This choice: They drag you out to the open ocean • Go Back...Chapter #7They drag you out to the open ocean by: Peri   Slowly, your senses return to you. Confusion is the first sensation to assail your awareness. Confusion as to how you're alive mostly. Or are you not alive? It's still wet. Is this the amniotic slurry of the VR capsule? Did you die? Or are you still in the ocean, somehow not drowned?
You take a deep breath and water fills your lungs. By instinct you begin to cough and sputter, but realize the urge is more habitual than reactive. Your body seems quite content to take the salty water into your lungs. You take another breath and your eyes flutter open. You see... Well... Not much. It's like you're in a forrest of sea weed. The long stalks gently sway in the heavy winds of the current. Your breath begins to come more easily, but how? You're aware of many magics in the world, but water breathing is new to you. A brief flash of the mermaids kiss passes through your mind and a scowl grows on your face... She changed you... Changed your lungs. Yes you're alive, but will you be able to return to the surface now? And worse still... You're captured, rather than killed. At the moment, you're not sure which would be a worse fate.
You try to move, but find your body still bound by the green cords. You flex. Stretch. Strain. Push! But alas, either your body is still weak from being drowned or those green cords are stronger than they seemed. As you wiggle about you realize that one of the longer stalks, still planted in the ocean floor, is tied tightly around your feet. preventing you from floating to the surface.
"Awake now are we?" A tittering voice announces from behind you.
You make to speak but the heaviness of the water throws you off. "Ahhk...." You choke as your vocal cords vibrate in an odd muffled way.
"Let me go!" You cough out.
She swims around in front of you and begins to play with your chest hair. You realize as she does this that they must have undressed you sometime during your unconsciousness. "Hmmm..." She considers teasingly. "No!" She giggles. "We told you we would find a nice enclosure for you, and so we have!"
You look around. "Seaweed?" You bark with impatience.
She laughs like the chirping of a dolphin. "You're so silly, 'great adventurer John Lemur, slayer of beasts, master of the blade.'" She teases. The way she repeats your title is clearly in mockery. "But these are merely bindings. My sisters have left to fetch your new home..." She looks over your shoulder... "Actually, here they are now!"
You try to contort yourself in the water to see, but alas you're bound quite tightly. However, the school of mermaids swim before you, allowing you to see their prize. Carried between them all, like a massive litter, is a the largest clam shell you've ever seen, almost as wide as you are tall, and maybe half as thick. The outside is rough and flaky, and covered in barnacles. It's a subtle, but brilliant violet. Where the edges of the shell meet curve sharply up and down, in an interconnected way so as to form a tight joint lock. But the inside hides the true majesty. A lovely iridescent pink and white, smooth, and shiny. In the center of the bottom and top shells are two tight little muscles, each about the size of a dinner plate in the shell.
"Ta da!" The girl titters. "What do you think?"
You watch as the troop sets it in the middle of a stone and corral podium amidst the seaweed forrest "Small..." You grunt, still getting used to speaking underwater. It tickles your throat as you speak your next words. "It's tiny. Your sister was given a large enclosure with any lavish treasure she requested." Your mind already begins to work into a frenzy at the thought of such a claustrophobic enclosure.
Another mermaid swims up to you, you realize this is the one that you punched as nearly half her face is covered in an ugly green and black bruise. "I assure you, you'll have all the treasure you could want slaver." She spits.
You don't bother correcting her on the semantics of her insult... You're no slaver, but pointing that out probably wouldn't do you any good. But you still seethe at the sentiment. Instead, you point your own finger at them... Metaphorically of course. "Where's your man, Mermaids? Aren't you all the tittering servants of a Merperson far more powerful than yourselves? Aren't you no better than slaves here?"
The bruised mermaid crosses her arms and spits. "Not here. We sisters are a school of our own." Her scowl turns to a subtle smirk as she turns to appreciate the girls around her.
At last it makes sense. The mermaid you'd taken as your slave was among a school of lesbians... Mermaids who refused to partake in the games that magically sorted out mermaid from mermen. A merman may be angry at the loss of a slave, but a school of so called "free" mermaid would find enslavement a far greater offense. You may be royally screwed...   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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