It was the first time Dya had seen any real shape shifting in the game. The skill was a rare gift game wise and she let out a terrified gasp as the giant ass wolf of doom became a giant ass wolfman—still of doom. The horns he must have earned from some weirdly misguided bovine beast still swept down to frame his face. The snout was shorter, the eyes larger, the chest and torso just entirely rearranged to be more hominid. Even the hips and legs shifted to allow for bipedal walking. Fingers and feet extended/rearranged themselves around their change in burden and over it all, incongruously, was a shower of green and brown sparkles.
It was like someone set off a damn sparkler over the wolf and when it was done there was a furry standing there. Somewhere, some when, some programmer had decided that all the transformation sequences would include sparkles and never thought that maybe that wouldn’t be appropriate to all occasions.
Dya suppressed a hysteric giggle as the wolfman stretched and Ponti’s growl slowed to a stop. Casually looking into the bowl of the altar, the furry’s eyebrows raised as he plunged his clawed hand in and pulled something out, raising nebulous anxiety in Dya’s chest. Another one. To go with all the others. Admittedly this whole situation was so fraught with anxiety she hardly even noticed.
But whatever it was he just palmed it in his hand and turned to Ponti, who gave another low growl, deeper in his throat than seemed possible.
“Ponti,” The beast kin said in a smooth deep rumbly voice, “Ponti, I’m not going to take away your prey. She’s yours, you got her all by yourself. And a mer! You got a mer, all the way out here, away from the blighted ocean.”
“Well, mostly.” He raised his now empty wet hand and gave it a sniff, before dropping it and taking a few steps in a wide arc around them, being careful to not get closer. “Granted this is one of Salts temples, but then this is where I told you we were going to take our offerings so, bravo. Good Job. You’ve done well.”
Then he dropped down into a squat to be on level with Ponti, and Dya could see the feral smile crawl across his lips, “But Ponti, you need to finish the hunt.”
Ponti had started to calm down as he talked, relaxing his grip on her wrists, giving the feral-dog-with-rabies imitation a break. Until, that is, the beastkin ordered the hunt finished. Ponti nearly broke her wrists with his grip and she hissed and let out a deep squeal of pain. This caused the beastkin to laugh and Ponti to snarl at her.
“Blood her or take her, or both, it doesn’t matter.” The old wolf said. Dya was struggling to get away again, but Ponti’s grip was too tight. Though through her fear, or maybe because of it, Dya noticed that as the wolf spoke, Ponti’s body locked up and started shaking, “It doesn’t even matter if you kill her now, since you brought her here. Sure, it would be an inconvenience, but only a minor one, so don’t let that stop you.”
Leaning forward on his hands the Beastkin dropped into a rumbling growl, and in his eyes a golden glow to match the yellow in Ponti’s eye flared,
“You are the wolf victorious.
Take your prize
Consume your prey.”
With a cry Ponti bent his head to Dya and bit her shoulder, hard. Dya cried out in response. Ponti froze up again, and trembled, his teeth bruising her skin but not breaking it. She heard deep in his throat whines and guttural coughs, like the beginnings of clicks that died before he could manage to make them. Then he pulled back and bit her again. And again. And again.
This happened so many times, and each time hurt as he left deep bruising and bite marks all up her arms and shoulders. He didn't break her skin but she cried out when he broke her ribs, cracked her arm, her foot. She tried to get away, but that just gave Ponti new angels for attack, and gave the wolf reason to laugh and he moved, making clear that he wouldn’t let her get away either.
Finally, the old wolf called a stop to this twisted farce. Ponti didn’t even notice the beastkin come close as he gnawed painfully on her arm. Grabbing a hold of Dya the old wolf hauled her into a half siting position between his thighs, where he held her as though she were wedged between three rocks, despite her trying to kick free. His clawed hands held her unbroken arm out to Ponti and slashed her wrist, pouring blood out and down into her hand. Ponti scrambled to lap up the blood and gnaw on her fingers.
It was disturbing: how much less painful this moment was than being Ponti’s chew toy had been. The nips on her fingers and scrapings of his teeth were sharp, finally breaking the skin and slicing of tiny chunks of flesh even as he slurped down the blood pulsing from her wrist. The gold in his one open eye was blazing with the taste of her blood and in her vision the numbers of her hitpoints began to grow larger and more prominent.
5/42
4/42
3/42
He seemed to finally have his fill, pulling back from her with a truly lupine sounding whine as he grabbed his head and collapsed to his knees.
It was at this moment that the old wolf began to chant, magic in his fingers casting out to wrap around Ponti.
Tra yatu sur, Ponti Ulolesesce.
Tra cime sur cu di,
Somere tra socha
Lecha cu tra dapudro
Sres ra tra
Sres srer ra tra
Sres srer ra Trarte
Dya couldn’t see, not really, not around the large red 3/42 in her field of vision, but Ponti, now Trarte was now shaking on the ground as golden light sparked around him, questing over his body and causing shocks where it stabbed in. She didn’t even question that he was now named Trarte, couldn’t when she tried to, instead wincing a little in sympathy as he howled at a particularly unkindly placed spark. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but she wasn’t a monster.
No, the monster still had a hold of her, and had switched languages, again, this time to something that felt, older, more arcane, darker. It spoke of lost cities, ancient ruins and unworthy gods, causing a deep shiver in Dya’s soul to summoned another, fouler word to mind: eldritch.
“Oh, great. Lets just invite Lovecraft to the mix, sure, why not?” Dya mumbled in English as she held her wrist and tried to stop the flow of blood. She tried to pull free of the tight, doubly uncomfortable crevasse of the wolf’s clamped thighs but her struggles only caused him to clamp down harder, crushing her cracked bones and compressing her sore ribcage. She could barely breath.
So wedged in an awkward, embarrassing place, barely able to breath, desperately trying not to bleed out, and barely able to see she watched as elder wolf-who’s-thighs-she-now-knew-way-too-well cast a spell using her blood on Trarte. Damned if she knew what it was, but boy did it look painful from what little she could see.
What was even supposed to happen here? This was not beginning game level bullshit, this was more like, early game bullshit, except what the fuck? At the very least she should have had a few more levels on her before whatever this was. Did she screw things up by not sleeping with Ponti? Like, should there have been points along the way where the game just popped up and said, “do you want to have sex with this character? Select YES to bone him, NO to continue on into the spooky woods to be tortured.”
Something to give the hint to DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE until you are Level 20 or whatever.
Fuck. Why did she even leave the pier?
“Now, let’s see what the pup brought me.” The deep rumble of the old wolf’s voice startled her back to an outward consciousness. His hands engulfed hers and he easily pulled her hand away from the wound, releasing a fresh spurt of blood and causing 2/42 to flash in her vision.
“Clembru nujsu.” he said, casually, and it was like the blood bleed back into her veins. 24/42 flashed over her vision before fading out and she could see again. Her wrist wound was healed mostly, just an angry, months old scar showing where the wolf had torn her open, as well as a collection of scars on her hands showing where Trarte had chewed on her while consuming her blood.
With more strength in her she was able to pop free of her position in his thighs but he still held her by her wrists with an iron grip, transferring both her wrists into the grip of one hand as easily as if she were a toddler and he was an adult professional weight lifter. She did her best to examine him but it was a crap skill all she got was Garga Ren of Cuil Drabor with three skulls after his title.
Which was just another way of saying she was pretty screwed if she didn’t find a way to get out of here, big revelation there. Given the wolf’s grip on her wrist, things weren’t looking great in the “run away” category.
He stood up and dragged her to her feet with him. On her feet she stood about even with his chest, which was frankly an improvement over the thigh grip where she had been ignoring the things poking her in the back. He loomed over her in the darkness and then snapped his fingers, summoning a pale red fairy light. She looked back at him but didn’t feel she really gained much by the light. He had black fur and a wolfy face. Very wolf like with lupine ears over a long snout and a sniffy nose. Sharp teeth. Just very… wolfy.
His eyes were disks of gold that filled the sockets, as he looked at her they were narrowing and then suddenly he grabbed her face and yanked her face up to look at him straight on, eye to eye for a full minute as he summoned a full white fairy light, flooding the clearing with light and blinding her. Then he was yanking her this way and that, ending with him sniffing all over her face and plunging his nose in her hair and inhaling.
“I don’t know why I thought that would work.” He chuckled to himself as he extracted his face from her neck, only to look at her again with a smile that gave Dya a shiver.
“Ka elzse natre recognitrie te, Elith Trisalee.” He growled at her, “ka dannotte kink te recgnitrie ni. Bartu te? Bartu te cann sa tene? Te paotte khunta scrokka te a sne?”
Once again he spoke in the eldritch language, though now that she was no longer suffering from the almost dead debuffs it no longer scared her so deeply. It just sounded like she should know it, but didn’t, and scratched at her brain like nails on a chalkboard. He held her, waiting, waiting for her to respond, to realize something, she guessed from the cadence of his words.
“Fuck you.” She said, in Doi’i'ian. He smirked.
“Ter oms stakken te, Elith.” He growled, and again he grabbed her face with his clawed hand, “mon Cheire.”
Was… that French? He laughed at the confusion written on her face as let go of her face and pulled her around. He still had her by the wrists in his other hand, and he looked as though he were tired of holding her in place. But rather than give her a perfectly good opportunity to run for it, he pulled a thin familiar chain from a pocket space. It looked like one of the chains from the outfit that Dya had been wearing earlier. The one she had given to Salt in exchange for protection. In the bowl. The bowl that the beastkin had reached into and pulled something out of.
Well, shit. She did not like that.
With a snapping crackle of Jabsi the Wolf swung the chain into a loop that snapped around his wrist into a delicate looking bracelet with no beginning and no end. At the same time Dya felt a cold chain to match come to rest around her waist. It didn’t feel heavy, it was light and thin, just like the original chain had been, only now it was invisible and insubstantial except to the skin of her belly. And side. And back.
Then he let her go.
Just let go of her hands and she stumbled, completely bearing her own weight again.
She didn’t stop to think, a lifetime in the ocean with predators that could eat her whole and fart her bones left her with sharply honed escape instincts. She was free of encumbrance, and she was automatically running towards the ledge, even as her brain was scrambling to tell her body just what the clues meant. Even before she felt the sharp pain across her stomach, she knew what was going to happen, what he had done with that chain.
It made her want to throw up, the impact of the thin line, yanking back against her gut like a tether. It pulled her insides up against her spine and flung her back to the ground, staring up at the red 1 floating away from her. Then she felt it dig in and drag her across the ground as she groaned in pain and struggled to turn over she felt the pull, and heard the wolf’s rumbling speech.
Rant really, but fuck it all if she could understand any of it. It was very dramatic, she was sure. He included some well timed kicks as she struggled to stand, knocking off a couple more hit points. She gave up on getting to the cliff and started to edge around to the altar, which he seemed to care less about.
Boy was he getting worked up about something. That finger jabbing was violent and Dya had to actively dodge it lest she lose an eye to his accusations. She didn’t manage to dodge all his blows, there was no way she could have with her HP so low and him so many levels above her. It was all she could do to get and keep the altar bowl between herself and him until finally he wound down and landed on something, a question maybe? He was waiting for her. Expectant, his eyes gleaming over the water.
Waiting for something that would never come, Dya knew.
Pulling deep from a desperate memory of an ancient past, Dya let fly her own stream of eldritch bullshit, “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!”
The wolfman stood, frozen, uncertain and confused, so Dya took the initiative and followed up with a good solid, "PetaQ!" and cast water jet at the Garga Ren.
The words, for once didn't float in a screen but streamed across her vision in a rapid message.
CRITICAL SUCCESS +15 damage--- QAPLA! Your goddess has heard your plea and boosted your attack. +40 damage +distraction debuff -10 strength +curse: salted earth debuff. RUN.
The "jet" of water that came out of the altar bowl was actually an enormous wave--more water than could have possibly been contained in the bowl--that collided with the Garga Ren of Cuil Drabor and sent him tumbling back. Dya stood a minute, watching in stunned awe before remembering the order from her goddess and beating feet.
She got to the cliff edge this time before she felt the bite of the chain into her gut yanking her off her feet and sending her to the ground. She hung, her shoulders over the edge, her arms reaching down to the storming ocean below.
And the ocean was raging below her, despite the lack of wind, rain, or even cloud cover. The waves below boomed in their ferocity against the cliff, reaching back up towards her, trying to reach back up the 40 or 50 feet of bare stone to reach her, but only moistening her skin with the spray.
Third eye open: she could see something new below her, though, something she had never seen before for all the many many times she had looked below. A blue square shimmered in the water, pale and luminous, and right up against the rock wall. As the wave pulled away she could see what she would not have been able to see except that the exceptionally high waves created exceptionally deep troughs- there was a deep, deep pool of water right up against the wall of the cliff, wide enough to step into but if you jumped, you would miss.
As she stared in longing and wonder she clung to that cliff, refusing to let go as she felt the spell around her waist twist and pull, dragging at her and cutting into her. Red numbers began to blossom before her eyes and soon she was staring at a 8/42 framed by the raging waves.
Still she did not let go.
It wasn’t until a pair of clawed hands grabbed her about her shoulders and arms, prying her free of the rocks that she stopped staring at the waves.
Now she stared (sorta) at the Garga Ren, between the red numbers that made up her world. He lifted her and glared at her glassy eyes, her lolling head, her limp, bleeding arms, and once again he gave her a strong sniff. Then shook his head in annoyance.
“You’re not her.” He declared, finally realizing the blatantly obvious.
“No shit, Sherlock.” Dya mumbled in Dio’I’an. “Didn’t get the fish you wanted, time to just toss me back.”
“Ha ha ho no.” Garga laughed. In that moment Dya decided to start calling him Gargamel. “Getting her would have been … nice, but unnecessary. You will serve the purpose, and then you will serve me.
"Besides you look so much like her that you must be… her sprite—a daughter or something. A relation shall we say?” He grinned a very unpleasant grin, “Seeing you under my control will make her scream, and that will make me very happy.”
“No thank you.”
Gargamel just chuckled and walked her away from the cliff and back towards the altar bowl and the now still form of Trarte. Not removing his hands from her shoulders, he set her down and growled “Nujsu.” Dya felt all the wrong things in her body snap to attention and melt away. She even felt like her anxiety got washed from her brain for a moment, and for that moment everything felt like it was okay.
But then he moved his hand to the center of her chest and demanded, “What is your name.”
So fuck that feeling of –okayness--, it was NOT okay. Given what he had just done to Trarte… Trarte whom she knew she had been calling Ponti all evening before, she did not want to just give him her name. She had a feeling he would not give it back.
“No.” She said in Jayin, and his ears flicked back in annoyance.
“Tell me your name.” He growled.
“They call me Hel” she lied, but could see that he didn’t believe her. It wasn’t a very Mer name after all.
“They call me Stacey.”
"They call me--" “Hrrrrrrrr” The wolf started growling. It fit. Dya allowed it.
“They call me Lisa.”
“THAT’S NOT YOUR NAME.” He barked at her angrily, “THAT’S NOT YOUR NAME! That’s not your name and you will tell me your name!”
Dya bit the inside of her lips to keep the giggle in, and looked away.
She happened to look down hill while *not* giggling and saw Trarte, who was twitching again, maybe even beginning to stir, and her amusement died. It didn’t matter her resistance, how far she was willing to go or whatever. Trarte knew her name, and he would give it to this wolf. Abyss take it.
Claws grabbed into her face and yanked her back to look at the glowing (shit!) yellow eyes of her captor.
“Tell me your name.” He said, his voice laden with something that she couldn’t quite name, didn’t have the experience or knowledge to describe. It was awful, and buzzed past her ears and in to her brain demanding that she obey him.
But she did not want to lose her name. Not her real one, not her main one.
“Zuthyi.” She whispered, pushing hard to get the nick name, the fish name, past her lips.
It was a tradition, to call a child by the fish they most closely resembled. Zuchi was Pazlik--Manderin fish in English, Oudloukra was Paynew, or parrot fish, Foup was Nazhde, and so on and the ever Orange (and at the time blue spotted) Dya was “Zuthyi” which sounded fine until you realized that the fish was this bulbus orange thing. It was a terrible name, she had hated it but it had stuck and even still people would call her by it on occasion, even with her on the cusp of adulthood and about to choose a job.
“Zuthyi.” The wolfman said, testing the name. Again there was something strange about his voice, but it made Dya’s skin crawl.
Then, his claws were piercing her flesh again, pulling out her blood, and damn it all if it didn’t hurt more than the last time. Well, maybe it seemed like it hurt more because she was hurt less all over, but still, she hissed at the shallow slash he left from her shoulder to her elbow. Dipping his claws in her blood he did exactly what Dya had feared he would do:
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Tra yatu sur, Zuthyi.
Tra cime sur cu di,
Somere tra socha
Lecha cu tra dapudro
Sres ra tra
Sres srer ra tra
Sres srer ra Sagli.
The spell landed on her, in her brain with a painful vibrating buzz that crawled under the surface of the skull cap and hissed angrily in her ears. The wound in her arm was forgotten as she clutched her head and scrubbed at her face as though she could change what was happening inside her head.
Stopitstopitstopitstopit!
But she couldn’t. Like Trarte before her the spell left her a melted mess on the ground. Unlike Trarte, she didn’t ever completely lose consciousness and suffered the entire thing awake. But then, he was an npc. She was not, so that apparently counted for something. Or maybe it was that she hadn't been under a spell when he cast this at her? Was he casting the second spell? Her brain was scrambling, trying to grab onto anything and everything just to stop the pain.
She wasn’t really able to track time. Everything was horrible until it wasn’t, and it only stopped being horrible slowly. Or maybe it was fast but just seemed slow to her because of being at the ass end of the experience. Either way, when she finally felt like she could deal with the world outside her head again, she found that she had been deposited on the ground and that vines had grown up around her legs, twisting around her ankles and calves and anchoring her in place.
She tried pulling free, of course, but the roots anchored the plant too well, the vines were fibrous and woody, and only the leaves snapped off when she pulled. She couldn’t claw them apart, though she did manage to damage them and make her skin itchy with plant goo. When she folded down to try chewing on them she was met with a foul bitter taste and a tingling numbness on her lips that warned her of poison in the vines.
Dya didn’t give up trying to get away, exactly, but she knew it was unlikely without any real tools. Still she worried at a single spot in the vines while looking around, and then gasped in horror. Trarte and the old wolf had been digging at the earth. The torn up patch where Trarte had chewed on her was now really torn up as they had clawed up the bloody weeds and soil and dumped it into the altar bowl.
Of course Salt hadn’t accepted the fouled earth as an offering, and so it just sat there, in the bowl, displacing water, filling up the clear ocean with mud and then just wet dirt packed with roots and leaves as the two beastkin kept heaping the soil in until the bowl was over flowing with dirt.
“She‡ ! How dare you!” Dya yelled, trying to climb to her feet despite the vines, and managing to make it, in a very awkward stance. “The abyss you’d do that for? Yïngpar ingt'nâyzha!”
Gargamel laughed at her and said something in Jabsi to Trarte, who simply nodded, and added more dirt to the pile. They continued to ignore her and began to dig shallow trenches around the altar in arcane patterns, setting up a ritual and soon other beast kin showed up, coming out of the darkness of the woods to set down loads or greet Gargamel and begin to help set up the ritual space. About 5 had shown up when a sixth showed up dragging another figure along and Gargamel popped to his feet and practically bounced over, his tail lifted and wagging as he went to them. As they stepped into the light the Garga Ren had left floating over the defiled alter, Dya gasped with recognition.
And then bit her tongue to keep herself from calling out the other mer’s name. Zuchi wouldn’t want to loose her name any more than Dya did. Shit… did she loose it already? Wait, would Dya know if she had lost her name? Had she been calling Zuchi “Zuchi” all this time? Well, she thought so, and she could remember calling Trarte “Ponti” up until about an hour ago, so yes, Zuchi was her name and a name that Dya wanted to protect.
“Pazlik!” Dya called out in anguish, as though she had just noticed the girl who’s angry defiant face was now being held by the giant wolfman, and now it was Gargamel who grinned in Zuchi’s face. Zuchi on the other hand looked at her with horror. There was more talking between the two of them, but Dya knew what was coming even though she saw Zuchi be defiant until the end.
“... Sres srer ra Suña”
It did her as little good as it did Dya.
The blood from Zuchi’s shoulder whipped around in a circle around her before describing some arcane symbols connected together like magic cursive then jabbing back into Zuchi’s skin directly. Zuchi’s eyes rolled up in the back of her head and she fell down, clutching her head, Gargamel grabbing her out of the air to haul her over to Dya.
In this moment Dya was forced to see just how large Gargamel was. Zuchi had always been about 4-6 inches smaller than Dya, but Gargamel towered over both of them. He was 7 ft tall if Dya were to guess, and broad chested, extremely well muscled underneath the fur. If someone were into bodybuilders and furries they would enjoy looking at the wolf, Dya assumed, she thought that’s how it worked.
He dumped the mer at Dya’s feet and with a “Clicual suna sredad” summoned more vines to have them crawl up Zuchi’s ankles and calves to anchor her to the ground as well. He actually seemed a bit weary and haggard as he barked an order to Trarte who scampered to get him whatever he asked for. Dya glared at the sycophant even while she questioned his free will. The poor bastard had been bespelled as well, and she had yet to figure out the ramifications of this damn name thing.
She was kind of terrified to, but Dya didn’t think she was going to have a choice as she looked up at the Garga Ren watching her as she checked over her friend.
“You’re a monster.” She said plainly in Jayin, and he laughed.
“I don’t need to understand your language to understand that, Sagli.” He said smugly, and her name made Dya cringe. She’d have rather kept the ugly fish name. “And you know, I think you’re right.”
Instinctively Dya held Zuchi up and hugged her, protecting the smaller mer with her body and Gargamel laughed some more as Trarte ran up with a gourd full of liquid that the older wolf guzzled down.
“Trarte, you have earned a break. Stay here and keep an eye on my girls, give me a signal when Suña wakes up. We should be ready to start then.”
Then he was off again, the gourd crushed in his hands and tossed aside as he walked back over to where a boarkin and a hyena-ish beastkin were arguing over the placement of a handful of weeds. Dya wanted to tell them exactly where to shove those weeds, but she doubted they had the courage for the placement. Gargamel would certainly not approve, for all that his appearance would certainly be improved.
Zuchi twitched and let out a soft, high whine in her arms.
“Its ok, its ok.” Dya crooned softly, “It was just your fish name. It was the best I could do, I’m so sorry, it was the best I could do to save your real name.”
“Are you going to keep babbling like a fish to her all night?" Trarte said, flopping on the ground close to them, but definitely out of reach.
“I have nothing to say to you, -Ponti-“ Dya said harshly, doubly so on the name since it was surprisingly hard to say and forcing it out gave it even more of a snarl than she had intended; not that she minded.
“Don’t call me that!” Trarte shivered and hunched as though she had punched him, “That’s my old name, I’m Trarte now, Sagli.”
It was Dya’s turn to shiver, and hunch over as though he had kicked her. The name scared her. She knew it was hers, it was familiar to her as the old fish name had been, but even less welcome. She didn’t know how she was suddenly feeling familiar with a name she’d never heard before what, a half hour before? It was nonsense. It was unreal. Sureal. It made her feel like the game had reached in and did something unnatural to her, which was silly because she knew she had all sorts of false memories layered in the real ones and what was real anyhow?
But this was different. She didn’t know how, but she could feel it, and she didn’t like it. It was wrong and she felt the need to get away from it. But how could she get away from a name?
“Why would you do this to yourself voluntarily?” Dya whispered, as she pushed the hair out of Zuchi’s face.
“Earn a new pack name?” Trarte arched the eyebrow over his white eye, “Earning a name in a pack is earning a place in a pack, a home. You should count yourself as very lucky to have even a lowly place in a pack with your new name. Look how much I had to do to prove myself in the hunt to earn my place.”
“You had to hunt ME.” Dya said, her voice straining with pain and anger as she looked up and glared at her attacker. “You fucking lied to me, you fucking lied, and you chased me, and you chewed on me like some goddamned chew toy. And the only reason I’m not a broken sack of bones is because Gargamel cut open my veins so you could drink my goddamned blood!”
Trarte flinched back from her anger, but looked at her in confusion. “I… I didn’t- I don’t remember… Did you just call Garga Ren Gonmanal 'Gargamel?'”
“Who’s ‘gone manual?’” Dya shook her head and refocused, “And you most certainly did, I nearly died before you were done, asshole.”
“Gonmanal. The Garga Ren. The large wolfkin we answer to.” Trarte seemed to decide to focus on something that was absolutely not him eating or drinking the flesh and blood of the other person he was currently talking to.
“Seriously.” Dya scoffed but then Zuchi whimpered and shook, and Dya had to stop to sooth her. It took the steam out of her anger, and when she looked back up, she asked, “His name is really Gonmanal?”
“You didn’t know?”Trarte asked, confused.
“How would I? He never told me. He’s barely said anything to me in a language that I could understand.” Dya shrugged.
“But then why would you have accepted a place in the pack?” Trarte asked, confused once again, and Dya just stared at him, godsmacked.
“Why are you giving me that look?” He asked.
“This whole ‘pack name’ nonsense isn’t voluntary.” Dya said. “He stole one of my names, he stole my fish name and replaced it with one that he chose for me.”
“That isn’t possible.” Trarte told her. “The Soblosrer wouldn’t allow it.”
“Fuck you.” Dya snarled.
“What the hell is your problem?” He snarled back with a bit more fang.
“Nothing I say to you is real, that’s what.” Dya said. “You hunted me, you attacked me, you gnawed me to the bone and broke me, you lapped up my blood and I’m the untrustworthy one.”
“I did not!” Trarte snapped. “I mean, yes, I stalked and hunted you, and I captured you, but this gnawing bloody bone bullshit, what the hell? Who would even do that? I’m not a cannibal!”
“'It’s not cannibalism if they’re not the same species.'” Dya spat his words back at him.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He growled.
“Do I, vey?” Dya was unrelenting in her anger, and with that she finally scored as Trente snapped his mouth shut and winced back. She didn’t let the moment pass.
“I’m still ‘captured,’ how do you think I’m going to voluntarily join a pack you hunted me for?”
“What are you—no.” Trarte visibly reigned in his gut reaction this time. “I don’t understand how you mean that you are still a captive. If you don’t want to be here, why don’t you leave? The water is right over there.”
“You know nothing of the local geography.” Dya muttered before saying to him, “I’m tied up in vines, dip shit.”
“Gonmanal told me that the vines were there to make you more comfortable.” He had that sad look of confused betrayal on his face looking like a sad puppy, but she couldn’t tell what he was feeling betrayed by.
“These vines are not making me feel comfortable.” She said, jerking her legs against her bindings, leaning back to show him and pointing to how Zuchi was similarly bound even though she was unconscious. The young wolf kin just stared. Dya couldn’t read the expression on his face, it was too alien? Dark? Subtle? All of the above. It wasn’t a pleasant thing he was feeling, however, that was clear, and she didn’t know where he was going to land with it.
Zuchi started to stir, and quickly Dya turned away from the confused wolf to give her shoulders a squeeze and say quietly, “Zuchi, don’t move, don’t open your eyes, just pretend to sleep some more and listen. We are in such deep shit. Oh, and apparently we’ve joined a beastkin pack. That’s a thing that happened to us. No, don’t move, just lay there and be still, if you move things start happening again and I don’t know what they will do to us.”
“Gods, more fish babble.” Trarte groaned. “We are going to have to teach you some proper Jabsi so you can communicate.”
“Or you could learn to speak Jayin like a civilized creature.” Dya said, going back to glaring at him.
“With all those weird click sounds? I don’t think so.” He waved dismissively and then clucked his tongue like he a clopping horse. “!|!|!|! Oooo, I’m speaking like a mermaid.”
Dya took a deep breath and then held it to started speaking rapidly in clicksqueal, “the way off the cliff saw I. Step off the cliff, stay to the wall, no jump you. only fall straight down and straight and fall in the deep water below.”
It sounded like a rapid series of clicks interspersed with musical squeals and grunts. By the time she was done Trarte was looking at her with large round eyes and Zuchi squeezed her hand to signal that she got the message.
“The hell was that?” Trarte whispered.
“Oo. I was speaking like a mermaid.” Dya said flatly.
“Uh… ok.” He blinked. “Really? I’ve never… that’s nothing like I’ve heard before.”
“We have to speak underwater, ok? So we have a different language for underwater.” She said, “Obviously.”
“Just how many languages do you know?” He asked. Dya took a moment to count
“Five.”
“By the mother, do all Mer know that many?”
"No, we're just fucking special you NPC." Dya snapped in English, to Zuchi's amused hand grip.
"You're players?!" Trarte hissed back in shocked and very British English, and both Dya and Zuchi looked at him in horror.
"Brothers! We will be beginning soon!" Gonmanal called, apparently noticing Zuchi's twitching, "I want to take the moment to thank our absent sisters for running interference tonight to give us the time we need to crack this altar and reclaim the LAND for the Goddess Terra!"
There were cheers from his small crowd but the three players ignored it.
"You're not supposed to be players!" Trarte hissed, "the system was supposed to let us know who was a player, right? I wouldn't have dragged a player into this quest, not as the prey."
"I didn't get anything from the system about you." Dya hissed right back at him, "I thought you were just a damn NPC, I'd have said something otherwise."
"There's nothing when I examine him!" Zuchi whispered, "Just Trarte of Cuil Drabor."
"I have decided to focus our efforts through the gift our new member, Trarte, the wolf! has brought to us-Sagli! Just guess which one she is." This statement was followed by chuckles, not that they noticed, "Sagli has already proven herself to be a resilient sacrifice, and I'm sure we all look forward to cracking her open as we defile the altar of Salt and reclaim what the sea tried to take from us!"
"Oh, shit you're awake." Trarte started, looking at Zuchi, but neither Zuchi nor Dya were paying him any attention now, as the cheers got louder, and roudier.
"Oh, fuck." Dya breathed.
"We have got to get out of here." Zuchi dropped any pretense of being unconscious and began digging at the earth around the vines to uproot them.
"Give us your knife. Or a file, or something sharp. A sharp rock. Anything. Please." Dya babbled, her eyes locked on Gonmanal.
"I have to tell the Garga Ren you're awake." If anything Trarte seemed a bit horrified by this utterly unnecessary task.
"No!" both girls whisper-shouted and Dya lunged at Trarte as best she could, managing to grab onto his legs and put her face in a very awkward spot. She didn't give a flying shit as he squawked and tried to wrestle her off, not noticing her fumbling on his belt and taking his knife with her when he finally pushed her off. She just scrambled back to Zuchi and shoved the small knife under the other mer.
Just in time too, as she felt the presence of the Garga Ren loom over her.
"Trarte, I take it that Suña is awake." Gonmanal said.
"Yes, Garga Ren, I was going to tell you..." Trarte trailed off
"But Sagli is a spirited and protective girl. Its ok, I understand." Gonmanal reached down and grabbed Dya's arm. "Sagli is going to learn her place in the pack tonight, it should take some of the spirit out of her."
He pulled Dya to her feet and released the vines from her legs. "Come with me, Sagli."
"Yes, Gonmanal." The words were out of Dya's mouth before she could think about them, and it made her cringe internally. What the hell was that? And why was she just following the douchebag?
But she was, and he was talking again to his crowd of six beastkin. "We can tap into Suña if we need to, so let's not kill Sagli tonight. I can heal her so getting her close to death is fine, but having two mer who have not chosen their jobs is just too damn valuable an opportunity to waste. I have some ideas for job builds that will have some very enjoyable training stages... for us. So watch how far you go, unless you want me to toss you to Salt at the end of the night."
The deep anger and American levels of Fuck You contrariness that Brooke spent 99 years cultivating before she was Dya came to the fore and as quickly as she could she had opened her menu to look at her jobs.
Available Jobs Brawler, battle mage, gatherer, mage, witch, philosopher, hunter, stalker, chanter, craftsmer:cook, adventurer, reefsmer, thief, clerk Would you like to choose a job?
Dya was trying to choose between Mage, Adventurer, and Reefsmer when Gonmanal interrupted.
“Oooh,” He growled, “I know that look.” And he yanked on the chain on his wrist, causing a painful jerk into her waist, breaking Dya’s concentration, and making her to blink close the window. “You thought, ‘I’m going to choose one of the jobs I already have unlocked right now just to spite him,’ didn’t you? Thought you’d spoil my plans.”
Gonmanal paced around her again, laying his large paw hand on her shoulder, sliding it around and between her shoulder blades as he walked and then riding it up the nape of her neck to grab her hair yanking her back against him. “Let me explain to you why that is a bad, bad idea for you.”
His voice was a low rumble, a growl deep in his chest that only formed words because he willed it. Dya’s brain hysterically noted that everyone spoke because they willed it-- but she barely had the thought as she felt his rumble through her back. She felt his teeth right next to her ears, his breath on her neck and chest, and when she instinctively flailed, trying to punch him, her shoulder and jaw banged painfully against the point of his horn as he force marched her to the defiled alter. His growl pulsed with humor as he laughed at her. He then gave her head a shake and began to force her down to the dirt filled bowl, and gave her a cut across the chest with a jasper knife, spattering red drops on the dark soil.
“If you aren’t able to take the very, very specific jobs I want, Sagli, in the order that I want, when I want, then you are useless to me as anything but a sacrifice.” Gonmanal was using his body to bend her over in a gesture that felt very, awfully, inappropriately intimate. “I will take you down to the deep places of the earth, where there is no light, no heat, no wind, and even the water that drips down belongs to Terra. There are temples to her in the dark places, those secret places, and that is where you will stay for the rest of your miserable existence. You will join the blind pale things, the ghosts of mer who were lost, who are so eager to please, to do anything for the priests the mother sends to them. To kill, eat, fuck, serve as she bids them. You will be the mother goddess’s plaything until even she tires of you and leaves your bones to petrify.”
Dya shivered with fear as his weight pushed her down, his one hand pushing her head towards the dirt and a growing slickness grinding into her seal as the other claw bit into her shoulder, with even more blood falling to the greedy earth. She was holding herself up her arms on the edges of the bowl, the fresh dirt a invitation to the grave and the only reason she wasn’t completely buried in it was because Gonmanal was pushing her slowly.
Content that she had received his message, he began to chant in Jabsi, and Dya felt the terrifying buzz that was the beginning of magic, some sort of spell. The other beast kin began to chant with Gonmanal, a ritual casting with her as the sacrifice at the center. Her thighs pressed up against the edge of the bowl painfully and her toes dug into the dirt as she instinctively tried to get away from him.
Toes.
She had toes, she was still in human form. She was more vulnerable in mer form while on land, with no ability to run, or stand. Now she couldn’t run, she wasn't even standing, but she could try to be what she had become—a damn slippery little fish. It was all she had left.
With a thought she transformed, and her skin thickened, hardened a little. Her feet gave way and she flopped on her belly into the dirt. Gonmanal grunted in surprise at the transformation and stumbled letting go of her shoulder to catch himself on the rim of the bowl. Dya took what initiative she had and pushed back, popping her ass against his hips and creating the room to slip over the edge of the bowl and down. She scraped her belly and chest, but she went down, kneeling on the ground before the altar on her knees and crimping up her fins. As she flopped down she felt his grip on her hair tighten to yank her head painfully. So she punched up and her fist, as if guided by blessed Salt herself, nailed Gonmanal in the nuts.
The ghost of a whine that came out of his lungs was almost lost in the silence that followed. Then she was pushing him over, and his followers were shouting and Zuchi was stepping of the cliff, just like Dya had told her to. Just like Dya was going to.
Snapping back into human form Dya stumbled up from the ground through a blinding band headache from the rapid series of changes and ran for all she was worth towards the cliff. She was not going to let him stop her this time. She was not she was not she was NOT!
She got to the edge of the cliff before she felt the bite of the chain around her waist. She had expected it, mentally prepared to just keep going and so she pushed and screamed in pain as she jerked to a halt, straining, holding herself out over the water below. She was at an fourty-five degree angle, her feet pushing against the edge of the cliff and a thin, brutal line of magic holding her back, holding her up, keeping her from going down.
Twisting around, she screamed as the magic cut into her, but she could now see Gonmanal snarling, laying on the ground and holding up the fist that had the bracelet, that had her chain around it. His flunkies were running towards her. All of them except Trarte, who was just watching and quietly giving her a quick thumbs up before backing into the woods.
That was weird and Dya didn’t have time for it. She looked back at Gonmanal. He began to stand up and Dya saw her moment, as he struggled to put his feet under him. She squatted and then pushed off the cliff, imagining the spell like a rope and she was repelling down the cliff.
The sudden loss of tension then the extra tension of the push off and pull of gravity caused Gonmanal to stumble and flail forward. Then Dya was over the edge of the cliff and she couldn’t see how far it pulled him, but she dropped a good twenty feet before she jerked to a stop and found herself throwing up blood. A thick red 20 rose from her.
Below her the water absolutely raged. The clear sky with brilliant sliver of moon gave plenty of light to see the white caps that gathered like angry sheep around the base of the cliff.
"Goddess, please, send me enough water to jet myself away from this monster. Please." Dya prayed, and thinking of her meager spell selection, cast "sink" which actually did make her a few pounds denser.
Below her the water receded sharply, baring the coral, rocks, and barnacles. Dya closed her eyes for half a second, "Praise Salt."
Abover her she saw the silouet of Gonmanal come over the edge, his yellow eyes blazing , holding up the arm with her chain on it with his other hand.
"SAGLI!" He roared down at her, "YOU WILL RETURN TO ME!"
Her heart sank a little as she felt the obligation sink in, but only just a little because she heard the wave coming, a ridiculously focused tsunami.
"I WILL!" She called back, "WITH THE STRENGTH OF THE OCEAN!"
And the wave crashed into the cliff below her, hitting perfectly to shoot the water up under her, soaking her. She cast water jet with all the magic she had.
Goddess Blessed Water Jets! +Nullify Magic
The chain around her waist snapped, and the water embraced her as she fell.