Kaldalis took a moment to assess what his next move was when a pop-up appeared in his vision. It was accompanied by a timer, counting down from only forty-five seconds.

Branching Quest

Choose one of the provided options to join one of the branches of this quest, or make no choice and end the quest now. There will be consequences for your decision.

0:45

Kaldalis looked around to try and figure out what the choices were. Towards the rear of the ship, he could see a group of sailors clambering across the gap in the boat’s deck with ropes, desperately trying to lash the two halves together. Heluna was among them, and she had that same shimmering outline as she had when she’d needed his help with the mess in the captain’s quarters. As he looked at her, the text on the pop-up had a little blurb added.

Save the Sailors

Grab a rope and help the sailors patch the ship to help it limp to shore through the storm.

That couldn’t be the only choice, though. Kaldalis grimaced and looked out into the ocean. His friends had been dragged out there, surely there was-

Lightning streaked the sky again, and he saw the empty sea, no sign of the tentacles. But for a second, he saw a figure out there. Someone was clinging to a floating barrel that had apparently been loosed from the hold. He couldn’t tell who it was at this distance, and with only a bare second of lightning flash to see by, but they had the same glimmering outline.

Save your Friends

Dive into the sea and face the elder nautilobster to help your fellow adventurers escape its clutches.

Kaldalis weighed his options for just a moment, as the timer ticked from thirty to twenty-five seconds. If he were playing this game in a utilitarian way, saving the ship was the way to go. The adventurers that had been dragged off the ship seemed to have been mostly PCs. If they died out there, they would respawn eventually. It also seemed like a glory hog kind of move to dive into the sea to fight a giant ship-crushing kraken instead of doing the hard work of making sure the supplies aboard the ship made it to the shore safely.

But he knew Balrim and Myrin were down there. He thought that they would come for him if their positions were reversed. He would be an ass to leave them to their fate.

Fuck.

He dove over the railing and into the water.

Despite the storm, the seawater wasn’t freezing, and even with his boots on and his spear in hand, he glided through the water with ease. Were Vathon aquatic somehow? His tail gave him something of a rudder, and he kept his course straight even in the choppy water, so maybe his race was giving him an advantage. Or perhaps it was just the game making underwater travel as painless as possible. Just the same, he made his way through the darkness towards where he’d seen the lone floater on the waves.

“Hey!” Kaldalis yelled as the figure came into view - finally visible once he was almost atop them. “Are you alright?”

“Kaldalis?” The figure looked up, squinting into the darkness. It was Aurigeant. “Are you alright?”

He almost snapped that he asked first, but he had to remember that Aurigeant had just been hurled from the ship and probably hit the water pretty hard. “I’m fine, but you have to get back to the ship,” he yelled, pointing over his shoulder back towards the glimmer of light barely visible through the rain.

“The others, though,” Aurigeant grunted, though he was already kicking his feet to propel himself back to the boat. “They’re all going to drown.”

“I’ll get them,” Kaldalis said. “Take care of the ship, okay?”

The pop-up vanished from Kaldalis’s vision, and a quest appeared on the right, just below the quest asking that he survive. Save your Friends it said, but it was oddly specific, instructing him to save Balrim and Myrin. They were PCs right? Not NPCs designed to be a part of this quest? Why was the game so intent on him saving them?

Regardless, beneath the quest text was a pair of red bars displaying their health, gradually ticking down as he watched. He didn’t have time to dally. He plunged into the water and started to kick his way down, hoping he was going in the right direction. As soon as he was under, he got a little blue breath bar at the top of his vision. It wasn’t draining very fast - he guesstimated that he had an unrealistic number of minutes, not a more realistic 90-120 seconds - but it was still draining.

The ocean wasn’t entirely pure blackness around him. It took a moment, but he soon realized that he had something of a “vision radius” around himself, about fifteen feet where he wasn’t really casting light, but he could still see when he swam by small fish or air bubbles despite the apparent darkness. He was grateful for whatever vision he could get when he felt the water shift around him - the current of something very large moving by him.

It meant he got a glimpse of tentacle the size of a tree trunk drifting by ten feet to his left.

In defiance of all conventional wisdom, Kaldalis adjusted his course, swimming towards the tentacle, rather than away, hoping he wouldn’t regret the choice. The milky-white appendage was sliding past him, moving faster than he could swim, but as soon as he was in reach of it, he lashed out with his spear, thrusting it in to hitch a ride.

The tentacle thrashed as he stabbed it, disorienting him as he clung to the weapon, letting himself get dragged in a confusing loop in the water. It seemed he made himself a thorn in the creature’s side now, and another tentacle whipped out of the darkness at him. With the maneuverability he was afforded by either his tail or the game systems, he put himself on the other side of the tentacle he had attached himself to, and the creature slapped itself hard enough that the shockwave of the impact through the water almost dislodged Kaldalis’s spear.

In the stunned moment that followed, he climbed up the haft of his spear and wrapped his legs around the tentacle as far as he could. His feet were barely halfway around the enormous trunk, but it was enough for him to get a grip, and he twisted his spear, wrenching it out and doing as much damage as he could. Despite the softness of the vulnerable flesh, he only dealt eight physical damage and two wind damage. This beast must have been exceptionally high level to reduce his damage to almost nothing.

The tentacle flailed under him, and Kaldalis struggled to keep his grip. He plunged the head of the spear back into the tentacle, gripping it just above the head as if it was a knife, just stabbing wildly. The water around him rumbled with a noise he knew was the creature’s bellow of anger and pain just before the tentacle thrashed hard enough to finally dislodge him. It didn’t hurl him off with enough force to send him careening through the water, and so he was near enough as he tumbled that he watched the tentacle rip through the water away from him. As the tip of it passed by, he saw there was a humanoid figure in its grip, and as it passed, the struggling figure broke its grip and floated for a moment in the water. They took a moment to orient themselves, and then turned, orienting on Kaldalis with familiar slit-pupiled eyes.

It was Balrim.

One of the bars next to the quest vanished, and the upper left of his screen suddenly had a similar health bar as the quest apparently automatically partied the two of them up. Kaldalis wished they could somehow communicate while underwater, but Balrim was one step ahead of him, gesturing to beckon him onward as the lizardman turned and started to swim after the retreating tentacle. Without any way to form a plan verbally, all Kaldalis could do was start paddling, keeping his healer close.