ZOE MADISON, the paper said. Athena fingered it with an anxious, shallow sigh. The fact that she had hardly any concrete idea who the hell "Zoe Madison" was supposed to be had her shaken down to the roots. I should know who this is, shouldn't I!? She felt like she knew this person! It was so familiar... it was like a very strong sense of deja vu that just never ended, as long as she held that paper, the one that she had all carefully wrapped up and charmed specifically so she wouldn't forget, but... she simply could not put her finger on it. And what's worse, she had a pretty good guess at why not.
That godforsaken arcade game... All week, she investigates an occult game cabinet and its parent company, she writes down a name with a charm so she wouldn't forget, and then that person suddenly disappears, almost without a trace? It didn't take a Sherlock to figure it out: whoever Zoe was, Athena must have told her about the arcade game, and then when she went to look at the thing for herself, the same thing have happened to her that happened to... to uh... the other... the... who was it? Athena couldn't remember who it was, but someone else had to have gotten mixed up in this stupid arcade business. Maybe Athena knew them too, and just didn't write it down? She didn't know. Probably she couldn't know. But she had a feeling that was way too strong to ignore anymore! Inexplicably she felt moved nearly to tears when she conjured up the thought that Zoe was gone, and she might never see her again, and worse than the dead, it was like she hadn't even existed!
At least, the Madison family didn't think she had. They were easy enough to find in the phonebook earlier, when it had first occurred to Athena that she wasn't quite sure who Zoe Madison was. That call had been... productive, if not very illuminating. "Is this the Madison household?"
"It is, how can I help you?" Spoke the voice of a woman probably in her late thirties, maybe early forties. This must have been Linda, Athena thought. (Wait... How did she know her name was Linda? Athena made a quick note.)
"Yes, I'd like to speak to one Zoe Madison, is she available?"
A pause. "I don't know any Zoe Madison. I'm sorry, I'm afraid you must have the wrong number."
"This is the only Madison household in Lake Point!" Athena hurried to interject. "And I only have a name, not a callback number. Are you sure you've never heard of any Zoe Madison, anywhere? I'd really appreciate the help getting in touch!"
Another pause. This one was much longer, punctuated only by occasional sounds of Linda's breathing (Athena held hers), and whatever sound it was that heavy thinking made. Finally, Linda's voice came back, uncertainly. "I... guess the name kinda sounds familiar? But I'm afraid I can't help you right now, ma'am. Good luck contacting your friend!" click.
That was the end of that lead. That had to have been something like twenty minutes ago, by now, but Athena hadn't really moved: those were minutes spent swimming in her own thoughts and feelings about the arcade, and Zoe, and the paper, and everything, and eventually, working up the courage and the lies she'd need for the other phone call she had to make. She had the number right there in the phone book, and it was, in hindsight, probably a call she should've made much earlier, but all the same... There were so many ways this could go wrong, some probably well outside Athena's ability to imagine. Still... she had an uneasy feeling that time was not on her side, and all her other leads were going cold.
She took a deep breath, cleared her head to focus, then dialed in the number for one Mr. Alex Cooper, the proprietor of the mall's arcade.
If this really were a video game, Karyn thought, drawing an arrow and bringing the point to her stinger, where she dribbled a little venom onto the arrowhead, then it'd be making a bloody awful first impression, following up a several-days-long tutorial session with a first mission composed of just walking in one direction, also for several days. Karyn picked a spot on the crest of the dune ahead of her, drew the bow, angled upward to account for the rather lengthy distance, and fired. It soared a while, arced down somewhat, and came down maybe a yard closer to the steep side of the dune than she'd aimed for, and three yards further forward. It wasn't bad, given how away far she'd fired from, but it certainly wasn't going to impress anyone. Then again, she wasn't even really practicing; she was just bored.
Vaguely, she was aware that she was probably in mortal peril, or something, but these past couple days of desert trek sure hadn't felt like it. She wondered whether that was also part of the true "video-gaming" experience: that constantly high risk of death, whether it be from dehydration or sandworms or environmental hazards or whatever malevolent Creator-Gods the Lady had been talking about, should just eventually become a routine thing to be taken entirely in her casual stride. Even the sandpools had somewhat lost their novelty the second time around: now that she knew what to expect and how best to approach them, she saw plainly that the whole affair was just a much higher-stakes version of red-light-green-light, a version which left her insect legs aching and tired after several unavoidable hours of it, and also happened to have Death the consequence for failure. On paper, that still should have been something tremendously disturbing and existentially frightening to her, and maybe if she were a human in the real world it might have been. But now it almost felt like that was just business-as-usual to her; it was, in her mind, now almost more remarkable for its unremarkability.
And even that should've felt more morbid than it did! I guarantee you, Karyn thought at nobody, that if you dropped a normal human in the middle of a vast and featureless desert, with nothing to see and nobody to talk to, it wouldn't matter how much food, water, or shelter you gave him at the start: anyone but the most steel-minded of ironmen would go mad and die delirious within a few weeks or months. And yet, somewhere in the desert behind her now was Fazalune, whose only apparent companion for years seemed to have been the Moon. Karyn still couldn't be sure if she was cut out for all that like she was; but now it seemed much more... well, possible than it ever had been before. After all, several days' worth of walking had just gone by, where she had seen nothing and talked to nobody and just walked across a vast and featureless desert, and she wasn't really any worse for wear.
But it is awfully boring, Karyn thought to herself, as she steadily made her way over to the arrow she'd shot. Once she got it, she'd shoot it again, retrieve it, shoot that again, and so on until she was either forced to sleep or actually made it to this ambassador or whatever he was that the Lady had told her about. I suppose that'd be another bad impression for a video game, Karyn thought. To make it fun, I'm having to actually invent my own minigames for it. "Presenting: the Arrow-Fetch Mod! Where you play fetch with your own arrows!" Karyn sighed. She had to find Jon if for no other reason than that he was one of only maybe 3 or 4 other people in the world right now that would actually understand that joke.
She had almost made it, and was reaching to grab the arrow, when suddenly she froze. Vibrations. In the ground. Felt through her feet. And apparently violent enough that a good deal of the sand on the steep side of the dune avalanched down. "SANDWORMS!?"
Karyn was suddenly on high alert, trying to feel out how the sandworms might be moving, but the tremor had stopped. She couldn't feel a thing through her legs. No, wait, yes she could, there it was again: another very sudden few vibrations in the ground, collapsing a bit more of the dune-sand, that stopped just as quickly as they'd come, and then started again just as suddenly. Off, on, off, on, in rapid succession: it wasn't some worm wriggling underground, it was something else, but what?
It suddenly occurred to Karyn that oddly, only the sand at the lip of the dune seemed to have collapsed any. Everywhere else was undisturbed. Arrow and bow still in hand, she came closer for a look over the side.
It was hard to see down into the trough between the dunes in the long shadows of the evening light, but nonetheless she quickly put together that what she was seeing wasn't natural. A huge inverted-conical pit lay there, concealed between the dunes, and at the bottom, she could see huge mandibles with serrated teeth, just shy of a meter long, digging like mad at the dune she was currently standing on, shoveling in and throwing away impressive amounts of sand with great, powerful jerks, each jerk a tremor. Antlion mandibles, Karyn realized in the half-second before the sand gave way beneath her, plunging her into its trap.
Athena suppressed all the nervous energy she could from her voice and asked "Hello, I'm trying to reach one Mr. Alex Cooper, the proprietor of an arcade in the Lakeview Mall Center?"
"You're speaking to him," came back from the voice of a kindly, genial old man. "What can I do for you today, young lady?"
Here's the honesty, Athena thought. "Well, I noticed you rolled out a curious new game cabinet earlier this week, so I went home and did some research on it. There's a fascinating story around it, I thought, but I couldn't find out too much on it from just the library or the internet. So, I thought I'd ask you some questions about it directly, or maybe schedule a better time for a more in-depth interview?"
"Oh, are you talking about Mystic Quest? Of course! Have you played it much?"
"Well, no..." Athena admitted sheepishly. And here comes the lies. "Actually, I was thinking I might make a YouTube documentary over the game and its peculiarly troubled development cycle. Like I said, it's a fascinating story, and one that I think could really rake in the clicks, you know?" It could, but it definitely shouldn't, Athena thought to herself as she spoke the lie. The last thing I'd want for that game is more players.
"Oh, I get it!" Mr. Cooper gave a well-humored chuckle. "You're what they call an 'influencer', one of that youngest generation of entrepreneurs, is that right?"
"Well, not yet," Athena returned the laugh, "but I'll get there one day, especially if I keep finding stories as juicy as yours!"
"Well, young lady, I think it'd be simply poor business to turn down free advertising like that. You're absolutely welcome to ask any questions you'd like, miss...?"
Well, he doesn't sound like he has anything to hide, Athena thought, but all the same, when so much hidden magic is at play... "Please, call me Minerva. It relates to my screen-name."
"Minerva, eh? Interesting name," Mr. Cooper remarked. "Well, Minerva, to tell you the truth, I'd be quite happy to see that little game get some more attention from my customers. I haven't even bothered to go collect the quarters from the machine yet; nobody's playing it!"
Athena wasn't relieved. Hundreds of people could've played that game and we'd probably never know that they had, she thought. And for the love of God, leave the quarters alone! If whatever life-erasing thing happened to this "Zoe" also happened to the arcade proprietor himself, there was no telling what'd happen to the arcade itself, much less what'd happen to the game within it. Things could go lopsided real quick... Athena shuddered. "Just you wait on that, Mr. Cooper," she eventually forced out as a reply.
"Anyway," Mr. Cooper asked before the silence got too awkward, "did you have any questions you wanted to ask me now, miss Minerva? I'm sure you want some proper footage for your YouTube show, but I have some time."
"Oh, just a few," Athena replied. "For one, I wanted to know how it was you actually got a hold of the game? I understand it's a one-of-a-kind prototype, not the sort of thing one just comes by!"
"Quite right!" Mr. Cooper came back with a note of pride in his voice. "I bought it off of one Seth Parsons, with whom I'm quite lucky to be acquainted, if you want the short version of it."
This one caught Athena totally off-balance. "Parsons... as in, the 'Parsons Entertainment' Parsons!?"
"The son of that Parsons, in fact!" Mr. Cooper said with a chuckle. "The 'Parsons' in the name refers to Adam Parsons, CEO and founder of the company. He, unfortunately, died quite suddenly shortly before the whole company went under. The game's prototype itself passed as part of the estate to his son, Seth, which, given that the poor kid was only maybe 2 or 3 years old at the time, effectively meant it went into storage for the next couple decades. Well, eventually, Seth finds himself a sweetheart, and plenty of years later finally decides he wants to get hitched to her, which naturally means selling off a lot of his estate to move in with her. That was when he rediscovered his dad's prototype game and started looking for buyers, eventually settling on yours truly. I buy it, clean it off, fix it up, and they all lived happily ever after, right?" Mr. Cooper gave another laugh.
"I-I... uh..." Athena suddenly found herself very grateful she'd had the foresight to record the call. "I had no idea any of the company executives had family. That must have been pretty hard on them all, wasn't it?"
"Oh, you don't know the half of it." A sudden grimness shadowed Mr. Cooper's jovial voice. "Seth, for one, was too young to even remember the whole fiasco, and it's still a sore spot for him! I mean, think about it, back then, you had secrets and bankruptcy and accusations of witchcraft and even a considerable number of deaths flying around... Listen, Minerva, I'd be surprised if you find even 3 people that came out the other side of that mess better off than when they went in, and that's a fact!"
Athena gave it a moment's thought. "How were you involved in said fiasco, Mr. Cooper?"
"I wasn't. Well, I lost a nice wad of dollars when that ship sank, but I wasn't really in it, you understand, Minerva? Back when my arcade was still shiny and new and I still young and dumb, I had a contract with them to get a couple cabinets of Mystic Quest at a bargain price when they finally finished up and released the thing as long as I paid a good fraction of it in advance. Obviously, I never saw that money again, but it did keep my eyes on the news regarding it fluttering away. Other than that, though, I was more or less an outsider."
"Oh? How did you get to know Seth, then?"
"He found me. Apparently I'm the only arcade owner still in business that has a standing order for a cabinet of Mystic Quest. Seth figured the old bargain price was still better than anything he'd get on eBay, so he called me up and asked if I'd still like to honor that ancient pre-order. I figured the bargain price was still a steal, so of course I said yes. I'd say it all worked out in the end!" Mr. Cooper finished with a chortle.
"It really is interesting how all these things will just 'work out' sometimes," Athena replied thoughtfully, with only a courtesy laugh of her own. "I wonder... did you ever think it really was witchcraft at the center of it all?"
"Oh, pfft," Athena got the distinct feeling that on the other end, Mr. Cooper was just shaking his head. "Who the heck knows, Minerva? I sure don't. You gotta understand, those were the days when people were still finding Communists under every other rock, UFOs behind every other cloud, and the End of the World spelled out with every other wayward sneeze by Premier Gorbachev. News of any scale above 'local' just didn't count until the US, the USSR, and the conspiracy nutters had all had their turn putting a spin on it. I open a newspaper then, and I see some absurdity about witchcraft and Satanism and yadda yadda yadda, and I think to myself 'Welp. I'm probably not getting to the base truth of this one, and would probably have some Big People mad at me if I did,' so I stop there. It really is a fun story, though."
Athena grimaced a little, but tried to just laugh it off with her tone. "Well, let's hope I don't have that many Big People mad at me by the time I've got this documentary posted," she chuckled more nervously than she'd meant to. Neither of us have the slightest clue what we're getting into, she thought, darkly.
"Heh, at your age, I wouldn't be so worried about the Big People as the Little. Something tells me you're gonna be wanting Seth's phone number among others by the time we're done here, young lady, but I already told ya, it's a rather sore spot for him, and I'm afraid it won't be much better with anyone else who'd got themselves tied up in that mess. Folks who knew it well are somewhat hush-hush about all the finer points of what happened, so I'm sorry to say, but I think you've got your work cut out for you if you're gonna make this documentary right."
"Oh, don't worry about that, Mr. Cooper, I'm anticipating it. Not giving up on this lead, I'm not." Especially given that there's way more than some stupid documentary at stake here.
Mr. Cooper chuckled. "I like your spunk, young lady! Besides scheduling that interview and getting those phone numbers, is there anything else I can do for you?"
Athena gave it a moment of thought. "There's only one thing I can think of," Athena said at last. And I really, really hope it doesn't tempt you to play the game, she added in thought. "I gather you knew quite a bit about this game before it was released, so, I'm guessing you might have some nice curios related to the game? Like, concept art, player handbooks or guides, advertisements, press releases, merchandise and so on? If you do or know where to get it, I'd really appreciate it: it makes for good footage and thumbnails, you know?" In truth, Athena just wanted a way to find out about the game itself without needing to come within 500 yards of the actual machine, but there wasn't any explaining that to Mr. Cooper.
"Oooh!" Athena didn't think it was possible, but Mr. Cooper's tone brightened considerably from it's already-bright state. "Minerva, my young influencer friend, you have come to the right place! I've worked myself up a good, sizable collection of awesome rubbish like that over the many long years, and you know what, it's not doing anyone any good just collecting dust as it is! I'd love to give you a nice look through it all! I have a good selection of stuff in the backroom at the Arcade, anytime you feel like wasting some time there, and more at home or in storage I'd like to sort through before you get a look at it."
"I'd prefer to see your own selection, sir," Athena said, still very much coveting distance between herself and the machine, "and... no offense, Mister Cooper, but aren't you in your sixties?"
"Oh, pfft. 'Old' is a mentality, Minerva! No matter how many birthdays you've had, you're never too many years old to be a big old nerd like me!"
"I suppose not," Athena said with a shrug. "And you know what, I like your spunk too, old man! Thank you for talking to me like this; I feel like we're gonna get along juuuust fine, you and I."
Fazalune and the Lady hadn't told Karyn much about pit devils, but it wasn't all that hard to fill in the blanks given how animal-hybridized everything here was. They sounded like antlions, if only antlions were far bigger, far scarier, found her liquified entrails to be far more appetizing, and just humanoid enough to be far more uncannily freaky. Somewhere hidden under the sand were this one's fleshy bits (a more-or-less human torso and lower half, complete with hands and legs), but all that was exposed was the chitin-armored insect upper half, including its fuck-you-huge venomous mandibles and freakishly powerful insect head, neck, and shoulders. Probably, Fazalune and the Lady had figured Karyn wouldn't ever actually fall into one of their traps if she knew what one looked like, but...
Karyn had probably never truly appreciated how absurdly difficult it must be to climb out of an antlion's trap until she was desperately trying to do so herself. There was simply no purchase her frantically scurrying insect legs could get on the steeply inclined walls without the sand simply collapsing beneath her feet and dropping her weight, if her assailant hadn't caused it to collapse already! With that thing frenziedly chucking entire sandstorms up at her, the whole trap might as well have just been a damned conveyor belt feeding Karyn inexorably into the devil's huge and hungry jaws. I'm going to die here, Karyn realized with an oddly calm sudden clarity, if I don't think of something fast.
The first thing she thought of was to ditch her pack and her tent, and honestly just everything but the bow and arrow she was still holding in her hand. The second thing she thought of was to use the distraction of the pack to flip around and shoot the thing with the one arrow. Either way, the pack needed to come off, so while her legs desperately scrambled to slow her descent to combat with the pit devil, she slipped her arms free of her stuff as quickly as she could and sent it tumbling down to her enemy. Then she sacrificed a few yards of her precious height advantage to turn and partially bury her lower half in the sand, anchoring her for her one precious shot at the foe. She nocked the arrow and waited for a clear shot.
Karyn didn't know what she was expecting that thing to do with her tent, but she definitely wasn't expecting it to simply throw it clear up and out of the trap, maybe 30 feet in the air straight up, with just its mandibles. The Lady had said something about the insane neck and jaw strength of the pit devil, but seeing it up close unnerved her so much she almost missed her opportunity at a clear shot. Fire she did, and hit she did, but the arrow didn't seem to lodge deeply enough into the chitin armor of the pit devil to do much more than piss it off. It just hissed at Karyn, staring daggers with its little beady eyes, then plunged its newly decorated head into the sand to draw her in even closer to her death.
For what might've been the first time since arriving in this new world, Karyn was starting to feel genuine panic. If she fought that thing head on, those mandibles would tear her human half to shreds and envenom her badly besides, but if she turned away her stinger and her human hands would be effectively useless (not that she was entirely sure it could penetrate the exoskeleton anyway, nor get at the fleshy bits when the devil kept those carefully buried and out of sight). The only thing she could think to do was to turn and once again try sprinting away like a maniac, hoping that without the heavy burden of the pack she could actually make some progress this time, but the devil swiftly reminded her how futile that was by lunging for a bite at her when she inevitably slipped backwards and finally close enough for the thing to really get at her. All it caught with that lunge was one of Karyn's hind legs without piercing the armor, but given how tightly it clamped down and wouldn't let go, Karyn realized in a sudden flash how much trouble she was in for the brief second before it flung her with the same force it'd thrown her tent.
Karyn had very little awareness of what was going on in the world around her for the next few seconds. She knew she was being slammed and thrashed against the ground, whipped about by the vicelike grip the pit devil's mandibles had on her hind leg, but besides that, she couldn't really have told you which way "up" was or whether she was currently on her back, on her front, or in the air, mostly because it felt like a blur of all three. When sense finally returned, she was dizzy enough to vomit, lying on her human front and gasping for breath, and steadily becoming aware that her hindleg was now underground, and being yanked down. That gave way to the realization that her enemy was trying to drag her underground and bury her alive, where there'd be basically nothing she could do to escape it.
Suddenly reanimated at the realization, the scorpion-girl's insect legs snapped back into action, the forelegs trying desperately to unearth herself, the hindlegs trying desperately to kick off the devil, and the midlegs trying desperately to do both. To her surprise, the pit devil eventually leg go when she'd kicked it enough, and quick as a flash she was scrambling back to the surface and onto the flat of avalanched sand at the bottom of the trap. It was a very short victory, though: it turned out it just wanted a better grip, because as soon as she was standing still the devil lunged again, this time biting down hard onto the middle of her scorpion tail. This time, it did pierce the exoskeleton, and immediately began pumping in a venom so torturously painful Karyn had to let loose a wild, bloodcurdling scream.
But here, the pit devil had overreached itself, because Karyn instinctively realized she was finally in a position do what scorpions do best: lunge forward with her stinger. She did, as hard as she could, and in doing so, finally began to jerk the human half of the pit devil out from under the ground. It realized its mistake immediately and let go of her tail, eyes going wide, but too late! Karyn had turned, just enough to give the thing a good sting from the side, down onto an exposed fleshy bit of its back. The sickeningly human scream it unleashed at that didn't apparently stop it from trying frantically to rebury its human half, and also apparently didn't stop Karyn from frantically trying to sting it again and again, getting closer and turning as swiftly as capable for better positioning. It was nearly under and giving Karyn the premonition it was going to lunge again, this time fatally at her defenseless flabby human half, so thinking fast she grabbed the arrow still lodged in its exoskeleton and held firm. Lunge it did, but the arrow spaced them safely apart and ended up thrust deeper into the pit devil's head. Holding that head still by the arrow, Karyn stung again, this time catching it right in one of its beady, unarmored eyeballs.
Everything, suddenly, paused. The pit devil made no move to run away or attack further, and Karyn, to kill it, need not do anymore than sit there and pour venom into the thing's head through her stinger, so she didn't. She realized, suddenly, that every bit of her body was shaking violently, her face had at some point drawn tightly and semi-permanently into a determined grimace, and oddly, nothing seemed to hurt, nor did she feel an ounce of tiredness despite her heavy panting. And, of course, she had just killed a man. Somehow, though, she hardly cared about that, at the moment.
Jon didn't really know what he was expecting, but whatever it was, it wasn't whatever the Tidal District was supposed to be. Not only did it not have any real-world counterpart, Jon struggled to think if he'd ever heard of anything like it even in fantasy novels! And yet, here he was, walking around the part of the city that actually sank every few hours like it was just another day in just another part of the world.
Earlier, despite not having much real reason to trust any friend to the Witch, Rashilder's tip had, for only a brief moment, gotten Jon wondering how he would actually go about contacting "waterfolk" or "merpeople". That had given way to the realization that duh, he was in a port city. Interaction between the nautical and the terrestrial was precisely what cities like this were built for. And thus if he were looking for a likely place to see some waterfolk, he could hardly have done better than to ask the tavernkeep for a few directions, then simply walk or fly a few blocks toward the shoreline!
Not that the "shore" cut a very well-defined "line" in the Tidal District, though. Of course, there was always a place where the water ended and the land began, and yet, said places only formed a "line" if you were very generous with the meaning of the word. Many of the district's taller buildings simply rose up out of the sea, apparently keeping some combination of a floor above water, a floor under water, and a floor that may or may not be flooded depending on the current height of the tide. Between these ran a curious network of canals, bridges, normal roads, boardwalks, and plenty of stairs or ramps apparently meant for amphibious creatures and craft to ascend or descend in or out of the water, depending on their destination. "Sandy beaches" apparently weren't thought highly of: Jon didn't even see any sand except in the less cleanly crevices of the place.
Despite all the civil engineering, however, the aura of the place was most certainly not one of venetian opulence; in fact, it struck Jon as a rather tough, salty old place, that in the real world likely have been the haunt of briny old sailors, rough-edged pirates, and few others. He could immediately tell the greatest height of the high tide, for instance, by the many buildings that hadn't bothered to clean off the buildup of brownish salts left on their rough stone walls by the evaporating seawater, and thus left a clear dividing line between the tidal and the aerial for all to see. Some poorer or apparently abandoned buildings had it even worse, with walls covered here and there by barnacles or slimy yellowishish algae, and that was if they were stone: wooden structures that weren't entirely aerial frequently suffered from awful rot, despite their owner's best attempts to paint them thickly over.
In all honesty, Jon hadn't gotten a stronger sense of unbelonging from a place since that very first nest he'd appeared in as a harpy so long ago. Not only were harpies -- and in fact, any avian race -- completely absent from the Tidal District as far as he could tell, humans themselves were a pretty rare sight too, as were a good number of the more terrestrial species. It was like he had walked into the tidalfolk version of a Chinatown: perhaps you wouldn't be outright excluded, if you weren't one of them, but you certainly wouldn't be welcome. And yes, "tidalfolk", not "waterfolk", since interestingly Jon saw oddly few of what he might call "true" fish-people. The plurality of residents there were human hybrids with crabs or other crustaceans that could endure an escape from the water, and behind them were the mammalian sea-creatures: dolphin-people, seal-people, orca-people, the occasional man-atee, etc. The remainder of the peculiarly tidal residents were mostly turtlefolk, human-watersnake hybrids, and then finally the occasional "true" waterfolk. The latter, understandably, seemed to hate leaving the water and leaving their gills exposed for any considerable period: probably, Jon thought, if they lived in Alethia, they were more likely to be found in yet another, stranger-still district further out to sea, just hinted at by the underwater sunstone lamps that became visible once it became totally dark out...
Anyway, said darkness had already started falling by the time Jon and Maggie had finished their initial overlook of the place. Thus, with the shadows getting long, most of the shops along the street getting ready to close up for the night, and the steadily decreasing number of tidalfolk out and about giving Jon and Maggie increasingly frequent looks of "what could they be doing here?", silent pressure was mounting to get what they needed and get out before Maggie did something stupid or something. In the end, Jon just picked out a storefront at random to start asking around about the Merfolk, one that seemed lonely enough to appreciate the business. That storefront happened to be a sort of farmer's-market-type affair, if only there were such a shop that sold only shellfish, urchins, and some varieties of kelp or algae, along with some sushi and other dishes presumably meant to show off such aquatically-grown foodstuffs.
"'Hoy there. Anythin' yer seein' interest ye, mate?" came the lightly accented voice of the owner. He seemed mostly human in his upper half, if one ignored the bits of carapace up his back and the fact that his left arm was a gigantic crab's claw, but his lower half was all side-walking crab's body and legs.
"Well, uh, I might give your sushi a try, but actually, I was hoping you could help me chase down some rumors I've heard. That alright?"
"Aye lass, couple a sample bites comin' right up, two coppers apiece," the crab-man said, grabbing one for each of them in short order. "An' on yer rumors, I'm curious: what sorta questions have ye that'd need answerin' by a humble aquafarmer as meself?"
"Just a generic tip from an acquaintance, who might just be pulling my leg for all I know," Jon said, fishing a little bit of money from his bag while Maggie popped a sushi bite into her mouth. "He tells me Merfolk know more about passage to other worlds than just about anyone else there is, and I happen to be from another world, marooned here away from home. I, uh, honestly don't know the first thing about how to go about getting into contact with a mermaid or else, but I figure the natural first place to start is to just ask around here and see what I can find out."
"She'sh a hyooman! Fruhm uh werld, mmff," Maggie swallowed her bite before continuing her interjection. "A human from a world of just humans and trying to get home! She says she got turned into a harpy when she got here."
The crab-man gave both of them a long stare for a moment. "Bloody hell, lass, thar's a tale t' hear if I e'er heard 'un! Yer serious?" After a moment of general nodding, he continued "Well, I can see why ye'd need someun's powerful as a Merfolk t' get ye home, but I'll warn ye they're scarce t' find e'en fer aquatic races, an', eh... meanin' no offense, lass, ye seem more suited fer life in the air than fer meetin' mystics what live under the waves. The sailor's life's awful hard un landlubbers like yerself an' yer friend; are ye sure yer ready fer that, mate?"
"Honestly? Not at all," Jon groaned. He'd had a bad feeling about this ever since that witch's shill had spoken up, not least because it was coming from the witch, but on top of that, the aquafarmer was right, and he knew it: Jon could make bathing work, but being part bird he was too buoyant to even really sink without actually making an effort to dive. Flying over the ocean might be easier, but on the flipside everything that happened to like staying underwater at any considerable depth might as well have been on a different planet to him and Maggie. Including, probably, the Merfolk. "Still, beggars can't be choosy, and at any rate all I'm looking for is mere information at this phase. Do you know anything, or at least who better to ask, mister...?"
"Angus, lass, me name's Angus Thatch. An', well, aye, I do, but not more'n what yer like t' hear from any other common scalawag. Lemme think, mate..." Angus brought up his claw for a scratch at the stubble of his chin, and let his eyes roll back and shut, clearly searching what memories he could. "Were ye waterfolk, I might point yas t' Nokiton. Word is, thar's a small nomadic school of the Mer what wander the open seas, an' e'ery so often put in thar at Nokiton fer supplies 'n' such. Methinks yer not like t' make that jurney, though, lass."
"Oh? Why?"
"'Cause from 'ere, Nokiton's some 35 leagues out over the water, an' then 'bout a hunderd meters under it. Thar's nary a thing t' see a Nokiton from the air, an' nary a spitta land nearby t' land a ship, an' in consequence nary a lundlubber seen swimmin' about the town a Nokiton. 'Tis 'ow it is with mosta the Merfolk's usual haunts, mate. Methinks the best ye could hope fer such places is t' try sendin' 'em as much watermail as ye can write, an' hope 'n' pray some sympathetic Mer gets the letter alright. If ye can write, that is?"
Jon blinked. "Yeah, I can write, but... watermail? Is that, just, mail, that you send underseas?"
Angus nodded. "'Tis a bit diffr'nt from the postal service fer the landlubbers, but at bones, it be so. Mostly ye needa etch yer letter inta one a these fancy tablets they sell atta post office down yonder," he said, pointing down one of the roads of the Tidal District, "'steada writin' it on them papers 'n' envelopes landlubbers use, but otherwise 'tis jus' like landlubber's mail. I'd not rush thither yet, though, mate, 'less ye know any Merfolk's mailing address, er ye know a good way t' get 'n ad out in Nokiton er elsewheres just by the post. 'Course, the folks down atta post office 's like t' be the best folks t' ask 'bout that sorta thing, but still."
"It's certainly worth considering," Jon said, in ponderance. On reflection, this was a general strategy he should probably have been making use of ever since it became clear his stay at the Rooster would drag on for some time: rather than flying this way and that in the hope of finding some mage that could solve his problem, he might as well just start putting out advertisements anywhere a mage was likely to see it, and let the problem-solvers come to him. He could probably afford it if the money from the music kept coming in, which on reflection, he'd probably end up promoting as well! And if one of those people happened to be a merfolk, well, all's the better! "Actually, it's a really good idea, thanks! You got any other hints as helpful as that?"
"Well, I can only hope, lass!" Angus said with a smile, happy to be useful. "I do know a few tales a merfolk what might mess with landlubbers on the regular, but ye be warned, they're all tall tales, an' as like t' be stretchin's a truth as they are not truths at all. That is t' say, they're pirate's tales."
Jon raised an eyebrow. This guy's earning himself a pretty healthy tip, I must say! "Pirate's tales, sir?"
"Aye, pirate's tales. S'posedly the knaves 'ave got a whole merry band a oh-so-beautiful mermaids all t' 'emselves in their nest at Pirnaut Island. 'Course if ye believe such things, I might also tell yas they got a pile a gold taller'n a stiff giant, a fleet a warships stronger'n a Royal Navy, an' a stunnin' lack a venereal diseases at Pirnaut Island, but I dun think I believe all that neither, lass. Thar's like t' be some truth t' it, methinks, but also methinks thar's no knowin' fer sure 'til the Empire gets off their royal arse an' sends a man-o-war t' clean out the place, er y'see it fer yerself, whiche'er comes first, mate."
Jon frowned. "So, wait, are you actually suggesting I just fly on over into a flipping infamous pirate's nest, just for a lookaround, just like that?"
"Oi, 'course not! You asked!" Angus said, throwing up his hands (er, hand and claw) defensively. "The pirates, mate, they'll only let yas in without cuttin' ya t' ribbons if ye can prove sufficient disloyalty t' God 'n' Country, an' the Crown, mate, they'll only let yas back in without hangin' ya fer piracy if ye can prove sufficient loyalty t' God 'n' Country! Where're ye thinkin' yer loyalties lie, lass?"
Jon shook his head. "Look, dude, I'm just an outsider, here! I don't have any 'loyalties' to this-or-that cause right now!"
Angus nodded. "Aye, aye, an' if ye wanna get in an' outta that nest at Pirnaut Island yer gonna hafta take care it stays that way, er else jus' dun go there! Listen, mate, I'm jus' passin' on the rumors; what ye do with 'em's up t' you, y'see?"
With a sigh, Jon nodded. "Yeah, yeah. You've been excellent, anyway, sir, I owe you one. Anything else?"
Angus shrugged. "Jus' tales e'en sillier than that Pirnaut bit, like some old legend about a pirate what married a mermaid an' hid his treasure with 'er in some alcove somewheres. It'd be a nice yarn t' spin fer yer little one, if she were still 'ere, but not much else, methinks."
Jon blinked. "What? Maggie's right... here..." Except, of course, she wasn't. Looking around the district revealed that night had fallen, the tide had risen a bit, the streets were nigh-deserted, and Maggie had vanished. "Maggie! We talked about this!" Jon called out, to no response. He scoffed. God damn it, that woman's gonna be the death of me!
He turned back to Angus, quickly fishing out a gold piece from his bag. "Look, thanks for everything, but I gotta go find Maggie. I'm Jen; me and Maggie have a little musical bit for evenings at the Rooster if you need to find us." He explained in all of a single breath, putting up the bite of sushi for later and giving Angus the gold before flapping to leave.
"Anytime, mate! Saw 'er wanderin' off towards the post office, that way, if ya'd like t' know!" Angus called out after Jen as she disappeared into the sky.
It was approaching that hour of the evening when everyone around Sarah started getting sleepier. The automaton herself felt as energized as she always did, of course, but with the sun sinking lower the social pressure was on to start quieting down and turning in for the night regardless. Tonight, honestly, she didn't much feel like waiting around awkwardly for everyone else to get their rest, and had an idea to make the most of the time; but still, she needed a good winding from Tom to stay awake/alive that long, and he'd probably be found in their room in the inn anyway, so, to the bedroom it was.
Diana was already curled up on her own little section of the bed and probably drifting off when Sarah came in, but she pricked her ears and her head up at the door opening. Tom was at desk, studying some blueprints and what looked like a map with some intensity, but he too turned his attention away from those almost immediately once Sarah entered the scene. "Hey, Sarah," he asked, gaze fixed intently on her as he did. "Are you winding down for the night?"
"Hey, Tom. Diana." The latter disinterestedly went back to her catnap after a quick hello. "Actually, I was hoping you could give me a good winding-up," Sarah replied. "I figured I could use a nice, long moonlight walk tonight. Maybe get my thoughts in order about all this craziness from the last few days."
"Oh." Tom's face fell in disappointment. "Well, of course, but... I was hoping I could catch a minute to talk with you some."
"Oh, really? What's on your mind?"
"Honestly? Leaving." Diana snapped back into wakefulness the moment Tom said it. "I have a notion that if this Melina doesn't show up here pretty quick, we ought to pull up stakes and give this place the skip. We can figure something else out from there."
"Wait, but why!?" Diana complained, bolting up to a sitting position on the bed. "This place's great! Everyone here's so nice and friendly and, and they play with me, and, and..." She struggled to come up with the words. Peter would be so sad...
"It's not that, Diana," Tom tried to soothe. "The people here are wonderful, but, ah, the town itself, I'm not so sure about. To me, it seems obvious that someone's cursed this place and cursed it strong, and uh... I'm kinda at risk here, girls," he added almost apologetically.
"Oh, shoot." Sarah suddenly felt a pang of guilt for not having noticed before. Here they were, sitting in the middle of what seemed to be a transmutative epidemic that affected primarily human outsiders in Robin's Heath, with a human outsider in Robin's Heath, and it hadn't even crossed their mind that he might get caught up in all that. "Man, I'm sorry, Tom, I hadn't even realized that!"
"It's fine, it's fine," Tom forgave it immediately, "and at any rate I don't think we need change Plan A on that account. If Melia does show up, problem solved. I just figure it'd be wise to have a Plan B lined up in case she doesn't show up in a timely manner."
"Plan B should be stayin' here!" Diana pouted. "She's coming! She said she owed me an' everything!"
"Diana, please quiet down..." Sarah urged, gently. "Some people are trying to sleep..."
Diana bristled angrily, but didn't say anything more.
"Thank you." Then she turned back to Tom. "Now then, um, how worried about this are you? Most folks around here say the changes are only temporary if you do get it."
"And they probably wouldn't be too debilitating anyway, right," Tom said, nodding. "Frankly, I'm not sure about that, not enough to want to chance it. The current outbreak doesn't seem like what was here before, and between that, and Kevin disappearing, and the thing with Mary, and so on, I'm seeing way too many bad omens around this place. Besides, if anything happened to these," he held up his hands, "I wouldn't be much of a handyman anymore, now would I?"
Sarah most definitely didn't laugh. Anybody could wind her, but it didn't escape her how absolutely dependent she would be on Tom's mechanical talents if something in her happened to really break. "Yeah, I'm most definitely seeing the issue here!" She said, the sudden fear now evident in the metallic tang of her voice. "I'm with you now, let's not risk it!"
Tom beamed at her. Diana, on the other hand, was vocally less happy. "We can't just up an' leave anytime we feels like it! I like it here! I really, really like it here! An' ain't we s'posta help Mary out, what with her bein' so much like Sarah?" Diana was just reaching for anything now; if she were being honest with herself, the real reason she was so bothered wasn't one she'd dare put into words.
"As a matter of fact, Diana, not only can we choose to leave at any time, the entire reason we're in this predicament is because each and every one of us did exactly that, only a few days ago," Tom explained patiently, if condescendingly. "And we can't stay here, in any case, not with your parents and Fletcher's cronies still about; now we're simply hastening a bit. As for Mary..." Tom sighed. "I've been looking over Sarah's blueprints for hours now, and I hate to say it, but I still don't have any real idea what happened to her or Sarah back then. Best guess at the moment is that it must relate to the magic of the soul crystal, which for one I don't really know anything about, and for two I wouldn't dare tamper with even if I did. It seems, unfortunately, that Mary's just going to have to figure out her own way for now."
That one hurt to hear. It wasn't so much a tightening in Sarah's chest as an uncomfortable grinding of some little gear in that chest that formed when she considered Mary's position, if she and Tom had to leave now, or soon. If she didn't go back to normal she could end up just as helplessly dependent on Tom as Sarah was. And... everyone assured her it was just coincidence, but still... Mary was the only one to see her back then...
"We still probably ought to show her some care," Sarah ventured. "We might be the only ones that can, if she doesn't go completely back to normal. It's kinda our fault she's like that, anyway."
"Hey, hey, none of that, ya hear?" Tom turned severely on the clockwork girl. "You didn't mean a thing, not a lick of it, you didn't! It's gotta be this place, Sarah; I'm telling you, it's cursed in a way we don't wanna be around! What happened to Mary was unfortunate, but honestly, it's kinda her family's own fault for hanging around a place as ominous as this for so long. We can't help that, and we're not responsible for that, you understand?"
Sarah didn't seem convinced. "I don't know, Tom... I was under the impression that Ancient machine-people like me don't really exist in this world, except in the most outlandishly exotic traveler's tall tales. Yet by some amazing coincidence, here's a second one, right after the first one showed up in town! Unbelievable, right?" she mocked bitterly.
"Sarah, please, don't," Tom pleaded, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up for something you obviously didn't have any control over. I'm doing whatever I reasonably can to make it right, before we have to leave; if anything, it's my own failing that I really can't do anything more. But Mary has her own family and friends here, they'll take care of her; whatever else happens, you come first, to me, you understand?"
Diana, listening to this, suddenly seized on an idea to extend their stay in Robin's Heath, and blurted it out without hesitation. "What if we waited fer Mary t' change back?" She asked. "We can take care a her until then, an' if Melia isn't here by then she'll probably never be, so... we can go. But, if Mary doesn't change back, we can still help 'er figger somethin' out long-term, maybe e'en take 'er with us!"
Both Tom and Sarah turned to give Diana a look of some surprise. She was more clever than she probably should've been, for a kid her age.
"That could be a long while, Diana..." Tom said, uncertainly.
"I know, but it's not forever! An' we hafta wait fer Melia anyway, so why not jus' that little bit longer? Then we'll be all square with Mary, an' Sarah'll cheer up, an' stuff!"
Something like defeat flashed from Tom's face at Diana, for only a second, but he said nothing to her. Instead he turned to Sarah, and after a moment asked, "Well, what do you think? I really don't wanna be taking any more risk than I have to... but like I said, you come first."
Sarah, for her own part, looked plenty conflicted. On the one hand was Tom, and on the other, Mary. "I think," she said eventually, "that I really should be taking that walk now. Maybe this'll all be clearer to me by tomorrow morning. Is that alright?"
"Okay," Tom exhaled. "That's probably for the best. You take care of you, and be safe, alright?"
"Alright. Now both of you, good night," Sarah said, turning to leave as both of them echoed their own "good nights", each now with something new and heavy to weigh down their minds. So heavy, in fact, that not one of them realized they'd forgotten all about winding up Sarah for her time out there.
The time it took for things to start really sinking in -- the pain, the weariness, the shock, the realization that she had just almost been buried and eaten alive -- was roughly the time it took Karyn to climb out of the pit and retrieve her pack. Even then, it almost didn't seem real: it was like she was drifting through some kind of robotic dreamworld, where you bandaged yourself up and inspected your gear and fought attacking humanoid antlions to the death simply because that was what some soulless instinct told you that that was what you were supposed to do, not because you were actually there, living it and feeling it and doing it your own self. Never in her life, not this or the last, had Karyn ever operated so purely on instinct for so long before now: she hoped she never would again, not least because of a nagging and disturbing feeling that those instincts weren't hers, not when she was human. Now she was halfway some deathstalker scorpion, and given some combat training by Fazalune and the Lady that apparently had really worked its wonders on her.
In a dream, she noted that her stuff hadn't really been damaged all that much by the pit devil, despite his hurling it so far: the only thing to take a real beating was her tent, which had some major tears where the mandibles had bit into it. Otherwise, everything was essentially in order. All considered, she counted herself lucky: the tent, she could afford to lose, but the water, on the other hand, would've meant a slow doom if any of the skins had broken.
Medicating herself was a pain, in the most literal possible sense. Her human half hadn't been damaged badly, but it ached like hell: she figured she'd be getting a nice patchwork of bruises on it over the next few days thanks to that thrashing the pit devil had given her. Her scorpion half, on the other hand, she wondered gravely about. Visually, it didn't look like much was wrong, thanks to her carapace, but underneath that the devil's venom and digestive enzymes kept up a constant burning sensation through basically the entire half of her, especially agonizing where he'd actually bit her. Her tail had got the worst of it: Karyn had a sinking feeling she wasn't going to be using it much for a good long while, nor the hindleg the pitdevil had bit. Her other legs, though, were at least functional: hopefully they could still carry her out of this damned place and back to civilization or even a proper doctor, where she could afford to be helpless for the while it'd take to heal up. Coming out here alone was a mistake, Karyn lamented, too late. Damn you, Lady, this all would've been so much easier and less punishing if Fazalune were still here!
Medication taken care of, there was only one more business to decide on before Karyn could finally pitch her tent and call it an early night. Hesitantly, she skittered back down to the bottom of the pit, and grabbing it by the mandibles, pulled the corpse of the pit devil up out of the sand for a better look at it before she paid her respects and finally buried the thing properly.
Eat it.
Karyn dropped the corpse in sudden fright. Had she really just thought that? She wasn't even hungry! And this was a person, at least below the shoulders!
And it's also more fresh meat than you'll find in months of scavenging out here in the desert. It knew that, that was why it tried to eat you! Eat it or wrap it up for later. Don't just leave it.
Karyn, deeply disturbed and no longer interested in the slightest at giving the body a proper burial, skittered back up the trap walls and intentionally caused a hasty avalanche down onto the pit devil. It, she saw now, was a he: the lower body, tan-skinned and thin in a malnourished kind of way, had finally been pulled up entirely out of the ground for Karyn to appreciate in all its manhood. With the head buried first under the avalanche, he might even have looked like a human if Karyn didn't know better. She rushed to get the shallow grave finished, then rushed out of the pit.
"I'm not a scorpion," she said aloud as she rushed back to her things. "I'm not a scorpion, and I'm not a scorpion-woman-thing either! I'm a human, goddammit, and back to humanity I'm going!" Ditching the plan of sleeping so near to that fucking thing, Karyn hastily donned her pack again, crying out in pain when it landed on her aching scorpion back, and skittered on her way into the night, stomach growling.
Step, step, step, step. Left, right, left, right. Tick, tock, tick, tock. One, two, one, two. Oh, god, stop, it!
Clockwork footsteps fell one by one, synchronized more to a march than a casual moonlight stroll. Normally Sarah wouldn't have minded, or even really have noticed it at all, but now, knowing what she did about what she really was, it was really getting under her faux skin. It especially irked her that she didn't seem to be able to stop: the very best she seemed capable of managing appeared to be stepping on half-beats instead of full beats of whatever metronomic tempo ticked away in her head forever and ever, at least without turning the walk into some even weirder skipping swing-step affair that still kept in sync with her internal tempo, in its own way.
Jesus Christ, Sarah internally complained to nobody. Here I was thinking that arcade game forever ago was more like Elder Scrolls when really it's been fucking Crypt of the Necrodancer this whole time! Ever since that incident Mary'd had the misfortune to walk in on a few days ago, Sarah had started noticing it everywhere she went, in just about everything she did: this rhythm, this subtle but undeniable beat she always seemed compelled to keep time with, that at best seemed to sometimes to speed up or slow down when she was agitated, never actually allowing an off-beat. Her steps? Always a march. Her speech? Always had this subtle cadence to it, like everything was a damn poetry recital. Blinking? Every 128 ticks exactly, if she wasn't deliberately trying to stop it, came a blink, right on cue. Standing still? She'd idle back into this little sway if she wasn't actually trying to stay motionless. Breathing? She didn't even really breathe at all, she had no need to, but if she was just idling about her torso would move juuust ever so slightly enough to suggest the activity, and, guess what? That also kept time with whatever omnipresent metronome was in Sarah's head. It was subtle, probably so much so that only Sarah had noticed, but the rhythm was always there.
...Had anyone noticed? Tom had her blueprints, so maybe he could've figured it out, somehow; but if he had, he hadn't said anything, and there didn't seem to be any indication he knew. The only other person that Sarah figured might've seen it was Mary.
Her tempo slowed, and Sarah stopped her march a moment, to just stare down at her feet and think. The road around said feet had gotten rougher, and dense with leaves, twigs, and other litter hard to make out by just the eerie white moonlight. She was already on the outskirts of the little hamlet, going down some trail into a wood just inland from the village. She didn't mean to go far; just far enough to guarantee seclusion, where people like Mary wouldn't be around to intrude on her thoughts.
A breathless imitation sigh came in, perfectly paced with her current tempo. Mary, Mary, Mary... Wherefore art thou, Mary? "Coincidence," they all said, coincidence that Mary just so happened to catch whatever Falseman Syndrome haunts Trueman Town just after Sarah came in, and just so happened to turn into a clockwork girl just like her, "coincidentally" just after walking in on the one moment Sarah had where it had all seemed to just connect. Logically, and probably, they were right, Sarah thought. But what if they weren't? "Coincidence" and "Magic" had a funny relationship, after all, overlapping so often and looking so similar it was often hard to tell the one from the other, at least from what little Sarah had understood about it in the real world where for all intents and purposes it didn't really exist. And this wasn't the real world, it was a world where magic was most definitely a thing!
Her tempo quickened again, and Sarah once again resumed stepping in time with it, farther into the woods and privacy of thought. It might not have been morally her fault, Tom was probably right on that, but it might not have been pure coincidence either. Sarah knew something had happened there! Something Mary just happened to get caught up in! Something the old crazy clockmaker that made her must have been dying to see, maybe even in a very literal sense! It terrified her, to think of it! What if when at last she let go, and gave in to base instinct, she'd discover something about herself she didn't want to see? What would happen to people like Mary? What would happen to her? What if she really was some soulless dancing doll underneath!? What if she was supposed to spend eternity as some object, and never go home, or marry, or have kids, or grow old watching them grow up, or see her mother or her BFFs at school ever again, or live a real person's real life, because as some fucking machine inside, she wouldn't go back even if she found a way...!?!
Sarah realized suddenly that her inner tempo had accelerated so greatly that she was nearly sprinting through the woods. She stopped abruptly, trying to will her furious, shuddering ticking to slow down. Didn't work. She tried to stop thinking what she had been, about instinct and Mary and home and her unlife. That worked, but not only did that not slow her tempo down, it got it ticking slightly faster. She needed to calm down; what could she do to calm down? Only one thing occurred to her, and that, she was having second thoughts about doing now. "God damn it, what was I thinking!?" Sarah berated herself aloud, voice on a very fast meter. "That I was just gonna walk out here, dance some stress away, and walk back there all clear-headed and decisive about Mary and Tom and all of everything!? I can't dance again! To hell with investigating what I did to Mary! This was a mistake, I gotta go back and just tell him all of it, gotta go find-"
Find Tom and tell him everything was the thought Sarah would hold onto while frozen in the middle of her sudden panic, out in some secluded part of the wood just outside Robin's Heath and still as a statue.
