Dya remembered the temple of Salt in !nano Landsby where her parents took her once a month for blessings. It was in the bay, with a entrance both to land and to sea for all her worshipers. In the sanctum there was a trio of laminar flows coming down from the ceiling. In the temple the three streams of water twisted unnaturally and in defiance of the laws of physics into a beautiful if simple loose knot about 10 feet above the alter before continuing to splash down into a deep bowl on the alter.
In this dank and forgotten chapel there was only one, tiny laminar flow, needle like but still bright enough to light the room like a beam of light sneaking into a dark attic. It shone off the moisture of the matted kelp, and gave hints of the polished coral under the thick layer of mold on the walls.
The smell was atrocious and Dya counted it a miracle of the AI of air that she could breathe in this forgotten tomb of prayer. Or maybe the laminar flow purified enough air?
Cautiously, she crawled forward, and found the mat to be much like a water-bed. It held firm, not splitting or dropping her in below, but it was bouncy in a very fluid way. It rolled under her with every move and eventually the rolling motions came back to her, waves in a bottle. It was kind of fun, if a little difficult to navigate.
Fortunately, the chapel was small. So small it reminded Brooke of going to Italy and seeing the Ecstasy of St. Teresa, a magnificent sculpture that made stone clouds look like they were floating, and was also the most blatantly sexual sculpture of a saint she’d ever seen. The chapel it was in was tiny and made tinier by having intense Rococo decorations. Likewise, this chapel was tiny and it was being made smaller by intense mess.
It was a surprised then, that the altar was partially visible when she got there. Sure there was kelp slime built up around it across the surface of the alter but the bowl was perfectly clean, shining mother of pearl. She would have pushed it off as purely “game mechanics” but then the kelp around the bowl looked eaten into, as though splashed with a potent acid.
Curiosity spurred her to peel off a piece of kelp and reach it towards the altar. Where the stream of water splashed back out of the bowl and hit the kelp, holes formed. Interesting.
So she put the leaf into the stream of water coming down from the ceiling, and it vanished entirely. Dyaku would have started to feel worried about the holy water, but then some had already splashed on her and she suffered no ill effects.
She picked up more leaves and let the blessed water wash them into non-existence. Then, escalating, she grabbed onto a clump of the slimy mess and shoved it into the bowl with both hands.
DO you wish to offer [Rotting Kelp] to the goddess Salt?
“SHIT!” Dya flopped gracelessly back in surprise when the prompt appeared, and flailed a couple of moments as she slipped on the kelp slime. When she was finally able to sit up again the prompt was still there, over the alter. She felt embarrassed, she had become so enamored of disappearing the kelp she forgot the damned altar was right there. And that was all sacrilege, wasn’t it. Would the AI smite her just because?
She crawled back to the altar.
“I- Guess? I mean, If she doesn’t mind getting rid of it, I can shovel some of this mess to the altar and we can get rid of some of it.” She looked back towards the dark sliver of cave that she had crawled out of, “I don’t think I can push it all out that hole.”
There was a cold moment where she didn’t think she was actually going to get any sort of response, and then the computer text in front of her wavered and changed.
Do you wish to offer [Cleaning Labor] to the goddess Salt?
Brooke breathed a small breath of relief, the goddess was not going to smite her for sacrilege, and said yes. The kelp melted away in the bowl, and new text appeared:
The Goddess Salt is offering you a quest:
Clean the forgotten chapel!
This chapel lost its caretaker and was forgotten. Over time it has fallen into deep disrepair and is on the verge of collapsing into a ruin. Help the Goddess Salt clean the chapel by bringing her 100 lbs of rotting kelp to her altar.
Be warned, there is more than just slime and algae floating in these waters.
Rewards: Blessing of Salt, 1 lvl 1 item.
Accept?
Wooo! Her first quest! About time! And from a goddess no less. Sure it was cleaning but a quest was a quest and loot was loot. Fetch quests always did come first, right?
“Yes!” she said cheerfully and begun shoving the kelp around her into the bowl.
The first couple of fist fulls came easily, and piled into the bowl. After that it became more difficult as the further from the bowl she got the more stable the kelp was, and more tangled the strands were. She found herself scraping the most rotted kelp from the top and it was slow going. Taking a moment to think she decided leaving would be nice, so she started to pull kelp from around the entrance to the temple. She decided tp stick with it because found the slimy morass that clogged the tunnel to the temple to be the easiest to move as it broke up into large clumps that smelled the worst.
“Oh, gods.” Dya was at the mouth of the tunnel and had stretched out to grab a lump. A large lump. A large lump that had unbalanced her, causing her to land cheek first in the slime.
Suppressing another moan and, in fact suppressing any breathing at all, Dya wriggled her legs around for better balance and surged up, pulling the great stinking hulk with her. It immediately began the process of sliding out of her grip as she pulled it away and a few strands of kelp struggled to stay with its fellows. She didn’t give it much of a chance to really fight though, wrenching away and knee walking the clump to the as quickly as she could before her breath gave out.
Holding her breath while doing heavy lifting and holding her breath while swimming were two different things, Dya found. Where she could hold her breath for a full 10 minutes (ish) while swimming, hauling loads of kelp burned through her oxygen at twice the rate, it seemed. Racing against her clock and the slipperiness of the evil ooze in her arms, Dya took as big of knee strides as she could manage on the kelp. She felt the slime start to trickle down her chest and shuddered.
Her current theory of breath holding is that while swimming she was using her body as it was intended. The legs kicked in their froggy kick, she had her fins and webbed fingers but her body stayed mainly in line. This knee walking was a lot of work and using her legs in ways that up until now, they hadn’t. She didn’t feel any burning muscle sensation, perhaps Brooke hadn’t had those part of her nervous system filled in yet. Maybe they were being removed from the game for enjoyment of playing. Either way, she had no way to know the exact strain she was putting on her body at the moment, except for the shortened timer floating just below her brow ridge on the right.
She had less than half a minute left when she collapsed next to the altar, dropping the clump in the bowl. As she watched the clump dissolve into clean water, Dya bit her lip and took a nervous look around. She hadn’t taken her breath yet, and really didn’t want to with the slime running down her from brow to belly.
She carefully stuck out her pinky and dipped the tip into the powerful holy water, expecting to feel it burn or something. Instead, it just felt wet. No concentration of holiness that burned through her flesh like butter or something like that. Just wet water.
“Sorry, Goddess” she click-squealed and then scooped water out of the basin with both hands, splashing it onto her face and then rubbing. The slime started to lift but with only 15 seconds left to her timer, Dya knew it wasn’t enough. So very glad that there was no one else there, she stuck her face into the pencil thin stream of holy water as it dropped from the ceiling and scrubbed.
When she opened her eyes again she felt clean. Well, cleaner. And when she gasped in her breath, she was relieved to realize that the air smelled sweeter than it had before.
Congratulations! You have gathered 100.025684 lbs of rotting kelp. Keep going for greater rewards! Would you like to complete this quest or continue?
Well then, that was interesting. She had more clumps to go before the entrance was clear enough to reasonably use so it just made sense to keep going.
“aahh… Continue?” Dya tried.
Keep gathering kelp to improve the rewards for completing this quest!
After that, Dya found another interesting thing waited for her in the bottom of the altar’s bowl.
“What?” she clicked, as she reached in to pick up the handful of purple, broken, and dulled spines from the bottom of the bowl. At least she thought they were spines, they looked like some of the urchin spines used to decorate the house.
“Where did you come from?” She said out loud, wondering briefly if this was supposed to be some weak sort of loot drop. If it had been Real Life she’d have assumed they had been tangled up in the kelp mats she was hauling around. This place seemed so real that maybe, just maybe, they did come from the kelp?
But if so, how did they get there. And why?
Brooke found that one of the most unrealistic and yet also endearing things about games and stories is that usually, unless you’re a late 19th Century serial writer, everything the author/programmer takes the time to mention/make is there for a “reason.” It’s a piece of the puzzle, a significant symbol, or some other such rubbish that is often as ham-fisted as the author/programmer can make it.
So now, here she was in a literal game, faced with the appearance of spines in a place where there should be no spines, and she suddenly felt like she had been handed a puzzle. But not one of the good ones, more like one of the “here, we’re going to lead you by the nose” sort of ones.
All of which is to say that at that time, she decided to just set the spines aside, keep her eyes out for any other oddities, and keep cleaning; resting securely in the knowledge that she would eventually find out what was going on with them.
“OH MY GOD! *hurk*Gasp*hork* What the FUCK is that SMELL.” Dya found herself yanked out of her reverie by the sudden sound of another person in the space.
The voice was feminine, young, and speaking in English, of all things. It had been so long since Brooke had heard English that it took her a moment to process what she was hearing, and then she was crawling and slithering down the now more spacious yet still slimy hall and onto remaining wall of slime as fast as she could manage while calling out. "Hi! Hello! yes! It's awful!"
“Hello?” The girl at the end of the tunnel called back automatically, then, “There is someone in here?”
“For now!” Dya was scrambling to get on top of the slime at the end of the tunnel, a task that was much harder now that she had loosened up the end.
“How do you stand the smell?”
“Poorly!” Dya struggled and flopped to get to the entrance. “I’m trying to get rid of it!”
“You have a long way to go.”
“Tell me about it.” And then Dya could see the entrance.
Backlit by the blue glow from light that filtered down outside was the girl from earlier. Faintly in the light she could see the lurid orange circles with black centers that decorated her skin covering her with false eyes. The false eyes on her face made her look like a drider with stacked eyes. Eyes that were all looking at her in horror and disgust.
“You’re laying in the smelly slime!” She exclaimed, sculling away.
“There’s no other way to get into the temple.” Dya explained, embarrassed. “I’m cleaning it up…”
“But… but, ohmygod, and I’m supposed to help you?” Her confusing outburst was colored deeply with horror.
“You are?” Dya was now confused. “How did you even find me? I’m hiding from those stinky boys.”
“Oh, you are not one to talk about stinky.”
“They are stinky in a much worse way.”
The girl paused and then conceded the point. “Ok, that’s true. They are pretty awful. They are bullies.”
“Oh, you're the girl they were being asshats to. Glad to see you're ok." Dya began working loose a chunk of slime with the tips of her fins, what would pass for her toes, as she talked, "Pip and Pra aren’t too bad on their own, but Thus is a real jerk. He makes them worse.”
“Thus was the big one with the black and yellow?”
“Yep.”
“A total åkåk.”
“Totally.” Dya agreed. “So hey, how did you find me?”
“You left the spear in the sand down there.” She pointed down to the entrance to the cave with the offending spear in her hand.
“Oooohh. Crap. Thanks for getting that.” Dya dove into the water next to her, and the girl recoiled, and held out the spear to keep as much distance from the slimy Dya as possible.
“Why are you up in that awful gunk?” she asked as Dya took the spear.
“There’s a hidden temple back here.” Dya smiled, “and I have a quest to clean it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What's the reward?”
Dya blinked. “I… don’t know. All I know is that I’m past the basic rewards. I just decided to keep going after the initial quest.”
“Oh.” She was chewing on her lip.
“I’ll bet you could get the quest too and get your own rewards. Its gotta be something worthwhile to save a failing temple of the goddess.”
“Goddess? Which goddess? Veruka or Anthozoa?”
Dya couldn’t help her smug smile, “Salt.”
“Salt?! Goddess of the oceans, overseer of all currents within and protector of all that inhabits the brine?”
That was too much and Dya started giggling and soon they were both laughing, “Yes! that’s the one.”
“Okay, maybe I can help you, if it's that goddess Salt.” Then the girl looked at the slimy pile and winced, “I guess…. I … How did you get up there?”
“I climbed.” Dya shrugged and the girl looked up in revulsion. "Why do you think you have to help me?"
"I got a quest from the system, 'find the girl who rescued you and thank her by helping her.'" Zuchi said.
“Ok, I'm not going to argue with the system. You go ahead” or not Dya thought to herself “while I toss this away and give the boys less reasons to hang around.”
When she came back she found that the girl had managed to pull herself up after all, and was almost down the hall, gagging with determination as she pulled her body along with her upper arms while weakly kicking with her legs. The girl had some powerful arms but her legs and fins were really weak. Dya caught up to her as they reached the entrance to the chapel and spilled out into the room.
“Wow” She wheezed into the faintly lit room.
“Yeah.” Dya agreed, and then turned fully towards the newcomer “So, I’m Dyaku, but I go by Dya.”
“I’m Zuchi.” The girl said, and then reluctantly took in another breath. Dya felt a hand bump against her, and she took it. They shook, which was definitely not the greeting that mer were supposed to greet each other with, but the pressed hand circles just seemed awkward in open air and they had been talking in English. It almost made Brook squeal “I take it you're a Player!”
“Yes! You are? You are! We’re talking English!” Zuchi seemed to forget the stench for a moment as she seemed to suddenly notice that they had been talking in English the entire time. “I didn’t realize! You’re the first player I’ve run into! Though I think I saw a glavweish player on the shore a bit back.”
“Really? What type? and how could you tell?”
Zuchi frowned, “I… don’t know. I’m not sure it really happened, I… these false memories are really messing with my head, yah?”
Nodding, Dya agreed, “Yeah, I get you. So you were told by the computer.”
“That’s one way of putting it, I guess.” Zuchi replied, sounding troubled, “but yeh, he was a beastkin kid with his parents. He looked largely human so he hadn’t bonded with a spirit yet. But his parents seemed to be variations of cowkin.”
“Did he see you?”
“Yes, but his parents wouldn’t let him into the water and mine wouldn’t let me out of it.” She dismissed it with a shrug and then turned back towards the center of the chapel. “So that is the altar?”
“Yeah, that’s where you can get the quest, I think. Here, I’ll show you.” Dya grabbed a slimy chunk of goo and thrust it at Zuchi’s outline in the dark, “You’ll need this.”
“Oh, UGH.” Zuchi moaned when she took it from her. Dya reached back to grab as large a chunk as she could and then lead Zuchi through to the temple. Zuchi had some trouble with the knee walking but got a hang of it quickly though she had to take a lot of breaks to knee walk essentially 20 meters grumbling all the way about how a temple to Salt should have more water in it. Dya did not disagree though she felt impatient with the pace, “I think the flow of water is being blocked by all this seaweed.”
“But then where is this nasty stuff coming from?” Zuchi said in a slightly whiny tone.
“I don’t know, but if we keep cleaning, I’m sure we’ll find out.” Dya said, finally kneeling before the altar. “And here’s the part you’re going to love—getting rid of it!”
As Zuchi stumbled closer Dya stuck her basketball sized lump of goo into the water and it dissolved quickly under the flow, a couple of the broken spines and a full if small urchin shell falling out. She added them to the pile she had started on the weed covered altar. Zuchi didn’t seem to notice the extras as she hurriedly stuck her own handful of slime in the stream and then started washing her hands vigorously under the water—only to jerk back in surprise at what Dya assumed was the sudden quest prompt.
“Yes.” Zuchi accepted the quest. “but does it have to be that slime from the entryway?”
Dya rolled her eyes. “I’ve been able to pull pieces of kelp from the matt and offer it, so if you want you could try to make a dent in that.”
“yeah, I’ll do that.” Zuchi agreed and sat back on her fins, reaching for a nearby strand. Dya made her way back to the entrance to clear more of it out.
A couple of passes later she came back to find Zuchi practically sitting in the altar’s bowl and using her hands to redirect the flow of the holy stream to splatter around the altar. This was, actually, pretty successful in melting away the kelp and as Dya watched, Zuchi managed to get the entire altar surface clear of the kelp.
“Mind if I get rid of this?” Dya asked as Zuchi struggled to get the stream to go further than the surface of the altar, without success.
“Huh? Oh, ew. Have at it.” Zuchi scrambled to the edge of the now pristine white altar. Dya felt her eyes roll again at the girl’s squeamishness and shoved the clump and her hands under the stream.
“I’ve almost got the entry clear.” Dya rinsed her hands in the holy water.
“That’s good, I don’t ever want to touch that gunk again.” Was Zuchi’s predictable reply. Dya had a feeling this girl was going to want to scream if the game ever tried to send her down a sewer to kill rats. “I’m having trouble making any headway on this tangled mess. I’ve barely been able to pull free a few strands and that was like, what, 15 lbs? Clearing off the full altar was another 20 but I need 65 more for the quest.”
“Yeah, that’s part of why I was clearing the entrance, you know, beyond not wanting to have to squirm down a full tunnel of rotting kelp to get out.” Dya shrugged. “I was able to work a couple of clumps free here and there but really it's not until it gets around the door that the kelp breaks down enough to break apart easily.”
“ew.” Zuchi shuddered, and pulled her orange and blue fins in a bit tighter to herself. Dya’s clump melted away to show a second uchin shell, largely intact, about the size of her cupped hands. Dya handed it to Zuchi.
“here, try this.”
Zuchi gave it a puzzled look and then said, “I’ve tried to bring the water to the seaweed. It melts away some but it doesn’t count.”
“What if you used the water as a blade to cut out a chunk?”
“That… might work.” Zuchi started scooping water out of the bowl with the shell. Dya went back to hauling The final chunks of slime from the entrance and then took the other shell and helped trace out a chunk of the seaweed roughly 5 x 5 feet. Then, together, they found a grasp on it, and hauled it forward, using their body weight to pull it onto the altar.
Maybe the next one should be a bit smaller. Dya thought as they scrambled to haul it up. My knees were just not built for this!
The matt of seaweed turned out to be a foot thick, with leaves and stems densely tangled. More urchins began appearing in the basin, only, this time, they were still alive. Some were as small as Dya’s thumb, and some were as big as both fists put together. They were purple, and spikey, and Zuchi had stabbed herself in the thumb on a spine before they had realized the beasts were there.
“Oooowwwww!” Zuchi shrieked, dropping her handhold on the matt. Dya dropped her part of the matt and waddled over it to get to Zuchi. The girl had a hole pierced in the fleshy part of her hand between her thumb and forefinger, fortunately missing tearing the web. The spine of the urchin was needle like, and broken off about 2 inches below the piercing.
“Oh, that looks bad.” Dya said thoughtlessly and Zuchi began to cry.
“Get it out get it out get it out!”
“Ah, are you sure?” Dya hesitated, wondering if they shouldn’t go get an adult to do it instead. Or a healer.
“Just get it out!” Zuchi wailed.
“Okay! Okay!.” Dya didn’t roll her eyes as she grabbed the girls hand, but she did call her a baby under her breath, “G’åk.”
“Am not.” Zuchi sniffled back in Jayn, the mermaid language. “I’m 26.”
Dya blinked. She didn’t think anyone so young would be uploading like this. “Then why are you acting like one?”
Zuchi was silent for a moment, and then hesitantly said, “Acting? AAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Dya had waited until she was talking to yank out the spine. Now the wound was bleeding, and Dya was very glad that they weren’t in the water that surrounded them.
“If its acting, then you’re doing an excellent job. Here, wash it off on the altar.”
“The priests would flip their shit if they knew how we were abusing the poor alter.” Zuchi sniffled and reached for the water.
“yeah, well, maybe they shouldn’t have let it get so messy.”
The blood sizzled and Zuchi hissed, yanking her hand back.
“Ow! That…hurt.” A sentence begun with indignation ended in tones of wonder, and Dya leaned over to see. The bleeding hole in Zuchi’s hand had vanished, the skin was now unbroken and unblemished.
“That’s… really useful.” Dya said.
“Wait, is this what they use for healing at the temple?” Zuchi asked, “The healing potions?”
“Maybe? But those smell like salt, mint, and habzhe kelp.”
“And they don’t sting as much.” Zuchi agreed, “that water smited my wound away.”
“Praise Salt!” Dya giggled and Zuchi laughed, then sighed.
“Ok, fine, yes, I was acting like a big baby. The emotions in here can be so overwhelming.”
“sheǂ, yes! Yes they are!”
“Hey, Kids aren’t supposed to swear.”
“Says the 26 year old in a 6 year olds body.”
“Fine.” Zuchi said in a false grumble, and let out a single chuckle.
“But yeah, I think they’re calibrating the endocrine systems and that means our emotions can go all over the place.”
“hm. That explains the second childhood, I guess.” She mused.
“That and the fact that they are sadistic bastards.” Dya rejoined. “Ready to get back at it?”
“only if you can explain to me where the urchin came from.” Zuchi grumbled, but also stood up on her knees and got back in position.
Hauling the chunk of weeds got easier and easier as they pulled and very soon they had pulled the whole 5x5 chunk of kelp onto the alter to disappear. While they didn’t find the urchin that had stabbed Zuchi they did see a couple more tiny urchins drop into the bowl of the altar and rapidly vanish. Apparently as living things and sources of food, they were accepted as sacrifices to the god.
“Mom wanted me to bring home something to eat.” Dya told Zuchi as she watched the urchin dissolve.
“Those were too tiny.” Zuchi said, “I’ll keep an eye out for bigger ones.”
“I’m sure you are!” Dya smirked.
“Hey, that spine hurt! I’d never been hurt in this game before, have you?”
Dya ignored her and moved over to the hole they had created in the mat of kelp. The water was dark and only the barest sliver of light was penetrating it from above, most of it being blocked by the 2 ft thick wall of kelp that was now sagging a little more into the water under her weight.
Carefully, she leaned over the edge and stuck her head in, then wriggled a bit more to hang over the edge and see past the kelp, but it didn’t help. The light that managed to penetrate the water didn’t reach further than the stairs at the base of the alter.
She pulled herself out with some help from Zuchi.
“I can’t see anything under there, its too dark.”
“Let me see.” A head dunk and extraction later, she agreed. “No light is getting through. Did you have any trouble sleeping in the dark as a kid?”
“I…what?” Dya was lost by the complete non sequitur.
“When I was a kid,” Zuchi continued, headless of Dya’s confusion, “we had fish that would get into the home and scare me, so my adra would cast this night light spell so I could fall asleep. It seemed simple enough.”
“It was something like ‘soü !! pouf gä.’ And she flicked her fingers in an awkward imitation of something, but nothing happened. Dya got the picture though.
“My da did something similar. It was nice.” Then she wrinkled her forehead in a concentration frown, and moved her hands a couple of times, remembering imitating him as a kid. “I think it's like, ‘Wou soü !! pouf gä.’”
And as she flicked her fingers, a tiny, tremulous light came into being.
And then went away, followed by a sudden prompt screen in Dya’s face.
Congratulations. By casting a common spell you have opened up the path of the Mage. Mage jobs are now within your grasp. You have access to the following jobs:
Mage
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Would you like to choose a job?
You may not choose a job at this time as character age is below the threshold for jobs.
“huh.” She let out a soft grunt of curiosity.
“What?” Zuchi asked.
“Keep trying to get that spell to work, and you’ll get a job prompt.” Dya said, dismissing the window and trying the spell again. She didn’t get it right that time but did the time after that, and a ball of light flickered to life at her fingertips, even stronger than before.
“Oh, wow, you are orange.” Zuchi said, seeing Dya for the first time in more light than the pencil thin beam illuminating the chapel.
Dya snorted a laugh out and agreed, “and you’ve got eyes all over you, Argos.”
“What?” She responded with confusion, and looking down at herself in the light of the holy stream.
“Those spots you have, they all look like eyes, all over you, like Argos.”
“Who the heck is Argos?” Zuchi was looking at her in confusion.
Dya sighed, “never mind, it's not as much fun if you have to explain.”
Zuchi rolled her eyes and then kept trying to cast the magic night light while Dya turned her night light to the hole they had cut into the mat. It went out right as she was about to plunge her head into the water.
“Damnit.” Dya cursed softly and then cast the light again, plunging her head and hand into the water.
Directly below the hole she could see dirty, slimy, algae covered stairs with nudibranch and snail trails creating wiggling patterns. However, even before she saw what else lay beneath her skin was prickling at the sound of thousands of tiny, scraping teeth. As her light zipped forward towards where she clumsily threw it, she saw the source of the horrifying noise.
[https://mcmcreates.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/illustration.jpg]
Urchins. So many urchins. Countless urchins. She didn’t even know where to begin. There was the even bulge of what should have been benches for mer to rest on, but every single one was covered in spikes. Some of the spikes were smaller, some were larger, but behind each ball of spikes was a trail of glistening white where the urchin had scraped clear the aggressively growing algae. Hundreds, maybe thousands of sea urchins, a variety of reds, purples and blacks, and a disturbing variety of size. Thumb sized, golf ball sized, egg sized, softball… There were three massive urchins that were the size of her head near the walls.
Zuchi plunged in down beside her and her light re-lit the room and Dya had the chance to see more, that the kelp too was growing through the room with wild abandon, and seaweeds of every variety was bursting from the floors and benches where the urchin army hadn’t recently plowed through.
Dya stared until Zuchi’s light went out, and then they both pulled themselves up to the top of the mat, looking at each other in horror. Before they could speak the glowing stream of water blossomed with a quick burst in the middle of the stream and then resumed flowing with a thicker laminar stream, more light in the room, the sound of a chime and a fresh pop-up.
Quest: You have seen what lies beneath: The source of the of the thick mat of seaweed is an aggressive battle of growth and consumption between the magically sustained temple kelp and the voracious sea urchins. The way to truly clean the temple is to thin out the over-abundant sea urchins, only then will the frantic growth of the temple kelp reduce, and you will be able to trim it back to its place in the temple.
6/1000 small sea urchins
0/500 medium sea urchins
0/100 large sea urchins
0/25 monster sea urchin
0/1 ??? sea urchin
230/2000 lbs of kelp
Awards achieved:
+1 strength
+20 silver pearls
+access to common jobs
Jobs available:
Mage
Witch
You may not choose a job at this time.
Do you wish to continue?
“auhuuuuuhhhh… Yes?” Dya said reflexively, then slapped herself on the forehead like a captain faced with a suddenly mortal pseudo god as the window vanished.
“There’s no way we can do this.” Zuchi said, looking at Dya like she was insane.
“I know! I know… It just came out.” Dya moaned. “Please don’t make me do this alone.”
“But I’ve got to go home soon!”
“Me too!”
“I don’t see how I can help that!” Zuchi countered.
“I… it doesn’t say that it has to be done today.” Dya was thinking furiously about how to deal with the hole she had just dug into. “We can come back tomorrow.”
“If the next time we wake up is tomorrow.” Zuchi pointed out relentlessly.
“No time limit means no time limit. Next time we’re awake we make sure to get back here.” Dya answered.
Zuchi kicked her fins out in front of her and thought for a moment, leaving Dya anxiously waiting and struggling to just let Zuchi think rather than pile on more spurious “reasons” the girl should help her.
“Fine.” She said, “Yes.”
Dya practically melted with relief. “Thank you.”
“You said you needed to get some urchins for your mom, right?” Zuchi asked, “Seems a little … odd, that.”
“Yeah.” Dya agreed, putting weight into the word. “But it's also urchin season, the gonads are really big and full right now. So everyone is hunting them.”
“Everyone?”
“Well, everyone who gathers wild food.” Dya shrugged, “my mom is a gatherer.”
“oh. Well, Looks like you’re going to make her very happy.” Zuchi nodded down at the hole.
“I hope so.”
…
If it had just been kelp and urchins then Dya would have been able to work her way around the room, no problem, but when combined with the darkness she got the feeling of a nightmare gauntlet of spikey doom.
Dya took off her tunic and did her best to twist it into a shallow yet serviceable bag. Then, grabbing a couple of thick leaves of kelp, she started to pick up urchins. She quickly found that scooping up the smaller urchins within easy reach of the altar, which made the larger ones easier to pick up by freeing up space. So she filled her bag with the small urchins in a quarter breath, and swam them to the altar.
“Thought you were going to take those home?” Zuchi asked as Dya upended her bag into the alter bowl.
“These are tiny, and I only have the one bag.” Day shrugged, watching the urchins melt away and then fumbling to figure out how to check her quest progress. She found that by thinking directly and with a bit of intensity about the quest, a quest log popped up in her vision.
Quest: Clean the Temple
You have seen what lies beneath. The source of the of the thick mat of seaweed is an aggressive battle of growth and consumption between the magically sustained temple kelp and the voracious sea urchins. The way to truly clean the temple is to thin out the over-abundant sea urchins, only then will the frantic growth of the temple kelp reduce, and you will be able to trim it back to its place in the temple.
18/1000 small sea urchins
2/500 medium sea urchins
0/100 large sea urchins
0/25 monster sea urchin
0/1 ??? sea urchin
230/2000 lbs of kelp
“Ooof, this is going to take forever.” Dya said and so Zuchi also pulled up the screen.
“That’s… not much.” Zuchi said unhappily.
“How long have we been in here anyhow?” Dya looked around, “its been a couple hours, right?”
“At least.” Zuchi agreed. “Why don’t you collect up your bag of urchin for your mom and we can come back to it tomorrow. Or, you know, whenever we’re next able.”
“Yeah.” Dya agreed unhappily, flapping her bag so that it was loose and ready, and sliding down the steps into the dark water. “I wonder if the ones I take out will count.”
“I don’t see why not.” Zuchi lied pleasantly and cast the night light under the water so that Dya could get going.
Once again, Dya used a series of kelp leaves to help her safely pick up the urchins. This time she chose for size, picking up urchins that were at least the size of a soft ball. She couldn’t get much bigger with the size of her bag, and with having to navigate around the kelp and dark. When her bag was full, though, she slung the straps over her shoulder, layered up some kelp leaves, and grabbed the biggest one she could find in the easy reach.
It was … well, bigger than a softball, smaller than… a volleyball? Maybe about shotput size. Yeah. Shotput sized. Which for a sea urchin was ginormous. And too be fair, that was just the main body. The spines on it were long and thin, and stuck out 10 inches. Picking it up had been a careful weaving of fingers around the spines, but the spines were razor sharp on the zides and they just wouldn’t stop moving.
“Pangda! That’s big.” Zuchi observed as Dya came back out of the hole. “Your mamma is going to be proud.”
“Its not going to make it to her.” Dya said, wincing at the pin pricks and slashes she was feeling though the kelp leaves, then “OW!” yelping as one of the pin pricks became a stab. A -2 floated up from her hand, which spasmed in pain. Blood dripped into the water.
“Oh, you’d like me to drop you!” she growled as she lunged towards the altar “Okay, I’ll give you exactly what you want, you fucking spike ball.”
With a thrust of her fins she launched herself halfway out of the water and dunked the urchin into the alter as it gave another jerk and slashed her for another -2, forcing her hands to spasm. If she hadn’t already dropped the giant urchin, she would have she would have been forced to as she lost feeling in her fingers.
Dya recoiled as she watched the urchin struggle for a moment, its spines flailing and jabbing out rapidly in an unnatural way. It almost looked like it was in a strobe light it was moving so fast, flailing against the incoming assault of the holy water.
“Holy shit.” Dya breathed, and then looked down at her hands, which were bleeding .
“That is seriously creepy.” Zuchi said, as the urchin spasmed its last.
You have defeated Lvl 1 LARGE URCHIN.
+Exp 10
You have defeated your first monster. You have won your first fight. The Warrior track is now open to you.
Jobs available:
Brawler
Battle Mage
Mage
Witch
She blinked and dismissed the notification, and let Zuchi know, “It was a monstrous creature.”
“No way.”
“Lvl 1 Large urchin, worth 10 xp.” Dya pulled herself out of the water and onto the altar, wincing at the pain in her hands. The pain seemed outsized to the wound, and it brought tears to her eyes.
“Oh, wow, look at your hands. You should smite them.” Zuchi said, eyeing the blood leaking from the many pricks and reaching into the pair of spines left from the dissolved urchin, and then exclaimed, “Shit, yeah!”
“What?”
“Take care of your hands and I’ll show you.” Zuchi grinned somewhat malevolently.
“You just want me to feel what its like.” Dya grumbled.
“Yep. Now, hands in the water!”
Dya stuck her hands into the bowl, expecting it to sting. She was just not prepared for the feeling of many tiny hammers striking her palms, and one big healing hammer to hit the slash wound in her palm.
“Ow!” She said, yanking her hands back. “That was harsh!”
“I told you.”
“I believed you, I didn’t have to feel it.”
“But now you have, so look at these.” And Zuchi handed her the spines.
The spines were rather long, even longer than the spines on the urchin had been. The living creature’s spines were around 8-10 inches long, these two were greater by at least 4 inches, and made of some sort of hardened material. The base was rounded, the tips a bit flattened and definitely very sharp.
As she examined it, a window appeared.
Blessed Thorns of the Urchin, Common
dagger weapon, two handed
Made of a hardened chitinous material, these sharp needles are made for quick stabbing attacks and precision work. Blessed by the Goddess Salt.
+1 stabbing damage each
+1 holy damage each
“Wow.” Dya breathed, “My first loot drop.”
“Yeaaah loot.” Zuchi agreed.
“Loooot.” Dya chuckled.
“Loot!”
“LOOT!”
“LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!”
There was an awkward moment of silence when she finished before Zuchi just quietly said, “Loot.” And they both burst into laughter.
“Ok, but really.” Dya said some time later. “We should probably go soon. Did you want to grab any urchins for your family?”
“I don’t have anything to carry them in.” Zuchi shrugged.
“What about your shirt?” Dya suggested, and then frowned. Zuchi’s shirt was a bikini top made of ná!uteng (aka kelp silk.) Not much room to it.
“Just take a couple of medium sized ones home in your shirt, like a handle around them.” Dya said, “its not like your mom’s going to be pickling the umi like mine is.”
“That seems like I should be able to make a spikey boob joke out of it somehow.” Zuchi said, and Dya laughed.
“Let me know if you figure it out, I’ll let you know if it beats Madonna’s Bra.”
“Booo. Old person joke.” Zuchi graoned, “Boo!”
Dya just gave her a raspberry and left.
…
When Brooke woke up next, she was surprised to realize she was still 6 years old and in the same bedroom. She fed her bed dried brine shrimp and got ready to go, though this time she was tempted to just swim without any clothes. Instead, she opted for a short crop top with pockets, not quite ready to be a fully naked mermaid just yet. Besides, it allowed her to tuck a quartz crystal the size of her pinky into it. She also stuck her hair up into bun, held up with the stabbing needles she had won as loot yesterday, disguising them as hair accessories. Her hands were just not as dexterous as she would have liked, so the bun was super sloppy, but she managed to get it to hold.
After a breakfast of kelp and dried fish her mom handed her another bag and Brooke knew for certain it really was just the next day. She felt great relief at the feeling of continuity, not realizing until just that moment how distressing the skipping, fragmented memories/experiences were becoming.
“Thank you, namcha.” Dya said, wrapping the long bag around her waist.
“And here, use this to break off spines.” Her mother handed her a 6 inch brass knife.
“Nam?” She asked, surprised. Sure, Mer were much more relaxed about letting their kids face danger than humans were, but this was still pushing it. She’d never been allowed to touch a big knife like this before.
“Oh, its not very sharp at all, its more for being a blunt instrument to break the spines, Sweetweed.” Her mother explained, “This is still a big responsibility though, you need to treat it as though it were very sharp. No playing with it, no waving it around at other kids. Vuf?”
“Yes mam.” Dya affirmed.
And Sweetweed?” her nam pinned her with a stare, “be careful of those really big ones you told me about. They’ll hurt you pretty badly if get close to them. You stay far away from them.”
“Yes, nam.” Dya lied, thinking of her quest.
Thusly armed, Dya tied the bag around her waist, tucked the knife in her “belt” and left, only pausing to grab the chipped pitcher her mother used to water the kitchen’s plants. She made sure to leave behind the desalinization stone that was in the bottom of it, not wanting to thoroughly piss the woman off after all. She also left it on a shelf out of the kitchen’s water, but only after starting to swim off and coming back.
…
When she eventually reached the chapel later in the day, after enjoying swimming through the coral and keenly observing the life, she found Zuchi waiting for her—if by waiting you meant already at work inside the temple.
“It’s the next day!” She greeted Dya waving a watering can cheerfully.
“It is!” Dya smiled and then held up her broken pitcher, “Great minds think alike! Though I think yours is a bit better.”
“Any bit helps.” Zuchi said graciously as she poured the blessed water in a clean circle, cutting a bite out of the mat. She must have been at it for some time since there were three such “bites” taken out of the mat already. It became clear right away that the side table sized bite was still a struggle to remove as it came apart in her hands and she had to take several short trips to remove the clumped weeds entirely.
Zuchi was working half in the water, taking her bites out of the area around the altar. Dya noted that she was leveraging herself more with her legs today than she was before. Good for her. She was very curious as to why Zuchi didn’t seem to move her legs automatically, but since that’s what the boys were picking on her for, Dya’s 99 years of experience in her previous life made her hold back from saying anything just yet. Instead, she crawled out onto the matt, pulled the needle knives out of her hair to set on the altar, and pulled out the quartz crystal.
Casting the night light spell she then tried shoving it into the crystal. It resisted, popping to either side until she got it juuuuust right and it just sank into the crystal, shining brightly.
Then after about 5 seconds, it went out. She’d taken to long to get it in apparently.
A couple more tries and she had the light in the crystal, which lit the room around her. On the wall was a sconce in which she rested the crystal, lighting the corner of the temple she was in. Then Dya was crawling back and forth with her pitcher, as quickly as she could in an effort to get her patch done before the light went out.
The quartz crystal stabilized the magic of the night light spell, extending the lights presence to a good solid couple of minutes. Of course, this meant that she wasn’t getting the practice of casting the spell every 20 to 30 seconds, but that was a trade off that Dya was glad to make.
It took Dya three trips with her pitcher to dissolve free a circle-ish shape roughly a foot across. However, part of it was still tethered to the bottom and so pulled her dull knife from her makeshift belt to hack her circle free, and caused the kelp to come away in clumps. Gritting her teeth in frustration she took the clumps over.
As Dya shoved the last clump into the blessed water, she groaned to turn back to the hole she had created in the mat. There had to be a better way, she thought, scratching her hip where the belt was irritating her skin.
Dya was experimenting with different carrying procedures, using the bag, using the bag as a sled, anything really to hurry up this task, when Dya’s concentration was broken by Zuchi, who was now holding up Dya’s knife, wet and dripping. “What is up with this knife?”
“Namcha gave it to me to help harvest the large urchins.” Dya said, current haul back over to the altar. “ its to knock the spines off them.”
“oh, ok.” Zuchi nodded, “My namcha just gave me a pair of gloves and told me to be careful.”
“Ha. Mine gave me a knife and told me to be careful. Weirdos.” Dya rolled her eyes and Zuchi giggled. “So my nam is a gatherer, and she got weirdly excited at the prospect of monstrous urchins.”
“Really? Mine is a cleric. I didn’t dare tell her about the monstrous urchin, she would have never let me come back, she’s so intent on keeping me ‘healthy.’” Zuchi rolled her eyes in disgust, “I’m driving her nuts by refusing to stay in the ‘safe’ areas.”
“I didn’t mean to, she just figured it out from what I did tell her. I kinda lied to keep her from charging in and harvesting all the urchins, I told her it was in a very narrow space.” Dya looked back at the now clear entrance and sighed a little regret at cleaning it out.
“Well, it was, and it was disgusting to get to.” Zuchi set down her watering can and started pulling out another bite of the matt, “I told my nam about the quest from Salt and she was practically falling over herself to help me prepare to complete it. She’s a Faith Healer and Cleric dedicated to Salt so she is fully supportive of our quest.
Dya nodded and pulled up the quest screen.
Quest: Cleaning the Temple! You have seen what lies beneath. The source of the of the thick mat of seaweed is an aggressive battle of growth and consumption between the magically sustained temple kelp and the voracious sea urchins. The way to truly clean the temple is to thin out the over-abundant sea urchins, only then will the frantic growth of the temple kelp reduce, and you will be able to trim it back to its place in the temple.
19/1000 small sea urchins
2/500 medium sea urchins
1/100 large sea urchins
0/25 monster sea urchin
0/1 ??? sea urchin
460/2000 lbs of kelp
Awards achieved:
+1 strength
+35 silver pearls
+access to common jobs
Jobs available:
Brawler
Battle Mage
Mage
Witch
You may not choose a job at this time.
“460 out of 2000 LBs.” Dya told Zuchi, who groaned. Dya looked at the room and, just before her crystal winked out on the other side, estimated that yes, they had cleared almost a fourth of the room. “That’s not bad. But then there are all the urchins.”
Zuchi shoved her bite of kelp onto the alter and went to pull up the quest as well.
“Do you think that there’s a way to just show our progress on this? So we don’t have to go through the description every time?” Zuchi asked.
“there should be, but I don’t know that there is.” Dya agreed, “like maybe Delta?”
“Delta? Like at the end of rivers?” Zuchi gave her a quizzical look.
“no, Delta, as in the Greek Alphabet. Its used to measure change over time. Potters call it “cone” because they literally use delta shaped forms of materials to measure the temperature and rate of change in their kilns, along side the whole digital thermometer thing.”
“Potters are weird, and that doesn’t seem to work here.” Zuchi replied, and Dya gave an agreeing grimace. “Maybe just Change?”
“Quest update?” Dya threw out, and to her mild surprise, it worked. “Oh!”
Quest update: Cleaning the Temple
19/1000 small sea urchins
2/500 medium sea urchins
1/100 large sea urchins
0/25 monster sea urchin
0/1 ??? sea urchin
475/2000 lbs of kelp
Zuchi’s latest bite had finished dissolving as they figured this out, resulting in a small increase of kelp collected. Dya heard Zuchi grumbling and echoed her sentiment. This was going to take a long time at this pace.
“You want to work together on large piece?” Dya asked, lifting up her pitcher.
“As long as it's not as big as yesterday's.” Zuchi provisionally agreed. Dya rolled her eyes but nodded her assent and they got to work. Between the two of them they were able to quickly cut out a section of kelp roughly the size of the altar. To their surprise, they found it much easier to move out than the first one, if for no other reason than they didn’t have to lift it up to move it. They were able to float it to the altar. Lifting it up onto the altar was still a chore, and required a lot of pushing and shoving and lifting. However, they did it and the chunk of kelp was soon sitting on the altar, slowly dissolving in the light and flow of Salt’s blessing.
Dya and Zuchi sprawled out on the mat behind the altar.
“I don’t think that was the best way to do that.” Dya groaned.
“No shit, sherlock.” Zuchi griped back at her, “but floating the kelp was way easier than carrying it.”
“yeah… so what if we cut out chunks, moved them to the altar, and broke them up a bit more before sticking them on the altar.”
“I was thinking something like that,” Zuchi said, and sat up, gesturing to the melting kelp cake. “I was thinking you could cut out chunks of kelp and float them to me, and I could break it apart into manageable sized chunks to stack onto the altar. “
“So you do all the lifting?”
“And you do all the ‘walking’.” Zuchi agreed.
“Fine, but at the rate that lump of kelp is going, it’s going to be a while before we have the space to offer more.”
“Fine. So we take a break.”
“Well fine then.” Dya snarked back, not budging from her spot.
Zuchi giggled. Then yelped.
“What?” Dya sat up to look at Zuchi, who had turned over and was now feeling at the matt of kelp.
“I thought I felt something. A thump or… something.” She explained, and bent her face close to the kelp.
And then jerked away, “NOPE! FORGET THAT.”
Dya sat back laughing as Zuchi gagged and coughed and crawled her way over to the altar where she splashed her face with holy water.
While she cleaned up Dya began poking around on her quest screen and then asked about a Character sheet. Right as she did, it appeared:
Dyahku O Nu‡’‡ak
(Brooke E. 1328)
LVL .6
Age 6
No Job or Class Available
Str 7
INT 6
DEX 6
WIS 6
CHA 6(X3 AGE MODIFIER)
LUK 10
MAG 5 (6)
SPE 6
SPELLS: Night light, water spray (unused)
Skills: none
“Huh. Looks like age determines characteristics right now.” Dya said as she stood up on her knees.
“Are you all sixes too?” Zuchi said in a mild moan, “I wonder what's going to happen when we turn 10.”
“Keep going?”
“So at 21 we’ll have 21 Strength?” Zuchi skeptical tone of voice said it all.
“Didn’t you know? We merfolk are all Hulks. GRRRRRRRR” Dya joked as she crawled over to where she left her crystal. Zuchi took the time to shove the remains of the large mat into the offering bowl. Both were startled when a chime rang out and the water stream thickened and created an S shaped flow about 10 ft over the alter. In the increased light Dya could see the algae and mold staining the walls fade back some, showing patches of polished choral in the deep black and green stains. She could also see that kelp was already growing to fill in the hole she had created.
Grabbing her crystal, Dya trudged back over to tell Zuchi the bad news. “The kelp is growing back at an alarming rate.”
“Alarming, huh?” Zuchi raised an eyebrow.
Dya ignored her skepticism, “I think we need to take a break from kelp and hit some of these urchins. That’s supposed to be how it works, right? The kelp is growing in response to the urchin horde?”
Zuchi frowned and, checking her quest log, confirmed, “That’s what it says. I guess it’s time to practice night light.”
“You go first on the urchins but see if you can’t go out further for your spiny beasts. I’ll collect what’s close to the altar, since I can put the light into a crystal for you to carry.”
“What?” Zuchi asked, confused. “Wouldn’t you go out with your crystal first?”
“Well, I thought we were creating lights for each other?” Dya said, embarrassed.
“Oookay.” Zuchi shrugged, “But I’m not going to go very far.”
“Yeah, I know. That was the other part of it.” Dya said, still embarrassed.
It was easier said than done, Zuchi had her bag, and needed at least one hand free to gather the urchins. Since that left no hands for the crystal, they tried various ways to get it to stay with Zuchi. In the end, they had to gather some sea grass from a visible, half-eaten patch and tie up the crystal into a necklace that she could wear around her neck.
As she put it on, they both got a ding.
Congratulations, you have gathered supplies from nature and created a useful object. You have unlocked the path of the naturalist.
Jobs available:
Brawler
Battle Mage
Gatherer
Mage
Witch
You may not choose a job at this time.
“It really seems pretty easy to get these job options.” Zuchi frowned.
“They were described as “common” at some point.” Dya shrugged. “I’m not seeing a job I want yet, are you?”
“I dunno, witch could be fun. I’ll bet you it comes with tentacles too.” She grinned wickedly and Dya rolled her eyes and cast the light spell into the crystal.
The maze of kelp and urchins was more accessible now that they had cleared 25% of the mess. More light reached it from the alter as well, though deep shadows were still cast by the mass of the kelp. This made scooping up the urchins into their bags so much easier, and in no time they were both back at the altar trying to unload the large bags into the stream. It wasn’t going well.
“Can we just put the bag and all into the alter?” Dya groaned in clicksqueal, as she recaptured urchins that had spilled over into the water. She knew the answer but still.
“The goddess will take the bags with the urchins, so no.” Zuchi replied, holding her bag and Dya’s as well, which was only 1/3 empty.
“Boooo.” Dya jeered listlessly as she surfaced and placed the urchins on the slowly dissolving pile of urchin doom. Fortunately, it was dissolving from the top where the stream splashed down, and from the bottom where the blessed water welled up, so the pile had shrunk considerably as she regathered. She got her bag from Zuchi and carefully piled up some more urchins, this time placing them by hand rather than trying to dump them out. Using the spines to interlock she was able to get the pile much higher and since the urchins were dissolving as she worked, emptied her bag.
“You know,” she said as she worked, “I bet if we pile kelp around the bowl we could just make a sort of basket and just dump the urchins.”
“A basket that is slowly dissolving with the urchins.” Zuchi rolled her eyes, impatient to get on with emptying her bag. Dya got out of her way. “Just be careful when piling your urchins.”
She placed her urchins onto Dya’s dissolving pile, keeping pace with the dissolving pile. Dya sighed and went after more urchins.
They found that gathering the urchins was much faster and less work than the kelp, so they kept going. They focused on the smaller and medium sized urchins, since there were so many more of those and they wanted to make sure to get a bag full of the large urchins for their families. Then there were the big ones that Dya decided needed the knife and the stilettos that had been in her hair.
She found the brass knife near the altar where it had fallen, and pulled both stilettos, once again using her hair as a storage place, and swam over to the large urchin where it sat "protecting" a cluster of small urchins. Swinging a blade in the water was a difficult thing, and Dya found that stabbing at the spines was the most effective and least likely to wobble out of place.
The moment her blade impacted on the spines, the urchin began its unearthly, vibrating, stabbing dance of the spines, swinging them unerringly to point at Dya. Still, they could only move in and out about an inch and were largely easy to avoid.
The urchin got in one hit with a well timed stab and Dya jerked back in pain and surprise as a red -1 floated up from her hand, along with the thin bloom of blood in the water. The wound seemed insignificant, but Dya found she couldn’t feel her pinky finger any more.
Grimacing, Dya attacked the urchin’s spines with renewed vigor and then stabbed it with one stiletto, generating a -3 rising from the urchin and more frantic vibrating. Back and forth they went, brass knife and stiletto quickly work the spike ball down and soon she was able to pick up the squirming creature with only a little pain. She swam it quickly back to the altar and dumped it in, splashing her wounded hand in the process.
“Mother fucker!” Dya gasped as the healing smite hit her wound and pain, pins, and needles zinged along the nerve to the tip of her pinky finger.
Clutching her finger she summoned a quest update:
Quest update: Cleaning the Temple
422/1000 small sea urchins
23/500 medium sea urchins
3/100 large sea urchins
0/25 monster sea urchin
0/1 ??? sea urchin
560/2000 lbs of kelp
They were moving right along, Dya thought, getting almost to half-way with the small sea urchins. Those little pests were plentiful and easy to gather, though, as their numbers dwindled, they were having to go into the darker corners of the chapel. Dya didn’t worry though. The chapel was small and the task simple. Besides, what’s the worst an urchin could do?
She almost immediately regretted that thought, but not as much as when, not even 5 minutes later, she heard Zuchi scream. She swam as fast as she could towards the sound, her half-filled bag forgotten behind her. She had been working her way down the isle between resting stone pews, and Zuchi had started to collect in the dark shadows behind the altar, underneath the unharvested kelp. It wasn’t that far, had they been outside Dya would have been to Zuchi almost immediately, but she too had been going deeper and deeper under unharvested kelp and the rising stems and fronds slowed her down long enough that she heard a second scream from Zuchi.
Scrambling around the altar, she saw Zuchi flailing and pulling, but stuck on something as pain creased her face and soft moans of pain passed her sealed lips with every pull. She was bleeding red 2’s into the water, and that scared Dya into action.
It didn’t matter in the moment that Dya didn’t understand how Zuchi was stuck, only that she was and with all the kelp everywhere Dya jumped to the conclusion that it was likely the kelp trapping her.
Zuchi grabbed onto her as soon as she got close enough, and pulled. Dya wasn’t anchored so that just pulled her in faster, and Zuchi moaned deep in her throat, not releasing any air like they had been taught. It was clear in that moment to both of them where the clicksqueal word for pain came from.
Dya saw with horror that Zuchi had been speared through the thigh with a long spine. It was relatively thin, if one were going to compare it to, say, a spear, but it was still around half an inch across. It stuck out of the thigh perpendicular to Zuchi’s body and had snagged on all sorts of kelp.
Zuchi’s grip on Dya was crushingly tight, and Dya, lacking any other ideas, hugged Zuchi and chanted “calm, calm, calm” to her in clicksqueal.
“Hurts!” Zuchi clicked back.
“I know.” Dya gave her another hug, a grandma sort of hug, “calm.”
“Stuck!” Zuchi cried.
“I know, calm.” Dya remained where she was another moment, as Zuchi’s frantic grip lessened. Then she pulled away and held up the brass knife and stiletto. “Cut you free?”
Zuchi nodded emphatically, and Dya swam around behind her to look at the mess Zuchi was in.
It wasn’t easy, the kelp was thick back here, with many leaves and little space left from the crushing mat above. Dya squeezed through and found Zuchi’s legs in the densely packed forest. As she swam she worried about where the spine came from and how it had pierced Zuchi’s leg so deeply that all the tangled stems had not pulled it free.
Her worries deepened when she saw Zuchi’s other leg with a deep gash running up it and bleeding 1's profusely in the water. Dya thanked the goddess that they were in a temple with a bubble trap entrance. Sharks would have to leap out of the water and swim through the kelp to reach them.
Feeling spooked by the dramatic damage, Dya quickly set to work trying to remove the tangle. Some she was able to just pull around the horrible 2 ft spine. Well, the 1.3 ft that was sticking out of Zuchi. The bulge in Zuchi’s thigh created by the lever action of the spine didn’t lessen as she worked--the kelp that Dya was able to pull around remained tangled with and on the stems still wrapped around the spine. Drifting up and back she got closer to where the kelp met the mat, stripped a stem of its leaves, and started cutting, or trying to. The knife was dull and the only reason that she was able to get anywhere was a few chips on the edge creating something akin to a few saw tooths on the blade.
She shifted her position and switched to the stiletto. It was made for piercing, but it was sharper, and made better progress. Then a spine shot through the space she had been in not a second ago and cleanly severed the kelp stem, as well as burying itself deeply into the mat.
“shiiit!” She squeaked in clicksqueal and grabbed the now loose end of the stem, pushed off the mat and dove towards Zuchi.
Another spear shot out at her as she swam away, this one aimed lower but still missing her as she flitted through the water. The next one shot over her head and cut through another couple of the taught kelp strands, causing them to give an audible pop while the spear embedded itself into the matt above.
No further spears followed her out to Zuchi. Whatever had thrown them, they were out of reach of it here. With as taught as those strands of kelp were, Dya could see that Zuchi was keeping herself anchored as far away from that dark corner as she could, regardless of the pain it caused her.
She stumbled through striping the kelp strands that had been cut by the spear of the leaves so that she was able to then pull them through the tangle and free. This relived the pressure on Zuchi’s wound and she started to move forward again.
“Wait!” Dya squealed, “safe, don’t move!”
“Get away!” Zuchi protested.
“Done! Safe here. Need the loose kelp.” Dya tried to explain, but it was hard. Clicksqueal had a limited vocabulary and did not have words for “leave some slack in the rope so I can get you loose.”
Still, Zuchi seemed to get enough of her meaning. “Hurry, I hurt, I am scared.”
“I will.”
Pulling the rest of the stems through was enough for her to be able to pull a couple more stems around and gently yet still painfully pull Zuchi around the tangle to slip her loose. Then Dya was shoving aside strands and awkwardly cutting at them until they got a cold, shuddering Zuchi to the alter.
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