With everyone staring at her, Atzi shrunk. Xathy sped off with her food.

  The serving lady looked at Atzi, her one eye filled with suspicion. "You're not filling Xathy's head with stories, are you?"

  "I-it's complicated, we're not messing with her though." Atzi scrambled up to the counter. "But uh, you probably wanna keep that stuff to yourself for now, just in case?"

  Murmurs broke out all around her. One of Atzi's eyes twitched.

  You know what, this isn't my fault at all, actually. They shouldn't have let her into the meeting if this is a problem. And since it's not my fault, I have no duty to stop it. Having assured herself, Atzi sighed in relief. "Can I just get some food, too?" she asked the serving lady.

  The serving woman paused for a moment, then served Atzi the same plate as Xathy. "Here."

  "This is my table! Sit here!" Xathy called from nearby, having claimed a table for herself.

  Atzi went to sit with her, escaping the crowd. The others joined them shortly.

  The table was covered in a mess of scratches. The most common was the name 'Xathy', sometimes misspelled 'Xatty' or 'Xathi'. Crude stick figures of cyclopes and bats and Atlanteans played across it.

  Instead of eating, Xathy immediately took out a sharp piece of stone and began thumping it on the table, trying to carve something in. The action rocked the table, making it impossible for anyone to eat.

  "Cease," Terra stated.

  "I thought you were here to eat?" Atzi asked Xathy.

  "Huh?" Xathy blinked. "Oh yeah!" She began eating, project forgotten.

  Atzi stared at her silently, before returning to her own food. Even though she wasn't familiar with the cuisine, she ate ravenously. It was her first meal since they left the mountainside.

  -

  After she finished, she realized she hadn't been asked to pay for her food. "So food here's free?" She asked Hemm, excited.

  "Three meals a day. But you need to eat what they serve," Hemm said.

  "So it's free, but you don't get any choice. Does that mean you have to eat 'bat food' like the innkeeper was moaning about?"

  "Yeah," Hemm said. "Don't mind her, she's just someone set in her ways."

  "She must be pretty old if she's that big, yeah." Atzi took a look around the cafeteria. The room was overwhelmingly filled with cyclopes and bats, but she found it interesting that there were only a few Atlanteans. "So, are there a lot less of the fish guys around or do they just not eat with everyone else?"

  "Huh?" Hemm looked around. "Huh. Now that you mention it…" She shook her head. "No, normally there's a lot more. I wonder why they aren't here."

  "I miss my fish friends but a lot of them haven't been here for weeks!" Xathy said.

  "Weeks?" Atzi asked.

  "Weeks! Like, this many!" She holds up three clawed fingers.

  "Did they say anything? Does anyone know why?" Atzi asked.

  Xathy scootched back her chair, then clambered atop of it. She cupped her claws around her mouth. "Hey, where did all my fish friends go?!"

  Atzi shrank again. She felt more attention, especially when they were already looked at by a bunch of people as 'the enemy', wasn't great.

  She thought about any way to distract herself. In doing so, she remembered something, and looked over to Terra. "Hey, don't you owe me a hundred gold?"

  Terra nodded. "So I do." She took a coin pouch off her waist and pushed it over to Atzi.

  Atzi grabbed the money and put it on her own belt.

  In that time, an Atlantean padded over. Atzi remembered her as one of the people she saw staying in the same public house as them.

  Up close, Atzi couldn't help but pay attention to the short fish woman's see-through scales. They weren't fully so, the sight underneath murky, but Atzi could make out the blurry figures of her organs in her neck. The purple tinted blood running through her veins. The movements of thin muscles as she raised her head. She could even make out what must be bones. It was altogether a strange sight.

  "Xathy, I told you before," the Atlantean burbled. Despite not being in or near any water, it sounded like she was speaking through it.

  Xathy sat back down. "Oh yeah!"

  The Atlanteans were of particular interest to Atzi, since if there was any of their old gods that might be her nameless patron, it was theirs. Atzi asked, "What happened to the rest of them?"

  She looked at Atzi and raised a clawed finger, making an obvious 'aha!' look on her face. "A crystal and I'll tell you."

  Atzi grumbled. It's what I'd do, so I can't fault it, but I can complain. She pulled out three bronze coins, her leftovers from what she'd left Sostra with. "S'all I've got, how about this?"

  Atzi barely saw it as the fish woman's webbed hand swooped out and grabbed the coins. She held them up and inspected them. "We don't use these here," she said.

  "Well-"

  And then she ate them.

  Atzi stared. She almost thought she could make out the small dark lumps of the coins as they moved through the woman's throat. "Y-you eat bronze?" she asked.

  "What?" the Atlantean stared back at Atzi. "I'm just putting it in my stomach for later."

  That's one way to keep it safe. "So if you buy anything, you gotta throw up first?"

  The Atlantean blinked, making a sloshing noise. "More questions cost more money."

  "No, they've just got flexible organs," Hemm explained, "so they can reach in and take stuff out easily."

  Atzi tried not to look too grossed out. "So, the others?"

  The fish woman looked at Hemm with a frown, and then back at Atzi. "Yeah. So a few weeks back a bunch of other fish people showed up through the underwater caverns! They looked different than us, more like you all" - she pointed to Marco and Terra - "but with scales and fins. And suddenly a bunch of people just started… leaving with 'em! A few at first, then more when the war started." The Atlantean grinned, showing off her sharp teeth. "I'm still here because now I'm top fish! Nobody else to take my salvage!"

  Other fish people? Does that mean the caves connect to the ocean? "So most of them are gone 'cause they wanted to see what was up with these guys? Or they offered something or what?"

  "More questions, more money," she repeated.

  "Ugh..." Reminds me of Fence. Atzi pulled out three more bronze.

  "I knew you had more!" She ate those, too.

  "Yeah yeah. So?"

  She wiped her mouth. "Right, so, there's this recruiter lady still here. She's trying to get any and all of us to go with her. Promising lots of stuff. Something about an opportunity to rule the ocean. Me, I'm too smart to buy that crap. But a lot of people did."

  "Rule the ocean? What's the point in that- oh, I guess you can breathe down there, huh?"

  "Yeah! And on land! Sucks for you land-onlys!"

  "Yeah, well... I've got stuff I bet you can't do, so there."

  The Atlantean made a dismissive noise. "I bet I could beat you at anything. You don't look that tough."

  A devious thought crossed Atzi's mind. "How about a drinking contest?"

  The Atlantean considered it for a second, then smiled. "'Kay."

  -

  Qun - that was the fish woman's name - took Atzi to the largest mushroom yet, both wide and tall.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Despite the very large building, Atzi could only see a small portion of it from where she entered, the rest blocked off by carved stone walls. She saw several benches, plus three desks, two of them currently staffed.

  One had a bored-looking cyclops woman with long black hair and several crystal piercings adorning her face, smoking what looked like swamp weed.

  Do they even have swamp weed down here?

  The other was a muscular and excited looking bat. He had a single crystal piercing atop one of his tall, fuzzy ears.

  Atzi wandered up to the cyclops.

  The woman didn't look at Atzi. Instead she took a big long toke, before blowing out some smoke. "Yeah?"

  "I wanna buy mushroom ale."

  "Three crystals a cup."

  "Three? A cup?!" Atzi's tail stood up.

  "Yeah. Unless you got ration orders."

  "People are paying that much for it?" Atzi leaned forward on the counter. "I gotta live here now, I can't just spend all I've got on a stupid bet." Atzi complained. "Bet's off!" She called back to Qun. Then she said to the cyclops, "Two cups then."

  The cyclops at the desk took the gold. She stepped down some stairs Atzi couldn't see. A minute later, she came back up with a bag that sloshed with unseen liquid. No actual cups.

  "You… got any cups?" Atzi asked.

  "One crystal for two," the cyclops said.

  Atzi grumbled and handed over another gold.

  The cyclops woman took them and grabbed two cups, too, returning them along with Atzi's change. "Try to give your entire order at once next time."

  "You said they were three a cup, I figured that meant the cup came with it."

  The cycloped looks at Atzi with a heavy eyelid.

  "...Whatever." Atzi went to sit on a bench with Qun, and poured both of their cups. "First of all, you weren't gonna win the bet." Atzi took a sip of hers.

  "Yeah I was." Qun grabbed her cup in both hands.

  "Can you get drunk?"

  Qun drank greedily, and then set down her cup before making a satisfied sound. "Yeah, but I can do something you can't."

  "Oh yeah? What's that."

  Qun held out her arm. Atzi watched as all the alcohol the fish woman just drank streamed into her arm, filling it like a waterskin, making the space underneath murky.

  "Nice trick, till you get full. I don't get drunk either." Atzi said, downing her own drink. "Cause I got dragon blood."

  "What, like a cave dragon?" Qun asked.

  "Swamp dragon! I can shoot poison and everything."

  "...Show me."

  "Sure. Pick a target."

  The Atlantean pointed at a dragonfly sitting on the wall.

  Atzi spat a glob of poison at the dragonfly sitting on the wall.

  Atzi's poison struck the dragonfly. It sizzled and immediately fell from the wall, dead.

  "Woah!"

  "Yeah, I'm pretty cool." Atzi swept back her hair. "Alright Qun. I wanna learn stuff while I'm here. Stuff that's awkward to ask about. Not to do with the war or anything, that'll be over pretty soon, but still kinda taboo to ask about. You feel me?"

  Qun nodded. "Since you bought me a drink, figure that pays for a few questions."

  Atzi leaned over. "Before the Uniter there were other gods, yeah? Asshole ones, probably, if you got rid of them."

  "Oh, the three banished gods from the stories? Yeah. Dunno if they were actually real though." Qun shrugged.

  "Yeah, those ones. I wanna find out about the one you guys had, the fish one."

  "Ah, yeah. Okay, so picture this. Cyclopses, they got a god. Bats. They got a god. We Atlanteans? We got a god."

  Atzi nodded. I know that part.

  "And they're making us fight all the time because they all want to own the entire cave." Qun bumped her two fists against each other. "Anyway, our god, she was real mean. If anyone failed her she would eat them alive as an example to the rest. She was huge, only the cyclops god was bigger. Had like, three rows of teeth and a crab in her mouth."

  "A crab in her mouth?" This doesn't sound like mine at all… "What's her name? What happened to her? Anything like that."

  "Right, okay. Well, they're just called the three banished gods now. Nobody knows their names. 'Cept maybe the Uniter himself. He's the one who prevented anyone from learning 'em, assuming the story's true. That way they couldn't come back."

  "Ohhh. So there's no record of them, at all? And the only one who knows is the Uniter?"

  "Just the stories they tell us as kids as a lesson to all get along."

  "Maybe." Not like I've got much hope of seeing a god to ask 'hey, so, the other god you beat up might be talking to me'. "So the way they look, that's just like, what the stories say? There's nothing else?"

  "It's full of a bunch of stuff about how evil and cruel and petty they were," Qun said in a deeper voice. Then her voice lightened. "And noble and powerful and righteous the Uniter was."

  "Oh yeah, that kinda stuff. So it could all just be made up." Atzi groaned.

  "'Course, I guess there's always" - Qun looked around conspiratorily - "her."

  "Her?"

  "Artist bat lady." Qun leaned closer, lowering her voice. "She tried painting pictures of the gods, saying they came to her in a dream. But then a decree came down from the Uniter that forbade her from showing them. It was a big thing a few weeks ago."

  "A few weeks ago?" Atzi blinked. "Right when those other fish guys showed up right?"

  "Yeah, 'round then." Qun shrugged.

  Maybe there's something going on there. "Where is she?"

  "She's been keeping to her house, hasn't even been out to eat. She probably has food in there though."

  "Probably, but good stuff wouldn't keep well." Atzi thought. "I've got an idea." She walked up to the cyclops quartermaster. "Hey, you can buy bugs here, right? What's the best stuff you've got?"

  She blinked her heavy lidded eye slowly. "The most expensive bug is Luminant Moths. Three gold an ounce."

  Atzi gawped. "You're just jacking the price up cause I'm not from here, aren't you?"

  "No," came the plain reply.

  Atzi put six gold on the counter. "Better be good..."

  -

  She slipped the small bag of insects into her tail-pouch as she returned to Qun. The moths were yellow, less glowy than she had expected from the name, and quite dead. "Alright, let's go find this bat."

  Qun walked out with her. "You ain't too bad for a foreign weirdo, you know that?"

  "I'm not weird," Atzi whined.

  Qun made a burbling noise. "You're totally weird."

  "Like you'd even know!" Atzi stomped a clawed foot. "I bet I'm the first Pomarian you've ever met."

  "Yeah! That's what makes you weird!"

  "Well, just so you know, I'm pretty great for a Pomarian." Atzi stood up a little straighter. "Most lizards would kill for a tail like this." She swished her tail.

  She looked at Atzi's tail. "I don't get it."

  "Yeah, that's weird." Atzi shook her head. All scales, no tails. "What do you guys have then? Big fins? Nice gills?"

  "Huh?" Qun took a moment, and then made a noise of understanding. "You mean like these." Qun flashed her pointed smile. "Sharp teeth! The bigger, the better."

  "Seems like that part's pretty universal," Atzi said. "Big tails, big tits, big teeth."

  "Yeah. Bats are the same way with their wings," Qun said. "And Cyclopses their eye."

  "Bigger the eye, the better?"

  Qun nodded.

  "So... if you were complimenting a cyclops girl, you'd say like 'your eye's looking really big today'?"

  Qun stopped and doubled over laughing, hiccuping at one point.

  Atzi whined. "That bad?"

  Qun got herself down to a small few chuckles. She looked up at Atzi. "You'd talk about how pretty her eye is!"

  "Shit. Right, pretty, pretty. Calling it big probably makes you sound like a creep." Atzi groaned.

  "You got your eyes on that cyclops girl with you?" Qun guessed. She continued walking again.

  Atzi rubbed her arm. "It's... complicated."

  "What's complicated about it?" Qun gave a short laugh. "Either you two wanna swap fluids or you don't."

  It was Atzi's turn to stop in her tracks. "Fucking hells, you aren't subtle at all. And it's complicated cause I like her, alright?"

  "My point stands."

  "Like, of course I wanna screw her, I'm not blind and stupid, but," Atzi's voice dropped to a whisper, "I think she likes me. So maybe I screw up and she gets hurt and..."

  Qun groaned, loud and fierce. "You're overthinking it! Grab life by the fins!"

  And suppose it does work out. What happens when things reset? Atzi didn't say.

  "I bet you're just scared she doesn't like you."

  Atzi sighed. "It'll be really, really awkward if she doesn't."

  Qun kicked a rock. "Yeah, I guess. But then you gotta make up your mind. Do it or don't."

  "Argh. I'll... figure it out tonight. First, I wanna meet this bat."

  -

  Eventually they reached the place where, according to Qun, the artist lived. Atzi was happy to finally arrive, because it was a long walk to get there. It was a pretty standard looking mushroom house, pretty much like all the others they passed. Things weren't neatly organized into rows like the homes in Sostra were, but Atzi felt their placement wasn't random, either.

  Atzi knocked on the door. "What's her name?" she asked.

  Qun shook her head. "No idea."

  "Then let's hope she's friendly."

  Atzi waited, but there was no answer. She knocked again. "Hey, is anyone there?"

  Again, no response.

  Atzi tried the door, but it was locked. She looked for a window, but there was only one on the second floor, covered by a dark cloth on the inside. There was no way up.

  "Qun. Can you keep lookout for me?"

  "Why, are you gonna break in?"

  "Yeah? I gotta talk to her."

  "...You still got money on you?"

  "A whole gold if you make sure no-one sees this or interferes. Deal?"

  "Deal!"

  Qun turned around and to keep lookout.

  Atzi could sense a kindred spirit to her former self. And to her current self, if she was being honest. Except, currently she was rich.

  Atzi tried to pick the lock, only to notice it was different from what she was used to. Not metal, but some sort of stone mechanism. Looking more closely at the door, she noticed it seemed to be sealed tight.

  Definitely trickier, but the same principles should apply. Pomarian locks weren't quite the same as Sostrian ones, and I adapted just fine.

  It was heavier, so Atzi needed to put more force into it than usual, enough that she worried her lockpicks might break.

  Finally, she managed to open the lock with a click.

  Atzi gave a satisfied chuckle. "Not bad, huh?" she said to Qun, while slowly sliding the door open.

  The first thing she noticed was the smell. Rotten, putrid, and reminding her all too much of many of the times she had died.

  Atzi retched a little.

  The door swung open further.

  "Oh Water... fuck..."

  The floor and walls were covered in rancid, drying blood. It was smeared over as though someone had taken care to cover every spot. Some splatters of blood stuck to the ceiling, an occasional drop splashing down. Something terrible had happened here.