The rest of the monster urchins went without real incident, though a few healings were needed. They were dramatic, as Nängay rubbed the wound vigorously, and practically shouted, “By your faith in the goddess Salt, Be HEALED!”
It did feel like being hit in the face with a giant anemone, tentacles and all, but in the end, her wounds were healed, and the poison was gone. This pleased Nängay who praised the level of faith that she had in the goddess, which lead Dya to look at her mom in the eye and then look at the altar and then back at her mom with a slightly incredulous look. Her mom smiled, rolled her eyes and shook her head, and Dya got the message to just let the Faith Healer have this one. No need to point out its easy to have faith when you’ve been relying on the healing of said goddess for days already.
The last two monster urchins revealed loot drops, and welcome ones at that.
Blessed Short Spear of the Urchin Uncommon
Spear weapon
1d6 x 1d3 attacks
Pierce
1d4 bleed effect
+2 pierce
+1 holy damage
“Well, those will be useful at least.” Namcha nodded approvingly as the two six-year-olds took the sharp implements from the alter bowl that should not have been able to contain them. For that matter-
“How did these fit inside an urchin?” Zuchi muttered to Dya as they looked at the four foot spears.
“Poorly, I hope, at least the second time.” Dya said, “Otherwise, it’s the magic of loot drops.”
“It's just so strange.”
“Why do you find it strange?” Namcha asked, leaning in to look at the spears, “This is just the way of the world. The loot generates inside the felled creature, it doesn’t exist whole and intact until the creature dies.”
“oh.” The girls chimed.
“Those are decent starting spears for girls like you. Short spears on adults are good for close in fighting, but for you they are sized more akin to a full spear, at least for now. Hang on a second.”
And then Namcha was rummaging in her ring inventory and pulling out her spear. Like all mer spears it was a sharp, thin affair with a barbed head, meant to stab and hook prey and enemies, piercing rather than slashing through currents.
“A spear is a noble weapon, fierce and pliable. It can be used under the water, on the land, and in the air. Each realm has a different technique for attack. In the air you would use throws, full body tosses, and thrusts. On the land, slashing movements, whip fast, stabs, blade and shaft.” Namcha began demonstrating, fluidly transforming into her human form and keeping her actions above waist and water level.
“Under the water we focus on pierces and curves, and while slashes aren’t out of the question, they are carefully calculated moves.” Namcha demonstrated the moves, curving her entire body around, to guide the spear head, to put force and current behind the attack.
Namcha began to teach them the basics of the spear, showing them proper grip and three basic attacks, and promising to help with the King Urchin.
“I thought we were going to let the children solve this.” Nängay said dryly to Namcha as the girls practiced their stances and attacks.
“That was the monsters, which we could have got them healing easy before any real damage was done. This is the King Urchin.” Namcha said, “The King Urchin could kill them with one lucky shot, and I’m not going to give it enough time to have that luck.”
Nängay looked startled and worried, and nodded sharply, ducking under the water and casting a powerful light into the corner behind the King without any further words. When she came up she said, “That should distract and blind it from attacks coming from this side.”
Dya paused in her practice to duck under to take a look for herself and now the urchin was a black silhouette starburst amongst the thick kelp strands. Already she could hear the clatter of urchin spines bouncing off the wall as it tried to spear the magical light.
Zuchi joined her under water and nodded at the light. Then they practiced some underwater blows for as long as they could hold their breath. When they surfaced, however, once again the two women were bickering, this time it was about how to deal with the King.
“I’m thinking we just stab it.” Dya said quietly to Zuchi in English, holding up her spear. The handle was a 3 ft pole of water blessed cedar, and the blade was 1 ft long.
“From on top of the kelp?” Zuchi nodded. “It seems like that is something we could do that the thinamcha can’t. They’re probably too heavy."
“Huh. Didn’t think of that.” Dya muttered. “Been wondering why they didn’t go for the obvious solution.”
Zuchi snickered.
This time when they crawled on the mat of kelp, they were not greeted with the thumps and pricks of spines piercing the mat. Nängay’s distraction was working, for all that she didn’t notice that they were making use of it. As they crawled they realized the light was bright enough to cast shadows through the mat and give them the rough idea of where the giant urchin was.
When they got as close to over it as they thought they could, they started to carefully, just so carefully, stir the water and mat with their spears and start to break it apart just a bit. Creating a hole they looked down and found they were off, moved over, and repeated the process, this time getting the location correct.
This time, Dya found herself staring down the hole in the mat at the circular orifice on the top of the urchin. The rather large orifice on the top of the urchin.
“Zuchi.” She whispered for no good reason, it wasn’t like the urchin could hear, but she still couldn’t stop herself from whispering.
“Yeah?” Zuchi whispered back, for much the same lack of reason.
“That is one big asshole.”
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“Yep.”
“Let’s stab it. “
“It's all boney, so we could line up our shots pretty close without it noticing.” Zuchi pointed out. “Then we could just jump and apply our weight to the problem.”
“You think we should both hit it at the same time?” Dya asked, moving her spear tip into position.
“It’s a big asshole and these are skinny spears.” Zuchi said, joining her. “We’ll finish faster if we both go together.”
“Never thought I’d be doing double team anal with someone.” Dya muttered, and Zuchi snorted, “though, honestly, for 99 years I thought that was because they’d want to double team me.”
“Zuchi!” Nängay’s voice was shrill and alarmed, causing both girls to look over at her. The thinamcha were looking back at them with wide eyes, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing, Nam!” Zuchi lied in a sing song voice.
“Onetwothree-GO!” Dya hissed and they jumped, thrusting their spears down and putting all of their weight on the spears, clinging to them once they pierced the hole in the top of the shell of the King.
“NO!” Namcha yelled reaching out uselessly to stop them.
“ZUCHI!” Nängay yelled.
“YEAAAA” The girls shrieked in a half war cry half terrified yell.
“MY ASSHOLE!” The King Urchin would have yelled if it had the ability to and the brain to contain language, which it did not. Instead, it released every spine it had ready at that moment upwards with such intense force that the spines extended 3 inches out through the mat. If the girls hadn’t been clinging to the poles of their spears they would have been impaled and their fins ruined.
As it was, it was fairly close as the short spear shafts only gave them a couple feet to cling to above the matt and their weight was slowly sinking towards the spines.
“Shit!” Someone yelled, either Zuchi or Dya, neither could be sure which because at that moment the King Urchin lurched hauling from side to side and causing them to slide off the poles they were clinging so tightly too. Dya just refused to put her delicate fins down and so landed on her butt on the spines.
To her surprise, she did not end up with an ass full of revenge, then Dya remembered the ridiculous outfit she was wearing. The Blessed Armor Of The Urchin; it was enough to push the unsupported spines back down through the mat underneath her, and Zuchi was armored as well, though she landed on her fins and had a couple of blood pricks showing in the blue webs.
The urchin below gave another vicious lurch and Dya could feel more than hear a series of pops come from the kelp mat as the holdfasts gave way and the urchin, mat, spears, children and all, began to move.
At first it was a slow lurching gate, no more than a leaf on the water, but with each lurch it picked up speed.
“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!” Nängay shrieked as the mat lurched towards the altar. “You practice a few spear thrusts and then you’re ready to use the weapon?!”
“but...” Zuchi began weakly while Dya jumped in front of her, conversationally speaking. Neither of them let go of their spears or moved anywhere, physically.
“The spear goes in the hole! It couldn’t be that different than every single urchin we’ve killed up to this point!”
“And what? Did you miss the hole?” Nängay sneered back angrily.
“Hey now-“ Namcha started, but at that point the King Urchin lurched around the altar and saw the waist down view of the thinamcha. This then, predictably, was when it started firing. Its first shot was just enough off that it only clipped the frill of Nängay’s forward facing fin. The older woman shrieked more in startelement than in pain and Namcha cursed and leapt out of the water and onto the altar.
Nängay swam around the back of the altar and the Urchin sped around to follow her, picking up even more speed.
“Nam! Get on the Altar!” Zuchi cried as they clung to the spears as the urchin rounded the corner. It was now going fast enough that they were beginning to feel force push them off the top of the matt, which was scary.
Zuchi’s namcha ignored her, and kept going around the altar, only to be chased by the urchin.
“Nängay! Get up here!” Namcha had a pretty decent roar when she set her voice too it and this at least got the other woman’s attention.
Its sacrilege!” Nängay wailed, zipping forward to dodge another spine.
“It’s safety delivered to you by the goddess!” Namcha snapped, grabbing onto the smaller woman’s shoulder as she rounded a corner and hauled her up onto the altar, tail and all. Once up Nängay seemed to reflexively turn her tail into legs and tuck her feet under her, but she immediately was bowing in prayer to the goddess.
The King Urchin kept going around the altar, chasing the figment of Nängay, and the girls kept clinging to their spears rather than, well, anything else. They didn’t know what to do. Dya wanted to try and pry the spears apart, to see if they could split the shell of the urchin but the trip around the altar was too short, she wasn’t able to shift her grip in the time it took to come to the next corner.
Namcha was turning and watching them go around and a round with a sharp eye. “Looks like you didn’t get your little spears in deep enough, and you’re not going to as long as you’re going around like that.”
With that she knelt down, and jabbed under the mat at the urchin. Her spear vibrated, the spears that Dya and Zuchi clung to vibrated, and the urchin lurched away from the altar. Now it sped around the area behind the altar, and then to the side of it. It gave Dya and Zuchi a much needed break from the vortex of pressure and they were able to relax their grips and shift about some before each turn that came.
“What if we shoved down-“ Zuchi started
“Try to jam the spears deeper!” Dya commanded at the same time.
“You girls need to get your weapons deeper!” Namcha yelled over to them, not hearing anything they were saying.
Dya took a moment to roll her eyes at her nam and then she and Zuchi were waiting until the next moment after the turn to try and shove down.
The results were immediate. The spears didn’t even go down a centimeter when the urchin vibrated wildly, causing the spears to vibrate in their hands and clack together, crunching on knuckels and causing -1’s and-2’s to go up from their hands, weakening their grips.
They cursed and did their best to hang on as the urchin lurched in another direction and more spears came up through the mat of seaweed—this time scoring points of damage off Zuchi and Dya and causing them to shriek.
“Shit! What are your hitpoints, girls?” Namcha barked out, “You’ll need to say “status hitpoints!”
Dya quickly followed directions and saw a new screen.
Dyaku Nu‡‡ak
HP 8/15
“Eight” she yelled, Zuchi had seven.
“Shit.” Namcha cursed, “Don’t suppose you can see how much the King Urchin’s lost?”
“No!” They both called, and Namcha made another curse, and then stuck her head under the water, only to come up quickly.
“Not enough.” She growled, “Not enough, Fuck it all.”
“Nam?” Dya cried the question as they zipped past, clinging to the short s spears sticking out of the matt. Namcha’s eyes had gone completely black as she tracked the matt of seaweed that marked the urchin, and the children on top.
“[There’s Blood in the Water.]” Namcha said, and her voice seemed to gain an extra layer to it as she shifted her grip on her spear. “Girls, start pulling your spears away from each other, try to split the urchin apart.”
“But that’s not going to-“ Zuchi started, but Dya cut her off.
“Namcha is doing something. Just do what she says.” Dya flicked her eyes back over to Nam, “I’ve never seen her like this.”
Dya started pulling on her spear handle, and bewildered Zuchi pulled on hers. Between the two of them they were able to create about an inch, maybe two of distance, and the frantic urchin below sped up even more, finding the center isle of the chapel and bolting away from the light.
Namcha lept, her spear high over her head. Terrified, the two children screamed as she plunged her spear down between their hands with precision, slamming her weight behind the strike as she drove the short spears apart.
There was a crack and a PoP! And the entire mass of urchin, spears, kelp and children came to a sudden halt, sending a large wave of water down the rest of the isle and out of the chapel. Nam was sinking the kelp into the water so she swung her still human legs around to brace on her spear at the surface. Dya found herself in a rapidly spreading morass of kelp, urchin blood, and spines; sputtering to keep the messy water out of her mouth.
You participated in defeating 1 KING URCHIN
+EXP 50
Monster was twice your character level::bonus reward: +1 grip strength
“Everyone okay?” Namcha asked from her perch on the haft of her spear.
Dya blinked away the window and gathered a mass of kelp under her to float on, and threw up a thumbs up. Zuchi let out a watery “Yeees” from where she floated.
“Great!” Namcha cheered, “I guess then you have some cleaning to finish!”