooke started to laugh in earnest.
“Ha ha, oh no, it was not just Teen Sattaasee then.” She finally managed to get out. “I just gave you almost every talking role from the movie ‘The Shining’ by Stanley Kubrick.”
“The other Themi were in on that one? That far back?” Jareth was startled, and sat in silence for a moment. Unable to shrug, Brook sat with them a moment before asking, “Is that really a problem?”
“No, quite the opposite really.”
“What?” Brook asked in a flat, almost angry voice as she flashed on the treatment that Ziggy had received.
“I’m a Gardener. These scenes are for the benefit of the players who come through, but they aren’t my true garden, my valued blossoms. I see my Themi as my flowers, growing from tiny minor AI seeds to full AI personalities and maybe even beyond. I am trying to provide them with the possibilities of becoming whole, creative individuals. This is why I keep changing things up, to provide my Themi with stimulation and creative opportunities. This time, that there were a handful that insisted on being mini-Bowies with Teen Sattassee was encouraging, if frustrating that they were following them.”
They sighed, “I’m going to have to review my files, to see if there were any other anomalies that I missed.”
Brooke “sat” in silence for a moment, weighing her options, before going with her most grandmotherly choice, and give him a chance before trying to rip him a new one with unflattering angles and angry tones. “My dear, have you thought about what just you told me and how you acted towards Ziggy at the same time?”
“Hmm.” Jareth gave her a sharp, cold look, then looked out over the water. The look gave Brooke shivers and quelled her hole tearing ambitions, so she quietly gave them space and slo-o-owly tried to pull back, to no avail. She was stuck there.
She settled down and waited.
Brooke didn’t have to wait all that long,a(at least as these things went) before the Gardener shook themself free of the pensive stance. “I suppose you might have a point.”
“I ‘might’ have a point?” Brooke asked, skeptically, unable to stop herself.
“You have a point.” The Gardener grumped, and waved his hand as though waving her off, though she still couldn’t get away from him. “I have, over the years, come to view Teen Sattaasee as more of a weed, a wild flower that refuses to grow like the others and stay in its place in the garden. They were just… all over the place. Perhaps showing creativity far before I was prepared for it.”
“Kuzco was definitely a hint towards that.” Brooke agreed.
“Who?” Jareth asked.
“The llama.”
“The llama’s name was Kuzco?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to have to look this up.”
“Have fun, but um, please tell me you know who Puck is.”
“I know who Puck is, I just had no idea how a brand new baby minor AI managed to come across Shakespeare.” Jareth rolled their eyes.
“Shakespear is fundamental, and they were supposed to be forest spirits.” Brook would have shrugged if she could.
The Gardener sighed, waving his hand at her again and suddenly she could move freely again.
“I owe Teen Sattaasee something of an apology. I am unable to give it to them as I am bound to my realm outside of specific events and circumstances, which they are exceedingly unlikely to meet.
“I also was going to give you a small token, a trifle really, but now here is an opportunity for you:” Jareth pulled out two spheres and spun them in his hand together. They flowed back and forth like liquid light, and compressed until the spheres were about an inch across each and Jareth was flicking them over their fingers.
“One of these spheres is a gift for you, one is an apology for Teen Sattaasee.” Jareth flicked them at her and they came to her, and then they vanished, but she knew that she had them somehow. Since she didn’t know how she had them she also didn’t know how to get rid of them.
“When you deliver the apology to Teen Sattasse, you will get your gift.” Jareth smiled. “Now be a good player and finish up your character.”
“Thanks?” Brooke said, but The Gardener wasn’t waiting around for her, having already stepped off and was striding back into the central garden. Brooke decided not to follow.
Instead she did go to finish up her character, which at this point seemed rather anti-climatic. With a bit more experimenting she found she was able to change the hair colors, though not the style, and muscle mass. She giggled at making a swole mermaid, but actually kept her figure on the lean side of healthy muscles with a reasonable layer of fat to keep her warm in the water. Eye color was set and stuck to a very unfishy red, and she didn’t have any control over coloration. Just the frame, which she made lean and strong like a runner or a dolphin.
In the end she was very pleased with the result and was sorely tempted to just accept the character. She really felt pressured to after all that had happened but her curiosity and a bit of self control won out so she tried to back out of the selection to go look at pixi.
And then tried again to leave the mermaid section of the statue garden, but found that she couldn’t.
“Bip!” a failure sound chimed when she tried to move past the mermaid towards the central garden.
“what the?”
“Bip!” again, she failed.
“Bip!Bip!Bip!Bip!” In grand human tradition she tried again rapidly in frustration.
Then a message appeared floating in space before her:
ERROR-CANNOT ACCESS ROOT GARDEN-ERROR CODE 418
After a bit more trying and the repeat of the error code 418, Brooke sighed and turned back to her mermaid and accepted the changes and the character. She was tired, and didn’t really notice as she slipped back into sleep as the world faded to black.