by A. J. Markam
Good thing, too, because the kraken turned its beady little eyes to me.
“Alright, motherfucker – come at me, bro!” I yelled, and cast Soul Suck.
The spell took a pittance of hit points off the monster, but I guess my blue lightning bolt was bright and shiny and mildly annoying. Distracting, at the very least.
The kraken heaved one gigantic fist into the air and brought it down, slow as a falling tree.
Which is to say, pretty fast, but slow enough for me to leap out of the way at the last second.
I dove into the water as an SUV-sized fist SLAMMED into the boulder I’d been standing on and reduced it to gravel.
Along with my Gravesite.
“DAMMIT!” I snapped as a computer window popped up and confirmed that my respawn point had been destroyed.
I was the only one to blame, though. It had been pretty stupid to put a Gravesite right in the line of fire – although there hadn’t been many other options. Maybe underwater behind the boulder, but that was about it.
According to the timer on my Action Bar, I now had… oh…
Nine and a half minutes before I could create the next Gravesite.
If I died, I would resurrect in the closest graveyard. Since there were fishermen, there was probably a village nearby. But it wouldn’t help Alaria and the mermaid if I respawned two miles away.
Speaking of Alaria and the mermaid, there was a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up to see Alaria had cut through the first chain, and now the mermaid was swinging excruciatingly by one arm. She bravely tried to stifle her screams as she jerked down to the end of the chain, but a muffled cry still slipped out of her mouth.
It caught the attention of the kraken, which began to wade towards the cavern again.
“Alaria, can you do something so it doesn’t pull her arm out of her socket?!” I yelled.
“On it!” she shouted as she wrapped her legs around the mermaid from behind. She began to flap her wings, which lifted the poor girl’s weight off her shackled wrist.
At the same time, Alaria put both her hands around the second chain and began to heat it up.
I turned back to the kraken as I treaded water. Time to see if any of my other spells would distract it again –
Wait, what’s this?
The kraken began to jerk its head back and forth in the air as little black puffs of smoke popped in front of its eyes, only to reappear a dozen feet away.
The monster looked like a cat entranced by a laser pointer.
“Attaboy, Stig!” I cried out.
My imp replied every time he teleported to a new spot.
“You – ”
whompf
“ – owe – ”
whompf
“ – me – ”
whompf
“ – booze – ”
whompf
“ – boss!”
“A whole case of it, buddy!” I yelled.
The monster ROARED in frustration.
The gale-force winds from its mouth must have blown Stig off course, because the little black puffs of smoke tumbled wildly off-course.
“Ah, fuck me,” Stig yelled as he plummeted towards the ocean, only to teleport away before he hit the surface.
I still had ten seconds left before I could cast Chain of Darkness again, so I decided to try Terrify.
I wasn’t expecting anything to happen, truthfully. Not on something that big and ferocious.
Lo and behold, though, the kraken flinched like it had just seen a ghost.
Then it roared and stumbled backwards into the ocean.
Holy shit!
Guess that inside that monstrous, skyscraper-sized exterior was just an itty, bitty little brain.
There was only one problem. Once it got over its fear, it was going to come back even angrier than it had been before. Thirty seconds was all we had.
“Alaria, how we doin’?” I yelled as I watched the kraken thrash about like it was having a seizure.
“Almost there!” she called back.
My cooldown for Chain of Darkness ended, but I decided to keep the spell in reserve. Just in case I needed another distraction.
Terrify was slowly counting down, though.
15 seconds… 14 seconds…
“Alaria, I don’t mean to hurry you, but – ”
“Almost there!” she shouted. “What do you want me to do after I free her, come and get you?”
“No, get her to safety first!” I yelled. “I’ll be fine!”
…I hoped.
Three seconds…
Two seconds…
One.
The kraken stopped flailing in the water and turned back towards the cliffs.
The scales over its beady little eyes furrowed even deeper, and it ROARED as it lurched through the water towards the cliff.
If it had been mad before, now it was furious.
And it was just seconds away from the canyon.
Time to cast Chain of Darkness.
A thousand tiny demons flew out of my sleeve and looped around the kraken’s head.
Hit points began subtracting every second –
-17,850
-17,672
-17,495
– but this time the beast was so angry, it ignored my spell.
It was intent on one thing, and one thing only: Alaria and the mermaid.
The kraken stretched out one clawed hand towards the canyon.
“ALARIA – ”
“GOT HER!” Alaria shouted, and soared straight up into the air carrying the mermaid in her arms.
YES!
The kraken roared in fury as its prize slipped away.
Insane with rage, it turned its attention to me.
Uh-oh…
Alaria and the mermaid might have escaped, but I hadn’t.
Time to get the fuck out of Dodge.
I ducked down under the water and began swimming parallel to the rocky cliffs.
My only hope at this point was to outrun the fucker.
I swam as fast as I could –
And then the sunlight was blotted out from above me.
A second later, a hand as big as an SUV crashed down into the water. Amidst a million tiny air bubbles, fingers thick as tree trunks surrounded me like a cage.
I darted between its fingers before it could close its fist, but I doubted that little trick would work too many more times.
My heart thudded in my chest like a sledgehammer. At this rate, the kraken wouldn’t need to crush me to kill me; I was going to have a fuckin’ heart attack.
As the hand pulled back up out of the water, I swam as fast as I possibly could –
And then the shadow loomed over me again, blocking out the sun.
I darted hard to the right, away from the cliff, as the hand slammed down into the water behind me.
Of course, now I was swimming towards the kraken.
A fact which was only reinforced by the redwood-sized tentacle snaking through the water towards me.
shit, Shit, SHIT –
I just resigned myself to death. There was no way I was getting out of this one.
And then two feminine shapes darted out of a nearby kept forest.
Mermaids!
Each woman grabbed one of my arms. With their tails beating powerfully, they sped me along four times faster than I’d been able to go on my own.
The shadow loomed above us –
But by the time the clawed hand crashed down, we were 30 feet away.
The kraken bellowed in frustration, and its rumbling roar vibrated the very water around us.
We were safe.
I looked over at my companions in wonder. One was blonde with hair like spun gold and an iridescent blue lower body. The other looked Indian – brown skin, black hair, with a glittering red tail.
When I looked at each of them in turn, both women gave me enormous smiles.
“Thank you for saving me,” I said gratefully.
“Thank YOU, noble adventurer, for saving our sister,” the Indian mermaid said, and kissed me on my cheek.
The blonde did the same.
A little more chaste than I was accustomed to, but still nice.
The mermaids turned towards the cliffs and headed for an underwater hole ten feet in diameter. We entered, swam through a narrow passageway, and reached a much larger cave inside the rocky cliff.
And I do mean a much larger cave.
It was the size of a cathedral, with sloped, 100-foot-high ceilings. A dozen small holes in the ceiling of the cave let in shafts of sunlight, which gave the entire place a magical, golden glow.
The cave had its own little beach at the far end of the grotto, where crystal-clear water lapped at yellow sands. Sitting on the shore was Alaria, surrounded by 30 gorgeous mermaids.
My succubus crouched by the red-headed mermaid she’d saved, focused intently on something – but when she saw me start to emerge from the water, she cried out, stumbled to her feet, and ran through the water.
“Ian – I’m so sorry!” she cried out as she crashed into me and hugged me tight. “I tried to come back for you, but you’d already disappeared underwater – but Oceana said that her sisters were going to save you, so we came back here – are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I reassured her, and kissed her deeply.
There was a murmured Awwwww from the mermaids, and they all slapped their tails repeatedly in the water – which was applause in Mermaid World, I guess.
Alaria and I laughed and looked around at all the beautiful faces beaming up at us.
“Where’s Stig?” I asked.
“I don’t know – I didn’t see him,” Alaria said.
I checked my Action Bar. The imp’s icon was fully lit, meaning he was alive and well… somewhere.
I would go and find him after we returned to the surface. Hopefully he had found a bottle of rum somewhere and was enjoying a much-deserved reward.
“Is… ‘Oh-she-yah-na’ the one you saved?” I asked Alaria.
“Yes,” a lovely voice called out, and I looked over to see the red-headed mermaid lying on the sandy beach, smiling up at me. “Thank you, brave adventurers. I owe you both my life.”
“It’s okay. We were happy to help.”
“I and my sisters are forever in your debt.”
“No, no,” I said, waving one hand in the air. “That’s not necessary – ”
Then I noticed that she still had iron manacles around her wrists. A short length of chain hung from each, ending in the distorted links that Alaria had melted through.
“I was trying to get them off just now,” Alaria explained, “but I think they’re enchanted. I’m afraid to cut them off with fire – I might burn her arms.”
“Huh… let me take a look,” I said, and walked over and knelt down beside the mermaid.
It was hard to keep my eyes on the manacles. Oceana was very beautiful, and her gorgeous breasts were just barely covered by the scalloped seashells over her nipples. The only thing holding the shells in place, it seemed, were strands of silver chain.
I forced myself to concentrate on the iron shackles.
If I had been a Rogue, I would have had the lockpicking skills necessary to undo them… but I wasn’t a Rogue.
I sighed. “I can’t unlock them. I guess we could go try to find those fishermen and get the key from them – ”
All the mermaids cried out as one.
“Oh no, no no no no no,” Oceana said, shaking her head vigorously. “No, I could never ask you to put yourself in harm’s way again.”
I smiled wryly. “After the kraken, I’m not worried about a bunch of fishermen. How the hell did they catch you, though? From what I saw just a couple of minutes ago, you guys should be able to outswim them easily.”
“Their fishing nets,” Oceana explained. “At night, we can’t see them. I got tangled last night and they caught me.”
“Shit… and they were planning to give you to the kraken so it would leave their ships alone?”
“Exactly. They worship it as a sea god, even though it is nothing more than a stupid beast. They believe that if they offer me or my sisters up as a sacrifice, it will leave them alone.”
“Fuckin’ assholes,” I muttered, then pointed at her manacles. “Can you swim okay with those on?”
The mermaid looked downcast. “I… yes, of course.”
“They’re too heavy,” one of the other mermaids called out.
“She’ll be weighed down,” another said.
“She’ll become an easy target for the kraken and other predators,” a third said.
The redheaded mermaid tried to shush them, but she didn’t contradict what they said.
I looked over at Alaria. “I guess we have to go after the fishermen, then.”
Oceana said, “We brought you here to this grotto, thinking perhaps that the dead human might help.”
I looked at the mermaid in alarm. “…dead… human?”
Had I just stumbled into some sort of fucked-up horror side-quest?
Oceana pointed at the rear of the cave.
There in the gloom was a shadowy shape slumped over on the sand.
I swallowed and walked towards it.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the shadows, I saw what it was.
A skeleton in pirate clothes.
It lay slumped over on its side, its skull bleached white and not a speck of flesh on its bones. Its linen shirt and trousers were little more than rags, but two things about it were relatively untouched by time: the eel-skin belt around its waist, and the corked bottle beside it with a rolled-up piece of parchment inside.
One of the items triggered a memory.
Eel-skin belt…
The quest!
I reached down and took hold of the belt, which was unfastened. It came away easily in my hands.
‘20,000 XP’ appeared before me in golden script, along with a computer window:
You have received Captain Darrow’s Pirate Belt: +10 Armor, +7 Intellect, +7 Stamina
And a treasure map and key!
Treasure map? What treasure –
Ah.
I reached down, uncorked the bottle, pulled out the parchment, and unrolled it.
On its tattered surface was a crude drawing of a coastline. In the area that was supposed to be water there was a giant skull, then a dotted line, several ships, and an ‘X’ right in the midst of them.
Huh.
I knew that it was my reward for the quest, but I turned back to the mermaids anyway. “Um, I found a treasure map… I don’t want to take it if you guys need it…”
“We have no need of a map, kind sir,” Oceana said. “We have everything we want in the waters off this cove.”
Must be nice.
“Do you know where this is?” I asked, showing her the parchment. Alaria looked over my shoulder in curiosity.
Oceana frowned and pointed at the bottom-most right area of the map, the farthest point away from the ‘X.’ “It seems that we might be here… there is the canyon where the fishermen bound me.”
I glanced down. Sure enough, there was a gap drawn into the rocks.
“Do you know where this skull is? Or the ships?”
“No,” Oceana said. “We live our entire lives nearby. None of us have ever been that far from home.”
Oh well. Guess I’ll have to figure it out later.
Not knowing what else to do with the map, I placed it in one of my bags and went back to continue my search of the former Captain Darrow.
Around his neck and beneath his rotting shirt, I found a tiny chain looped through an iron skeleton key.
“I found something!” I shouted.
All the mermaids exclaimed in excitement as I ran over and tried to put the key in the lock.
But the key was too big for the tiny holes in the manacles. It wouldn’t fit.
“Haven’t seen that happen to you since the frost elves,�
� Alaria teased.
“Ha ha,” I said darkly, not laughing.
The mermaids all sighed unhappily, the sound of deflating hope.
“It’s alright,” the redhead said with brave resignation. “I can just… learn to live with it…”
“We’ll go get the key from the fishermen,” I promised her as I dropped the key in my bag.
“Isn’t there anything you can do besides that?” Alaria asked. “I mean, you didn’t have a key when you freed all those slaves in Abaddon.”
“That was different,” I said. “I had a – ”
A magical staff.
Which I had never sold or given away.
“Holy shit,” I muttered as I rummaged in my bags until I found it: the Scepter of the Servant.
It was a staff I’d gotten when I defeated Alaria’s first evil ex-master – and which I’d used not only to summon the Goddess Chalastia (a one-time thing), but also unlock the bonds of thousands of slaves in the mines of Abaddon.
Could it unlock the mermaid’s shackles?
Only one way to find out.
I brought the ivory scepter over to the mermaid and gently touched it to one of her manacles.
A golden wave of light passed over the iron, and it popped! open.
“YAAAAAY!” the entire throng of mermaids cheered, and slapped their tails in the water approvingly.
I grinned and touched the scepter to the other manacle, which popped open just as easily.
“Thank you again, noble soul,” the mermaid said, her eyes tearing up as she rubbed her wrists. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
“We were happy to do it,” I said. “But we should probably get going.”
“And forfeit your reward?” she asked, surprised.
“Uh, we already got it,” I said, holding up the eel-skin belt I’d pilfered off the captain.
The mermaids tittered.
“That is not an adequate reward for what you have done!” Oceana laughed.
“…okay… what did you have in mind?”
“A tittyfuck,” Oceana said, serious as could be.
I stared at her.
“…a what?”
“A tittyfuck,” all the mermaids repeated at the same time.
I just stared at them, flabbergasted.
Alaria jumped in to help. “We’ve done that before, babe – it’s where you put your hard cock between my tits and – ”