It was a calm, still day in Laemist. The sun was shining down from the all but flat surface some seven meters overhead, and the sea was unusually clear. Merfolk were moving here and there through the slightly three dimensional town, a few of the scary, but apparently harmless sharks that they liked to keep as pets were swimming around with their owners, and in a nearby plaza a raft was straining against its chains as it was loaded up for transport to the surface.

The entire settlement was built into the reef, with enclosed structures that blurred seemlessly into coral, with entrances at all kinds of odd angles since the denizens weren't confined to a simple two dimensional plane. There weren't quite as many fish as I had seen on television programmes about reefs, as I understood it they were mainly raised elsewhere, but there were a few here and there, and further up, in the open water above, there was a pod of dolphin-like creatures that a group of merfolk children were having a great time playing with.

Usually, I visited the wondrous reef town to spend time with my girlfriend, but this time I was here on business, with also Velevir, Nathan, and Mousington in tow. We were headed to an antique shop at the far end of the reef away from Guildport, which Meria had found after making inquiries about people who could read Caith.

It was just off a large a square filled with manicured sea-grass, and unlike many of the buildings which had their crystalline windows open, the circular metal and glass portals looked like they hadn't been opened in a very long time—with coral beginning to grow them shut.

"A warning," said Meria, who had guided us to the far end of the town. "Elder S'corra can be… cantankerous."

"I'll wait outside," said Nathan.

"Me too," said Velevir.

I glared at them. "Traitors."

"Fear not, friend Charlie!" said Lord Mousington. "We shall brave this young whippersnapper's lair with you!"

"Whippersnapper?" said Meria, clearly not familiar with the Valorian word.

"He means 'a young person,'" I explained.

"But… Elder S'corra is over a century old," said Meria.

"Mous- Lord Mousington is probably thousands of years old," I said. "He refuses to say. Personally, I don't think he even remembers."

"It isn't polite to ask a gentleman's age," sniffed Mousington.

It was dark and even stiller as we made our way inside the antique shop, passing through some kind of magical filter that changed the feel and taste of the water around me—going from hard and salty to soft and salt-less.

I thought it was nice, but Meria made a face and rubbed the side of her neck where she had a set of gills. "Ugh, I hate breathing fresh."

The shop itself was laid out in a fairly standard arrangement, with aisles of shelves filled with items—even underwater, gravity still existed. What made it unusual, however, was that there were shelves that went down from the entrance-level, and ones that went above, with only a narrow horizontal plane of open water between. It gave the entire place a claustrophobic feeling, and I immediately wished I'd been able to wait outside.

The shelves themselves were groaning with a vast array of eclectic goods: books and jewellery and clothing and weapons and armour and strange, inscrutable looking devices and machines.

"Hello?" called out Meria, using one of the words of 'Southern Merfolkish,' that was the language spoken on the reef, and which I understood a little of. "Elder S'corra?"

I, of course, felt the swirling brown aura before I saw her, and a moment later an upside-down head appeared from behind one of the ceiling mounted shelves. Like most merfolk, the 'elder' had blueish skin, although hers had a few streaks of purple in it, and unlike Meria who had bright, multicoloured hair, Elder S'corra's looked like brushed steel. Her red eyes peered at us from a surprisingly unwrinkled face, and if it hadn't been for the fact that Meria had called her 'Elder' I would never have guessed she was over a century old.

"You're late," she snapped, kicking down and moving over. "You're lucky I'm not out for lunch!"

Or, at least, I think that was what she said. I definitely got 'late,' 'lunch' and 'out.'

"You, ah, said noon, didn't you?" said Meria, opening up a literal clam-shell pocket-watch and holding it up to show that the hands were both pointed downward—which made no sense to me, but that was just how merfolk made their watches.

"Bah," said the elder, not even glancing at the watch and remaining as steadfastly irritated as when we'd entered, turning her attention to me and switching to extremely excellent Valorian. "You're that Outlander, hmm? The one who's been causing so much trouble?"

"I'm Charlie, nice to meet you," I said as politely as I could manage. "Thank-you for agreeing to see me."

"What? No spine?" she said swimming closer and sticking her face inches from mine. "I heard you had spine, Outlander."

"S-sorry?" I said, looking at Meria, who offered no help.

Mousington, also, was not making himself useful, and had instead found some kind of shiny bauble and was batting it around in the water. Brilliant. Great job, Mousington.

"Spine, child—they say you pissed in Port Imperial's current," said S'corra. "Were they lying?"

"That- uh, what?" I said, thrown by the strange expression.

"It means you, err, deliberately antagonise someone," said Meria.

"Thick as a rock too, eh?" sniffed S'corra. "Thought Outlanders were smart? That's what all the legends say; guess they're wrong."

"I- I didn't do it to annoy them," I said, somewhat irritated at having my intelligence randomly insulted. "I did it to free men and women and a child who had been enslaved, reduced- reduced to the status of things!"

I exhaled.

"And this has nothing to do with why we're here," I said, bringing out a ring-bound book that was a copy of the one we'd found in the dungeon, and that I'd had replicated with magic and then spelled to be hydrophobic. "I'd like to get this translated into Valorian, please."

S'corra eyed me for a few moments, and although her face didn't change, I felt a swirl of green and rose that indicated, as far as I had been able to ascertain given the somewhat rare emotion, a degree respect.

"Let's see it then," she said, taking it out of my hands and opening it.

"Meria said it was Caith-"

"Yes, yes, obviously," said S'corra, flipping through it. "From that dungeon of yours?"

"Yes," I nodded.

"Not modern," she said after a moment, flicking to another page. "Very, very old."

My heart fell a little. "But… can you translate it?"

"I can see some cognates," she said. "And the grammar appears, more or less, similar…" She sniffed. "It will take time." She glanced up. "And you're an adventurer, right? They're rich."

"Relatively well off, yes," I said cautiously, feeling like I was walking straight into a trap.

"Then it will cost you extra," she said.

I sighed. Maybe I could get Laera to foot the bill, or something? After all, it wasn't like this was just going to benefit me and my group.

The Elder continued to be cantankerous as we hashed out the terms, and then we somewhat solemnly clasped both of our hands in what seemed to be some kind of ritual that presumably sealed an agreement.

And then, finally, we were able to get out of the cramped shop. Well, I had to pull the unhelpful Lord Mousington away from a collection of shiny crystal fish, but then we were out.

"Success?" asked Velevir as we kicked out into the objectively less pleasant salty ocean water.

"Yes, although it's going to cost us," I said. "But she seemed confident she could translate it."

"Sweet as," said Nathan. "So, like, does this place do sushi?"

"What's 'zu-shi,'" said Velevir, stumbling over the pronunciation a bit.

"It's like these seaweed rolls with fish in them-"

"That's maki," I corrected him. "Sushi is just fish, rice and vinager."

"Eh?" said Nathan. "No, I mean the big rolls, with the seaweed. You put that spicy green shit on them, goes right up your nose."

"That's maki!"

"Yeah-nah; but I mean in English, not German."

"I'm not speaking- they're all Japanese words!"

"Yapan-eez?" said Velevir, totally lost.

"Yeah babe—Japan is a big island on Earth, they've got, like, a communist government in the northern bit or something: in their language, 'ari-gah-toe' means thank-you."

I smacked my forehead.

"Oh, and what's a 'Komu-neest?'" asked Velevir, who was grinning at me widely enough to reveal her fangs, her aura surging with amused green. The little traitor, she knew that Nathan's half-baked explanations of Earth history or culture or politics drove me up the wall.

"It's like, people who believe what Chezza does and shit," said Nathan, with all the confidence in the world.

"That's Korea!" I shouted, unable to contain myself. "Not Japan, Korea! And- and no, I'm not a Jucheist-"

"Nah mate, Koreans say 'gam-sammy-dah;' I know 'cause my school did Japanese," he said easily, unperturbed by my outburst. "'Ari-gah-toe,' that's how they say thanks in Japan. My Grandad hated that I learnt it." He paused thoughtfully, or some facsimile thereof, and stroked his beard. "You know, come to think of it, I think Grandad might have been a bit racist."

"That isn't… I meant the country…" I spluttered, before giving up and hanging my head, defeated by Nathan's earnest and confident ball of mostly nonsense. "You know what, never mind."

"Anyway, I could fucking obliterate some sushi right now…"

I was distracted from Nathan's mad lunch-based declarations and mind-boggling geographical and political illiteracy by several unusual emotions, all around the edges of the little sea-grass covered square: dozens of yellow, orange, and lime auras: fear, anxiety, and nerves, all directed at us-

"Ambush!" I shouted a few moments before a bunch of spear-like shafts shot out from all around us.

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