Hiking The Deep

[Bob-Kyle]

Donovan kicked idly in the water to keep his depth roughly twenty feet
below the surface. He sheathed his sword and watched with mild interest
the flashes of cannons going off above and as pirate after pirate broke
the surface. One of the pirates who had a peg leg grasped onto Donovan's
leg as he was unable to swim back towards the surface and was running
out of air. Looking down, Donovan met the man's eyes, and could see the
wild sense of fear the man had as he was scrambling to climb up Donovan
towards the surface.

Placing his hand reassuringly on the
pirate's shoulder, Donovan smiled. A moment later a concentrated burst
of light and heat seared the man from shoulder to his opposite hip.

Donovan
shrugged off the upper half of the now bisected pirate, who's dilated
pupils, furrowed brow, and gasping mouth communicated an expression of
shock and anguish that would have possibly amused Donovan if he hadn't
already started scanning the surface again.

A small splash caught
his attention.

Finally.

Mordecai sped his way towards
where Donovan was waiting.

"Del tempo.
Che faceva lei?"

Le scuse per
il ritardo. Il loro combattimento si divertiva ed ero distratto.
L'isola che lei cercano riguarda una settimana ed un mezzo est dovuto di
qui.'

"Bene. Ringraziarla per i
suoi sforzi. La voglio stare col gruppo al di sopra di e la relazione a
me quando niente di importanza succede. Capisce?"

Mordecai
nodded his understanding, gestured a polite greeting to Sereph, and
then shot up towards the surface.

Turning to Sereph, "Our destination is about a week and a half due
east, traveling at my pace." He grinned, knowing that Sereph
could easily make the journey in only a few days at his tempo. "Shall we get going, then?"

-----------------------------------------------------------

Quest Participants: Donovan and Sereph

Quest
Rewards: Unknown

[Bob-Kyle]

Sereph watched as the small dragon flitted through the water as easily
as it would the air, and wondered (not for the first time) whatever
happened to his cat.

Donovan spoke, or...thought he did,
seeming to forget that human vocal chords don't work underwater. Nor do
their ears do very well picking up the vibrations zoran vocal chords
are able to create, and even if they could it'd be highly doubtful a
human brain would be able to discern it from all of the background
static without years and years of practice.

So, Sereph floated
eye level with Donovan, reassembled his naginata and attached it to his
back, then motioned with his hand to lead on. For the impatient and
rather--well, lets say selfish--zora, it would be a long week. Though
of course, he didn't know that yet, nor was he likely to without a
lively game of charades.

[Bob-Kyle]

"What are you, mute all of a sudden? What's
with the hand gestures? I'm right here, speak to me." Donovan
looked at Sereph, a little worried his friend may have hit the water a
little to hard.

"Are you alright?
Wait... oh. Heh. Let's get moving, and I'll explain." He kicked
off Eastward and began to explain to Sereph, who was following at his
direct flank.

"In my absence I had
some spare time so I took a closer look at the Jabu Jabu Scale you gave
me. I noticed a few similarities to another... well, let's just say I
toyed with it a little bit and though some trial and error I've managed
to modify it somewhat." He parted through the various garment
layers on his chest and revealed a shiny silver scale over his right
lung, fused into a bright, translucent layer of cloth. "I took the base qualities of the Scale and
aplified them with a few tricks of my own doing. As long as I'm wearing
this garment, I can breath indefinitely underwater, I'm more resistant
to the immense pressures of deep sea, and I can speak as well as if I
were above the waves. Won't let me speak Zoran, though. Try as I might."

Donovan
frowned slightly with what looked like annoyance, and then flashed that
very specific smile that he used when he wanted people to know he
didn't want them to know something.

[Bob-Kyle]

As any creature with wildly different habitats could tell you, moving
from one to the other changes your perceptions and actions. For Sereph,
or any zora for that matter, the change from being surrounded by air to
submerged in water changed what in that environment he paid attention
to. So, when Donovan had begun talking, it hadn't registered as speech,
but instead as noise, much the way a foreigner speaking their native
tongue will sound. After a minute of their conversation, Sereph nodded,
and spoke. The common tongue of Hyrule was not meant to be spoken
through water, and as such the dark scaled zora's speech sounded slow,
garbled, and drowned to his human companion and navigator.

"Very
well, in that case can you swim for that long? If not, it will be
easier reaching the bottom now rather than waiting til we need to stop
for rest," he said, speeding up and swimming in a deteriorating spiral
with Donovan as the central axis, creating what would have looked like
an arrowhead from a distance--Sereph's way of stretching. "It would
probably be more interesting than just swimming for a straight week as
well," he added, swimming backwards in front of Donovan.

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