The village elder had nothing else to say. He didn’t turn hostile, but he prevented anyone from speaking any further. Any question that Darya asked fell on deaf ears, and the only answers that anyone else gave ended up uselessly vague. Darya decided she had seen enough of this. She left Seris to write a letter of whatever to the grand church with the big seal of whatever to beg for funds.
She didn’t feel that a village so ready to abandon a kidnapped girl deserved any money, but she didn’t want to say that to impoverished people. They clearly had their own reasons, which they weren’t even comfortable speaking about. She never had to deal with people this scared back on Earth. Interns and juniors scared of the leads didn’t count. They weren’t using spiked whips on them in Amberlith. That would’ve been illegal.
Lurim shuffled after her as she left the house of the elders. He clung tightly to her dress when the elder shouted at him to stay where he was. Darya let the boy tag along just to spite the old man who had given her no information.
The crowd of children who had been spying on them through openings scattered like mice in all directions as she exited from the front entrance.
Wait. Why don’t I catch one of these older ones and make them talk instead?.
She picked Lurim up as they walked down the street. Every adult bowed out of the way on sight. She didn’t want to waste any more effort on talking with the adults.
“Do you see any of your friends here?” Darya asked Lurim as he awkwardly wrapped a tiny arm around her to cling on.
He looked at her as if he didn’t understand and shook his head from side to side.
“What? You don’t have friends?” she asked with a scoff.
Well, I should’ve seen that coming.
Lurim looked a bit too different from regular Merfolk children. He had lived with his sister all this time. Darya had to catch a child herself if she wanted to talk with one.
“Let’s go somewhere nice. Where do you want to go?” she asked Lurim.
He seemed to understand that question just fine. He pointed to their right and started doing a bunch of signs.
“Alright, that way,” Darya said.
The street wound up hill through decrepit buildings. She passed several makeshift houses with walls missing. Entire families eagerly got on their knees as she passed. Most of the houses nearest to the center were full of old people. Some of them were too old to even lift their heads from their beds.
Looks like the needy old people are closer to the house of elders. These houses are horrible. What do they do when it rains?
The answer was curtains. They had thick, handmade fabric made of thin ropes. While they could keep the rain and winds away, the floors were all unpleasantly wet and muddy. This village was clearly in desperate need of renovations. She wondered if the Dovarists could foot the bill for such a feat. It was unlikely. There had to be hundreds of other islands just like this.
The buildings uphill got worse and worse until they turned into a maze of abandoned ruins. Lurim pointed leftwards at a junction, and it was a path heading downhill.
“Aren’t we going back to the sea?” Darya asked.
Lurim insisted on this direction, pointing several times.
“Alright, you’re the boss.”
The darkening ocean loomed in the distance as she walked downhill. Dark clouds were swirling above the horizon, a sign of bad weather to come. If this storm were anything like the last one, they would be stuck on this island. She didn’t want to waste more time.
Surprisingly, she didn’t encounter any more people down this path. The buildings on either side looked calcified like a dead coral reef above ground.
She emerged from the street into one end of the shoreline cut off by a cliff. The pier and all the fishing boats were a few hundred meters away to her left. She could see the mast of the Desert Rose lurking above them.
Lurim nudged her to the right towards the rocky cliff. There was a stone path heading in that direction with wooden pillars for lanterns.
The path led up the slope that gradually turned from sand to soil and rock. It led up towards a triangular cave entrance on the cliff.
Lurim jumped off and ran inside. Darya followed him, ducking under the short entrance.
The cave interior was nothing like what she expected from the outside. There was no rock surface to be seen. The place could best be described as a wooden cocoon. Someone had gone to extreme lengths to convert a cave into a house a long time ago. Everything here was much better than the decrepit village, likely because it was well protected inside a cave.
This looks like the best place on the island. Why did he bring me here? I’d imagine a lot more people would want to live in a place like this, but there’s no one.
“Is this really your house, Lurim?” Darya looked around.
The boy nodded eagerly and performed a bunch of signs. She took it as a yes.
It was dark inside the cave, but she could see just fine because of her Dovarist jewelry. This place could fit at least five families.
“Is it only you and your sister living here?” she asked. She saw several spaces that could be considered rooms, but they were more like blocks sectioned off with wooden walls.
Lurim shook his head, pointing at a larger section in the dryest corner of the cave. There was a tall bookshelf there along with a table, two chairs, and a bed. Long black robes hung from a hook on the wall.
Darya walked over, curious to see what sort of life they lived here.
Lurim excitedly pointed at a smaller section with a makeshift table and a chair, proudly pointing at himself afterwards.
“Ah, this is your room,” Darya nodded. He had his own little bookshelf, but it was full of pretty seashells, stones, hand-carved wooden figures, and other trinkets.
She assumed the larger section was his sister’s, but nothing about it looked even remotely girly. Apart from the black robes, she saw two pairs of tattered leather boots, a leather hat, and a harness.
Something on the table made her doubt whether this place belonged to a girl. There was a large pipe next to a rusty tin of tobacco.
Is she a cowboy? What the hell is this room?
Darya had assumed Lurim’s sister to be a teenager at best, not a forty-year-old rugged sailor or something. Granted, she wouldn’t have minded smoking a pipe herself as a hobby.
There was a small wooden statue on the table that depicted a naked woman sitting inside a seashell. Darya saw a strange symbol carved above the head of the shell. It was an eye with a spiraling iris.
“Wait. This isn’t your sister’s room. This must be the Seer?” Darya said. “You two lived here with someone else?”
Lurim nodded, holding up three fingers.
Ah. Now it makes sense. Three people live here. In that case, where’s the sister’s room?
She couldn’t see any space here that she would consider girly. There was only one bed, and that was in this large section. She suddenly noticed Lurim himself didn’t have a bed either.
“I don’t see any beds. Where do you sleep?” she asked.
The boy pointed over his shoulder at the back.
Somewhere that way.
Darya turned to him after looking around for a bit. “Do you know where your sister is?” she asked, using some hand signs herself. “Or do you know where the man who lived here is?”
Lurim stared up at her with a blank expression. There was a hint of discomfort in his body language. She was sure he understood the question, but he was getting upset remembering his missing family members.
“I want to find them and bring them here to you,” Darya said, using her hands as much as possible.
The boy rolled his lips and nodded. He had tears in his eyes, but she didn’t know how to console a child. She could pick him up again, but she knew he didn’t want to be.
He came up to her and tugged at her dress while pointing at the center of the cave, clearly wanting to show her something.
Darya let him drag her where he wanted. She was pleasantly surprised when she saw something spectacular, hidden behind a semi-circular wooden wall.
There was a hole in the middle of the floor that looked like a pond.
It was the only source of light in the cave, emitting a faint blue glow from deep within.
Lurim descended a small set of wooden stairs and leapt into the hole like a frog.
“Wait!” Darya yelled before she remembered he was a merfolk toddler with gills. She hurried down the stairs and crouched at the edge of the pond.
It was far beyond a pond.
The space below was huge. Peering into the water, she caught a glimpse of a huge coral reef at the bottom. It had to be at least twenty meters deep. This was the opening to an underwater cave that likely opened to the ocean. She saw too many colorful fish to count and a lethargic blue eel the size of a utility pole.
Why is this not covered up? a hole in the middle of the house? Doesn’t this water level change with the tide?
Lurim couldn’t answer the questions even if she asked them. She watched the boy swim with uncanny competence. He wasn’t leaking any air bubbles from his nostrils or mouth. He swam exactly like a fish. She dipped her hand into the cold water and waved at him. The boy waved back with a wide smile on his face for the first time.
He circled a section of the reef and vanished behind it into a dark hole. The mere thought of poking her head into a hole underwater was unimaginable to her. He emerged from the hole carrying something luminous in his hand.
He gave it to her as soon as he surfaced, nostrils flaring for open air.
The luminous thing was a turquoise stone caged in a silver frame; it was a golf-ball-sized pendant hanging at the end of a chain.
“Whoa!” Darya exclaimed, looking at the intricate shifting colors inside. This stone was the exact color of Lurim’s eyes crystallized. “What is this?”
[Inspect]
Item: Voyage Sea Crystal
Category: Relic/Crystal
Weight: 0.1 lbs
Worth: 36 Gold 7 Silver
Effect: +5 SP, +10 DEX
Records the mana signature of the wearer.
Lurim made a bunch of signs, indicating wearing a necklace with crude gestures. She guessed he was trying to tell her it was worn by his sister. In that case, this stone had the mana signature of the missing girl. From here, it was about using a spell, performing a ritual, or preparing a potion to track it.
She had to talk with Seris and Fominel about this. She couldn’t remember the specifics of the solutions that she remembered. They had to have done something like this before.
The boy nudged her, pointing at the stone with a curious look. It seemed he wanted to know how to use it, which Darya unfortunately didn’t. She hadn’t seen anything like this in the VRMMO before.
It’s too important to let go of. I should just lie.
“Oh yeah, I can totally use this,” she said, shaking the necklace. “Come, let’s go find your sister,” she said.
Lurim smiled at her and ran off to his section. She heard him rummaging through the shelf and things clattering on the floor. When he returned, he came with another wooden sword, a slingshot, and a pouch. He clenched his fists eagerly and gestured a fist at his own face.
Darya held a giggle, trying not to break this dramatic tension. The boy had readied himself for war. He pointed at the cave entrance after gesturing at his weapons and punching his face.
“Ah? You want to kill someone?” Darya asked before she realized that murder was hardly an appropriate topic for a toddler.
Surprisingly, the boy nodded, narrowing his eyes.
Darya shoved the Sea Crystal necklace into her pocket and lifted him off the ground. Lurim was heavily insisting that they leave the cave right now. “But I haven’t used this crystal yet,” Darya said. He hadn’t waited for her to figure out where his sister was.
The boy shook his head, patting her pocket. He patted her chest, as if to say it was her job. He pointed at himself and the entrance and waved his wooden sword. He was saying something more complicated than she thought.
“There’s someone here right now that you want to beat up?” she asked.
The boy nodded with his whole body, even flailing his legs. He was raring to go.
Darya laughed. “Fine! We’ll kick all their asses. Show me!”