「 Quest Obtained - No Strings Attached

Survive.

Destroy the Salt-Sorcerer’s minion.

Reward - A Mortal-Rank Weapon」

Clay dropped back, flinging the bottle towards the mannequin’s head. It ducked aside and Clay raced to grab the ape’s bone club, left lying by the altar.

The mannequin got there first.

Its long saw-limb swept for his head, and Clay stumbled back, feeling his heart sucker-punch his lungs as cold sweat blossomed on his face.

The mannequin was unbalanced. It lurched as the swing went wide, pulled forward by the weight of its overburdened sword arms. Its feet struggled to follow its upper body.

Clay pulled away and shifted behind the stack of smuggler’s crates. As it came for him again, lurching forwards in an unsteady gate, he threw his shoulder to the crates and pushed. Down came rum, spices, and the straw that covered them. The crates crashed onto the puppet’s shoulders and sent it stumbling back, overbalancing, falling to its side. Bottles burst apart and soaked the sandy ground in liquors.

With a darting quick movement that circled around the beast, Clay grabbed the bone hatchet.

As the puppet came up-

His blade came down. It slammed into the creature’s wooden skull and stuck fast, splinters breaking away as Clay struggled to pull it out again. His foot swung out and caught the creature in the back, bracing him to rip his weapon free.

They staggered in opposite directions.

The puppet turned and swung its arm into the motion, scything the air. Clay continued back, his feet dipping into the water as he held up as his axe, breathing hard already, feeling every vein in his body clench and relax with the pounding beat of his heart. His ears were full of the rush of blood within those veins.

So much for aiming at the head. The mannequin’s blank face had been split halfway down to the neck, without appearing to slow or stop the thing at all.

The joints, then. Clay thought. “How do I use the cards?”

“The Arcana? Think. Just think…” The serpent mumbled from his arm.

With each word the puppet was backing him further into the smuggler’s bay, the weight of the water piling up over his legs and dragging him down to a slow, wading step.

Clay thought; Clay thought very hard. In his head he captured the image he had visualized when making the card, the thoughts of primal domination and brute force war. Something bright blossomed in his chest. He pushed against that spark and suddenly it was like his limbs knew what to do; his arms and legs didn’t need him anymore.

He took a step forward, gripped the axe in both hands, and swung down.

The blow took all the momentum from his step and carried it up his arm into the rotation of his shoulders. His body moved like a baseball batter, pure torque, momentum building onto momentum as the head of his axe descended into the joint of the arm in a blur of flint.

The thing’s arm exploded. A rain of splinters flew in all direction, pricking Clay’s hands and arms as he stumbled with the recoil of the blow.

Crude Instruments Skill increased to 2.

Crude Instruments Skill increased to 3.

The puppet’s right arm and much of its hip were gone.

And Clay felt the hollow flame inside him again. Star-Burned. It was a hollow, hateful sensation that left him clumsy on his feet as the mannequin swung with its one good arm. Still not dead. Still trying to kill him.

Clay stagger-threw himself out of the way and still caught the club-arm to the back. “Fuck!” He felt the long, hooked sharkteeth studding the club’s edge punch into his flesh and rip free again, sawing him open in a jagged line that burned like fire across his back.

He kept moving, kept stumbling, even as his eyes blurred over.

“No no…” Stay calm stay together stay moving.

Should he use the Tapestry of Scars? Heal himself? But it was only good for one time, one true escape from death, and Clay knew he’d face danger again.

With a growl he forced his body to ignore the pain. He stumbled through the cave as the puppet clumsily followed, dragging its crippled leg.

What could I use…

In the fallen crates he saw grinning idols. Necklaces of pearls. And…

A pistol. An old one, with a flint hammer meant to light the gunpowder cartridge. He grasped it and began fumbling about in the straw, searching for ammunition, for powder, for something to fire…

Nothing!

His fingers brushed jagged glass He swore and pulled his fingers to his mouth, cursing, only to smell strawberries. Rum.

Hard, harshly alcoholic rum.

He didn’t need powder and ammunition. He had a gun that produced sparks when he pulled the trigger, and his enemy was soaked in spirits.

Grasping a handful of booze-drenched straw, he cocked the hammer back and pulled the trigger. Something jarred within, but the mechanism was locked in place. He pulled at the hammer again and it clicked back another notch.

This time… This time a volley of sparks burst as the flint hammer dropped. The straw went up, cinders landing on the tips and taking root. The flame was strawberry red.

He turned just as the puppet was wading onto the shore. Clay turned and flung the blazing straw matches against its scarred face, and there was a faint, flickering whoomph sound as a wall of hot air washed out from the sudden ignition. Fire leapt up twice as tall as the puppet, covering it down to the waist where the water had washed it clean.

It staggered back for a moment.

But the fire wasn’t enough on its own. Wood took time to burn.

With a second wind in his guts, Clay retreated further, to where hammocks had been strung up over the sand. Unhooking a hammock at one end, he waited for the puppet to come closer; the mannequin was still following relentlessly, a faceless horror melting slowly under a brilliant flame.

A final burst of motion and he rushed forward with the rope, clotheslining the thing across its weakened legs. It tumbled into the sand, struggling to lift itself back up with one clumsy, club-handed arm. He twisted the hammock-net around the fumbling thing and held fast until the fire crept up to scorch the back of his arms.

「 Skill Gained - Dirty Tricks

Increases your speed and strength when attempting to trip or bind enemies.

Decreases Grace used for such attempts.

Slightly increases your resilience to being tripped.

Rank - 0.0 // Grade - Mundane 」

Clay collapsed onto his back, huffing and puffing, feeling anxiety, fear, and exhilaration mix in his belly until they came up in a choked and croaking kind of laugh.

“Oh god I almost died. That was fucked up…”

The line along his back where he’d been cut hurt like hellfire, and he could feel blood spilling down his back, a hot sticky presence.

There was a chime as his quest completed. A watery ripple expanded through the air, out from a core of sparks that buzzed and swarmed like fireflies. Those sparks coalesced into the shape of a sword and dropped down to land at his side.

It sank blade-first into the sand.

It was a beautiful piece. The blade was nearly silver, a curved saber with a vicious looking point. The hilt was a brass basket marked with a compass rose, a knuckle-guard in the shape of a snake coiling around the blade’s base and descending down to the sapphire pommel-stone.

“Look snakey-wakey, it’s you…” Clay sung, heaving himself out of the sand and onto his knees with a grunt.

“Oh I hardly noticed. You see, I was swept away by my joy over your survival.” A small, grumpy voice said from his arm.

“I thought it was very brave!” A small, unfamiliar voice chimed.

Clay’s head turned mechanically towards the source of the voice.

A mermaid was leaning out of the water, her hands folded on the edge of the docks, her chin planted atop her hands. Her tail swished back and forth eagerly as she watched him.

---

The mermaid’s name was Coral.

She wasn’t the one who’d saved him; apparently there was a whole colony of mermaids nearby, her sisters. Clay sat down by the water…

But not too close. He still remembered the stories of mermaids hypnotizing sailors to drown them, and she was definitely having a hypnotic effect on him.

She had blue skin, amazing features, and a smile that made Clay’s heart do ridiculous little backflips; it was a smile like the sea coming up over the ocean, like-

Clay yanked his attention away. Oh god I’m getting poetic.

“So, you’re really from another world?” She asked. In place of hair, the mermaid had broad crests of translucent pink fin that stretched between long, sharp quills, forming something like a feather headdress. It contrasted against her blue skin and-

Again, Clay had to stop and hold the ‘horny’ valve in his mind closed.

If she had social skills- that was Skills with a capital S- they were powerful.

“Yeah, we called it Earth.” Clay said. “... I guess that’s a silly name, actually.”

“It’s like calling your planet Mud!” Coral said happily.

“What’s this one called then?”

“Temerakt, duh.” She shook with laughter. “You really don’t know anything, do you? That’s amazing. You get to experience everything with fresh eyes! I’ve always thought, wow, I see the same boring things every day. But if I was a new person, they’d be new things.”

She paused for a second…

And nodded, like she’d said something very wise.

“I… guess… they would…” Clay said. “You know what? I get what you’re saying. Yeah. It’s exciting. I’m getting to experience a whole new world. Hell of an adventure.”

“Uh-huh! Now, I’ve got a quest. It says…” She paused, looking upwards at something he couldn’t see. “It says I need to ‘help the Chosen resolve the crisis.”

“Okay, first I’ve heard of a crisis. Or a chosen. But I guess that’s me.” Clay spread his arms wide, and instantly regretted it. Stretching his back ripped open all of the thin scabs that were already beginning to form. He flinched.

“Ooo. You’re hurt!” She clapped her hands together. “And I can help! Yes, yes I can.”

“Can you do, like, healing magic? Wish me better?” Clay asked.

“Oh.” She paused, her crests deflating as her smile did. “Well, noooo, I don’t know any magic, but!” She held up a finger, gaining a second wind of enthusiasm. “I do have this handy-dandy slug!”

She reached into the pouches and conches that hung around her waist on a belt of rope, and pulled out a small, squirming blob of reddish-pink flesh. Its two eyes waved on stalks, staring at Clay in horror.

“You want me to…”

“Eat up!” She nodded, offering the slug out.

Clay looked at it dubiously, then plucked the unfortunate creature from her hand. It was really nothing more than a small, tongue-shaped sliver of flesh, and feeling it squirm against his hand wasn’t helping him resolve to swallow it down. Its entire body was covered by slick bulbs like tastebuds. The tongue resemblance was really uncanny.

“Wait…” He paused. Tapestry of Scars would let him recover from one really bad mistake, but that didn’t mean he could be careless.

And also, he didn’t want to have to use Tapestry of Scars. Every situation he saw it coming in handy was a situation where he was in some significant pain.

“How does a creature grow to heal whatever eats it? Isn’t that completely, like…” he could say ‘contrary to the principles of evolution’ but she probably had no idea what that was.

“Oh, it isn’t natural! We bred them, and we only feed them on elixir algae, my sisters and me. Muuuch easier than brewing potions.” She explained. It was so fast and so easy…

Clay believed her. Which meant he was out of excuses for not eating slug. In the background of his mind, to keep from having to think about what he was about to do, he amended; she might actually know about evolution, if she’d helped breed a magical species. But that was horrifying in its own way. Was magical eugenics the norm?

He shook himself out of that line of thought. “Right. Do I chew or…”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh storms, no! Never ever chew down. It’ll get stuck to your teeth for days!” Coral made a face, sticking her tongue out.

For a moment all Clay saw was a slug poking its head out of her mouth.

“Down the hatch…” He sighed, closed his eyes, and swallowed the poor creature. It was as slippery and horrible as he could have possibly imagined.