The heavy silence in the undersea dining hall was shattered in a single blow by that rumbling, gurgling voice that seemed to roll deep from a coral-like chest.
“YEAH… We like Landies… !!”
The gigantic host set a massive paw down onto the stone floor with a rocky thud, so hard that the cutlery on nearby tables vibrated briefly. He leaned far over the robust wooden counter, the thick, gleaming coral on his shoulders creaking softly. A giant, rough hand reached into the display case filled with glistening delicacies.
“And especially those two little ones over there!”
He produced two shiny, deep-blue glazed fish cakes, each carefully mounted on a sturdy stick of polished driftwood, and offered them over the counter with a surprisingly gentle motion.
Miki’s eyes grew as wide as saucers. The steam from the warm glaze rose into the cool air, and without hesitating for even a second, she snatched her cake. She immediately took a massive bite, sending blue crumbs flying across her chin. Ren began to beam cheerfully, gratefully accepted the wooden stick, and waved his free hand happily back at the colossus.
They gathered around a colossal, copper-bound wooden table in the middle of the hall, shifting the benches to make room for the whole group. Once everyone was seated, Davinci rubbed his hands together with a laugh, rested his decorated wooden staff against the wooden bench, and looked at the host with a broad, generous grin. “Assemble a meal for twenty hungry fighters! All the best this deep sea has to offer. All expenses are on me today!”
An explosion of cheers went through the Goats. Without hesitating for a second, they yanked the giant parchment menu toward themselves, dog-earing the thick paper in the process.
“Everything!” Beat shouted, slapping both hands onto the wooden table so the copper fittings rattled. “Just give us the whole menu!”
Within a few minutes, the long table was piled high with steaming, bizarrely exotic platters: grilled deep-sea crab legs the size of tree trunks, bowls full of luminous violet mussel meat glowing softly in the dark, spiced underwater plants smelling of salt and citrus, and foaming copper mugs of ice-cold dragon beer.
All around them, the dining hall was a visual spectacle of swarming, mysterious life. To their left sat slender Thalassians whose milky skin moved slowly like rippling seawater under the magical lanterns, while behind them, dark Deep Ones let their supple, ink-black tentacles slide relaxedly over the wooden benches.
Davinci stuffed a giant bite of grilled seafloor meat into his mouth, wiped his greasy lips with the back of his broad sleeve, and looked around the table with full cheeks. “Sooo?… How was it all, then?”
Silarias hung sideways over the table, sucking a coral shrimp clean with a loud, shameless slurping sound, and answered with his mouth still half-full: “Well, to be fair, that training was wildly vague, but this gear fits perfectly.”
Before the rest could respond, the carefree atmosphere was abruptly cut short.
A tall, grim humanoid with the rough, sandpaper-like skin of a deep-sea predatory shark and rows of razor-sharp, red-flushed gills in his neck stopped right behind their bench. He sneered sharply and blew an ice-cold, foul plume of salty steam right into the necks of the group.
“We don’t want your kind here!” the shark-humanoid snapped. His golden eyes narrowed with undisguised contempt.
The clattering of copper cutlery fell dead silent in an instant. Everyone at the table looked up with wide, thunderstruck eyes. Everyone stopped chewing.
Davinci calmly picked up a linen napkin, casually wiped his lips, and looked up out of the corner of his eye. His dark eyes began to gleam dangerously in the magical light. “What is ‘your kind’… Guppy?”
The shark clenched his massive, knobby fists. His jaw muscles tensed so hard that the razor-sharp fins on his back rose up with a creak. He took a brute step forward, wood splinters nearly flying from beneath his heavy paws, but before he could plant his claw on the table, a figure slid silently between them.
It was a Riverkin. The creature possessed moist, glistening skin full of subtle, iridescent scales and fine webbing between its slender, elegant fingers. Its dark, reflective eyes looked ice-coldly controlled. Its wet, blue-black hair moved slowly back and forth as if under water continuously, while atop its head sat a natural, bowl-shaped disc holding a perfect pool of clear water.
The Riverkin simply raised one slender finger.
From the disc atop its head, a single, crystal-clear drop of water rose upward. With a soft tap, the drop landed precisely on the sensitive gills of the aggressive shark.
The shark instantly froze. His breath caught, and his eyes widened as his body went rigid for a moment. Then he let out a low, frustrated growl that stayed trapped deep in his throat and slunk off toward the dark, shadowed back of the hall without daring to utter another word.
The Riverkin turned to the Goats with a mild, friendly smile. “Let him talk… Some Oceanix simply cannot stand Landers. It is all because of the destruction and terror of the corrupted prince Alec…”
Silarias burst out laughing and shook his head with a chuckle, shrugging his shoulders. “Right… Whew. I’m far from done with that guy.” He casually took another massive bite from his overflowing plate and continued eating as if nothing had happened.
Right behind him came the cool, sharp voice of Nyx. She didn’t even look up as she plunged her knife straight and deep into a piece of red deep-sea meat: “Then it’s a good thing we’re the landlords now.”
Davinci theatrically brought his broad hand to his forehead, chuckled awkwardly, and raised his mug of beer to hide his discomfort.
Suddenly, the raw, thundering laugh of Renuardo echoed out. With his mouth completely stuffed with chewed crab, he looked at the Riverkin. “And the Ward is only going to get more harmonious, you know!”
Right after, Renuardo let out a giant, smacking burp that echoed loudly through the stone arches of the dining hall. Faustus, without looking, tapped him firmly and dryly on the back of his head with the back of his hand. “Mind your manners, Renuardo.”
Before the echo of the tap and the reprimand faded, little Miki let out the exact same loud, stone-faced burp on the other side of the table.
The Riverkin burst out laughing, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “Wow, little machine, you have a big appetite!”
Ren likewise burst into a sudden laugh. “Yeah, haha!” He immediately looked at Silarias with big, inquiring eyes. Silarias narrowed his eyes slightly, a sharp look of you don’t even need to ask, brother.
Ren wiped his hand clean on his trousers with happy haste, extended it wide, and said cheerfully: “I’m Ren!”
The Riverkin grasped the hand firmly and warmly. “And I am Naru. Welcome to the deep.”
As the clattering of plates and loud conversations erupted back in full force, a sudden, heavy shadow slid across the end of their long table. Three figures, draped in heavy travelling cloaks caked in salt crusts and algae, slid silently onto the empty wooden benches.
A low, husky voice sounded from beneath one of the deep hoods: “We heard what you pulled up there… The legend is true. And we stand behind you.”
With one synchronized, fluid motion, the three figures threw back their heavy cloaks.
Beneath the coarse fabric emerged the lined, graceful faces of two Lunari, beings with milky-white, luminous skin and silvery, rippling eyes that seemed to constantly shift in depth, and a Siren with magnificent, mother-of-pearl scales along her fine neck and elegant, finned ears.
“We hate Alec,” the Siren spoke with an icy, sharp undertone trembling with pent-up rage. “What he has done to our worlds and our families… Every so often, his executioners send their Inquisitors to demand tribute and coin.”
The male Lunari chimed in immediately, his voice trembling and broken by despair: “Still… We are completely in the grip of an Inquisitor…”
“Shh!” The Siren snapped fiercely at the two Lunari and resolutely took over. Her voice sounded full of restrained, deep-rooted pain. “I am Mirma of the SoulShanties Kingdom… Former princess and heir to the throne. And these are the king and queen of the Lunariatic Kingdom. Our realms are completely ravaged. It has cost me my entire people… And not a trace of them remains on the ocean floor.”
The twenty Goats stopped chewing all at once. Mouths full, cutlery hovering mid-air, and plates still raised, they turned their heads in unison toward Davinci.
Davinci rolled his eyes in annoyance, hurriedly swallowed his giant mouthful, and let out a deep, heavy sigh that shook his entire chest. “Yes, of course… Uh, listen. We can’t come along right now to make a difference. But we can return with more help, because this clearly involves much larger matters. Can you hold out until then?”
Davinci leaned heavily forward, planted his elbows on the wooden table with a dull thud, and looked intently at the trio. “Tell me precisely who that guy is. What does this Inquisitor look like? How is his team structured? Does he travel with armies?”
The Lunari king’s face went bright red instantly. His lips trembled, he stammered blankly, and he looked completely lost at his queen, who was equally speechless. He simply didn’t know what to say to Davinci’s direct, razor-sharp questions. The shock and raw reality of their situation ran so deep that detailed answers froze in their throats. The entire trio fell abruptly silent, overwhelmed by suffocating restraint.
The silence at the end of the table grew so thick you could almost hear the water pressure above them.
Finally, the Lunari king took a deep, audible breath. With a trembling hand, he reached deep into the folds of his heavy travelling cloak. He pulled out a heavy, snow-white shell and laid it carefully on the greasy table. Anchored in the heart of the shell was a softly glowing blue crystal that seemed to pulse to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
“Let us… let us simply keep in touch,” the king stammered with a hoarse voice, slowly pushing the shell toward Davinci with two fingers. “Please return as quickly as possible. If you speak into this… it reaches us directly, wherever we may be hiding.”
Davinci looked silently at the glowing object for a moment, picked up the shell with his broad fingers, inspected the shimmering crystal up close briefly, and slipped it deep into the inner pockets of his robe with a quiet, meaningful nod.
For a while, the food sat cooling in front of them. Silarias looked down at his plate, then toward the shell Davinci had tucked away. Around the table, the others slowly picked up their cutlery again. Conversations resumed in quieter voices, interrupted by glances toward the three visitors. They finished what remained of the meal without quite recovering their earlier ease.
Eventually, the last of the Goats set down their cutlery with a clatter. Miki immediately let out another loud, cheerful burp that echoed through the arches of the establishment. Silarias wiped his mouth thoroughly with the back of his hand, leaned back, and folded his arms tightly.
Davinci stood up from his chair with a heavy motion, grabbed his wooden staff firmly, and called out across the dining hall in his booming voice: “Goats, come on! Let’s go.”
The whole group scraped their heavy wooden benches back and began walking across the floor at a brisk, steady pace. They strolled through the vast, enchanting realm of the cavern, toward the edge of the abyss where the Scarab’s massive, open gold-black wing waited for them like a sleeping goliath.
As they walked through the teeming, colorful deep-sea life and fish glided past the magical ceiling above their heads, Silarias suddenly noticed something. He glanced backward and leaned hurriedly toward Nyx, who was walking beside him.
“Do you think they heard you… when you said we’re the landlords now?” Silarias muttered with clear hesitation and a touch of panic in his voice.
Nyx chuckled softly, a rare, playful glint in her dark eyes, and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Mmh, what do you think?”
Silarias’ face turned bright red, standing out against his attire. He snapped his head around and saw the colossal, coral-like host standing by the wooden counter in the back. The giant creature was waving his massive arm broadly and laughing to see them off with high enthusiasm.
One by one, they climbed inside the open, illuminated wing of the Scarab. The heavy doors began to close slowly with a deep, hydraulic hiss and a release of steam, cutting off the sound of the dining hall.
Miki walked with quick steps to the front of the cockpit, stared straight up at Davinci, who stood with both hands behind the large wooden steering wheel, and asked with an unusually serious, sharp look: “Are you really planning to do something about this?..”
Davinci stroked his gray beard slowly and thoughtfully, looked through the thick layered glass into the dark, bottomless deep sea outside where the Scarab’s light was slowly fading, and let an icy, heavy silence fall.