Drip-Fed

A Rivalry 9 – Shipwreck

“So, I guess we just stand here and wait?” Korith asked.

“Yup-puh.” Reysha let the end of the confirmation pop, then took another bite of gorilla arm. “Want me to eat you out while we wait?”

“No!” Korith answered.

“I’d wash out my mouth first.”

“That is not the issue! There’s absolutely no cover around and there’s monsters about.”

“…Since when are we against outdoor sex?”

“Since there is no cover around!” Korith squeaked. “Why are you like this, Reysha?!”

The redhead chortled at the exasperated question. “’Cause it keeps giving me funny faces to look at… finger action, maybe?”

“N-no, Reysha, please… don’t do stupid stuff.”

“Alright fine… little bit of making out?”

Korith wanted to answer no instinctively, because of how the conversation had gone so far. After Reysha had cleaned the blood off her full lips, however, one member of their polygynous party stared at the other with a lot more than platonic desire. “O-okay… but we have to stay vigilant!”

“I’m always vigilant,” Reysha purred.

While the landlocked half of the party were doing their best to keep busy, the slime and the angel were scouting out the lake. They had been told that the crash had happened near the south shore of the lake, but well within the murky expanse of the body of water.

Aclysia hovered above, keeping a lookout for any sign her darling gave her from within the lake. In a fortunate case, she would be able to see the mast of the ship in the upper layers of the murky water. In the absence of such luck, it was up to Apexus to find the target.

The humanoid chimera was naked. Taking the robe into the water would just have created unnecessary drag. In his state of nature, Apexus was slowly walking over the lakebed. His legs vanished, often up to the thighs, in the dense carpet of water plants and soft mud. Small animals, sharp rocks, and the occasional sea urchin pricked his feet. Only the last of that list was bothersome. Apexus devoured those that got stuck on his soles by enveloping them with his membrane. His feet resembled those of elephants because of it.

The lake was an interesting ecosystem and entirely natural. Most of the worlds’ biomes had been designed by the gods that had made them. The lake had been an accidental, later creation, coming about because of the interplay between tides, strong winds, and elevation.

A hundred years were not a long time in human generations, but for fish it was plenty of time to adapt. The salinity of the lake was considerably lower than the neighbouring ocean, but it wasn’t nothing. Because of this, the lake was not used as a source of water for the surrounding wildlife. Simultaneously, the lake was not big enough to support large marine predators. In that interim, the crocodile gorillas had taken up the niche as top predator. Everything else in the lake was a smaller version of their open ocean cousins.

Apexus stopped for a moment when he felt something solid under his steps. He bowed down and pulled out an algae covered piece of wood. He dropped it again a moment later. ‘Too overgrown to be what we are looking for,’ he thought. He was walking, rather than swimming, primarily because he did not want to drift over something. Visibility was terrible. The water was utterly dominated by algae and drifting mud.

The humanoid chimera felt nostalgic at the environment. It was different from the cavity in which he had formed, but close enough to invoke memories. Things had been much simpler back then. A simplicity that, given the choice, Apexus still would have surrendered in favour of what he had now.

The shape of the ship peeled out of the ‘fog’ slowly. Apexus thought it was a rock at first, then he made out the various markers of a crafted thing. The angles, the wooden planks, the nail, one after another it became apparent.

Apexus finished digesting what was currently in his feet, then pushed himself upwards. He swam to the top of the deck and disturbed several dozen crustaceans who were working on a corpse tangled up in rope. ‘The dead sailor tried to escape after the ship had sunk,’ Apexus guessed and carefully prodded the corpse. When it did not move, he disentangled it. It was composed of too much bone now to float to the surface.

Leaving that there for a moment, Apexus inspected the rest of the ship. Dimensions, position, and design all matched their targeted vessel. They had found what they were there for after just six hours of the humanoid chimera wandering about. There were plenty of other ships wrecked in this lake that he could have stumbled over instead.

Confirmation acquired, Apexus grabbed the corpse, threw it over his shoulder, and returned to the surface. Once Aclysia had spotted him she floated over. Her moth wings vibrated softly, creating the illusion that it was them, not the magic flowing under their fuzzy surface, that kept her airborne. “it appears your

“That went smoothly,” Reysha commented when Apexus came back with the chest carried in front of him. “I don’t trust it. There’s no way we make a big amount of easy money.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Apexus requested.

“I’m doing the opposite of jinxing it. I firmly believe something fucky will happen. The Leaf will tumble into the endless void before we’re allowed to have actually good equipment and luxury stuff.”

Korith’s eyes, all the while, were glued to the chest. “C-can we open it? Can we?”

“Not yet,” Apexus answered.

“Not yet?” Aclysia landed next to the group, just as Apexus placed the chest down on a relatively dry and blood free part of the beach. “Darling, may I ask why we would open the chest at all? It is not our property.”

“I want to assure nothing crawled in. We won’t look through the contents,” Apexus stated simply. “We will not,” he repeated at Korith specifically.

“500 gold thoooooough,” the kobold whined.

“Oy, it’s my job to be the greedy, immoral one,” Reysha complained.

“It’s 500 gold. In coins.” Korith shifted her weight from one leg onto another. “Hoard disdains stealing from the undeserving, so I won’t take it, but I just want to… look at it, you know?” Excitedly, she ran a hand over the top of the chest. “Such good craftsmanship… when will we open it then?”

“When it is dry,” Apexus answered, then looked up at the fading sun. There was only a sliver of it left. They had been lucky and it still had taken them the entire day.

“I must inquire where you buried the corpse,” Aclysia said.

“Sure, bubble butt, follow along.” Reysha guided the angel over to where they had dug out and filled back up a shallow grave. “Best we could do with the tools we had. Shouldn’t be a problem, not much left to rot and all that.”

“It will have to do,” Aclysia sighed and put her hands together in prayer. “May your Spark find its rightful home in the Heavenly Trunk.”

The rest of the party stood a few steps removed, lacking the dedication to the faith to stand with the Priest. They could have done so for the show of it. Without sincerity, the gesture was unwelcome.

Nothing happened either, neither visually nor invisibly. No particles of light showed the passing on of an otherwise trapped soul nor was there an ethereal wind that blew over them with the gratitude of a departing consciousness. There was just an angel, saying her prayers for the dead, and those she travelled with standing quietly in respect of her faith.

It wasn’t until Aclysia lowered her hands that conversation resumed. “So, what next?” Reysha asked.

“Next we make camp,” Apexus stated plainly and pointed at the group of lights that was coming towards them.

The Atlas party was returning.