“I am called Samiel.” I announced back, making my voice as clear as I could through the distortions of the water. Voice? What is the Beast Beneath the Waves?
“Samiel.” the deep, grating Beast continued. “Named for an angel, fallen from grace. Now far from home in this lonely place.” The Beast then gave a slight whuff, like a cat does when it smells something interesting. The water around me rushed forward in a surge that threatened to carry me with it. I dug in my heels against that inevitable tide, but luckily, the Beast did not continue its inhalation. Instead, it stopped with this sample. When next it spoke, it dropped the rumbling cadences of rhyme for a more conversational tone: “I think, Tiny Trespasser, that I would like to eat you.”
“You don’t want to eat me!” I protested, thinking fast. “I am... I’m not even a mouthful, to you. You’d devour my whole life, which might not mean a lot to you, but it sure means a lot to me, for nothing more than a, a passing taste of halfling? Really, it’s an unequal exchange.”
“Then I ask again, Tiny Trespasser, what seek you here that you disturb me from my restless sleep?”
“I am seeking...” I faltered. What could I possibly say to this behemoth, this stone giant, trapped underneath a mountain for a millennia? What of my concerns could it possibly think important enough for even the moment it would take to let me past? It couldn’t care about Cynric’s Goggles, or the Talarian Sandals. Could it be bribed with a small fortune’s worth of sirenstones, or would such trinkets only seem petty? When you’re all out of other options, Ramsey had told me once, you could always try the truth. “I am seeking... that which I have lost.”
The great yellow eyes blinked slowly, once, unfocusing from the present. “Lost,” it mused, as if in reminiscence, “I have lost... much.”
“What did you lose?” I asked, curious despite myself.
The eyes refocused on me. “EVERYTHING!” it boomed, in a voice that rattled the bones of my ribcage. “My freedom. My form. My world. I thought Cerulea a gem for the taking, a sparkling morsel for my appropriation, but this world is not to be taken. It is a trap. I sought to consume it, but it devoured me. Me! I am—” and here it faltered, sighed. “I was—I was, something else, once. Now I am the Beast Beneath the Waves. I have lost even my name.” The Beast did another rip-tide sniff. “I am also losing patience. What will you give me, Seeker of Lost Things, in return for my mercy?”
I thought fast yet again, and again, was forced to fall back on the truth.
“Um. I offer nothing.”
Even the Beast seemed modestly surprised by this. It laughed. “Then why should I not devour you?”
Because it’s bored too.
“You shouldn’t devour me because... because that’s not a nice thing to do! If my life means nothing to you, then my death doesn’t either, so why not let me go? If you help people when you can, instead of hurting them because you can, then maybe... maybe someday someone will come along who can offer you more than a momentary distraction.” I looked up at the huge, lantern-like eyes, wondering what they saw, what this stone Beast thought of the economy of favors that fragile mortals traded in. “When they do, you’ll sure hope they’re one of the people who defaults to kindness.”
The Beast laughed again, harder. “Tiny Trespasser,” it boomed, “Audacious Angel, Seeker of Lost Things; for my mercy, you would offer me hope?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because... because it is a terrible thing to have lost.”
For a moment longer we considered each other. Then, finally, the Beast blinked again, this time in ascent. “Very well then, Peddler of Hope. You may pass, and your light with you.” It seemed to settle back into the rock, and its tone grew formal once more:
“Beware of Cerulea, azure and serene,
A glittering gem is not what it seems.
Angel of Death with Victory paired,
Two worlds, two minds, one soul, ensnared.
The lure is set, the hunter awaits,
But the hungry realm cares not what it takes.
When walls between worlds grow feeble and thin,
Beware of the tempest that rages within.”
With that, the Beast opened its maw wide, and wider still, until the yellow eyes disappeared into stone folds, and the stalactites rooted themselves to the ceiling. The lower stalagmites sunk into the floor, leaving only melted nubs poking out of the sand, and soon there was no trace of the monstrous face that I had been conversing with a moment before, only a perfectly ordinary sea cave, studded with starfish and shells.
A flash of silver on the edge of my vision snapped my attention sideways, and then another, and another, a darting rain of silver arrows rushing at me in perfect synchronization. Dropping my rock, I threw my hands in front of my face—but the arrows all dodged aside.
A school of sardines, fleeing… what? Against the backlit blue behind me, the menacing drift of a couple predatory silhouettes; finned spears with underbites. Barracudas.
One of the sardines darted too close to a purple anemone; the delusory star-tipped tentacles of a moment ago turned snarling and treacherous as they caught and grabbed it. The little fish jerked and writhed in its death throws, but was inexorably drawn into the bulbous mouth.
“What? You mean they get bigger?” I started edging away.
“Oh, well, that’s ok then!” I snapped sarcastically. “What about halflings?”
I looked down at my rock, which I had sort of grabbed with my toes to keep from drifting away from. My hair waved weightlessly about my head; a metallic golden mass, dancing in the current.
Not without exiting the cave. I picked up my rock and began hurrying deeper, into the maw of the Beast. Heave, lunge, leap. “Surface dwelling fish, you said?”
Heave, lunge, leap. “Maybe they won’t like caves.” Heave, “Maybe they’ll be scared…” Lunge, “…of the dark.” Leap. I panted bubbles towards the ceiling.
“Not helping!” Heave.
“Bet my life on it?” Lunge.
Leap.
And then below me was not the rocky sea floor of a moment ago, but a slight drop-off into a bulbous, tubular opening, surrounded by waving purple tentacles six feet long. The giant anemone lit up in my improvised glow like a sunburst, like a flower—a hundred phosphorescent rays around a black and empty heart… and I was streaming straight into it.
I dropped my rock. It sank into the anemone without me, trailed by a few tentacles just to make sure it didn’t escape, and the mouth sphinctered shut around it, swallowing it, shuttering its bright radi
ance. In the resulting darkness there was only the waving, disorienting star field of the glowing tentacle tips, from which I tried to thrash away. A moment later the mouth opened again, spilling light once more into the cave, and revealing that in my struggles I had only managed to turn myself upside down. Unless it was not me that had moved, but the anemone, somehow crawling in that second of darkness onto the ceiling, and leaving me spun around, lost, sinking down instead of up. How would I even know?
I exhaled, and a burbling silver stream ran upwards, past my feet and into the not at all distant ceiling.
Ah ha! I now have a compass that always points up!
With this as my reference, I whirled around again, and then snapped my arm in just before a tentacle could grab it.
[Dodge 1check: Success]
Another tentacle swipe, this one connecting with my ankle. The limpid limb felt like burning jelly, and stuck hard to my flesh, trying to pull me in.
[-3 Hit Points, Acid damage2]
[Hit points: 17/20]
I struggled helplessly in the water, unable to run, unable to stand, with nothing to anchor myself to. Rootless. The occasionally dilating mouth of the sea monster spilled light out at slowly pulsing intervals, alternatively bathing the cave in witchfire and then casting it into an alien darkness populated by waving fluorescent streaks. Even as I fought to stay out of the deadly reach of the tentacles, I had to admire how beautifully they flowed, effortless in their medium, and somehow never tangling in spite of their complexity. It was like a really excellent rendition of Weeping Willow Waits.
The mouth opened again, spilling light, and something else glinted inside the anemone.
If it can do Weeping Willow, then why can’t I?
I’d think that actually being in the sea would be the most awesome Sea Stance ever, but even Sea Stance required you to anchor your ki somewhere. The only stance that didn’t…
The revelation hit me like a compass that only points inwards. Wind Stance alone centered my ki inside myself, and oriented everything relative to me.
Below me, the mouth opened again, and this time I saw the reflective object from before: one of my steel daggers with the hollow ring for a pommel, tangled in a bundle of blue robes and moonstone studded sandals. My gear!
I took a deep breath, let it out, and stopped worrying about up vs down. Instead I pronated my trapped foot, placed my other foot alongside of my knee, and kicked off the grasping tentacle with a Shaving Kindling strike.
[-2 Hit Points, Acid damage]
[Hit points: 15/20]
My other foot stung as the anemone’s acid ate into my skin. A trickle of blood fouled the water around my feet. Another tentacle came waving towards my face, but White Crane Flaps Its Wings seemed to leave the jellied mass confused, snaking amongst my eddies but not finding what it was looking for.
I untied my belt, grasped it at one end, and then performed a Gathering Storm, twisting in a tight circle, my belt streaming along around me, and then threw my arms out to arrest the spin and snapped the long cloth length at one of the tentacles.
The tentacle in question tried to grab my belt, but I jerked it back, faster than the fleeing sardines which were streaking past me once again, and the tentacles were misdirected once more.
I spun around just as the anemone mouth opened again, illuminating the tunnel where, laying low in the weeds, were two steel grey spearheads with underslung jaws; the kind that almost never attack humans. The slight current took the ribbon of blood from my ankle and wafted it towards them.
[Lost and Found: Quest update!]
[Optional objective: Ooh, barracuda!]
I moved first. I whipped out my belt once more, towards one of the hungry tentacles, but this time I waited the split second it took for the anemone to wrap around my belt, grasping it tight, and then I hauled myself forward, down and in, towards the pulsing mouth. Behind me the barracudas moved in.
Phosphorescent purple ropes lashed at me while I went through an impressively acrobatic rendition of Tumbling Pebbles, dodging and twisting and turning. One caught at me, burning me through my clothes…
[-3 Hit Points, Acid damage]
[Hit points: 12/20]
…and I dislodged it with the belt this time, saving myself the secondary burn. The barracuda lunged at me, all jagged slashing teeth and predatory menace, but I dodged that too, and then, suddenly, it jerked back, trying to bend itself in a U shape, slashing its mad jaws at a rope of solid purple jelly. It managed to sever the one tentacle, but by then another one had gotten ahold of it, and then another, and another… the giant fish went down beneath the writhing, light-tipped appendages.
[Lost and Found: Quest update!]
[Optional objective: Ooh, barracuda! 1 /2 killed]
And then I was through. The inside of the anemone was a round-ish bulb maybe twice my height from wall to wall. Purple rings, like miniature mouths, or suckers, covered all available surfaces, in various stages of digesting things. Beside the Light stone and the heap of my gear, the bottom of the anemone was covered in small piles of goblin bones… but only goblin bones. Wherever my body ended up, it was not here.
The second barracuda, by some infernal grace, had managed to make it through the forest of tentacles and slipped into the stomach with me. It swam in a tight circle, along (but not touching) the purple ringed walls, swift as a reflection. I dove down and pawed through my gear, searching, searching… there! I grabbed up my dagger and brandished it at the fish.
If barracudas could laugh, it would have.
Instead, it drifted gently into alignment and aimed itself at my shining hair, and then Ballistic Barracuda met Sphinx Ascending. It shot forward and savaged my bangs, while I swiped up and out in a crescent arc with my dagger, but fouled my cut when I couldn’t angle my wrist properly. I had only practiced the move empty handed.
Unwilling to drop my dagger in spite of this, I faced the fish for a rematch, and when it came again (and it came fast) I managed a palm-heel strike as part of Autumn Leaf, but the barracuda was a solid mass of muscle and was not much deterred by my hit.
It darted at me again, and I ducked, barely, crouching into a ball and spinning slightly. Around me, it looked like the sides of the anemone were starting to contract.
“So what stat do barracudas not have?”
Then I must outwit my enemy. I arrested my spin by stabbing my dagger into the wall/stomach lining, then flicked myself upwards to the narrowing mouth. In one smooth motion I reached out, stirred the water at the base of one of the tentacles, dodged its return strike, and then deftly severed it with my dagger.
[Dexterity check: Success. No damage taken.]
The barracuda came at me while I was still wrapping the wiggling tentacle with my belt. It slashed at my foot, but I kicked off the underside of the anemone mouth, trailing purple appendage and gold hair in my wake, and then, when the barracuda banked its turn for a lunging tear at my throat, I whipped the tentacle right into its line of attack.
Weeping Willow Waits.
Fish met phosphorescent doom, stuck to it, tried to bite it off, received a mouthful of sticky acid, and drifted into one of the ringed digestive structures, still thrashing out its death, as if protesting the inconceivability of it.
[Lost and Found: Quest update!]
[Optional objective: Ooh, barracuda! 2 /2 killed]
[Optional objective: Ooh, barracuda! – COMPLETED]
As if stimulated by the appetizer, the stomach walls of the anemone pulsed and oscillated, contracting, stirring the bones on the floor and trying to push me into the same fate as the barracudas.
I dove down into the bones and lifted out a tangle of once-blue silk and leather sandals. As fast as I dared, I stowed my dagger, unwrapped the silks, and pulled out the Talarian Sandals. Yes!
“I thought we didn’t like min-maxing?” I commented as I rapidly laced my sandals.
“None of them are as important right now as getting out of here!” As I gathered my silks, my second dagger fell out. Quick as a barracuda, I snatched it out of its fall and stowed it away.
[Achieved Level 5]
[Class3 acquired: Monk4, 1 (Total: Ranger5 2, Rogue6 2, Monk 1)]
[WARNING: MULTICLASSING LIMIT7 REACHED]
[Granted abilities8: Unarmed Fighting9, Centered10]
[Granted, (1d8) maximum Hit Points: 5]
[Hit Points: 12/25]
For A Few Minutes More Page 14