The next morning, the thinamcha (both of the namcha), Zuchi, and Dya examined the chapel. Well, everyone else examined the chapel, but Dya spent some time examining the thinamcha. It was her first time meeting Zuchi’s namcha and her first time seeing her namcha in deeper waters.
Her mother always said that gatherers gained their colors and fins from the clever tusk fish. Certainly, that explained her own cute little tusks, but also the subtle psychedelic patterning of a green to blue to grey skin with bright orange freckles. Her other jobs left their marks, most notably her hunting giving her a black fin of hair that she kept braided and out of her way, but black was black was black. It didn’t matter that they were in deeper waters to the black. However, to Namcha’s face, the deep water changed her. She had been turned dull and blue grey, her lurid orange spots going away and the colors blending in with the blue and green world around them.
Dya had been impressed.
Zuchi’s namcha, on the other hand, was a smaller woman with a singular tail that had a yellow with black polkadot frill down the front, and a line of black spots arching down the side. It gave her flamboyant curves where the tail came to her torso and met up with black and white pin striped skin. Her face was a starburst of yellow, as were her arms and hands, but her hair was a lurid purple, red, blue combination in the light of the altar. Apparently, this is the look of a Clerk and Scribe combo with a third job as a Faith Healer. It was fairly intense, but then, every faith healer Dya had ever seen had been intense so par for the course?
By this point the entry to the chapel was much cleaner and less of a slime trail. Both Zuchi and Dya explained with great detail just how much kelp was in the entry way when they started and Dya promised that she hadn’t been lying about there not being a way for an adult to get in when they started out.
They had to review just how much kelp they had cleaned up (1906 lbs) just to get them to believe them, and then they had to explain just how they moved that much kelp to get them to believe that they weren’t making up the number.
Ironically, it was the king urchin that helped them explain it, as where the king urchin was still was overgrown with hyper growing kelp, and there was still a thick matt spreading out from the area. Overnight it had butted up against the altar.
“Dya, you don’t just climb on the Blessed Alter!” Zuchi’s nam cried, but Dya was already leaning over to grab a handful of the spines from the most recent attacks of the king urchin on the source of light in the chapel. She showed thinamcha the four spines that she pulled up, explaining to the best of her six year old vocabulary the safety of the acquisition.
“The king doesn’t like the light and it attacks it as it can to try and get it to be dark. But it can’t hit the light so all it hits is the altar but its too far away from the altar and the water makes the spines stop before they hit the altar mostly and they don’t do damage.” She explained, pointing out the still sharp tips of the spines. She then handed two spines to Zuchi and they both swam over to a couple of large urchins that had wandered out of the dark protection of the king urchin over night.
Flipping them over and stabbing them through was the work of seconds with the practice that they both had, and they had soon scooped the urchins into the alter bowl and increased the count of urchins offered to 92 of 100.
They were so close.
The problem was that there was 25 monster urchins around the chapel that Zuchi and Dya were avoiding as well as the King Urchin that protected the final 8 urchins. Their spines were about 1 ft long, and the core of the urchin was roughly the size of a basketball.
More importantly, whenever they had approached too close, the monsters had begun to release tiny 1 inch dart spines. They hurt a lot more than they should, and Zuchi had discovered that they were poisoned when she ignored one for long enough for the poison to take effect and start draining her health with a green -1.
Fortunately, they had discovered this yesterday, before the thinamcha were there. The blessed water had smited the poison and wounds away, easy, but she could just imagine her namcha’s reaction to her getting poisoned by the monster and had shared with Dya in detail the drama she expected.
But that had been yesterday, before Zuchi had realized this wasn't the task for her quest, before she had told Dya of her quest. Today, Dya tried to get Zuchi alone enough so they could whisper in English about how to handle them, but Zuchi was still mad it seemed and was sticking close to her namcha. When subtlety didn’t work Dya resorted to trying to wave her over, and Zuchi outright shook her head, so Dya had to swim over to her and ask, in English, “Why are you mad at me?”
Zuchi scowled at her, as if the very sound of her voice was offensive, or maybe just the question was.
“You lied to me.” She hissed, in Jayn
“How?” Dya asked still in English, sharply confused, “When?”
“This whole quest!” Zuchi flung her arms out and splashed down into the water, her voice rising. And there goes the subtlety. Dya’ thought, cringing while at the same time, a flush of anger started to rise. At least she started speaking in English.
”I told you that I was supposed to help you and instead of telling me about your quest to find your friend you dragged me into this horrible, smelly, dangerous, awful, quest. And tedious. The worst part of it is that it's been so fucking TEDIOUS. “ at this point Zuchi was yelling. Both thinamcha had come over with concern and puzzlement on their faces. Neither of them understood a word, but Dya was sure the tones conveyed plenty. It was pissing her off.
“I actually got USED to the slime and the smell before they went away and I never had to.” Zuchi thrust her finger out at Dya, “Except that YOU lead me to believe that this was the god quest that I was supposed to help with.”
“What are you even talking about?” Dya snapped back, “I had no idea you had some sort of quest to help me with a god quest, you just said that you were supposed to help me. I thought it was like the note I had from Gary saying to ‘go west!’ Some weird and vague direction that the game threw at you to get things moving. You didn’t say a goddamned thing about a ‘god quest’ or ask if there was ANYTHING ELSE AT ALL.”
“oh, so you’re going to say that this was my fault.” Zuchi huffed angrily
“Yes!” Dya all but yelled to cut off any further tirade, and Zuchi snarled. “Bullshit!”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Dya agreed viciously, “your complaint is bullshit. I didn’t lie to you, you jumped to conclusions and are blaming me for being wrong.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“You utter gonad!” Zuchi barked out in anger, “You’re one of those people who just always knows they’re right, aren’t you?”
“oh no, I’m a normal human being who acts on the best information that they have available and thinks that they did the right thing with what they get.” Dya rolled her eyes in an angry deadpan, “watch out! Next thing you know I’m going to try my best at some ridiculously outsized task just to see if I can do it while claiming I can do it in order to psych myself up.”
“Oh, fuck you bitch.”
“Fuck you!”
Suddenly, Zuchi’s namcha was there, looking like a referee, and looking down at Dya “I don’t know what you are saying exactly but I can tell when the conversation has fallen apart. Perhaps if you could try telling me what the problem is, I could help you solve it.”
“Naaaam.” Zuchi groaned, while Dya rolled her eyes and turned away, ignoring the 'older' woman.
“Dya, it is rude to turn your back on your elders like that.” Zuchi’s mom huffed, insulted. Dya looked back at her. She was balanced on her tail with the yellow fring showing how it was coiled to support her weight in the water of the temple between Dya and her daughter.
She could feel the wisdom of her near 100 years telling her that she should be peaceful and allow this woman her vanity, that perhaps letting Zuchi air her grievance would be the same as giving her rope to hang herself and clear Dya's name to the parents. That wisdom was definitely somewhere inside her. Deeeep inside her. Way down inside her and far behind the much angrier voice of irritation that decided to speak up.
Dya turned around to stand up to her full height, supported by the four feet of water in the temple and said, “It is rude to [insert] yourself into [others conversations].”
Or at least that’s what she thought she said, not really having a word for “insert” or “conversations.” Judging from the frozen look on Zuchi’s Namcha’s face and the strangled laughter coming from her own namcha, Dya had a feeling she’d missed the mark.
Zuchi’s namcha gave in and started laughing, and soon both thinamcha were laughing helplessly as she agreed that Dya was correct.
“What did you say to my namcha?” Zuchi asked, hostilities mostly forgotten for the moment.
“I tried to say it's rude to insert yourself into others conversations.” Dya said, mystified.
“yeah, but that’s not what you said.” Zuchi scowled. ”What was “kujuzh” and why did you bring up clams?
“it was the best I could come up for insert. It’s a way to stuff clams for cooking.”
“Oh no” Zuchi gawked and then started to laugh.
“What?” Dya asked, and then clicked out in Jayin “What?!”
“You idiot, You told my namcha that its rude to stuff her clam while people are talking.”
…
Ten minutes later and Namcha had talked Dya from behind the bench where she hid as overwhelming waves of embarrassment and shame crashed into her. Dya had sent a note to the admins about calibrating her emotions better, because in all it was a kinda funny mistake, but she felt like she was going to die from it.
Namcha taught her a better word, ‘azhún’ and now she was listening to Dya’s explanation for Zuchi’s anger and why it was so unfair.
“That does sound unfair.” Namcha agreed, “but I don’t think she’s really looking for an apology.”
“you don’t?” Dya asked, and hrmmed.
“Look how overwhelmed you were with your mistake.” She said gently, and failed to completely smother a giggle, “I know you could understand the nature of a mistake and could see that no one here took offense, and yet you still hid like the child you are from it.”
“So?” Dya said defensively, trying to fend off the humiliation rising again in the back of her skull.
“So she’s probably struggling with big emotions just like you, and it doesn’t matter that its not really your fault that she made her mistake.”
Dya nodded. After a little more discussion with her namcha she got up, and swam over to Zuchi.
“I’m sorry you got stuck doing all this work with me.”
“Its not your fault.” Zuchi admitted, ‘It just feels that way because you’re the one who benefits. I’m sorry I freaked out on you.”
“How about I help you with some chores some time.” Dya offered.
“That would be nice of you.” Zuchi allowed. “That helps.”
“Friends?” Dya asked
“Yeah, I guess we are.”
“Wonderful!” Zuchi’s namcha trilled. “So do you want to know how to deal with monster urchins?”
“Nängay, we had agreed to let the children complete this quest on their own!” Namcha protested, and giving Dya Zuchi’s namcha’s name.
“They’re still going to have to do the work, Zhulma.” Nängay said primly, “but if we make them figure it out on their own they could get very hurt, and we would be here for a long time.”
“Figuring out you have to move quickly and that the monster urchins can only fire from a horizontal stripe in the middle of the body isn’t that hard to figure out.” Namcha said.
“Maybe it doesn’t seem so for a laborer like you…”
Dya and Zuchi tuned out the now squabbling thinamcha and turned to a near enough visible monster urchin.
“So we need to be fast and figure out how to dodge the horizontal.” Dya said, eyeing the green spikey creature.
“That’s what the tutorial said,” Zuchi agreed.
“Hey, that tutorial is my namcha.” Dya said sharply. “be nice.”
“Right. Sorry.” Zuchi waived her hands, and picked up her urchin spines. “Look, the urchin there is on the wall, right? So if we swim at it at a perfect perpendicular angle we will probably avoid all the spines it can shoot.”
“Right, but then, how do we get it? I mean, we can’t see its sphincter from the outside, can we?” Dya asked. They looked at each other for a moment.
“Maybe? Why don’t you go find out?” Zuchi grinned.
“Ugh.” Dya groaned, but carefully submerged herself and swam in at as perfectly a perpendicular an angle as she could manage. It seemed to be close enough as she didn’t experience any stings or blows from the monster urchins.
As she worked to stay in place, she realized that, yes, actually, you kinda could see the anus at the crown of the shell.
Not hesitating a moment, Dya carefully aimed and stabbed into the hole, and a -5 floated up from the urchin.
The reaction was immediate and startling. All the spines flexed, and every single dart that the urchin manifested exploded off the surface of a rust colored ring that was about two thirds up the shell.
Remembering that she had to be quick, she shoved the makeshift spear as hard as she dared into the urchin and then used it to pick the urchin up, using her other spear to brace it as she swam it to the alter where Zuchi waited with her spines and helped to lever it into the bowl.
You have defeated Lvl 1 MONSTER URCHIN.
+Exp 25
Soon she and Zuchi were finding ways to drift over the tops of the green, spikey basket balls and stab them through. The trick, it turned out, was to drift on the surface barely moving as you got into position and then to stab down into the hole as quickly as possible, before the urchin could aim.
The thinamcha acted as a cheerleading squad for the most part, proud that they had figured it out “on their own” and oblivious to the role their own squabbling had in showing them how to kill the urchins. Through silent agreement, neither Zuchi nor Dya disabused them of this notion.
They didn’t dodge all the darts, unfortunately, but there was the altar with its smite of healing. Nängay was horrified when first Dya then Zuchi went in for a healing.
“You wash your wounds in the altar?” She practically squeaked.
“Its uncomfortable, but it heals.” Dya told her.
“The goddess smites with healing.” Zuchi said seriously to her namcha, who then made then blessed herself and immediately knelt at the alta, praying, “Forgive these children their trespass, oh Salt, they are young and foolish.”
She then slipped a couple of mother of pearl coins into the water and with a mummer they were gone.
Namcha just rolled her eyes and said, “If the goddess is going to put my child in danger, she can provide the healing as well.”
“I am here now.” Nängay said, “I’m a level 5 faith healer, so I can take care of the pricks and cuts from an urchin and clear out the poison if we get to it quickly. There’s no reason to desecrate the altar for such simple healings.”
“If it doesn’t feel like I’m being hit with tiny hammers, you have the job.” Dya said, picking up her spines. “Smite healing is the worst kind of healing.”
“Its more like being hit in the face with an anemone.” Zuchi said, and her mother scowled.
“It depends on how much faith you have in the goddess.” Nängay said primly.
“Sounds better than the hammers.” Dya said, and went for Monster urchin number 13.