Apparently, I’m still looking concerned for my love, because she smiles. “If you really want to be sure, you can help me check my fine-motor functions and skin sensitivity, yeah?”

  I nod rapidly. “Of course! What do you need me to do?”

  She flicks her tail, drawing closer. “Just stay still… aaaand HONK!”

  She grabs my breasts, squeezing lightly, as I fil and spin all out of control, my face heated with shock and a little embarrassment. “Astiiiieeeee, no fair!”

  She cackles, “Yep, everything’s working just fine! Told you, but you didn’t look reassured!”

  I huff, “Well it looks like you’re f-fine! Let’s go!”

  I flick my new tail, diving deeper, the water darkening around me, Asteria following close behind, giggling at my blush. The sandy bed of the ocean floor stretches out below, pale and spectral, hillocks and rolling ‘fields’ of unduting shingle expanding on for miles. We twirl and glide through the cool, dark sea as I drink in the view.

  Schools of fish of all kinds swim through the water in all directions, occasionally scattering as we pass through their group, or when a predatory piscine creature decides to grab a snack. A couple of sharks give us looks that seem to indicate interest, but they keep their distance when I brandish my swordspear. With Astie at my side, I turn my head.

  “So, uh… which way are we going to find this underwater city?”

  Asteria smiles, spiralling through a school of sparkling fish and causing them to scatter and disperse briefly, reforming several metres away as she whoops. “This way!”

  I follow, my tailfins beating through the water after my girlfriend, her scales fshing with the gloaming flickers of light glittering down upon us. The seabed rolls on beneath us, and we swim for at least three hours, deeper and deeper, until my sharp eyes catch sight of something unusual.

  A tall pilr, about half-a-dozen metres tall, with a sapphire sphere mounted at the top. It pulses with light, shining coldly and illuminating the area around it well. It’s like a streetmp, but I can’t tell if that’s the object’s only purpose. Asteria points.

  “Look. There’s a signpost! Let’s check it out, yeah?”

  My tail beats, and I’m so gd that I’ve concealed my wings. They’d be sodden and I’d be floundering and waterlogged for hours if not days!

  Drawing closer, I try to read the sign. I can clearly see the words marked on it, but I can’t understand them at all. Asteria smirks. “Can’t read it, hmm? Let me do a little magic!”

  She holds a hand out, a gentle purple glow sparking from her fingers as she murmurs softly, the sign starting to shimmer the same shade of purple. When the glow fades, the words have transted into ones I can read.

  “White Sands- 24 nautimiles.” The sign indicates back the way we’d come.

  “The Aquadeep Prison- 53 nautimiles.” The sign indicates off to the right. And, ahead of us…

  “Brinehaven City- 160 nautimiles.”

  I smile. “I guess it’s Brinehaven we need, then? Looks like it’s straight ahead for now. We should keep an eye out for more signs like this!”

  I swim in tandem with my girlfriend, our tails churning the water as we power through the darkening seas, the number of aquatic lifeforms dwindling as we swim, visibility dropping as night falls up on the surface.

  Despite the dark, whatever magic bespells the chokers gives us great subaquatic vision, even in the dark, and the strange streetmp pilrs’ light allows us to keep good track of which way we’re going. Asteria’s sense of direction is way better than mine, and I let her take the lead, finning after her as she swims, her fishtail’s sparkling scales almost glowing in the faint fragments of shattered moonbeams that glint through the water like exotic fish.

  The miles of sandy terrain pass almost-effortlessly beneath us as we swim for hours, but, somehow, I just can’t get bored. This is incredible! I mean, I love flying more, but this is its own brand of amazing! The sand shimmers with little sparkling pinpricks of light, and the dark water doesn’t even ripple, an inky bnket around us that we can breathe as easily as air, cool and strangely-comforting. I’d thought that, as a Skyborne, I’d feel uncomfortable in an environment so unsuited to my race, but I’m totally okay. In fact, my frequent trips to go mining for ores and precious gems leave me more discomfited than this. I guess underground isn’t my cup of synth-tea, but underwater is no big deal. Lucky I can swim, even though IRL swimming sucked when I was a kid who didn’t know I was actually a girl the whole time.

  By the time the water lightens around us, we’re coming to the edge of a subaquatic caldera, maybe the impact site of a great comet back in the ‘beginning times’ of this world’s creation. It’s almost completely occupied by a grand city with white and blue stone, with shell adornments carved everywhere. The streets are wide, and thronged with merfolk of all kinds. There are merpeople like ‘currently’ us, with some strange underwater goblinoids with webbed hands and feet, wearing loincloths of shimmery skin.

  Dana’s accent thickens as she points. “I think those are Sahuagin, and… oh look! Kelpies!”

  I smile, loving how excited she’s getting. The Kelpies look like horses, but there’s a sort of feral grace to them, and they seem to have no trouble breathing underwater. There’s a brace of them pulling a sort of carriage, with a trio of ughing mermaids riding inside.

  Approaching the walls, we swim through the gates, as several guards watch the coming and going of traffic into and out of the city. I smile and check my map. “Yeah, this is Brinehaven, alright. We made it!”

  Dana hugs me, her warm skin pressing against me as her ample assets do… interesting things to my heartbeat and pulse. Thank fuck we’re not streaming now, and not JUST because I don’t want anyone ogling us in bikini tops!

  “So, the information Ulged gave me while he was recruiting me for this bde-smithing dealie was that I had to find an absolutely gihugic pearl. It has to be genuine, and, worst of all, it’s gotta be blue.”

  I blink. “Aren’t naturally-occurring blue pearls the RAREST KIND???”

  Dana shrugs. “Yep. There’s a few mobs that apparently drop small-to-medium ones, but the drop chance is only like 0.1%, and they’re way too small for what the big d needs. He’s after one the size of a sports ball. Like, one of those footballs you see in museums and shit.”

  I bnch. “Oh what the FUCK, Ulged? Not only are we after the rarest KIND of pearl, but it’s got to be sodding enormous, too? Gimme a break! Thunderpunching a METEOR is going to be easier than this pearl-hunt!”

  Dana cackles, a thin stream of silvery bubbles drifting from her lips as she squeezes me lovingly. “Aye, but I wanna see you do that! Now, Ulged’s gonna be out of luck setting up a Translocation Beacon here unless he can figure out how to stop normal people from doing the whole ‘drowning’ and ‘explosive decompression of the body’ sitch. Plus, I’m pretty sure exploded nd-dwellers all over the city would be murder on the property market!”

  I poke her, trying not to ugh. “Yeah, that would kinda suck, wouldn’t it? Anyway, something’s bugging me, but I can’t figure out what…”

  I spend a few minutes observing the street. There doesn’t seem to be anything unusual. Just some guards patrolling, a few shopkeepers opening for business, some guards patrolling, another Kelpie-drawn carriage, some more guards patrolling, citizens and tourists engaging in conversation, some MORE more guards patrolling…

  Then it hits me and I feel slightly dumb.

  “Dana? There are a LOT of guards out. Like, a weirdly high number. What’s happening? Some big event or something?”

  Dana shrugs, then disentangles herself from me, swimming over to one of the guard patrols. She spends about ten minutes in intense discussion with them, and then breaks away, returning to my side with a furrow in her brow and a look of mild arm in her periwinkle eyes.

  “There’s a high-alert out at the moment. The Baywatch, that’s the standing army here, are looking out for a massive monster that’s been causing problems around here for ages. It stopped a few months back, but st week, it attacked a squad of travelling traders coming here from the city of Undertow, and… it ate the lot of them, guards, merchants, wagons and everything…”

  I stare. “What could even DO something like that?”

  Dana tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, just an utterly huge shark. Like, take the Megalodon, make it BIGGER, and make it really, REALLY hungry and pissed. That’s what we’re dealing with.”

  I swallow. “Oh, you have GOT to be fucking me with a broomhandle… why do I get the feeling that we’ll find the pearl we want wherever that monster shark’s ir is?”

  Dana snrrks at my… ‘colourful’ choice of words.

  “Because you’re not a dummy, love. You’ve pyed enough games to recognize a plot hook!”

  I giggle softly. “W-well, yeah, but still…. This isn’t going to be easy, is it? I mean, this mega-sized Megalodon’s big, strong, and weirdly good at escaping. Like, if they know it’s out there somewhere, how come they haven’t managed to track it down?”

  Asteria shrugs. “Beats me, Kettrin. All I got out of them was that this isn’t a civilian matter and that I should stay out of it.”

  She gives me a wink. “Which is EXACTLY why we’re going to do the opposite!”

  I groan pyfully. “Is this gonna get us banished from the kingdom of merpeople?”

  “Not if we’re careful!”

  I smile at my crazy girlfriend. “I knew you were going to say something like that. C’mon, let’s go and see what the marketpce has on sale! I don’t know if they take gold, but we can find that out!”

  After spending a fruitful couple of hours in the market, during which we learn that yes, they DO accept gold here, we head for an inn and rent a room, settling down inside the giant cmshells that serve as beds. I poke the mattress. It jiggles and wobbles like a rubber sack filled with pudding, but it’s pleasantly springy and comfortable.

  Asteria flicks her tailfins. “So, big shark causing problems. We need a giant, naturally-blue pearl. If we whoop some sharky ass, we’ll either FIND the pearl, or the city of Brinehaven will be so indebted to us that they’ll help us get one!”

  I sigh. “But, do we have any clues as to WHERE the shark might be? Like, maybe we can investigate the site of the attack? Maybe the Baywatch missed something? You have that mana-trace ability that you used during that farm quest in Vassim, right?”

  Asteria nods approvingly. “I do. I even got an improved version, which tells me what KIND of magic exactly was used, and when, as well as marking out a trail. Do you have anything that can help with this?”

  I shake my head. “No, sadly. I wasn’t expecting to end up underwater, so I don’t have any skills meant for this… even if I used Call on the Heavenly Host, those angel-dudes would be as useless as me underwater…”

  Asteria shrugs. “Well, you still have your regenerating health ability, and maybe Thunder Cannon will work better here? Salt water conducts electricity VERY well!”

  I sigh. “At least I won’t be defenceless. Although, I think swinging my swordspear will be a lot harder than up in the air. I’ll have to stick to thrusting attacks. Plus, my shield’s too heavy in this environment. I’ll either have to take whatever hits come my way, or get really good at dodging, really fast.”

  I sigh. “This is the worst pce for me to be… I’m out of my depth, that’s for sure!”