I woke up, to find that nothing had changed; no monsters had attacked, the sea was as still as ever, and no one had come up with a brilliant idea to get us to the island. I dug some provisions out of my inventory and handed them around. There was not enough in my inventory to carry this on indefinitely, but I didn’t tell the others that, it would just be one more thing to worry about and distract from the problem at hand. Not that they seemed very focused on the problem! Tom seemed like his old self, and was telling Boo Ra about Cornelis The Bloody, [one of the old heroes] “…and after that, he had to supress the alliance of orcs and men in the wild country! He singlehandedly killed over 600 of them before they retreated! But their water mages nearly wiped him out when they sent a flood down the valley!” “How did he escape?” Boo Ra asked, wide eyed. “Cornelis didn’t ‘escape’” Tom said clearly in awe of his hero “He rose above the waves, with great endurance and fortitude he emerged from the torrent victorious!” I looked at Tom, then at Boo Ra’s confused face. I stepped in with a few more details, “He survived the flood by ripping the bladers out of his fallen enemies and inflating them. That is how the legend goes anyway.” “How did he have time to inflate the bladers?” Boo Ra asked, “well he would have had a lot of skill points in agility” Tom said “he was a swordsman after all!” I left them to talk and scowled out at the sea; if only we had some spare bladers of fallen enemies lying around, maybe we could make a raft or something. But the whole idea was stupid, even if an enemy did show up, the dungeon would just reabsorb it before we could use a blader or anything else from its’ fallen corpse. I shook my head and turned my attention to my inventory, I had a few bits of dried meat, some very stale bread, and a few good handfuls of a soft fungus that the goblins grew and made up a large part of their diet. Most of it was taken up with goblin water bags, other than that, I had some odds and ends; short pieces of rope, half a flint, that sort of thing… Goblin Water Bags! I jumped to my feet smiling, water bags were better than bladers, less messy. Now, the only question was, ‘did I have enough of them?’
It floated! Sure, it looked like scrap heap had been thrown into the water; Tom had given up his belt to help lash it together, a jacket and shirt made up some more of the tying materials. Here and there little bits of string were sticking out at interesting angles; but it floated. for just a second we stood admiring our handy work, and then came the trouble of getting on it. Tom was the first to try, he stepped out with great confidence, then needed to lie down very fast, [ a deck, held together with cloths and string, isn’t very stable] I, carefully, crawled after him, and last came Boo Ra. It was a good thing that this ‘sea’ was as still as it was; with all of us on board, not only were we in danger of upsetting the balance, but we were also dangerously low in the water. But in spite of this we were feeling rather optimistic as we pushed off from the shore. Boo Ra was paddling with Toms rapier, [ we had stuck the end into a porous rock, that Tom had in his inventory, to make a sort of paddle] as Boo Ra was the lightest, he seemed the least likely to capsize us.
Progress was slow, the air was still and quiet. The paddle went into the water, and came out dripping red. As we moved, we sent ripples across the water, that died away into nothing. The water looked like wine, and I couldn’t see into it. Not knowing what might be around us made me tense. Then in the still air, I heard something, something far away; it was music, beautiful music! I only caught a few, ethereal notes, and then it dropped away, and I was left straining my ears in the still air. “Did you hear that?” I asked, keeping my voice down, in a sort of reverent awe, “Sure. Any idea where it is coming from?” Tom asked, looking around, I shook my head, and then wiped some water off my face, I looked up to see Boo Ra was holding the paddle up, pointing ahead of us, towards the dark island, “it comes from there.” He said, I looked at the island, then back at Boo Ra, “it must be coming from further away than that!” I said, Boo Ra just shook his head, and then picked his ear, [rather like someone might pick their noise] I heard it again, it was singing! I couldn’t make out any words, maybe they were in another language, or maybe there were no words just a sound, so clear, so complete somehow… as the music dropped away again, I said impatiently “well, what are we waiting for? The island is our destination, if that is where it is coming from, let’s go!” Boo Ra raised the paddle again and we were off.
The island was closer than it had looked from the shore and was made from a rough black stone. There where little out cropping and ledges round the island, and it was on these that I saw the singers: they were so dark and still that at first, I thought they were just part of the rock, but then I saw them and I couldn’t make them blend into the rock again. They were mermaids… but not like I had ever heard them described, sure they had a fish’s tail, and a human-ish upper body. But they were short, fat, creatures, they reminded me of a seal I had once seen as a child. And to top off these grotesque beings was hair that seemed to be made of tentacles.
Boo Ra paddled us closer to the island, [in a place where there were no mermaids] every now and then I would catch a bit of the mermaids’ song, it always sounded like it was coming from a long way off, and I was always left wanting to get closer, to hear more, but I resisted. When disasters happen, they happen fast. We were at the island, it rose like a wall in front of us, but the rock was so ruff that it was easy to climb, Tom had already disembarked, and was clambering up the wall with ease. I had one foot on the raft and the rest of me was on the wall. The water all around us was smooth and still and then, it was boiling with tentacles. These weren’t the ‘hair’ like tentacles from the mermaids, these where huge, bigger than my leg tentacles, I scrambled up the wall, heart racing.
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I was holding on to the rock and looking back, Tom was to my left, with Scar perched on his shoulder, hanging his neck out as if he was afraid he would miss something. Back over my shoulder I could see Boo Ra clinging to the remains of our raft. He had lost the rapier/paddle and was splashing with his hands, like a cripple, trying to pull himself along. He was almost at the island when, the water again boiled with tentacles, and he was gone! I stared at the water, once again still. A bubble floated up, bringing with it a piece of goblin, a piece that belonged inside. I climbed up the rock, it wasn’t like I could do anything to get him back! I stopped at the top, feeling like I might vomit. Tom hadn’t seen what happened to Boo Ra, he was looking the other way, so it took a bit of persuading before he got it. But when he got it, it hit him hard! He sank down onto the rock like I had just punched him in the gut, staring at nothing. I thought he was being a little over dramatic, but I left him to it and started to look around. The island dipped down into a crater, when I got down inside it, it was almost like having walls around me. In this ‘room’ there was a statue, but it wasn’t like the ones in the desert. This one was black, and could almost have grown out of the rock of the island. It was meant to be a mermaid. Up close the hair looked more like snakes, but the statue was rather crude. The tail seemed to fuse with the rock and was even less distinct than the rest of her. She seemed to be looking at her hands, which were held out in front of her, like she was about to take something. In front of the statue, in the centre of the room, was a fountain, with more of the red, glowing, water in it. I walked towards the fountain, fixated on its glowing water, my toe court on the uneven floor and I stumbled, and fell. I used my hands to break my fall, as I got up, I noticed that the uneven floor wasn’t actually uneven, but rather it was carved! I could just make out letters cut into the floor, but as it turns out, black holes on a black floor do not make for easy reading. So, I left the letters and went on to look at the fountain. In the fountain lay an ovel mirror. It was silvery white and seemed so out of place in that red and black world! I was not sure if it was glass, or crystal. It’s curved shape, put me in mind of a large dish, or small shield. I looked up from the fountain and surveyed the rest of the ‘room;’ there was nothing else there, just rough black walls under a dark red sky. My eyes travelled round the edge of the crater, finally finding Tom, still huddled where I had left him. It didn’t look like I was going to get any help from there! I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate; There had to be a way past this point, like those statues in the desert, there was a statue here too, and there were words carved in the floor. I needed to find a way to read those words. I looked back at the fountain as I thought, and the image of Boo Ra from a few minutes earlier rose in my mind before I could stop it. The moment started playing in my mind, the tentacle appearing, so close that I could touch it, Boo Ra’s face, and then, a still, glowing sea. ‘Focus on the problem’ I told myself, annoyed that I had let the memory replay in my mind!
The water filled the second column of letters on the stone floor. Word by word it was taking shape. I was using a ruined water bottle that I had salvaged to take water from the fountain to the letters. I had first tried to flare manna at the letters, but the black stone seemed to suck it in without letting it illuminate anything; so, I was trudging between the fountain and the words, filling out a few words and then going back to the fountain to get more water. It was tedious but effective: red letters glowing in the dark floor, it was quite cool. At last, I was finished, here is what I read;
‘I once served the ruler, reflecting his light’
‘But now I reign here, by my own might’
‘I once desired his beauty, spread across the sky’
‘Now show me my beauty, or you will die.’
Why was it written in this needlessly complicated way!? Why couldn’t it have been just strait forward instructions? I tried to calm myself down and think. I had a mirror, by dint of it being the only thing here it must be important… ‘show me my beauty’ … the only other thing here was the statue; so… show the statue… Itself? I pulled the mirror from the fountain and walked to the waiting statue. I turned the mirror, and placed it in the statues waiting hands. Nothing happened. I frowned, wondering what to do next, and then, a scream, I assume it came from the statue, but it was so high pitched and sudden, that I wasn’t really sure. It swelled, getting louder and louder, more grating, and ragged. I covered my ears, but it did not help! It was like it was drilling into my head, reverberating through my entire body. Just when I thought my head would explode from the noise, the mirror did explode, and shards of it filled the air. They seemed to be vibrating with the sound, filling the world with echoes of it. And right then I felt the world beginning to twist, and a feeling in the bottom of my stomach, the feeling of the next level!
End of part 2