Chapter 185 - The Castle in the Sea VI

“I hate this part.”

Claire muttered under her breath as she stared up at the towering job board. There were hundreds of requests plastered all over it, far too many to make an optimal selection. She had not the faintest clue where she was supposed to start, or why everyone else was able to quickly pick their tasks and leave.

The roundest member of the party was just as flabbergasted. Flippers flapping wildly, Marcelle was hovering in place, her eyes blank and her mind completely numb. She failed to respond when she was poked, be it with a light prod or a violent pinch. It was truly a powerful state of mind, clearer and more focused than that of a master swordsman. But while the two ocean-adapted life forms were in over their heads, their landlocked companions were happily combing through the list.

“Oh, what about this one!” Sylvia, who was sitting atop the manatee, pointed to a particularly flashy entry featuring a doodle of a fish.

“I don’t know…” Natalya tapped her quill against her chin before responding with a shake of the head. “Liverfish are easy marks, but they’re a little too far for it to be worth the effort. It might’ve been worth it if the pay was a little higher, but I think we should be trying for something more ambitious.”

“Aww… I wanted to try eating some. Fine! Then what about this one?”

“I think that one might be a little too ambitious,” said the cat, with an awkward smile.

Following the vixen’s paw, Claire found a request asking for a dozen leviathan shells, perfectly intact without even the slightest hint of damage. The pay was certainly much better than her previous selection, three pounds of silver compared to only a tenth of one, but it was impossible to fulfill, even with a dungeon that featured a leviathan as its boss. The endless supply did nothing to mitigate the fact that the monsters were level 1000 or higher. A completely unblemished shell was not the sort of good that could be so easily acquired.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Leviathans are really yucky. I don’t think I’d be able to eat a whole ten of them.”

“It’s always about eating with you, isn’t it?” said Natalya, with a giggle.

“Yup! Nothing’s better than fresh fish. Oh, except maybe the dried fish my dad makes. I dunno how he does it, but he makes them super yummy.”

“Was your dad the elf or the fox?”

“Elf! My mom was the fox, and the fairy thingy.” The vixen stretched out her back, as far as it would go, and scanned the board again. “Oh! What about that one? It looks easy enough! And the pay seems pretty good too.”

“Let me see…” Natalya adjusted her glasses and looked up at the entry. “That one doesn’t seem too bad. We should be able to finish it by early afternoon.”

“I don’t like that one.” Finally stepping forward and contributing to the conversation, Claire grabbed the fox off the manatee’s back and pulled her into her arms. “It sounds like a pain.”

The task in question was to guard a venue while a group of merchants held a public auction. At a glance, it seemed like a low effort job that involved little but standing around, but any batch of goods valuable enough to guard was likely to attract the wrong crowd. Worse yet, it wasn’t just the external factors they needed to protect against. Keeping an eye on the various members of the group, as well as the customers was sure to be a headache in and of itself.

“Awww… I guess we’re gonna be stuck doing the first one then.”

“Don’t worry, Sylvia. It really isn’t going to be as bad as it looks,” said Natalya.

“But that one needs us to go back into the forest! There aren’t gonna be any fish!”

With a groan and a squeal, Marcelle floated in front of the board and pointed at one of the choices.

“Oh! That one seems like it could be kinda decent,” said Sylvia.

“Hmmm… yeah, you’re right,” agreed the cat. “I’m going to go check with the clerk to see if it’s still available.”

“Okay!” said Sylvia. “I’m gonna see if there’s anything else that looks like it’d be fun.” She floated out of Claire’s arms and hovered up to the top of the board, where she scanned the various entries that otherwise would have required her to crane her neck to an uncomfortable degree.

The lyrkress alone was left to stare at the sea cow, her held tilted in confusion. “You can read?”

Shaking her head, Marcelle confirmed the answer as a definitive no. She rolled around in the air and squealed, nearly running into the other job seekers’ heads as she ridiculed the idea of a manatee knowing enough Marish to read. And though she knew that she was being watched, Claire was tempted to kick back, relax, and join her. A pair of eyes had been following the group ever since they stepped out of the inn. She had never quite pinpointed the observer’s location, but the gaze was intense, impossible to miss.

Grabbing a very confused Marcelle by tail, the longmoose left the job board and made for the alleys. Sylvia spun around and gave her a look, but a quick whisper silenced the fox’s concerns and saw her eyes returned to the listings.

Feet pounding against the paved stone streets, Claire dashed at an incredible speed. She made a dozen quick, snappy turns, but never managed to break line of sight. The eyes remained squared on her back from start to finish. By the twentieth intersection, she was already too fed up to allow the farce to continue. Spinning around, she struck her shadow with a quick punch. The building behind it was scarred by the attack. Massive cracks spread along its walls and threatened an imminent collapse, but the tagalong was perfectly unharmed. The dark reflection distorted when she attacked it, warping to create a hole in its structure large enough for her hand to pass through. The mage within had made their presence obvious, but they refused to reveal themselves even under the threat of violence.

She threw two more punches, but both were met with similar results. The wall was the only thing that was hurt. Her lips twisting into a scowl, Claire magically grabbed the shadow and peeled it off the stone background. Just like the wind and lightning, the supposedly incorporeal object was seized and put under her control. It stretched and distorted to break free of its bindings, but she pulled it back each time it tried to get away.

It wasn’t until it suddenly lunged that she had to let go. The shade erupted into a thousand spikes in an attempt to destroy her hands, but a shove sent it flying back into the wall, the impact revealing a brief glimpse of the caster that lurked within.

Not missing the opportunity, Claire seized the woman with a vector and tore her from the shadow, only for her to burst into a bloody mist. The crimson particles moved with a life of their own and charged straight at Marcelle, who was still investigating the half-broken wall. With more fluid seemingly coming out of nowhere, the crimson tide expanded and formed a net large enough to swallow the manatee whole. But again, the caster was grabbed. Neither transformation had prevented the lyrkress from registering her as a single entity.

Drawing Boris, Claire batted at the wave with a hefty, two-handed swing, but to no avail. The blood washed right off the living weapon, with not even a fraction of it sticking to the metal club. Likewise, the lizard was completely unbothered by the impact. Claire was the only one to come out of the exchange with damage to her name. The bits of blood that touched her hands tore away at her skin and scales, and the fluids that seeped from her injuries were only used against her. Moving with a life of its own, the scarlet tide dug into her pores and ripped apart her flesh, shredding it like a wheel of cheese seduced by a grater.

The more blood it drew, the more powerful the attack became, and the more the biting wounds hurt.

Her foe had put her in check. But not checkmate.

The lyrkress enabled her aura with a stomp and sent a pulse of magic through her surroundings. All the blood in her vicinity began to freeze. The icy crystals raced through the crimson tide like horses around a track before crackling through the air and shattering to bits. Her enemy was forced to retreat. With the blood droplets flying away, and the shadows fleeing, she revealed her true form.

Though almost entirely humanoid, her species was one that the lyrkress failed to recognize. Arranged into a ponytail, the bangs of her jet-black hair obscured many of her identifying features. But her eyes were still apparent. Peeking out from between her luscious strands, they shone with a deep, crimson light, and carried the ravenous look of a chained wolf. Her face was covered in light blue markings with one shaped like a moon on her forehead, and two claw-like lines across each cheek. Similar tattoos could be seen wherever her silken dress was torn and her skin left exposed. Her hands, her legs, and even her obscenely voluptuous chest hosted the arcane symbols denoting her dedication to Griselda’s worship.

A hand on her frayed, pointed hat, the woman was panting, still breathing. Until a malformed blade pierced her stomach and exited through her spine with half her guts in tow.

It was Boris. His eyes and mouth were still visible, but he had transformed into something completely unalike his previous form. The end of his snout had become a jagged point accompanied by a quartet of serrated edges. Each had a base roughly two inches thick, but the tips of their blades were easily sharp enough to rend flesh and bone alike.

Leaving the weapon where he was, Claire followed the stab with another. Her tail shot through the witch’s chest and impaled her through the lungs, while her newly freed hands grabbed her by the neck. She was confident, but the mage turned into a puddle of blood and vanished into a shadow before she could be frozen again.

Eyes narrowed, Claire twisted the shadow the witch entered, but she hopped to another before she could be wrung out. The lyrkress kept up the assault, but the hemomancer continued to evade capture and soon vanished around the corner. Catgirl detector kept her location pinpointed, but all the twists and turns that came with the alleys made it difficult to keep up. Slowly, her prey created distance between them, but it was invalidated when the frustrated lyrkress gave up on remaining incognito and spread her wings.

To minimize the risk of recognition and exposure, she changed her form and outfit. Her body was swapped to its new four-legged, half-humanoid default, and her cloak was turned into the sort of costume often worn by assassins and bandits. Her face was covered with a cloth mask, her frame wrapped in thick pieces of leather, and her back covered by a ragged mantle made of moth-bitten fabric. There were even two blades on her hips. Both were meant purely for decoration. Her real weapon had been ordered to keep an eye on Marcelle, just in case one of the attacker’s accomplices circled back for the manatee while she was looking away.

“Claire? What’s going on?” Sylvia’s familiar weight appeared on her head as she pumped her wings. She was flying low, both to avoid the air traffic, and to ensure that the mage would fail to spot her.

“They finally came. The people Marcelle was working with.”

“Oh! Finally! Took them long enough,” said Sylvia, with a wag of the tail. “So what’re we gonna do? Follow them, beat the crap out of them, and save the day?”

Claire pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “I’m not sure.”

Sylvia’s suggestion was certainly an option, but Marcelle had not been able to tell them much, and she doubted that it would be wise to storm their base uninformed. If their goal really was to murder the queen, as the sea cow had claimed, then they were sure to have fighters on par with, or perhaps even better than the local royal guard. But at the same time, they had been the ones to pick the fight, and the lyrkress had no intention of backing down from a challenge.

“But I’m at least going to follow her.”

“Okay! Want a bubble?”

“No. I’ll be fine.”

Scratching the fox’s chin, she picked up the pace again and continued to chase the mysterious mage. It was a long pursuit, requiring her to leave the city and dive beneath the waves. They went far east, travelling for over an hour. When she finally came to a stop, it was outside of a narrow gorge that led deep into the sea. The valley was hidden within an unassuming stretch of narrow shore, obscured by the seaweeds, corals, and fish that made up the reef around it.

Catgirl detector had already lost track of the woman. Her trail was still present, but her presence had vanished as soon as she entered the gorge, and a glance was enough to confirm the reason. There was a rapid, submarine current running within the trench. She had no idea how far it went, or where it would take her. Still, the lyrkress leapt in, after only the briefest of delays.

“Huh!? Wait! Claire! I really don’t think this is a good idea!” said her hat.

“It’ll be fine.”

There was no telling how deep the rabbit hole went, but Claire proceeded with utmost confidence. Diving into the depths provided her with a long awaited chance, an opportunity to push her new body to its limits and see just what all four of her forms could do.