The Chosen One pulled himself up out of the water and shook himself like a dog, causing Qube to slide off his back.

“So, what’s the deal?” the Chosen One asked the mermaid still sitting before him.

“I tell you, our people have been taken,” she sighed, her dark, seal-like eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I plead with you, free us from the Deep Ones.”

“Yeah, okay, sure. How do I do that?” the Chosen One asked, crouching down and trying to pry out one of the pearls studded into the rock.

“I tell you, the tears of the Deep One will save us and restore our city.” The mermaid tried to touch the Chosen One’s face. Without looking, the Chosen One grabbed Sewer Bard and shoved him in-between them. As the mermaid caressed the Bard’s face, his eyes nearly rolled back in his head in bliss.

“Hey, wait,” the Chosen One said, catching the ecstatic expression on Sewer Bard’s face. “Gimme that.” The Chosen One caught the mermaid and smacked her damp palm onto his cheek with a wet slap.

The instant she made contact, the Chosen One went slack. His Sacred Sword that he’d been using to vandalise the scenery hit the ground with a clatter. The sudden, sharp sound seemed to startle the mermaid, making her shift slightly, breaking skin contact and snapping the Chosen One out of his mini trance.

The instant he was awake, the Chosen One backpedaled off the rock, nearly throwing himself into the water. He burst above the surface, doggy paddling as fast as he could to the corridor. As he hauled himself up, the mermaid called softly after him.

“I beg you: free us all,” she said, her voice echoing strangely as she started to sing again.

“Sewer Bard,” Qube said to the entranced man. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady and Definitely Bad Guy were still in the grotto’s water, already turning to follow the Chosen One. But the Bard remained seated, his eyes glazed as he stared adoringly at the unnamed woman. “Sewer Bard!” she repeated more urgently, reaching out and touching his shoulder. At her touch, he slowly blinked and looked at her.

“I need you to carry me over through the water,” Qube said, unsure if she should be worried or exasperated by his stupor. Surely this was taking appreciating inner beauty a little too far? Still, the song and the singer were beyond anything Qube had ever experienced before. She couldn’t exactly blame Sewer Bard for being blown away.

On the other hand, she couldn’t swim and he was being slow.

“Forgive me, fair Healer,” Sewer Bard said, still a little groggy. He shook his head and seemed to recentre himself. “I-I have heard tell of the mermaid’s song before, but I never dreamed of what power they would hold.” The green mana still floating in the area seemed to throb. Sewer Bard reached out and lightly tapped one of the half-formed notes. It popped, and the mana rushed back into his lute. He shivered.

“I feel as if I have learned something,” he confided to Qube.

“The saga?” Qube was far too polite to ask anyone, even a fellow party member, if they had acquired a new spell. But Sewer Bard, having more social graces than a certain Hero, perfectly understood her meaning.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I feel… like I can do something I wouldn’t have been able to do before.”

“That’s wonderful!” Qube enthused, turning him to face the corridor leading out of the grotto. Fortunately, he didn’t have a backpack. “Now, can you please give me a lift back to the corridor? I have trouble with water.”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure!” Sewer Bard declared, as Qube piggybacked onto him. It was an awkward pose, mostly her just reaching over his shoulders and clasping her hands together in front of his throat, then hanging off of him like a pseudo backpack. A small part of her felt like she should wrap her legs around his hips or some such, to help distribute her weight more evenly, but it didn’t seem to be necessary.

His doggy paddling was much smoother than the Chosen One’s, and they quickly caught up with the group. The Chosen One hadn’t waited for them — instead he had started back the direction they’d come from, before abruptly pausing and turning.

“You!” he said, pointing a finger at Sewer Bard. The Bard looked nervous. “What was it like when the fish lady touched you?”

Sewer Bard seemed to lose focus again as he contemplated how the mermaid had made him feel. He gestured, somewhat helplessly, as he failed to find the words.

“Wonderful,” he managed eventually. The Chosen One nodded.

“Me too,” the Hero confirmed. “It was like pure happiness, straight to the brain. That [snack]’s powerful.” He started pacing in the narrow, wet corridor. “Like, seriously powerful.”

“I have heard stories of the mermaids, that they can lure sailors to their doom with their beauty and song,” Sewer Bard offered weakly.

“Isn’t that sirens?” Qube frowned. She could have sworn that was the description of them from the bestiary she’d skimmed through in the Royal library.

“Who cares?’ the Chosen One said, getting more and more excited. “That contact flooded me with dopamine or serotonin or whatever that happy juice is called. I felt amazing!”

“Chosen One, I don’t like that she was able to affect you so much. It may be some kind of spell,” Qube said, worriedly. The Chosen One stopped his pacing and grabbed her shoulders.

“This is so much more than the sensory feedback,” he said, incomprehensibly. He squeezed her shoulders, his eyes blazing. She’d never seen him look so excited, not even when he was really, really breaking things. “This is massive! We could, I dunno, actually help people with this. This is huge!”

Since the Chosen One seemed so pleased by the idea of using mermaids to help others, Qube tried to be excited too.

“I’m sure if we rescue them, they would be more than happy to assist us with anything we needed,” she said, cheerfully. “Especially if they know they can help people.”

The Chosen One looked confused for a second, then grinned at her.

“They said the tech wasn’t there yet for actual artificial sentience,” he told her. “But if it can do this, then why the [fiddle] not true AI?” He gave her one last squeeze, then released her. After a beat, his smile dimmed slightly.

“Although the implications… is it bad I kinda hope you’re not?” he asked her. “Just ‘cause that would really mess with my head.”

He was asking her a direct question! She needed to give him an answer, guide him! Qube tensed as she tried to understand what in the world the Chosen One was going on about. Finally she relaxed, tilted her head, and smiled.

“...Chosen One, I’m very sorry. But I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Qube happily admitted. “Whatever it is, though, I totally and utterly support you! As long as it’s not more crimes,” she hastily added. “Unless those crimes are for a really good reason, and no, stealing because you don’t want to spend money is not a good reason,” she finished, as the Chosen One opened his mouth.

The Chosen One closed his mouth.

“Fine,” he said, a little sulkily. He eyed her thoughtfully. “Come on, let’s finish this run. I have a lot of questions I want to ask.”

“The devs?” Qube asked. “Is that who you interact with via the Save Point?”

“Yeah,” the Chosen One said, backtracking to the constantly flooding and emptying room he’d broken earlier. “That’s it. So, uh, don’t touch a Save Point, ‘cause I have no idea what would happen. Something super bad, probably.”

“Of course!” Qube was shocked that he felt the need to tell her that. Sure, she was a little bit curious, but he’d already warned her about them before. She wasn’t about to go sticking her hand into mystical objects without him saying so!

After swimming across the room the party reassembled in front of the jammed lever. The Chosen One sighed as he looked at it.

“My greatest work, ruined by the need for water-based puzzles,” he lamented, before shoving the lever. It didn’t move. The Chosen One groaned, before throwing his whole body into it. It resisted for a moment, before suddenly giving way with a sickening crunch.

The ceiling closed, and the water slowly drained out. Once it was about halfway empty, the Chosen One jumped down, the others following. There, at the base of the room, was another doorway, revealed only once the water had disappeared.

Qube was seriously impressed with the Chosen One’s puzzling skills! Somehow he had known that there would be another way out, and that he had to lower the water level.

“Chosen One, you’re so smart!” she chirruped. The Chosen One rolled his eyes at her.

“The fact that you genuinely seem to believe that is a very good argument against true AI,” he muttered to himself.

The new corridor they were in was surprisingly dry, considering it was completely submerged under water until only a few moments ago. And, given the original room had been half-filled when they’d arrived, seemed to have been so for quite some time. Even the moss one would expect confined itself to the edges of the floor and the walls, with only a few strands of seaweed dangling from the ceiling.

“So, how are we going to rescue the mermaid’s people?” Qube asked the Chosen One as she trotted beside him, the others the standard three steps behind. The Chosen One shrugged.

“Kill that Deep One. It’ll drop some tears, and then we’ll know what to do.” He thought for a moment. “Or we’ll have to kill the mermaids. That seems to be how these things go. Hopefully we’ll be able to do both.”

“Why would we want to kill the mermaids?” Qube asked, aghast.

“I, for one, would be totally and utterly against the harming of any creatures as lovely as the one we left chained back there,” Sewer Bard said firmly. He paused, as the full implication of what he’d said sunk in. “Wait, why did we leave her chained up back there?”

“She touched me and it made me feel weird,” the Chosen One said.

From behind them, Qube heard Sexy Screamy Spider Lady choke.

“Settle,” the Hero said warningly, not looking back.

Silence was his reward.

“I would be greatly interested in first attempting to study these so called ‘Deep Ones’,” Definitely Bad Guy rumbled. “It is entirely possible that they will have unique aspects, or some knowledge that we could benefit from. I request that we communicate with them before destroying them, if possible.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want to ‘study’ the mermaids,” the Chosen One snorted. “You [fiddling] creep.”

“Oh, I do,” Definitely Bad Guy said, with unmistakable earnestness. “I very, very much do. Once you have recovered from whatever spell the water woman placed on you, I was going to ask for your permission to try and capture one. That is less urgent, though. If we restore their city, there will be plenty of time for me to … research … them, at my leisure.”

The Chosen One briefly closed his eyes, before looking up at the seaweed strewn ceiling.

“Why are all my party members so weird?” he asked the stone above him. “No offense,” he said to Qube.

“None taken, Chosen One!” Qube smiled. “They say a party always reflects their leader, after all!”

The Chosen One gave a bark of laughter as they came to another platform. This one stood over an empty room, with a lever in the middle. Opposite them, about half way up the wall, there was another corridor.

“Right,” the Chosen One said, jumping into the room and approaching the stone lever. The others dropped down behind him.

“Noble Patron?” Sewer Bard said, suddenly at attention. He was staring at the walls on either side of them.

“What?” the Chosen One asked as he tripped the switch, and six large squares opened in the walls, pouring forth both a room’s worth of water, and six very large, very angry-looking sharks.

“That,” Sewer Bard said meekly, and the battle began.