Chapter 44: Keys to Kaliber! (Part 1!)

Normally, I might say a bit of bizarre history or some random nonsense in the effort of seeming smarter than I actually am. But I know neither you, my dear student, or I, the beautiful ruler that I am, want that.

What do you want to know?

“What the fuck happened?” Vega yelled out, suddenly sitting up, awoken from being knocked out. Ren, along with his family, were right above her.

“~Uh, nice to see you again?~” Ren shrugged, swimming around Vega.

“~Oh! I’m in water… I’m in water!~” The scarecrow panicked, hopping up. To where she had expected to land on her feet, she fell forward once again. “Darn. What’s wrong?” Turning over to her side, she saw that her legs had been blown off up to the knees. All that remained was one of her boots, charred and bent.

“Huh. Cool!” Calming down and admiring her lost limbs, she took her time to see the place she now was. Halls of basalt rock shaped into stone cavernous, archer hallways, and salmon colored stained glass. These windows were high up and shimmered lights that moved in the pattern of water. She wasn’t in water, she was underwater.

The air had an icy sensation, like dipping your hands in a bowl of cold water. The merfolk, encased in water bubbles, swam around her with ease. Around their necks, hands, and gills were charms of flowers that resembled the opening mouth of a fish. Floating in a way, or rather, swimming in a floating bubble of water.

“~This is so weird. Can ya help me up?~”

“~Got it Vega.~” Using one arm, he hooked it under her arms and carried her up. Getting a better view of the space she was in, this wasn’t a singular outpost. This had to be the home of the mermaids.

Gardens of swinging bottle shaped plants on the floor, leisure rooms with walls lined up of various sea creature heads, much like a trophy room. Vega’s eyes were having a feast of all this lake world wonder. But that creeping worry got to her? Why wasn’t she awake? Why wasn’t she on the ship?

“~Ren. Tell me what happened.~” She asked, with a look of authority.

“~Okay. Uhh, we were transporting those Iozians they you guys got from the port, right? And as my family were transporting them, I decided to check up on you guys.~” Ren used his off arm to push off the walls, as one would in a constructed pool.

“~Just ya-ya?~”

“~Yeah, we didn’t think anything went wrong since you guys got the people out. As I was heading back to where you guys had set sailed to, I saw an explosion come from the top of the ship. Then another, and two more!~”

“...No way.” Vega remembered that shadow. The shadow that took the form of herself and blonde haired assassin. The whole event clarified, the celebration and the confrontation. But that still leaves two things unanswered. “~Did ya see anyone leave?~”

“~Did I -what? I was too busy trying to get help for you guys.~”

“~...Then where is everyone else?~”

“NO! No way bro!” Skaldi, somehow not hungover from all the rum he drank, was holding onto a pile of molten metal. A pile of yellow molten metal. A pile of golden molten metal. All the fucking gold was gone. Black powder streaks all of it, the form of the body was that of the box they had carried the gold in, now looking like an frozen overflowing cake in a mold.

“Hubby-”

“Don’t hubby me. All of our hard earned coin is gone!” His red hair hid most of his expression, but his voice was of astonishing despair. Not the type that accompanies death, although that is funny. Instead, it is the type that finds its company in gamblers that have lost it all or overreacting idiots.

“Skaldi.” Bolato sternly spoke and stomped his foot on the ground. “We still have the plans, we still have the stuff you stole from Jao and the ship, and we’re still alive.” The soldier raised his arms to all around them. In a circular hall with gothic pillars with great windows of glass, showing the outside Thrakian Sea.

The stolen goods and most of their belongings were being piled up by the mermaids that floated over. Sure, all of it was waterlogged, but it was there.

“But… but the gold? What I’m holding on to is the corpse of ten thousand gold damn pieces!”

“Sweetie, your wounds are going to reopen if you keep being hysterical. Again, we are alive.” Bolato crossed his arms, realizing that a purely problem solving mentality wouldn’t make Skaldi suddenly happy. This was a real loss, the soldier couldn’t deny that.

“We can always get more money, Ska.” Valiato walked up to the upset elf and sat on her knees.

“~Leave the boy alone. It is good for feminine men to cry. Good for the soul and a laugh.~” Amir pulled Valiato back up, holding on to her delicate hands. “~Heh. Even after fighting like hell, the sodomite doesn’t change much.~”

“~Ari…~”

“~I’m kidding. A little bit, at least.~”

“Guys-guys!” Vega’s voice echoed down from high above, as she now crashed into a pile of random goods. Sending Tripolian coins and other trinkets rolling around, Vega crawled out from Skaldi’s stolen goods and before the team.

“Hello… Vega?” Valiato tilted her whole torso, sparing no time but to notice her new change. “Are you alright?”

“Oh yeah. It's a new weight loss program I’m on. Lost ten pounds in less than a week, and with this new health supplement, ya can do this too!”

“What’s the supplement?”

“A bomb.”

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“Go figure.” Valiato chuckled, looking at Amir in a way that prompted him to sigh and to start fixing up Vega. This was more an art than a medical science. Skaldi, upon seeing Vega in her normal mood, calmed down and wiped his eyes briefly. His face craned up towards the soldier.

“You know, you should probably go on a weight loss thingy.”

“I try!” Bolato spread out his arms and his feet, making a starfish motion. “But my body isn’t working with me quite. Like when you guys were gone, I stepped on the scale you stole. An hour after I went to the bathroom, I stepped on it again and somehow came back five pounds heavier.”

“Haha.” Skaldi stood up, putting his fingers over his mouth, finally turning away from the scrap gold. “You have a way of making me giggle, sweetie.”

“You know what they say, make them giggle and their cheeks will clap and jiggle.”

“...You mean my face right?” Skaldi squinted up at Bolato. “OH! I get it. He means my ass, funny joke.”

“By the-the way, where is Florato?” Vega kicked her feet up. Well, she didn’t have any feet, but the Tripolian and the kid tied handkerchiefs around the stumps, in a sort of vain way to show that they tried to fix her. So she kicked up her stumps.

“She went to an upstate farm and isn’t coming back.”

“Skaldi.”

“Fine.” The elf rolled his eyes and slowly got up with the help of Bolato. Wincing slightly, he strained his voice as he spoke. “She’s currently having one of those periods that women just love to have at the most convenient of times.”

“See? That’s better.”

“I guess you’re right.” Skaldi still held contempt for his own femininity, but made progress on accepting it in others. He smiled, as if secretly enjoying a future banter session with the actress.

“Good. Now what about the gold?” The scarecrow couldn’t help but to ask.

“Ow.” Skaldi dully spoke as his hand reached up for his eyepatch.

“You alright?” Bolato held Skaldi by his shoulders, making sure he wouldn’t fall over.

“No, just a headache. And just the fact all the gold is gone.”

“Ha, ya sure have a way of forgetting things.” Vega, when finishing her sentence, opened up her jacket. In her stomach and chest were hundreds of gold pieces, and with the shining sea lights, made circles and rings of dazzling light. To the whole party, the sight was dizzying.

“Oh thank the spirits! We’re saved.” Skaldi clasped his hands together, raising them high over his head.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” A voice behind all of them shot out. Stepping out in cloaked darkness, the caramel actress of long golden hair. Florato had returned, with a piece of toilet paper on her sandaled feet.

“Pretty lady!”

“Glad that you’re safe.” Florato crouched down and hugged the scarecrow, as one would to an old friend. “How the hell are you able to survive a bomb and carry all that gold?”

“My body is very stubborn.”

“~Hey Vega!~” Ren had patiently been waiting for her to finish reuniting with her friends. “~Are your people ready to choose what rewards they want?~”

“~One second, alright?~”

“~Okay. But we’ll been waiting a lot time.~”

“~We’ve literally just got our boat destroyed, please-please cut us some slack.~” Vega waved her charred boat at Ren, causing her to shrink and back up.

“Okay, we need to discuss some thing-things.”

“Yeah. Like what caused the explosion.” Bolato placed a hand on his chin and his eyes started wandering to Skaldi’s stolen shit.

“Hey! I didn’t grab anything that could explode like that. Plus, the explosions came from the upper deck, remember?” Skaldi tried to put a hand on his hip but he stopped, wincing for having used his wounded arm.

“Definitely had to be something she saw. What do you see?” Florato knelt down to Vega’s height and laid one hand on her shoulder.

“It was… an Assassin guy?” Recollecting the frightful memory, she tried to compose a proper retelling of events.

“~What’s an Assassin Ari?~”

“~Sneakly killers. Don’t worry.~”

“She looked like me. Then changed to look like herself. So cool! But also very concerning.” Putting a finger to her mouth, Vega rationalized how the assassin operated.

“Hmm. Must be a shapeshifter.” Skaldi wagged his fist to everyone, speaking with confidence. “What kind of hair did her… normal form have?”

“Black, spiky pigtails. Weird eyelashes.”

“Oh. Oh shit.” Skaldi muttered.

“Why, what’s wrong with being blond?” Florato got up in an offended way.

“Nothing, its just… that’s how the Fliction fairy looks.” Skaldi stepped to Vega’s side. “The type of fairy my people used to worship.”

“Wait, they recruited a Galtian elf?” Bolato raise his hands to his face, as if he were hiding a roll of dice.

“No-no. The Galtian tribe are Flictions elves, but a Fliction fairy is a common spirit in all elvish peoples. But that couldn’t mean…” Skaldi held a secret discussion in his mind. Too many events and operations were off.

First, Gem Sacrifice in Fort Jao, now a Fliction fairy as an Assassin? Who and what forces had used these wholesome and noble parts of his people to commit violence?

“We need to establish how this Assassin, whatever it is got to us. It’s not like we advertised our position.” Speaking in a tactician’s manner, Bolato circled around the whole group.

“What about me?” Vega raised her hand as she offered an answer. “I mean, when I worked in Vein Xinyuai, I got along with the demon there-there pretty easily. And the priest in Jinmai seemed to be pretty interested in me.”

“Nothing seems to be particularly celestial about you.” Bolato waved the answer away.

“Are we really going to dismiss that?” Florato countered, having two fists on her hips. “Didn’t you say that Vega wrote stuff in Tripolian, even though that she doesn’t know how to?”

“Yes but-”

“And you Skaldi,” Florato continued, not allowing her argument to be put aside, “you also saw that Vega has shifted in her demeanor when upset?”

“That’s… also true. Although it doesn’t happen often, hay girl over here changes weirdly.” Skaldi brushed her head affectionately, almost noogling her.

“And… I don’t think I need to say this to ya, but the Voice. The Voice is saying more, uncomforting things.” Vega said this with a smile on her face. She wasn’t entirely fearless of it, but she knew that its attacks could be thwarted.

“Right.” The soldier paused his circling and stopped at Florato’s side. Not turning his head, he closed his eyes, keen on listening. “I’ll admit. That is certainly not the idea I was going for.”

“Is that a bad-bad thing?”

“No sweetie. It just means there's more to you than what we’ve initially thought.” The actress took Vega into her arms, with the scarecrow hanging on to her by the neck.

“I’m okay with that. So long as ya guys are there!” She gave a goofy giggle and snuggled up to the actress.

Florato loved Vega as much as she loved herself. And in that aim, she wished to see her succeed and improve.

“Call it over speculation, but I know there's something more. Look, I’m just an actress that looks pretty. But as an actress, Vega is acting out parts that she and none of us truly know the scripts for.”

“Can those fairies detect celestial stuff?” Valiato wanted to join in, not wishing to be an absent party in the discussion.

“Yeah. While Galtian spirits can’t speak to each on our plane, fairies can. They kinda act as messengers.” Skaldi couldn’t exactly find the equivalent of Fliction fairies to Iozian fairies, so he opted to summarize their roles. “Still, why would they destroy the boat and leave us alive?

“Maybe they didn’t know we had mermaid friends? They could have just thought we’d drown-drown. Well, ya guys drown-drown.” Vega replied.

“Perhaps…” Florato tried to accept this possibility, but her emotional heart struggled to. There had to be more, this couldn’t have been a simple assassination.

“Now that we’re done-done discussing bad stuff, who wants to get some loot?!”

“Me!” The elf exclaimed, leaping high into the water colored air.