86. The Finless

  [Designation: OYSTER]

  [Instrument Class: ZEALOUS]

  [Anchored Realm: PRETJORD (+1)]

  [Item Description: Once upon a time, a girl played hide-and-seek with a whole kingdom. She ran and hid from anyone who’d come near: soldiers, ministers, ladies-in-waiting, and even the king and queen. She was so good at hiding that, in time, everyone simply stopped looking for her. Then her game became hide-and-never-come-out, herself the only player. That was, until one patient and loving soul—the girl’s one and only friend—found the girl in her perfect hiding place. They held out a patient hand and coaxed in a loving voice, “Open up your shell, child, and look out with your own two eyes, unclouded by judgment. And you’ll surely see the truth of it. That the world really is your oyster.”]

  ***

  The Finless’s bulky silhouette slimmed down considerably as she unslung her shovel—DREDGER, assuming this was that pesky Auxiliary everyone had warned about. She then stepped closer, allowing Serac her first good look at Lady Pink.

  A pint-size tree-frog body was made even shorter by a noticeable slouch. Most of her was covered in a hooded suit—save for her bare, webbed feet and a squat face filled by a pair of round, wide-set eyes. But Lady Pink’s most striking feature, at least to Serac’s sensibilities, was her skin. Such pure pinkness it shone through even in the dim, green lighting, remarkably smooth and coated with an almost translucent sheen. Seeing this, Serac vaguely wondered if ‘the Scaleless’ might be another appropriate epithet for the Finless.

  She really is like Froggy… if Froggy could stand on two feet and hold out a giant shovel menacingly! Indeed, were it not for the weapon in her hand and her clear intention to use it, the Finless inspired no fear at all. The frog woman certainly didn’t have the look of a hardened criminal, nor was she accompanied by an army of Wildspawns as had been claimed by Palmr Jorgensen. Surely, this was all a big misunderstanding, one that could be cleared up by a little—

  That was when the Finless sprang forward on her frog legs, winding up her shovel for a big swing. Serac was dumped to the floor again, as Lars let go of her to reach for his STROKE-SIDE OAR. The two Yakshas clashed in the middle of the flatrock, their respective Auxiliaries meeting with an ear-splitting ‘clang!’.

  The ensuing shockwave sent Serac tumbling, nearly clean off the edge of the flatrock. Lars and Lady Pink too had been pushed apart by the combined force of their own attacks. But they clearly hadn’t had enough, as they immediately dashed toward each other for round two.

  Thud! A distinctly meaty impact, infused with something other than metal-on-metal violence. Zacko jumped into the fray and wedged himself in the middle. The NINEFOLD master had both arms up in a rare display of [Double Shield].

  “Let’s all cool our jets and talk about this like adults, hm?” Zacko said through gritted teeth, even as a shovel and an OAR ground against him from two sides. “I think we all have a bit of explaining to do. Especially if we wanna get out of this cave situation alive.”

  “What is there to explain?” Lars snarled, angry and anxious. “Finless pulled us into cave, with help of Wildspawns under her command.”

  “You believe that rubbish too?” the Finless spoke up then. “You Stammers really are hopeless. Dreaming up false enemies until you’ve become frightened of your own shadows.”

  Despite the tensity of the situation, Serac couldn’t help but take note of the Finless’s voice. Unexpectedly deep and raspy, in a manner ill-fitting the frog woman’s compact, smooth, and, well, pink features. It was, however, perfectly in keeping with the fact of her being a frog!

  “Do you take me for fool, Finless?” Lars went on, oblivious to the vitally important debate inside Serac’s mind. “How many more must suffer… how much more of the Realmtree would you see wither at whims of your madness? Were it not for you, my brother and I would still be—”

  “Yes, that’s it, your brother!” Zacko interjected then. His face grew purple, not with Erudite energy, but with the sheer effort of acting as a human buffer. “Bubblegum here was just helping me look for—uh, which is it?—Hans Tomasen, even before you showed up. So why don’t you back off and let her speak for herself, hey?”

  Lars did back off then, though due to astonishment rather than agreement. Serac took the chance to jump in and place herself between Zacko and Lars, adding a Rakshasa component to the buffer.

  “You were with Hans?” Lars directed his question to Zacko, sounding much subdued compared to just a second ago. “What happened to him?”

  “We saw him a ways above where we’re standing now, trying to fight off a gang of Slangespytts by himself,” Zacko explained as he massaged his forearms. “You don’t need me to tell you he was having a shitty time of it. Before Bubblegum and I could get to him though, he took a tumble off one of the ledges, and well, that’s the last we saw of him.”

  “Was it a lethal fall?” Serac butted in. Her question sounded rather grim (and especially insensitive, what with the man’s brother standing right there), but given the company she kept, it was one of a merely pragmatic nature.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “No, or at least Bubblegum here doesn’t seem to think so. Ripple-reading and whatnot. Apparently, she can do that too, even though she’s a frog.” Wow, Zacko, you really have no filter, do you? “But the strange thing is, Hans kept going lower and lower into the cave, faster than we could keep up. Like he’s got urgent business waiting for him at the bottom of this thing. Anyway, when you guys showed up, I thought he might be with you, but…”

  Zacko trailed off to eye the ‘other twin’ meaningfully. Lars, who’d been listening with slumped shoulders and a blank expression, suddenly tensed again, tightening his grip on his OAR.

  “It is all your doing, is it not?” The question—nay, accusation—was directed at the Finless. “Rivers drying up. Wildspawns swarming from and within the Roots. Presence lurking down below, hell-bent on upsetting the Realmtree’s natural balance. My brother is drawn to it for same reason as I—to put end to your witchcraft, once and for all. Well? Manusya says you wish to speak, so speak. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Three pairs of eyes trained in unison upon a hooded pink figure. Lady Pink herself kept her gaze fixed upon the sturgeon at least twice her size. Her grip on her DREDGER hadn’t loosened one bit.

  “I have nothing to say to the likes of you,” she croaked. “Those who’re blind to the ripples are also deaf to reason. I’ll not waste my breath.”

  Serac didn’t know anything about Pretjordian politics or the apparent beef between this particular pair of Yakshas. But even she knew this was the wrong thing to say in the moment. Both she and Zacko moved at the same time, her putting up PULVERIZER to block Lars and he to [Shield] against Lady Pink.

  [37!]

  This sucks! Serac gritted her teeth against Lars’s enormous strength. I have to take a hit to my HP just to break up a fight?

  “Enough already!” An exasperated shout from Zacko. “Just calm down and use your head, Twin A! If Bubblegum really did lure us into her witch’s lair with witch-ly intentions like you seem to believe, you think she would’ve cured my [Poison]? Or tag-teamed a bunch of Aberrants while she helped me look for Twin B?”

  Serac felt the pressure on PULVERIZER lift slightly.

  “If she wanted to kill me,” Zacko continued, “she’s had plenty of opportunities to do that. But she hasn’t, and she won’t. In fact, she’s as fucked up by this whole situation as we are, and she’s just trying to find a way out. Now, are you going to be mature and sensible about this, or would you rather turn a powerful ally into a formidable enemy?”

  Wow, Zacko, when did you learn to be so diplomatic? And I wonder how Lady Pink managed to cure your Manusya ass of [Poison]. Maybe with those ‘potions’ I keep hearing about? Serac was bursting with questions, but she could read the room (if not the ripples) well enough to know when to bite her tongue. Her restraint soon paid off, as Lars relented in earnest. Hopefully for good.

  A deep frown darkened the sturgeon man’s usually impassive features. Clearly, his anger and suspicions hadn’t receded, and perhaps they never would. But he’d also calmed down enough to see the merit in Zacko’s words. After all, wasn’t he himself a believer in cool heads in the face of adversity?

  “We work together until we reach bottom.” Lars lowered his OAR. “Until we find Hans, and until we deal with this presence that gnaws at the Realmtree’s Roots. After that, Finless, you come with us to Stamgard… to answer for your crimes.”

  Serac turned to gauge Lady Pink’s reaction, praying she’d take the olive branch without further incident. Which was why she physically winced as she heard the woman’s next words.

  “I’ll never go with you willingly. You’ll have to capture me if that’s what you’re after.” But even as the Finless said this, she lifted her giant shovel and secured it onto her back. “You’re welcome to try… after all this is over.”

  Several more seconds passed in tense silence. Then Lars let out a noncommittal ‘hm’, before turning around and making his way over to the edge of the flatrock. He’d evidently gone right back to mapping out the next part of the descent, with the implicit understanding that the spelunking party had just doubled in size.

  Serac finally let out a sigh of relief. She herself went right back to ogling the frog woman, purely out of fascination.

  Lady Pink, for her part, reached into her suit to fiddle with something around her chest. As Serac watched, she caught glimpses of a strange contraption—a series of lidded containers each about the size of an orange. Some of the containers swung open at Lady Pink’s touch, revealing yet more strange objects that gave off distinct gleams within the cave’s luminescence.

  “What do you want, Rakshasa?” Lady Pink spoke without looking up.

  “Nothing! I’m just curious, that’s all,” Serac said sheepishly. “If anything, you’ve already done more than enough, getting my friend Zacko down here in one piece. I should be thanking you… you… er, actually, what should I call you?”

  The Yaksha said nothing, nor did she look up from her task.

  “It just doesn’t feel right.” Serac persisted, as was her way. “Just in the last minute or so, you’ve been called three different names. Finless, Lady Pink, Bubblegum—whatever the heck that is—and Pathsight isn’t any help either. I just think if we’re gonna work together, we should at least know each other’s names, right? Feels like common courtesy… and I mean that both ways.”

  The nameless woman said nothing. Serac waited patiently a while, and was just about to give up and turn around when—

  “Renate.”

  Serac stared. The woman still did not meet her eyes.

  “Renate? Just Renate?” Serac lowered her voice, muttering to herself as she cooked up her latest masterpiece. “Pretty name. I like it. Three syllables, which isn’t too bad, I suppose, but at this point, I’m committed to my art form. Let’s see… Renate, Renate, Renna!”

  The woman froze. She finally did look up, slowly and with noticeably rounder eyes.

  “What did you just say?”

  “Well, ‘Renate’ is one too many syllables for a proper nickname between spelunking buddies,” Serac explained happily. “So I’m calling you Renna instead. You’re going to respond to it, and I hope—in time—you’ll learn to like it too.”

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