Into the Waterfall

[Fay]

Closed to Fish Girl

"Is it...Him?" I heard a small voice coming from a building to my right. I had been adventuring and stumbled across an abondoned village. "I hope it isn't Him."

"Who is it?" Asked a voice from a nearby alleyway. His voice was cloaked in shadow but I could make out his sillouette. He was probably 6 foot with a great broadsword on his back. "If you want to take our gold or kill our people we are now prepared." He drew his broadsword from his back and stepped out from the shadows.

"I want no harm." I replied - but just in case rose my bone minion from the dead. Then all of the sudden my own undead wolf charged me. I was able to dodge at the last second but he charged again. I swung out my sword and it struck him in the face. "What in the world are you doing?" My sword made a minor gap in his face but he pinned me, his claws digging into my shoulders. "Stop!" Reality blinked into existace in his eyes.

I escaped from his grasp pulled out my staff and sucked him back into the realm of the dead.

"He do that often?" the warrior asked.

"No...it seems as if something corrupted him."

A teenage girl stepped from the building on my right. "A beholder has been corrupting us and assaulting us with monsters weekly."

"Lead me to him I shall defeat him!" I said nobly trying to hide the fear that was creeping into my mind. The man with the sword stepped forward.

"I am Thorin but I go by Thor and I will lead you to the beholder's cave...and what shall I call you?"

"Fay." I replied as I started to follow Thor outside town "How long a walk is this?" I asked.

"Only a mile but I don't have the patience for complainers. I hope a mile isn't too far for you, tree legs." We walked in silence untill we came across a waterfall. "We're here." I looked at him puzzled. "His lair is behind the water fall." He started to leave then stopped. "If you see any prisoners release them. We have lost many to the lich." With that, Thor left.

I looked at the waterfall and walked through into the lair.

[Fish Girl]

Nadia gulped a guppy and gnawed it while doing a backfloat on the River Bloom. Deep in Corone, the river ranged a bit far out of range of the mermaid's normal ocean habitat. Still, the mer-girl felt comfortable enough with the critters of the creek. Water was water, after all.

In her situation, most humans would have felt aimless. Ever since leaving the coral reef that her family called home, Nadia had done... well, nothing much. Humans need tasks to keep them satisfied; they have ambition. Rivers have no ambition, and Nadia had none either. She floated with the tides, ate, slept, and made the best of whatever happened. There couldn't be anything to care about beyond that, right? She plucked some kelp from the bottom of the river and gnawed on it for a few minutes. She didn't need any excitement. Just the sun and the stream, that was enough for her, yeah?

Actually, she felt completely bored.

Well, there was that one thing...

In one of the river's lesser tributaries, Nadia had detected a trace of something weird. She'd stopped eating the fish there because they had extra fins and deformed gills and fangs. When she saw a trout covered in eyes, she fled the area. Now, however, she decided to investigate the issue.

She swam down the River Bloom and back up the tributary. As she swam, the flora and fauna got stranger and stranger. Glowing fish with mangled teeth looked like they belonged at the bottom of a sea trench, not in a sleepy creek. The orchids on the banks of the creek had fangs. Nadia shivered. The source of the blight couldn't be far off.

She arrived at the waterfall at the same time as two men. One of them she recognized as a Soud--a race of tree people she knew well from the past. The mer-people and the Soud considered themselves two fingers on the same hand. What was a coral reef but a giant underwater tree, after all? The other man was a human and looked like a barbarian. He had an uncomfortably large sword and muscles like an ox. The human left and the Soud ducked into a cave behind the waterfall.

"Hey!" Nadia shouted. "Wait, that's dangerous!" She dove onto the bank of the creek and ducked behind the waterfall and into the cave. The Soud turned his head and blinked.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I'm Nadia," the girl panted, out of breath from sprinting. "There's something bad in this cave," she said.

"I'm Fay, and that's why I'm here," the tree-man said. He was a good two feet taller than Nadia, and more than a little bit intimidating. His skin was made of dark bark, and his hair-leaves a regal purple. He carried a staff and a sword, and looked prepared for just about anything. Nadia realized that he probably hadn't needed any warning. In fact, if anyone was in danger it was probably her.

The Soud pointed at a puddle of water in the cave floor where two blighted trout swam in circles. "Can you talk to fish?"

Nadia stuck her tongue out. "Can you talk to the grass? Next you're going to ask me if mermaids have tails."

"Well then, there's only one way to find out what's going on. Deeper into the cave."

The mermaid felt uneasy, but she nodded. "I'll go with you," she said.

[Fay]

Nadia walked along beside me. "So what can you do fighting wise? Blow bubbles or something?"

"No I happen to be very skilled in water magic." She replied glaring at me. "Who are you really?"

"I already told you. My name is Fay, I'm a 3417 year old Soud Necromancer. My main ability is to summon undead, but the beholder in this cave has corrupted my minion." I looked at the staff from my mother tree. "I guess Eirembene is useless here." I sighed. Over the past two or three centuries I've been attached to that staff and was suspicious that it had some sort of hidden power.

"Wow you are OLD!" She looked down at her feet "But I have been wondering what was causing the corruption. Well why did you go into this cave all huffy-puffy-im-gonna-save-the-town if you cant even fight?"

"Well I'm not completely defenceless." I pulled out my sword made of darkness. It seemed as if it was sucking the air around itself into a black hole. "This sword made of Eternal Darkness cuts like steel."

We came to a stop. There were two paths branching out on our right and on our left, "What do we do now?" Nadia said. I ignored her and turned right. We came to another intersection "Oh no, a maze."

"Dont worry, Nadia. After all, paper is made of trees." She looked at me puzzled. "I'm going to draw the map on my arm." I took out my sword and started cutting out what we knew of the mase so far. "If I draw this on my arm then we will be able to retrace our steps easier."

"O.K. thats a good idea." Nadia looked at me. "How did you get that?" She touched the hilt of my sword.

"That is a story for another day" With that we started our adventure in the maze of the beholder.

[Fish Girl]

The two adventurers walked through half a mile of tube-shaped hallways. Luminescent purple algae covered the stone walls around them and offered a dank glow. The Soud marched on expressionless and revealed the emotional range of a log. Every so often he stopped to draw a notch in the bark of his arm with that creepy sword. At intersections, he picked their paths at random. A bead of sweat formed on Nadia's forehead.

Just what kind of person is this, anyway? she wondered. Can I really trust a necromancer? Their feet made quiet splashing noises in the shallow water that collected at the bottom of the tunnels. A dark thought crossed the water witch's mind. What if the Soud was the warlock responsible for crafting the blighted creatures? Another bead of sweat appeared on her forehead. The tree-man didn't give her that impression, but the dungeon was making her anxious.

They continued walking for another ten minutes, and then the Soud stopped in the middle of the hallway. Nadia, looking at the floor, walked right into him. "What's the deal?"

The Soud raised his arm. "This happened," he said. His arm looked perfectly normal.

"It looks fine," Nadia said.

Fay sighed. "That's the problem. This is the arm I was recording our directions on. Apparently my bark grows back faster than I thought."

The mermaid's jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me?" she shouted. She smacked him on the head.

"It's what they call the Soud's blessing," the necromancer said. For the first time, he smiled, and even managed to look a little sheepish. "If I could use my magic my summons might be able to smell us a way out, but there's no hope for that right now."

Nadia crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks. "No way to go but foreward, then," she said.

They resumed walking, and the tunnels changed. Before, their walls were smooth, making perfect cyllinders. Now, small holes perforated the walls, like wood eaten through by termites. Fay stopped again. "Do you hear that?" he asked.

She stopped and listened. From somewhere in the tunnels, she the slapping of skin on stone. Then she heard hissing. Before either of them had a chance to react, snakes started pouring out of the walls.

[Fay]

"Snakes!" Nadia screamed. "What do we do?!"

"We stay calm, that's what we do. Slowly walk away." We slowly walked through the hall snakes crawling at our feet. Then all the sudden all the snakes eyes turned red and they looked at us hungrily. "O.K. that part about staying calm? Scratch that we are out of here!"

"Which way?" Nadia shouted.

"Forward!" I grabbed Naudia and ran ahead. "I'm faster than you are so I'll need to carry you!" She kicked once or twice then gave up. More snakes came out of the walls all around us. Nadia drew her dagger and was swiping at the snakes on her feet. "Just stay calm, kill snakes and we will get out of here."

"How can I stay calm if there are man-eating snakes coming out of walls that are closing in on us?!" I just realized that the walls around us were getting smaller and smaller every second. All the sudden we heard a big THUMP and another sound that sounded like thunder. Nadia sheathed her dagger and pulled out her bow and magical arrow apeared already strung and she let the arrow fly. Just then I realized she was shooting at the beholder above us. I was so busy running and kicking at the snakes at my feet that I didnt realize he had apeared around 3 meters in front of us. She hit his slimy mouth and he wailed.

"You hit me!" He spat acid at us but he missed us. "You are worthy to come to the next trial." I opened my mouth to ask what that was but we got sucked into a void.

[Fish Girl]

Nadia didn't even have time to see the beholder before she blacked out. When she woke up, she was an otter.

I'm not an otter, I'm a girl, the otter thought. The idea moved across its brain like a leaf floating across a pond. A buzzing noise circled around the otter's ears. Thinking felt difficult. Then the 'not-an-otter' idea got swallowed up like a leaf pulled underwater by the current. I am an otter, the otter thought.

The otter floated on its back with a sea urchin in its paws. Beige ocean sprawled around it in all directions. Overhead, the sun sank like an apple melting into a pie crust. The otter felt nervous. Sunset meant predators. Why was it so far out to sea this late at night? The creature abandoned its dinner and started swimming. Which way was the shore, though?

Sunset flared for an instant and then it was night. No stars shone overhead. The otter swam faster and its heart raced. It thought: Predators! Black water beneath the urchin-eater stirred. It glanced back and saw three triangle shapes break the surface of the water. The hair on the back of the otter's neck rose, and it felt the presence of hundreds of pointy teeth only feet away.

Desparate to escape, the otter dove down. The predators pursued. It swam down and down, not thinking, until the ocean floor was in sight. Wait, ocean floor? That didn't feel right. There was no time for thought, though. The otter's joints ached but it swam faster.

A tall, dark object pierced the seafloor in the distance. The tiny mammal swam toward it, not thinking but desparate for anything. Out of the gloom, the object became an oak tree. Its bark was black but it shone even in the night, and its leaves were lavender. The leaves shook and sighed. Predators swam around the oak tree, dark, menacing shapes that rotated between teeth and tentacles and eyes and razor-sharp fins. The tree groaned. Help, it said, Nadia, help.

Glass shattered. Nadia felt her identity return, and arms and legs came with it. She opened her eyes and a dark cell replaced the oceanscape and tree. She was lying on her back a straw pallet. For a long minute, she stayed there and let her mind coalesce.

Okay, so, she thought, First things first: I'm definitely not an otter. She nodded. Good to have that out of the way. Then another thought occured to her. She remembered the tree from her dream. Fay wasn't the bad guy after all. And he's probably still mesmerized by the beholder.

[Fay]

I was an urchin but... wasn't I a Soud? Why did I have spikes on my back? Why could I breathe underwater? Something was carrying me. It was an otter!

Something was wrong about this otter but, well, I just couldn't put my mind on it. The otter resembled my new companion Nadia, but Nadia wasn't an otter.

"I'm not an otter, I'm a girl!" I could somehow hear the otter's thoughts and then I was sure that it was Nadia.

The otter dropped me and I sank into the depths of this strange prison sea. I couldn't tell if it was day or night. I just sank. And sank and sank. The currents pushed me around this strange unknown sea. It could have been an ocean or maybe a river. No, it wasn't a river because the currents pushed me around.

I finally reached the bottom of the body of water I was in. I sucked into the ground about a foot under. Wondering what was going on, I squirmed, hoping to dig myself out. Then I felt myself change and grow. My body turned into a giant tree trunk and my spikes turned into branches. I was turning into a tree!

I rose from the bottom of the sea all the way to about 15 feet above the surface of the water. Strange creatures circled me. A mutated looking shark bit one of my branches.

Out at sea I saw the otter swimming in my direction. Nadia came to save me! But there were still four questions; Where were we? Why was I a tree? Why was Nadia an otter and how would she save me?

I groaned in agony. "Help, Nadia, help." My branches swayed violently at a creature attacking my trunk. Nadia disappeared from the horizon. "Nadia!" But it was too late, she was gone. Where did she go? Thunder boomed on the horizon. This is bad.

A figure appeared on the horizon. The figure was giant. It ran toward me, clearing away all the monsters in its path. "Nadia!"

The giant was Nadia alright. She ran toward me and pulled me from the roots. The dream was over. I woke up to a face smiling down on me. I got up from where I was laying and walked to the end of the cell. "So he imprisoned us?" The mermaid nodded. "Well, we will just have to break out then. I smiled at her and walked toward the middle of the cell.

There lay a pedestal with a red pillow on it. In the center of the pillow was an emerald green gem. My smile faded. "Nadia... Once upon a time I was a librarian in a city named Shashin. A girl walked up to me and gave me an emerald, saying that it was cursed and would one day kill her. I took it from her and put it in the cash register. Her name was Isha. Now, a week later she told me her house had been raided by pirates and that she needed the gem back in order to sell it. I willingly gave her some money and the gem. The second she touched that gem a void opened and she got sucked into the void.

"Help me Fay. There's still hope" The gem whispered. Ishas face appeared in the gem.

"We need to save Isha!" I yelled. Nadia caught my arm. Before I could grab the gem.

"What if its a trap?"

"Only one way to tell!" I reached out and grabbed the gem and it sucked us both into a void.