[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Lucinda Hemmings(1)]

[Level: 2]

Water was very heavy. It pushed at her from all sides now, pinning her to the bottom of the ocean bed. And yet still, she swam, her eagle eyes trained on the massive shape of the squid which had captured their tech wizard.

It didn’t seem to notice her, which was good. She was free to follow it for as long as her lungs would hold up. That is to say, Verity Monroe’s lungs. The System had identified Lucinda as a different player character, but that terminology simply didn’t sit right with her, it was just slightly off from what they really were, crammed into this narrow term simply to keep the video game motif going. Maybe there was a reason for that?

If there was, these people had yet to be able to figure that out. And Lucinda might have to help them discover it. Just after they got Michael out. In the meantime, there was a squid. She was following it. All the way to the bottom of the ocean floor.

There was a settlement there, she could see. Large structures made out of coral and other plants. Bigger than even a human city of old. Big enough for squids of the size that had grabbed Michael, and countless of her corvid brethren, to wander around.

Once they reached down there, there would be no hope of fighting their way out. Not with the cephalopods clearly having the upper hand of this situation.

There was only one way to proceed from here: Get Michael out now.

An honorable plan, with simple steps, except for one glaring fault. Lucinda did not have a killer’s spirit. That level of bloodlust and ease of murder did not come easily to a normal person, even after decades of stewing in the presence of much less empathetic humans. If she went in alone, she would not be able to win. But she knew who might.

There was an extraneous function she had seen being employed once. Right after she had been dragged out of the muck of the Cocoon and into this new body, and her only hope was to access that again. But if she closed her eyes and focused, she might just manage to…

[Switch Character?]

[Available Character Slots: {x} Verity Monroe { } Lucinda Hemmings(1)]

[Transferring Player Character Log…]

[New Log Holder: Verity Monroe]

Verity woke up with a tightness in her chest and a suction over her mouth, hell knew how deep under the sea. It was to her credit that her first instinct wasn’t to immediately open her mouth and condemn herself to death as she took stock of the situation.

She was underwater, still in CephaloRaven, apparently. A giant squid was taking Michael down into the depths, where an entire coral city of more of these monsters waited to greet him. That was all she needed to know to piece together the fact that they did not want to be going down there. And if she wanted to free Michael, her first course of action was to strike.

[Applying Killer Instinct…]

The familiar dreadful film of red flooded over her vision, and her arms and legs pinwheeled as if by second nature, torpedoing over to Michael and his captor.

She wasn’t going to last long here, so this was her last chance to get Michael out before he was lost forever. Given the squid hadn’t seemed to notice that she was there, it was a safe bet to try and swap them both. Release Michael upwards and hope he could handle the rest, while letting the squid take her instead.

Verity had been doing an awful lot of that these past few days. And it hadn’t worked well the first time, either. But it would have to this time. Michael was even less capable of surviving underwater than her.

But when she crept closer, she found that Michael’s face was enclosed in a small bubble of air, and he looked perfectly conscious and not drowned. He even managed to catch sight of her, and they both stared at each other in confusion, his jaw dropping slightly.

His arms were pinned, and the speed of the squid was unmatchable even by Verity’s standards. Yet still, in the few seconds they had to spare, he brought his hands into view of her and clumsily signed out using what little signs they had picked up from Terry, “Leave. I’ll survive.”

Absolutely not. Verity was not leaving her friend behind. Her first real friend, after Jared’s betrayal was revealed. She refused to let him die right here, in a completely avertable disaster.

Even if the only solution was giving up her life.

But Michael glared her down, something which had never had the spine to do before, and it was so shocking that even through the Killer Instinct, she froze. The squid moved out of her range. The window of opportunity was lost.

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She dragged herself back to the surface, the sting of defeat bitter in her gut.

Once she broke the surface and sucked in precious air, the immediate next concern was obvious. The island was nowhere in sight. How far had she gone in her pursuit?

Verity eyed the horizon in every direction, trying to identify the ridge that she had left Feathertooth and Ben on. They all looked the same, though. And some were too far away to even begin thinking about swimming to. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug.

On instinct she started paddling towards the nearest island. Once her legs weren’t constantly pumping to stay afloat, she would have a better idea of what to do.

Something bumped against the bottom of her foot. Flat. Smooth. With some amount of give. She almost breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that she had made landfall, but that was not so. There was a creature underneath her, which had ducked out of range once she had touched it.

All around her, there were creatures, she was starting to notice. A formation of dark blurs were circling around her underwater in calculated, pre-planned manner, as if stalking prey. She’d never met sharks up close, but she was getting the sick feeling that today was the day that changed.

And then one of the blurs lifted its head, revealing a smooth, feathery face with a sharp beak that it opened to honk into her face.

False alarm, then. Not a shark. Some sort of… waterfowl. A seagull?

All the blurs were slowly surfacing, each of them revealed to be more of the same type of waterfowl. Sharks or seagulls or whatever they were, that didn’t make it any less capable of ripping her apart, if it was hungry enough for it. Those ridged beaks did not look friendly.

When they tried to come any closer to her, she backed away. Even if they had her cornered pretty good, she wasn’t going to give up without a fight. They played this game of chase until the moon was high in the sky, and exhaustion was starting to make her legs cramp up.

Through it all, the gulls kept on honking.

“Please, just shut up!” She complained, twisting away from the one that had finally gotten closer to her than any of the others, “I don’t know what you’re saying.” And then she saw what was wound around this one’s neck.

They didn’t exhibit signs of sapience like the ravens and the squids did. Not because they couldn’t communicate in human language, or anything, but because they were operating off base hunting skills alone. No extra strategy was going into it. None of the others had on any adornments either, so it seemed unlikely that they put on their victims’ possessions as a form of intimidation tactic.

So why did this one have Ben’s scarf tied around its neck, knotted in one of her distinctive figure-eight knots? There was no other explanation she could think of other than it was Ben trying to tell her something. To get her to follow the birds. Though how she had managed to establish an alliance with these guys in the time that Verity was gone had yet to be established.

It could be a trick, the part of her honed with paranoia insisted. Everyone was out to get her. She couldn’t allow herself to be roped into such an obvious ploy. But she was going to. Because that was the only hope she had right now. And if there was anything she had learnt from her time in the Game, you gotta cling on to hope.

“Okay.” She decided, finally stopping. The birds crept closer, but none were for her throat or her legs. They instead twisted over to get under her arms, two on each side, paddling her determinedly into a set direction. As if they already knew where to go.

They passed by a few islets, but those were all uninhabited, and they didn’t even waste time in going around them. Until finally, finally, she was deposited onto soft sand, staring up at Ben’s concerned face.

Verity would have gotten up, but after being submerged in water for so long, her entire body felt like unset jelly, plastered on the hot, dry sand as she tried to breathe.

“Well… at least she’s alive.” Ben sighed over her, taking her pulse before turning back to the gulls, “And what happened to the boy? And sign of him?” They honked in return, and she made a sound that was almost like a sob, “So he’s dead then.”

“No.” Verity choked out, finally regaining her wits enough to speak, “He’s not dead. Underwater breathing spell. Or something.”

Ben let out a hysterical laugh, “Of course. He just had a breathing spell ready to go. And you’re sure he was okay?”

Verity shrugged, unwilling to show how blasé she could be about the very people she had charged into the ocean to save, “He looked like he was doing pretty well for himself by the time when I had to resurface. The gulls you sent came by a few minutes after that.”

“Gulls?” Ben repeated with a frown, before looking around at the cheerful six-foot-tall birds that were surrounding them, “These are penguins.”

“Seriously?” She squinted at the one that had been wearing Ben’s scarf, who just honked some more, “I don’t know anything about birds. What are gulls, then?”

Ben tilted her head, looking at her sharply, “Lucinda knew what penguins were.” She decided, as if Verity would have any idea who Lucinda was. And then her eyes widened, “Verity?”

“One and only.” She confirmed, giving Ben a fistbump, which she didn’t even reciprocate, just holding her fist up in shock, “So Lucinda’s the other girl. Cool, cool, cool. Will I ever meet an actual seagull?”

“I hope to never have the displeasure of having to show you.” Feathertooth sniffed, already moving on, “Now what? We’re down a member, and but we got another one back. Which also has the downside of losing the Healer forever.”

“Not forever. We can switch back.” Verity explained.

“You can?” A new voice squeaked. No, not a new voice. It was Jared. Verity swung around in his direction, and there he was, standing behind a palm tree, whittling away at the end of one, without a care in the world. He glanced up when he saw Verity standing there, “Oh, hey.”

“When’d you get back?” She asked frustratedly, “What did I miss in two hours?”

“We found him half drowned, just hanging about with the rest of the bottom feeders.” Ben volunteered to her, “Dragged him up, and so far all he’s said that the others managed to go to a Sub-Level of sorts, and are trying to meet the Pass requirements.”

“And that took a week?” Verity asked, before it occurred to her, “Have we been here for a week, too? How long was the wait time between trials?”

“Pretty long. Avian Judiciary likes their bureaucracy.” Feathertooth explained. Verity brushed off the shock of that statement. All of that was just details.

“Tell me about the Sub-Level.” She asked Jared, “Why did you get out when no one else did?”

[Log End!]