Like all mer children, Dyaku and Zuchi had been taught to never, not even a little, remove a spine or thorn from a wound in the ocean before it could be treated. At best it would hurt like the dickens. At worst, it could kill. And bless St. Steve of the Animals from her previous life, Dya knew never to challenge that.
Normally this would mean finding a high enough rock or or coral for Zuchi to sit on while she went to an adult for help, but here and now, they had the altar, and regardless of how they appeared, both of them were adults on the inside.
“No.” Zuchi whined, watching Dya’s hands and clearly knowing what needed to happen.
“Yes.” Dya said, summoning up the best of her grandmotherly firmness. It wasn’t that great since she had never been a grandmother, but she had been really, really old so it counted for something. “We need to get this out of you and this is your best chance at a solid healing.”
“The temple has healers.” Zuchi reminded her.
“We’re in a temple and one with healers this will cost you what? 50 velm to mend? And that’s just covering it over so that it doesn’t keep bleeding and getting the ocean into it. A full healing would be three times that, at least.”
“You old people are so fixated on the cost of healing.” Zuchi spat out angrily, “it’s fine.”
“You young people never had to have insurance, and the bold-faced price gouging of the hospitals and insurance companies combined.” Dya snapped back, “I don’t know about you, but 50 velm would be out of my family’s reach. A full healing would never happen. You have it for free right here. Are you really going to do that your wisun?”
Zuchi pursed her lips like she wanted to protest but then nodded. “Fine. Do it.”
In the light of the alter, the spear was clearly an urchin’s spine, a reality Dya had been denying in the dark purely because of the sheer size of the thing. It had pierced clean through Zuchi’s leg to poke at her other thigh, still leaving the two foot-ish length that had snagged and bound up in all the seaweed. The implications of spines that large was terrifying enough on their own, much less that they could be projected somehow.
Still, the wound looked clean enough. Dya held Zuchi’s leg in place and gave a couple of prods and pinches, and then without warning Dya yanked out the spear like spine in one smooth motion. Zuchi howled at the removal, and blood gushed from the wound. Holding onto her thin leg, Dya yanked her around to put the wound directly in the stream of blessed water, first to wash the hole in her leg out and then to let it heal. She braced the wound together as though her hands were stitches and used her body and elbows to brace the leg in place as Zuchi screamed and bucked while the wound zipped together.
Though the healing seemed was crazily rapid, Dya held Zuchi in place until she stopped screaming and kicking. At first Dya made the mistake of thinking that somehow she had gotten strong, but then she realized that Zuchi was just so weak in her legs that she was easily held in place. Dya held her there because Zuchi’s kicking and screaming seemed to be indicating that she was still being smote with healing, though it seemed to go on longer than Dya expected.
When it was finally over Zuchi was sniffing on the corner of the alter, poking at the tiny white star of a scar, smaller than a pox scar (not that she’d know what that was) and Dya was holding the spine. It was two foot long-ish and half an inch thick at the base. While sharp it wasn’t as brittle as normal spines were; having just a bit of bend to it. The surface was rough with a grabby sort of texture, like little teeth or sharkskin. It was the sort of spine that would work its way into and through a body, doing more and more damage as it went.
“You ok?” Dya checked in with Zuchi.
“yeah. I guess.” She poked at her leg again. “What… I mean… This is a game right? So why is the pain so real? It really hurt, and I was really scared.”
“Maybe that’s the point? Being scared I mean,” Brooke said, speaking out of character, “If there aren’t real enough consequences then the game feels less real.”
“But it’s a game! People are going to walk away and do something else if they’re afraid to be hurt!” Zuchi protested.
“Maybe for you, you’re what, in your 20’s? You have a body to go back to.” Brooke shook her head. “People like me don’t. This is our life now, I mean, sure I could bail on the game and go to Star.fleet but I’d be just as likely to do that if the game made me feel disconnected and unreal.”
“This is my life too, you know.” Zuchi glared at Dya, “It's not just old people in here. I’m here for the next year, maybe two.”
“What?” Dya said intelligently. “why? How?”
“I have phocomelia of my legs, and my parents got me into a trial treatment where they’re replacing my spinal column with nanotricortical tech. Reaching into my brain with artificial nerves so they can attach functional legs.”
“Attach…you’re going to be a cyborg.” Brooke pieced together.
“Yes.” Zuchi said simply.
“A real functional cyborg.” Brooke continued.
“Well yes. It's not that big a deal, there are already cyborgs around.” Zuchi rolled her eyes.
“Not like this.” Brooke shook her head. “I mean, we’ve had cyborgs ever since they made cochlear implants but what you’re getting is real science fiction stuff. A real merge of man and machine. That is amazing!”
“um. Thanks.” Zuchi said uncomfortably.
“You’re not excited about it though?”
“I am.”
“but.”
Zuchi looked at her for a long time and Brooke sat patiently, looking at her from the eyes of her 6 year old avatar. Zuchi shook her head.
“But I was doing fine without the legs. I got around, I had my mobility aids and I lived on my own during college. I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong, I just I don’t know.” Zuchi shrugged.
“It's complicated.” Brooke suggested.
“It's complicated.” Zuchi agreed. And they sat in silence for a bit.
“Well, at least now I know why you forget about your legs.” Dya said.
“Yep.”
“So how are you feeling now?”
Zuchi took a moment to pause and then a bemused smile crossed her face, a complicated expression to be on a 6 year old. “I’m ok, actually. Like really ok.”
“Are you sure, if you need a real break, we can go outside and do something else.” Dya said.
“No really, I’m ok.” Zuchi frowned a little, “ More Ok than I probably should be, like the anxiety and trauma of the thing is fading so fast I can feel it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s one way to do it.” Dya mused. “Ready to get back to work?”
Zuchi groaned, but shifted to her knees. “I guess we need to get my bag of urchins back.”
“You drop it when you got hit?”
“Yeah.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll go get it if you don’t feel up to it.” Dya volunteered.
Zuchi looked at her askance for the ready way she volunteered. “Aren’t you afraid of getting hit like me?”
“Well, yes, but also, not as much as I might have been in the past.” Dya shrugged, “I’ve always figured that 60% of pain is fear of the damage done to the body, that it might be permanent, that you don’t know what it’s going to do to you. In this case, the pain will definitely suck so much but we’ve got healing right here and you’ve already cleared a path out so… yeah. I figure I can plot my course to swim in, grab the bag, and swim out and be healed as necessary.”
Zuchi looked at her, unimpressed. “I think you’re underestimating the pain.”
Then she shrugged. “But hey, if it gets this done and I don’t have to do it, go for it.”
The plan was pretty simple from there. Using night light Zuchi was able to point out where her bag was and Dya charted a course through the dense kelp forest. She felt pretty safe in her approach of the bag but made sure she had what speed she could manage as she swam by and grabbed the rough fibers.
It was as she was grabbing the bag and shoving off the ground with her fins that she saw it. A boulder sized urchin. An urchin so monstrous that it pulled a squeal of horror from her even as she frantically kicked away and dodged around the kelp. Even with her wild movements causing her to move erratically the oversized kelp eater managed to score her with a spear, leaving a long bleeding mark up her arm that throbbed and stung in the salt water of the temple.
“There’s no way we can handle that thing.” Zuchi said when Dya gave her the description, “it’s a monster!”
“maybe.” Dya hissed as she was smote with healing. “Maybe the answer is that we need to ask for help. But we don’t need to deal with it just yet. Let's just stay out of its corner for now and do everything else, neh?”
After depositing Zuchi’s bag of urchin’s they returned to the task of removing kelp, which, seemed safer. They soon worked out a method of cutting out a long, thin strip that ran the length of the temple with blessed alter water. The strip was maybe a foot wide. Dya then went under, and cut the anchors so that it floated freely, and Zuchi pulled it to her at the altar while Dya started cutting out the next strip, starting with the underneath anchors-- of course.
Working like this made the clean up go quickly, and very soon they were passing their halfway point, with the stream of water becoming thicker and looping back on itself, and then when they got 75% of the way done it was splitting into three fourths to form a simple looking knot in the stream. Even better, they could see most of the chamber clearly.
But the back corner remained, and the kelp was littered with spears from when they had got too close for the creature’s comfort, and still the kelp kept growing back at a visible rate.
Quest update: Cleaning the Temple
485/1000 small sea urchins
28/500 medium sea urchins
2/100 large sea urchins
0/25 monster sea urchin
0/1 king sea urchin
1906/2000 lbs of kelp
The kelp around the king urchin kept growing at incredible rates, even beyond the rest of the kelp, it was like a spaghetti machine. Zuchi and Dya stared at the growing mass as they tried to figure out what to do.
“We could use the kelp to make bows to launch the spears at the urchin.” Zuchi said without any sort of conviction.
“Or a funnel to pour holy water down on it.” Dya said, while immediately dismissing the idea since the urchin was completely submerged under sea water.
“Or fashion armor out of kelp so we can just go in and stab it.” Zuchi added, rolling her eyes as yet another spear penetrated the thick matt in front of them. Dya laughed at the image of the amount of kelp they would have to heap on themselves to be protected from those spears. They wouldn’t be able to move!
“Why don’t we get all the other urchins first, that’ll slow down the kelp, right?” Dya said hopefully.
Zuchi agreed and they backed away from the king urchin. With the main space of the chapel now open it was much easier to identify and harvest the small and medium urchins. They even set aside a reasonable pile of urchins to take home with them, and still killed the quota.
“How did so many of these urchins even fit in here?” Zuchi asked as they piled the last of them onto the alter “I swear, if we actually took all the small and medium urchins we’ve gathered and laid them out next to each other, they would carpet the chapel several times over! This doesn’t make any sense!!!”
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“Game logic?” Dya suggested, “It makes a reasonable representation of a task that was folded in on itself, but had to be un-origami-ed to be finished and when unfolded it becomes a seemingly huge 2 dimensional object? Like how they are using solar sails in space.”
“You can’t origami urchins.” Zuchi growled, and then sighed as the last couple of medium urchins dissolved away and the blessed water of Salt chimed to acknowledge their offering and another twist was added to the knot.
Dya pointed to the new twist and said, “Seems that Salt disagrees with you.” Zuchi rolled her eyes and groaned, and turned to review the quest update.
“Ok, so that’s 1000 small, 500 mediums. Let's tackle the larges. You have your brass knife and those stilettos, right?”
“And you have those gloves, right?” Dya asked, thinking that those would be much better than her knives
“I suppose.” Zuchi said reluctantly. ”I think the knives would be better.”
Dya looked at her for a moment, and then, before she could blurt out something stupid, she offered to trade, “I’ll give you the knives for the gloves, at least temporarily. Nam will want her knife back.”
“Ok… I don’t know how to use it though.” Zuchi said.
“Neither do I.” Dya shrugged. “I found that stabbing motions were the best in the water though. Get in close and then wave the blade around.”
She demonstrated in the air. “At least on the one urchin I tried it out on. You can use the stilettos as well. Nothing says ‘I want you dead’ like a stab to the head.”
Zuchi snorted and took the blades, handing over the gloves.
----------------------------------------
Very soon both Dya and Zuchi were cursing as they got stabbed by the urchins.
The gloves were very effective at protecting against the stabbing damage, and against minor pricks, but the urchin managed to get in a lot of piercing damage. Likewise, Zuchi was discovering just how difficult it was to get a blade to go where you wanted it to in the water.
“Fuck this.” Dya said, in her sweet six year old’s voice as she watched her urchin be claimed by the goddess.
“Uh-huh.” Zuchi agreed emphatically as she dumped a very ragged looking urchin into bowl. She’d gone for one with short spines and stabbed it through with the stiletto’s to carry it out.
“That’s what, six out of fifty?” Dya asked.
“Out of a hundred.” Zuchi corrected.
“And these are just the large ones. The basic baby monsters.” Dya continued.
“The monster urchins look to be around the size of a basketball.” Zuchi supplied.
“And that Godzilla urchin in the back.”
“It’s a beach ball.”
“A beach ball that shoots spears at you.” Dya added.
“A very mean beach ball.” Zuchi agreed.
“Fuck thiiiiiis.” Dya groaned and flopped back on the altar.
“Uh-huh” Zuchi joined her.
They laid like that for a bit, both avoiding putting their wounded hands in the blessed water for healing for the moment. Nobody wanted time with the tiny hammers just yet.
As she laid there, Dya just felt a bit overwhelmed. She didn’t have any reasonable tools to work with, and these were very unreasonable urchins. In the Real World they had armored gloves, and scoops of various sorts. Or if they weren’t trying to move the damn things they had the simple ability to resort to big hammers and smashing the urchins if they became too plentiful.
A soft clink caught her ears, which were submerged in the water while her face was not. She almost didn’t think anything of it, the king urchin enraged by the increased light in the room had begun occasionally shooting off a small spear spine in their general direction every few minutes. At first it had been alarming but, like most things in the water, the spears lost their momentum quickly. By the time they reached the distance of the alter they had the force of a tossed ball, and would bounce off whatever surface they encountered.
She almost didn’t think anything of it. Almost. Except they needed tools.
She turned over with a splash and grabbed a handful of the long thin spines. Most were between ¼ and ½ inch in diameter and were between 12 to 28 inches long. Otherwise, they looked very much like urchin spines with one sharp pointy end and one rounded end where it had fit into the urchin.
Dya would have wondered about the ginormous urchin loosing so many spines but the older spines were already degrading at such a pace that they looked like they were years in the ocean and falling apart. As her da would say “if it goes easy it was made easy.” Some creatures could just summon defensive weapons as needed, especially those with projectiles. This king urchin was one of them, which meant that any spine of its had a limited time to be of use.
Out of the handful she selected two relatively fresh spines of equal length, about 18 inches each. Then, wielding them like a pair of oversized chopsticks, she tried to pick up an urchin.
It didn’t work, she was unable to lift the urchin and was, at best able to flip it upside-down. Looking down and cursing her tiny six year old hands, Dyaku had to also admit in her heart that even if she had her adult human hands at their strongest it probably wouldn’t have worked either. Still, it had been worth a try, right?
Trying again she took the pair of spines and, with one in each hand, tremulously scooped up the urchin from underneath. It worked, but it was wobbly, and it took a lot of concentration to make sure she didn’t drop it on her way to the altar. Zuchi watched and cheered her on, and when it looked like she was being truly successful, went to pull her own pair of spines from the pile. Soon they were both carrying the large urchins to the altar.
The second urchin she carried was much more smooth, but the third kept falling off. Dya was cursing the large urchin’s mother when Zuchi let up a cheer.
“LOOT!”
“Your mother fucked a magic eight ball and thought that ‘maybe’ was a good time.” She hissed to the intransigent urchin, and then swam over to the altar.
Zuchi was scooping something small out of the altar bowl, and turned to show Dya. It looked like someone had taken a cross section out of the middle of a large urchin, and added a hair pin.
“Oh, wow, neat! Want me to help you put it on?” Dya immediately offered, and Zuchi nodded eagerly.
As she pulled back Zuchi’s hair and pulled it through the urchin, she examined the little treasure.
Halo of the Urchin, uncommon
Haircomb
Made of a hard chitinous material, this hair comb is the result of a combination of blessed holy water and a Comb of the Urchin. The extra long thorns radiate from the head to show the blessing of Salt upon the wearer.
+1 spiny protection (+1d4 from damage protective shell)
+1 blessing of protection (2 armor)
“This is really nice.” Dya said as she pushed the pin through the hair and the magic took control, adjusting her hair to perfection, and giving her the appearance of having a spiky purple radiance style halo. It was very intimidating next to her many false eyes.
“It is. I wonder what else we can get out of these urchins. We’re what, seven in and we’ve got two drops?” Zuchi grinned in anticipation.
“So far that seems like a pretty high ratio.” Dya acknowledged, and grinned. “Lets see what else these urchin’s are hiding. “
Four urchins later Dya was tying the spines to her forearm and wishing she had a way to spot wield the damn spines together so she could just make a brace hook when she had a revelation. A stunning revelation. A revelation of just how stupid she was being.
“Oh my fucking god.” Dya popped up to the surface just to say it in English, she felt so stupid. The water, now that it wasn’t smothered in a dense layer of kelp was not that deep, only 48 inches between the benches and 12 inches on top of the benches, so she noticed and came to the surface to see what Dya was up to.
“Are you actually evoking Anthozoa or-“Zuchi asked cautiously.
“I’ve been so stupid.” Dya cut her off, tearing the kelp from her arms.
“Hey now, I thought that was a great idea.” Zuchi said.
“Maybe if we had to present perfectly intact urchins.” Dya said, holding her spines in each hand.
“We don’t? Oh… no, we don’t. Oh.” Zuchi face palmed. “We’ve been thinking we needed to gather them like food.”
“yeah.” Dya said, “my fault, I think, since it’s my mom we had to get some for.”
Dya dove down and used the two spines to flip over a large urchin. Then she kicked her fins out of the water to add weight to the spine as she aimed right into the mouth of the urchin and speared the urchin right through the mouth.
A red -4 rose up from the urchin and it began to frantically thrash. Twisting around in the water Dya was able to use the spear spine and the support spine in her other hand to cart the thrashing urchin to the alter. Popping it off her spear with the other spine, she found that the whole trip took less than half the time to do.
A couple more experiments and they found they could spear all the way through an urchin from mouth to anus and receive the notification that they had defeated a monster. Zuchi soon reported that she had the warrior track open to her as well, and they had more loot turn up.
The most common were a bracer, armband, and anklet, both Dyaku and Zuchi got one each. They all had the same stats, +1d4 damage from spiny shell and +.5 armor from a blessing of protection. Fortunately, they found that they were stackable.
Zuchi got the necklace, +1 charisma +1 blessing of minor healing (.5 per second) and Dya got the choker, +1 charisma, +1 blessing of armor. Zuchi should have received the belt (+1 armor +1 blessing of armor) but it kept slipping off her hips and she gave it to Dya in disgust. Dya promised to give it back to her when she had built up more muscles in her butt so it would stay in place.
Zuchi did not appreciate the promise.
But the prize that really caught their attention was the “breast plate.”
Blessed Breastplate of Thorns, uncommon
Chest armor
A pair of urchin shells and layers of urchin spines protect the chest from blows in this stylish top. Blessed by Salt.
+1 armor
+1 defense
+1 charisma
Dya held up the “breast plate.” It was sized for an adult, but they could both see how it would fit. Two large urchins formed bra like cups with sea urchin spine scale mail between and around. It connected over the shoulders by a pair of cords.
Dya twitched it.
The breastplate jingled.
“Is that not supposed to stab you when you wear it?” Zuchi asked.
“What do you mean when I wear it?” Dya looked over at Zuchi. “This has your name written all over it.”
“Oh, no, its your turn for the loot.” Zuchi said, “I couldn’t dare take your loot from you.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t be so greedy as to take the only real piece of armor we got.” Dya pushed it out towards her.
“It’d clash with my skin.” Zuchi said, pushing further away on the alter stairs where they sat.
“It’ll clash with everyones skin.” Dya said dryly.
“Its yours, you wear it.” Zuchi said with finality, and Dya sighed.
“Fine, but if we get another one, you’re wearing it.”
Like the choker, bracer, and anklet, the breastplate shrank to fit her perfectly when she put it on. Unlike those accessories, it really didn’t help.
If it were just the few layers of urchin spines that laid down to create the scale mail that covered her chest bone and wrapped around her back, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Barely there, but not so bad. But the urchin shells sat on her chest like a pair of pompoms, obviously empty and awkward.
Zuchi started laughing and it didn’t take long for Dya to join her.
Dya looked at her stats:
Dyahku O Nu‡’‡ak
(Brooke E. 1328)
LVL .6
Age 6
No Job or Class Available
Armor:7.5
Defense: 1
Passive Attack: 3(1D4)
Str 7
INT 6
DEX 7
WIS 6
CHA 6(X2 AGE MODIFIER)(+2)
LUK 10
MAG 5 (6)
SPE 6
SPELLS: Night light, water spray (unused)
Skills: none
Dya smiled at her improvements and then turned to Zuchi. “Give me those gloves again, I want to try something.”
“Something new?” Zuchi asked, “or just the old thing now that we have equipment.”
“The old thing.” Dya said, grinning. “I’ve got an armor stat of 7 now, and then there’s the spiny shell that we’ve not tried.”
“Couldn’t we just get close enough without touching them to have that work?” Zuchi seemed reluctant to risk touching the vibrating urchins again.
“I dunno.” Dya shrugged, “Why don’t you try.”
Dya swam over to one of the few urchin’s left and scooped it up. She felt it vibrate against her skin and it was not a pleasant feeling, but that was it. It was unpleasant. Like a blade of sand paper grabbing at her skin.
Immediately two 4’s and a 1 rose from the urchin and then a second later, as she carried it over, 2,1 and 4 . Soon after the vibrating shotput sized urchin suffered a 1, 1, and 3 and stopped moving entirely, and Dya was able to drop it unchallenged into the altar.
Then she checked the progress on the quest.
Quest update: Cleaning the Temple
1000/1000 small sea urchins
500/500 medium sea urchins
89/100 large sea urchins
0/25 monster sea urchin
0/1 king sea urchin
1906/2000 lbs of kelp
“Oh no!” Zuchi moaned as a breastplate appeared when her newly dead urchin faded under the blessed water.
“Ha!” Dya shouted triumphantly, “your turn!”
“Go stuff a sword fish.” Zuch grumbled and then put on the ridiculous top. “How are you going to explain all this loot to your namcha anyhow?”
Dya froze up. She’d forgotten about that detail, there was going to be no getting around that. “we finish the quest and sell off the loot before I go home?”
“So you can slip coins by her but not clothes.” Zuchi said doubtfully. “I guess that makes sense…”
“I have an inventory. A small one, but I can fit coins in it.”
“How did you get an inventory?” Ziyal asked, astonished, “I don’t have an inventory! I thought we were going to have to get bags of holding or the like.”
“It came with a quest I got from the Gardener.” Dya summoned Promise and Apology into her hand and began cycling them in her fingers.
“Wait, this isn’t your first quest? You got a quest in the entry garden?” Zuchi was scandalized.
“Did you encounter the boob-charisma bug?” Dya asked
“Only briefly, they were fixing it when I first encountered it. Kind of hilarious.” Zuchi shrugged.
“I was involved in getting it fixed. It got… messy.” Dya explained the events of the Garden to Zuchi, including a very detailed description of the Gardener and Ziggy. <3
“So the boobs weren’t a bug, they were a feature.” Zuchi groaned when Dya was done. “I should help you find this Ziggy and thank them—oh.”
Dya looked over at Zuchi and saw that she had jerked back in surprise, then she said, “I got a quest update. Wait… you mean finding Ziggy was the quest I’m supposed to help you with?! I didn’t have to help you with this cleaning quest at all? Oh, my gods…”
Dya experienced a moment of confusion but then just rolled with it. Zuchi did say something about having to help her before, this must be why. Dya reached over and patted her comfortingly on the shoulder, “Well, you got loot and stat boosts out of it.”
“This has been so disgusting and painful and hard!” Zuchi cried.
“Thank you for not leaving me alone?” Dya hazarded, trying to help.
Zuchi closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the now clean air. Then she took another. Finally, she sighed and said, “yeah, sure. It’s not been that bad, but it’s not the game that I thought I’d be playing.”
“We’re barely started with the game and we’re almost done with this cleaning quest. I think this is about the same as having the quest to go down into the sewer to kill rats and slimes.” Dya smiled hopefully, “So there’s a bright side, no sewers for us!”
“Oh, dear god.” Zuchi shuddered. “There is that.”
She sighed heavily again. “Look, I need a break. I think I’m having a harder time with this than I would if I weren’t so tired. It’s got to be late. I don’t think we can finish this before we need to go home.”
“I um… ok.” Dya said, a bit alarmed. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do about this armor and my namcha.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Zuchi sighed again and left, her eyes staring into the depths, and leaving Dya all dressed up and having to go home.