Data Dragon Danika

The dolphin insisted firmly, "My companion is not for eating. And you should beware of those who have been of service to the G.o.ds, for I have heard the ring of her great luck myself, and she still wears the mark of the Dragon!"

The mermaid who had suggested that Danika looked like a delicious new sort of fowl pouted at the dolphin, but did not argue his words except to point out, "She is not a priest, and does not properly follow any path."

The mermaid"s complaint made Danika remember what the design team member had said about the game wanting her to become a priest of balance. She also wondered if she was really not using her subpath "The Way of the Cat" properly. She"d been a.s.suming that she needed to be able to transform into a cat to continue with it.

Sea Song Tione insisted, "Service to the G.o.ds is not limited to those who tread the paths of duty. A singer of prayers to the sea and storm should know that more than a priest"s prayers are answered."

The mermaid sneered at the dolphin and asked, "Do you think everyone can sing the storms? The singers are followers of the G.o.d"s paths."

Danika wasn"t certain how the mermaid spoke, but like the dolphin, she could open her mouth and emit sounds without letting out air. Her voice wasn"t as human as her face either, it was beautiful and the words were in the common tongue without the hum of translation beneath them, but the sound was more like an instrument than a voice.

It also seemed to have the same effect as her own dazzling skill, although rather than being caught by light, it was as though her attention was caught by the sound. Sometimes she couldn"t seem to hear anything but the mermaid, even though a moment later she would hear Sea Song Tione rattling on in mid sentence. The mermaid seemed to know when she had captured ZipZing in her sound, because her sharp teeth would flash in a dangerous grin once in awhile.

Danika couldn"t speak while breathing under water with the pearl, because the trick was that you had to hold it in your mouth. It made her feel like she was enacting a reverse fragment of the mermaid legends where the mermaid gave up her voice to walk on land. She clung to Sea Song Tione"s dorsal fin and eyed the merfolk warily.

The mer village under the sea was much more human in design than the nadia city, and seemed to include a lot of pieces of salvaged shipwrecks. Although Danika saw nothing during her dolphin guided visit, aside from the brief mention of singers, that indicated that the merfolk actively called storms and sank ships like the mermaids of many legends. The merfolk kept schools of brilliantly colored fish, which they seemed to casually eat raw with their sharp teeth whenever they felt like it, as a human might pluck a ripe fruit from a tree.

They had houses that reminded her of what she"d heard of beaver dens, because they breathed air, not water. The houses were entered from the water, but had sloped "floors" inside so that the mer person in residence could casually lay with their human half above water, while keeping their scaled tail wet. The air pockets were somewhat magical though, as they were well below the surface, but tended to smell of fresh air and storms.

Almost every mer person carried an enchanted pearl like the one Danika had acquired from Stubbles. Usually it was worn on a necklace in the company of beautiful sh.e.l.ls or stones. Danika supposed that it was only a logical safety measure for air breathers who spent their lives in the water. Fortunately none of them ever suggested that her pearl was ill-gotten.

Sea Song Tione asked hundreds of questions, but Danika didn"t begrudge the time spent, because it was pretty interesting. During their visits to the surface and to the interiors of the buildings, she was able to ask things as well. She traded fresh fruits and vegetables from her garden s.p.a.ce with some of the friendlier merfolk, for another dozen teeth and scales from sea creatures that she didn"t have yet.

The merfolk were fascinated by the habitable s.p.a.ce created by the genius enchanter. They led her to the enchanter who created their pearls, to have her show the mermaid her "stone bubble". Danika again shared Logical Heart"s name so that the enchanter might contact him, after sending him a message to get his permission.

When they finally left the merfolk, ZipZing and Sea Song Tione did not head back toward land, but toward the edge of the ocean. The dolphin a.s.sured her that the seas of return could be navigated to visit other oceans if you knew the trick of it. It was the first Danika had ever heard of the borders being linked to the other edges of the game map, but she trusted the dolphin bard.

The fog on the sea at the edge of the world was like a windier version of the fog around the beginner"s vale. It actively blew her back to her starting place. Sea Song Tione instructed her to dive with him again, and she held the pearl in her mouth and clung to his fin again as he dove into the water at the edge of the world and sang to it.

The water grew warmer as they traveled into the churning depths, until suddenly the dolphin turned and dove back toward the way they"d come, no longer fighting the currents that pushed them back, but traveling with them. They surfaced on an ocean that was truly blue beneath the warm southern sky. Danika gazed around in amazement.

"We made it," the dolphin announced with satisfaction. "This is definitely the flavor of the south western ocean."

Danika launched herself back into the air and flew up to get a good view. In the distance, instead of a wide ocean with the goblin plains beyond the sh.o.r.e, there stretched a sliver of desert below a mountain range.

"That was amazing!" Danika told the dolphin excitedly as she dropped back down to him. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"I don"t think you can see the sound of the world," the dolphin replied doubtfully.

"Oh," she said with disappointment. But after a moment she recovered and asked more cheerfully, "Do you plan to travel all the way to the desert with me, or are you heading home right away?"

"I will travel with you until you leave the water, and then I plan to visit some of my cousins who live in this ocean before I return to the north," the dolphin replied happily.

After they parted ways, Danika located the next repeatable quest at the foot of the southernmost dwarven mountain. She obtained an enchanted sunstone before she slept, that she sent to Shrubbery. It wasn"t as powerful as the light stone they"d borrowed from SaltySiamese, but Danika thought that the soft sunlight-like light that the sunstone emitted seemed suitable for the light powered dryad.

--

The next day, she attended her first morning meeting from home through the newly installed VR-medi pod application without any difficulty. Everyone was still focused on the expansion, so she didn"t try to present any of her half formed ideas about the repeatable quests.

Afterward she did her exercises and fussed around in her kitchenette until she had successfully started a cake cooking in her rice cooker, before getting cleaned up. She didn"t try such fancy things often, but… today Aishin was coming over. They were planning to go out, but all of her early childhood training said that one should have snacks to offer guests. She told herself that she could always eat it over the next few days if he didn"t eat any of it.

She had still only had his usual morning message from him when she logged out for lunch in the early afternoon. She had finished another repeatable quest, and planned to travel to the rainbow city of the fairies for the last messenger animal quest next. The cake had come out really well, and looked surprisingly presentable while cooling on the counter.

Danika tried not to stare at her phone while she ate. Looking at it wouldn"t make him message any faster. She also reminded herself nervously that he might not manage to get the evening free and that they might have to wait after all.

She returned to "Living Jade Empire" and portaled to the fairy capital.