Payment:
- 12 Gold Coin
- 1 Evenly Tarnished Candelabra
- the Thumb of the Pirate Scanlan
Service:
- Seaward River Maintenance
Back:
The seal upon this rock does bind participants utterly to the exchange of Payment for Service.
For more information, contact Payee or your local Treasury of Contracts.
The river is sweet. It is wonderful, fast, it is life in the purest form. Not like the sea, the freshwater, yes, the freshwater is the best water.
So thought Sundrenched Leaf Sinking and Floating Again of Upper Burrow North Shore Lake PlplPlrian as ze flitted and bounced along the mud and rock bed of the Seaward River. Ze twirled zir long body through a school of fish, leisurely floating through their numbers to count the scales along their side. Slowly, the dumb beasts noticed zir between them and they burst into a flurry of flashing scales. So slow, so bumbling. Cute, ze thought.
Sundrenched Leaf Sinking and Floating Again was so lost in zir musings that ze almost didn’t notice the ugly jutting rock interrupting the lovely flow. Ze stopped short at the offensive thing and considered zir options.
Ze flattened against it, coiling zir body into a jetstream that hung, tattered and grasping in the flow. Ze flowed and pulled magic from the stream, consuming bits of water that were purer than just water and pulsing them against the offending stone. In less than an hour, it was as flat and smooth as the rest of the river bed. It was, once more, beautiful.
Though, to zir, it was near maddeningly long. In the water, ze wanted to stream and flow and and to sit on a rock was death itself. Stillness, stagnation, disgusting, ze thought. Almost as bad as a-
And as ze thought it, ze came across a log jammed into the wash, braced by another tree that had been caught in a small landslide as the fast river cut into the small hill little by little. The first, held by the second, formed a weir, slowing the river and making a whirling death zone of flow on the downriver size. Ze beached zirself against the point bar, cringing as ze felt the precious water wash up among the rocks and evaporate in the late afternoon sun.
Slowly, difficultly, ze lifted zir body out of the wash, straining against gravity to hold a form, any form. Ze were old, by the standards of Fleeting like zirself, and ze had amassed more body in zir age, making the task even more difficult. Worse still, time above the waterline suddenly sped up to meet zir awareness, if not sprinted past zir so that every movement was a labor to maintain. Time was against Sundrenched Leaf Sinking and Floating Again.
The rocks crunched under zir body as ze stepped carefully closer, bracing zirself against the trunk and expanding zir form, stretching zir wings wide to catch the air that was purer than air. Ze shuddered and contracted and used the air to force zirself through the natural channels made by the tree’s growth. Ze expanded suddenly, splitting the tree into a dozen lengths that each fell into the rushing river. Most turned and floated along, to be zir problem later on, ze was sure.
Sundrenched Leaf Sinking and Floating Again had begun to let zirself pour down into the water again when ze felt something pleasant tingle along zir currents - ze realized ze were hearing singing. Beautiful song, bubbly, watery, song.
But from the voice of a Hermit. Of those dour, slow, droning Hermits!
Ze finished pouring into the stream, bursting the remaining lengths of log with more swallowing breaths of fresh air. Ze hesitated for many long milliseconds before deciding ze could expend a little more energy to hasten the process. Ze roiled zir current into sharp whirlpools and rushes against the log, chafing strips of bark and slicing lengths of wood to send down the strong stream.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Job done to, if not the delegate’s satisfaction, the standards of most Fleeting, Sundrenched Leaf Sinking and Floating Again let zirself relax down the fun slopes and bends of the Triples. On the last identical cutback down the hillside, ze felt the vibrations of song and the obstruction of legs in the surface of the river. Ze let zirself wind between the legs, tasting that it was in fact a Hermit, before looping onto the back of the point bar and soaking through the rocks.
The Hermit was open to the air, more so than any other Corporeal ze had known, with long straight fur on its head and wrappings of bright blue and the shimmer of the narrow spectrum of red that ze could see. It was an enchanting Form Horde, somehow accentuating its form rather than covering or protecting it like most Corporeals or detailing it like Fleeting.
Sundrenched Leaf Sinking and Floating Again pushed zir body up once more, orienting zir appearance to face the Hermit as it began to sing once more. The voice was beautiful, fast, uplifting! It kicked at the water, sending joyful splashes that twinkled in the setting sun. It was utterly unlike any Hermit ze had ever seen! Artistic, fun, alive!
Ze spread zir wings and pulled each membrane between each finger taught, then reared zir head back to join in the song. Zir wings hummed and droned a doleful accompaniment to the echoed harmonization ze provided the elating song. Ze even mirrored the sudden strangled scream it let out and eagerly awaited the next chorus as the Hermit stared at zir with wide, panicked eyes.
Then, softly at first, it picked up on the next song. Faithfully, ze joined its lead, even making clumsy attempts to mirror the vigorous dance it performed that caused twisting eddies and exuberant splashes in the steady river. Despite zir attempts, the weight of the world above the waves caused the twirls and kicks to appear more as a dervish of mist. Another song, and another, but try as ze might, ze could not keep up with its energy and soon dripped and slumped back into the river.
The Hermit finished its song with a last hysterical laugh and fell backwards against the steep hill, out of breath. Ze watched it sit there for many long moments before the hermit got up and tried to climb the hill, losing a piece of its Form Horde into the stream. It clambered up the rest of the way and sat to remove its matching piece, watching the other roll and float down the river.
The Fleeting knew, if nothing else, that it would hate to lose a piece of its horde on some beach somewhere, so it flowed down stream to chase the piece, which matched the colour of the rest of the horde, as though made together. Ze tried to imagine a whole Form Horde sourced from the same place, at one time, kept together as a set. The outlandish idea tickled zir, sent tremors down zir channels. Ze would have to try it when ze returned to the lake.
The piece was easy enough to catch up to and ze took to filling as much of zirself as ze could into its hollow and, true to zir name, sinking and then bouncing zirself out of the current to skip merrily along the surface for as long as ze could maintain.
Night had truly fallen by the time the Hermit had caught up with the Fleeting and let out another atonal cry as ze beached zirself on the shore and deposited the horde piece at its feet. It eagerly slipped both pieces on after vigorously shaking the water out of both, then spoke, first in something ze did not recognize, then again in Hermit.
“Thank you. I have to go, will I see you again?”
Ze marveled at the new words it had added to the minimal Hermit dictionary ze knew and responded with a joyful “Yes!” with every membrane ze could make to produce sound.
The Hermit flinched, but smiled eventually. It bowed at the waist, then continued past zir. Ze stepped around it, rotating zir appearance to stay facing the Hermit and flowing flat where it did not need to appear as detailed - and watched it go. To zir shock, ze traced its trajectory to find a big square construction barely visible against the dark, open, over-water sky.
Sundrenched Leaf Sinking and Floating Again slipped silently back into the water and surged downstream to where the new construction was, to where an infuriating slow bend in the river had been bypassed by order of Riptide PlplPlrian zirself. Ze beached once more, taking the record for the number of over-water forms they’d coalesced in a single day, and took in the strange structure. It was layered like a coral reef, surrounded by strange lumpy structures like schools of crabs. How something could show up so quickly, so completely, was beyond zir. Ze took note of the location and returned to the water once more.
Ze would complete the job, clear the rest of the river, but ze would also make effort to complete the job quickly. Ze had to report back as soon as possible. The structure was big, not just one Hermit could live there, not this deep in Goblin lands. If this one Hermit was anything to go off of, there was a whole herd of new Hermits to meet. Good Hermits, artful Hermits, maybe even friendly Hermits.
Would you like to see a straight forward description of monsters/locations/character biographies in the post-chapter or learn about them as they are presented?