Dropping back down 40 feet with the water was still a drop, but it was the best drop of Dya’s life. Her world was dark and wet but alive as she plunged into the narrow hole at the base of the cliff and was sucked down in a rushing current. It didn’t matter how deep she was pulled or the pressure she felt, she had enough air in her lungs to last for half an hour.
It was a relief, that blessed rushing darkness, the aloneness far from the grasp and grab of the wolf and his horrid pack. She let the water take her where it will, and lay in its grip, letting it heal her as it shot her through the darkness.
Eventually and far too soon Dya found herself ejected into the sandy bottom of a broad pool. Around her were the shapes of corals and anemones filtering the water with small crabs and fish darting around. There was spare light coming down from the surface and she could see Zuchi's silhouette drifting in the reflected light.
Zuchi. How the hell did that girl get involved with this? Really, Dya didn’t understand how she herself had become involved in this, but then to have Zuchi show up too was beyond weird. The entire thing was terrifying. Was she ok?
Dya unfurled her fins and rose through the water towards her friend. Zuchi was staring into the dark that Dya came from but it seemed to take a moment for her to register that Dya was there. When Zuchi finally did she darted forward in the water, startled.
“Free are you!” she clicked desperately and swam into Dya clinging her into a hug. “How are free you? Afraid was I.”
“Afraid was I.” Dya echoed back to her and hugged her back, “Alive are we. Safe.”
“Safe.” Zuchi agreed, and they hung there in the water with the little fish swimming around them and the flow of the water pushing them in a gentle swirl.
“Going to-“ Zuchi started.
“Did not they.” Dya denied, not letting her finish, unable to face it, unable to name what the Cuil Drabor pack were going to do to her.
“Get free how?” Zuchi asked. “Tied magic, said Gonmanal [of] you.”
“Was.” Dya agreed, and pulled away from Zuchi, to swim to look at their surroundings and to struggle with how to say what happened. “Saved Salt-goddess me. No magic. Cast No magic.”
“Cast No magic?” Zuchi was confused, and Dya groaned internally. There wasn’t a clicksqueal word for nullify. She waved her hands to signal a difficult word and focused instead on looking around them.
The reefs around them were laid out in a perfect, unnatural spiral. They were all of the brain-coral type too, clearly cultivated and protected to remain the same type. The room was about 40 ft across and had multiple cracks in the rocks that made up the dome above the water to let in light, in this case spare moonlight from the setting moon. Then it would be completely dark and impossible to navigate. Zuchi caught her hand and pulled her towards a pocket that Dya hadn’t noticed, a ledge on the edge of the water where bed anemones grew at great size. Large enough for 20 mer to sleep on together, a concept that amazed Dya.
As their heads broke the water Dya took in a breath of air and then said, “Salt blessed my casting of Jet with nullify magic.”
“Oh, I got it. No-magic. If it comes up again, maybe call it no-no magic?” the last bit was said in clicksqueal.
“I’ll try it.” Dya said, wondering if it would ever come up again, then moving back to her narrative. “I’d managed to get over the edge of the cliff so She could reach me with her waves and she cut me loose from him. If she hadn’t he’d have pulled me up and…”
Dya trailed of, the memory of the dirt and the flesh of him pushing into her, trying to force its way past her seal. It hadn’t, it hadn’t, it hadn’t but he would have had she not had Salts blessing of protection. “He almost…”
Zuchi put a hand on her shoulder as she shuddered. “He didn’t though, because you got away. You’re here.”
Dya nodded and pulled herself onto the shelf to curl onto the soft anemone, Zuchi followed her up and they curled together, shivering in the dark though it was not cold.
“You’re safe too.” Dya finally said, “How the hell did you end up there?”
“How did I end up there? How did YOU end up there?” Zuchi asked right back at her. “I was attacked by a pair of beastkin, kidnapped by a large wolf, and dragged up the cliff by even more beastkin. The last thing I expected to find at the end of the climb was my best friend tied to the goddamned mountain.”
Dya opened her mouth, closed it, considered, and then said, “Point. Neither of us were where we were expected to be. I was enspelled, kidnapped into the woods, hunted up the damn cliff, almost got away, and… he stole my name.”
Dya curled back in on herself and Zuchi glommed onto her.
“What does that even mean? What did he do?” Zuchi murmured, confusion and worry squeazing her voice dry. “Dya, you’re still Dya. He didn’t steal your name.”
“But I’m not Zithya anymore.” Dya said.
“Zithya? Why would you be Zithya? That is an ugly fish. Your fish name is Sag…li… oh, shit.” Zuchi finished in a horrified mutter.
“There is no fish called Suña either.” Dya pointed out.
“No, that’s what he called me.” Zuchi scowled. “Something like a delicate flower so some such bullshit. You know my fish name is Suña.”
Dya just sighed and hugged Zuchi while she took a second to realize what she had said, and then tried to correct it with no avail.
“It's not Suña, it's not! I was called Suña as a child---No!” Zuchi hissed, “What did he do?”
“He stole our names! Stop fighting it so much and you’ll be able to say who you were easier, I found.” Dya shrugged. “I was Zithya, but now I am Sagli. You were ph-Pazlik, but now you are Suña.”
“Oh my gods thank you. Thank you for saying that name. I couldn’t even remember and I was trying so hard.” Zuchi buried her forehead on Dya’s back.
“We are as water,” Dya quoted the holy texts, “we fill the vessel we are given but it does not change what makes us.”
“What does that even mean for us?”
“What does this name bullshit mean for us?” Dya returned “It means something, but damned if I know what.”
“A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.” Zuchi quoted aimlessly.
“I did my best to keep my real name away from him… and yours too.” Dya said. “I’m sorry if it’s not how you wanted.”
“I wouldn’t have known and would have told him my name, was about to when you called out.” Zuchi shook her head. “How did you know?”
“He did this to Trarte.” Dya said. “He used my blood to bind Trarte. Trarte used to be p-Ponti.”
“Bind?” the sharp mer caught the word choice.
“huh.” Dya thought about the word choice, and turned it over in her head. It had not been a conscious decision but, “It feels like it was a binding. I saw it cast, sorta, on Trarte, but I clearly saw it cast on you and it looked like a seal of some sort. And when it crawled through my skull it didn’t feel like a passing thing, it felt like an anchor, a tie. You know?”
Zuchi contemplated this for a long moment in the dark. “Yes, I think you are right. What he did before too, was a binding.”
“What did he do?” Dya asked, concerned, but all she got was the feeling of Zuchi shaking her head against Dya’s back, so she didn’t push it.
Instead she said, “This is supposed to be a game.”
“Something went wrong-“ Zuchi’s breath caught in her throat.
“No shit. They’re required to have Grimdark warnings for this sort of content. I mean the hunting and capture, ok, fine, yeah, I guess that would be in bounds but Gonmanal almost… he would have… and he told the others they were supposed to as well. What the hell kind of NPC is that?”
Zuchi didn’t reply, just clung to Dya in the dark. Dya shifted so she could hug Zuchi back, needing to hold on to her friend, to not be alone.
“I can’t do this.” She whispered. “I have to make a complaint to the programmers. This can’t run in the game.”
“Yeah.” Zuchi whispered a ghost of a whisper.
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“Lets quit the game together and make a complaint. Maybe they can fix the game and because of the circumstances they’ll let us back in and we can play the way we were playing before.”
Zuchi curled in on herself and sobbed, startling Dya out of her self focus.
“Zuchi!”
“We can’t!” Zuchi wailed.
“What?!”
“We can’t quit!”
“What are you talking about?!" Dya did not process what Zuchi was telling her correctly, she couldn't--she didn't want to--and pushed her away.
"I can’t keep playing a game like this!--I won’t!” Dya shouted. “Why would you say we have to keep playing after this!”
“We don’t—I mean—we can’t NOT. I mean—“ Zuchi cried and yelled at the same time and then tried to calm down and only got a little bit down, but enough to say, “I tried to quit already.”
Dya tried to look at her friend but the darkness prevailed.
“Gonmanal… when he kidnapped me he… he DID. He did and I couldn’t stop him and I … He left me with his pack to continue the hunt.” Zuchi was curled in on herself like a ball, and Dya put her hands on her shoulder. She wanted to curl herself around Zuchi but was afraid it would be too much at the moment. She didn’t know what to do but listen, so she did.
“So I tried. I said the words. I said it. Quit Seirpin.Fantasy. I shouted it. The pack members there just laughed at me, thought I was being a trapped animal. They mocked me in Jabsi. And nothing happened.
“I didn’t even get an error message.”
Dya was stunned. In the darkness, she pulled back in on herself and shook her head. This didn’t make sense. She didn’t believe her. But Zuchi wouldn’t lie.
“I’ll try and I’ll get you out if it works.”
“right.” Zuchi said with no real hope.
“Quit Seirpin Fantasy.” Dya intoned.
And nothing happened.
For a long time.
“Quit Seirpin.Fantasy!” Dya tried again. “Quit Seirpin.Fantasy!”
She tried again and again and again but in the end she was left in the dark water on a anemone bed with Zuchi, still a mermaid, still on Seirpin.
Zuchi reached out to touch her, and found her fin. Dya found her hand and they hugged scared and confused.
“We can’t leave.” Dya whispered. “Was this something he did to us?”
“How could an NPC do this to us?” Zuchi asked, “It has to be something bigger.”
“You think… you think maybe Goddess Terra is involved?” Dya was horrified by the idea.
“I don’t know! I haven’t gotten that far. I just, I can’t see him as having done this to us. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well who else would have done it? He was doing his… ritual to me in her name.” Dya said bitterly.
“But does that mean she was aware of it?” Zuchi whispered. “I mean, she has the most players to track, the most … everything to track, doesn’t she? We’re not hers, so she wouldn’t have us on her list, and he’s just an NPC.”
“Trarte.”
“But he… he was on a quest, all was normal for him, right?”
Dya thought about it. “I don’t think it was, but I don’t know that he was aware of how not normal things were.”
“So would she be aware of a player not in distress?”
“I don’t know.” Dya admitted.
“Yeah, neither do I.”
“But that would mean that the game would be programmed to keep us in against our will. That’s illegal.” Dya all but shouted in frustration.
“Or it could be a goddamned glitch!” Zuchi pushed right back. “I don’t know! All I know is that we’re here! Now! Stuck!”
“Jokers to the left of me, rapists on the right and here I am stuck in the middle with you.” Dya muttered.
Zuchi paused.
“I don’t think that is how the song is supposed to go.”
“I don’t think this is how our lives are supposed to.”
“Sweet conch slippers.” Zuchi muttered, tired. “Seagulls of Palitul.”
“Damn dolphin riders.” Dya agreed.
“heh, gross.” Zuchi laid her head on her.
“Dolphin males are pretty gross.” Dya agreed philosophically, and Zuchi snorted.
They sat in silence, in the darkness for a long time before they settled in and drifted off, clinging together in the shallow water and the darkness.
----------------------------------------
Dya woke when a beam of light bounced off the water and hit her in the face. Zuchi woke up when she moved. In the cracks in the stone dome Dya could see waving grass and blue sky; morning had come and with it enough light to navigate the water below.
“I’m hungry.” Zuchi grumbled, splashing to the edge of the sleeping platform. “I didn’t get much to eat last night.”
Dya nodded, though she had more than enough to eat last night. “Didn’t partake of much festival food?”
“I was dancing and then hanging with Jive and Coleman for the first part of the night.” She gave an elegant one shoulder shrug. “We had some snacks but, we were more interested in each other than the food.”
“Jive and Coleman?” Dya asked.
“Terrible names but great guys.” Zuchi said, pushing off the platform, and Dya followed her. “Last I saw of them they were beating the shit out of a couple of beast kin who attacked us while we were … you know. Laying around.”
“Only laying around?” Dya grinned at her.
“Well, we’d already done everything else by that point.” Zuchi said, and then slipped under the water before Dya could tease her further. Dya considered teasing her anyhow, but decided to leave it be. They had other things to do.
Specifically, they were looking at a large spiral labyrinth of coral. Zuchi was diving right for the middle of it, but Dya stopped 10 ft under the surface and looked at it, feeling like it was familiar. She’d seen it before—the angle was wrong though. She swam to the edge and swam the circumference while Zuchi dove down into and out of the paths of the labyrinth. Mazes seemed like a strange thing to have in the water, after all if you can move in three dimensions there was nothing to keep you from just jumping the boundaries, right?
Then as she curved around the northern edge it snapped into focus and she remembered where she had seen it before.
“EEEE!” She let out a loud squeal to call Zuchi to her, and when the smaller mer came down next to her she proudly pointed down what appeared to be a hall that went straight through the labyrinth to the other side.
“What.” Zuchi clicked.
“Path know I!” Dya clicked, mentally hating on clicksqueal’s awkward limitations. “Air first, then follow.”
She shot towards the surface and grabbed a great lungful air, then thought about it and waited for Zuchi.
“What?” Zuchi asked when she surfaced.
“The labyrinth, its magic. If you follow the right path you can get to the secret at the end, and I know the path!” Dya said excitedly, “You do too, probably, but you wouldn’t think to use it. I only did because I recognize this from Ziggy showing me in the garden-“
“The Garden—you mean you saw this in the starting Garden?” Zuchi asked.
“Yes!” Dya nodded enthusiastically, “After the whole Boobage thing and then Lord Jareth—the Gardener—was fixing the character interface and Ziggy had to stay around we wandered the mer garden and they showed me this.”
“Oh, wow.” Zuchi plunged her face in the water to look down and then pull back up again, “That’s amazing. I didn’t think anything from the garden was here in the real world. I mean the real game.”
“I know.”Dya agreed. “You’ve got to follow me. Just you know the traditional pattern for a labyrinth? Not this maze structure but the simple circular treeish like structure?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re following that. So help me mark that. Don’t veer off course, not even a little. Ignore all other paths, doorways, treasures, etc.”
“That’s not possible.” Zuchi told her. “I’ve been in and out of the maze in a couple of places, its just not built like that.”
“Its Magic, Zuchi.” Dya said, with ‘obviously’ in her voice. “It will work.”
“If you say so…”
“Just follow me ok? If it doesn’t work then you can explore the damn maze at your leisure after.” Dya grumped and Zuchi huffed her acceptance.
“Fyyyne.”
One minute later they were down against the sandy bottom entering the mouth of the labyrinth and turning left into the first tunnel following the outside wall. It wasn't brain coral exactly, but it must have been related, as the walls had the same maze like patterns as the brain corals did. There were tube worms, crabs, fishes and openings in and out of the path they were following. The openings hinted at secrets and as they swung around the outside almost back to where they started from, there was an opening to what should have been the room they came from. Instead, it was a dark 10x10 room with a treasure chest spilling stained and encrusted silver coins, strings of pearls, and glittering gold.
Zuchi stopped to stare at it and Dya grabbed her hand to pull her along, "Mimic."
Zuchi just nodded and let Dya pull her along. Mimics were extremely common in the ocean, and not just of the dungeon variety.
Five minutes after that Zuchi was keeping Dya from skipping a turn right to get to the next loop through. 10 minutes after that they were halfway through and Zuchi was clicking her acquiescence.
“Right were you. Magic must be this.”
Another fifteen minutes later and both of them were struggling to stay down. They were at their limit for holding their breath and above them the labyrinth opened up to the sky, which itself didn’t make sense. They had been traveling in an ever inward spiral but suddenly the the dyaku, blue sky seen through the surface of the water, was visible above them. It beckoned them with a promise of fresh air, glorious air, cool air but they knew they would never find their way back to the path unless they finished the damned maze. And they were almost there. They had to be, the curves were coming closer and closer and they were swimming as fast as they could manage before their lungs demanded they take a breath of fresh air that wasn’t there.
Until it was.
They came around a corner and found themselves spilling through a gentile waterfall into a room the size of the rock dome they had spent the night in.