Pandemona – how weird it still felt to actually call herself that and know she’d been given the blessing to do so – liked the Jiridion Belt. She liked it so much that she was determined to leave it at the very first opportunity that presented itself, before she could grow tired of it.

  There was a chaotic vibe to it. The vilge she now found herself in – Dona Shay – was a ramshackle collection of huts that had been cobbled together from other, more superior buildings that had once been mighty, but had fallen apart and been reappropriated. There was an improvisation, an artistic hand that guided the pce. One that used statues of unknown heroes of old to now prop up the roof if a market stall here, and pieces from what looked like a mausoleum serving now as a brothel.

  No one in town knew what had been here before Dona Shay. A great city of old, to be certain, that had fallen. But no one knew for certain if it had fallen to war, pgue, famine, in-fighting, or any number of other factors that were the great reaper of eternal empires.

  What Dona Shay now was a port. It was a marketpce that had grown into existence out of the need for sailors of the south to have somewhere to meet that wasn’t the Siyan Isnds. Oh, everyone respected and loved the Siyan people in peacetime. They were said to be great at parties, and fun to be around, though never leave your wife alone with one of their infamous penoa.

  But if the wind shifted just so, if the crops didn’t yield a bountiful harvest, or their nets pulled up nothing but seaweed, then there was always the danger of them turning ‘Oloawei.’

  No one really liked to talk about it, and when they did, it was in hushed whispers. To Pandemona, it had sounded like they would descend on their neighbours like some kind of monstrous locusts, and in a way, it was true.

  Turned out, ‘Oloawei’ just meant ‘Viking.’

  The colourful isnds to the north would put away their fishing nets and repce them with spears, and go hunting for different game. They didn’t do it as a whole nation. The Siyan Isnds never decred war on anyone. They just happened to enjoy a little looting and piracy every few years or so.

  Dona Shay was a bit more diverse than the usual city in Reylorien, the World of Fell. From what Pan had heard, the various tribes in this world didn’t like to intermingle. Something about the Dreamers not wanting their subjective people to mix. No one seemed to know why, just that it was the norm. But the people of Dona Shay were the exception.

  Here, Criobani traded with Dereii and Siyan alike. Sassians shared drinks with Mikovians. This was the nd of misfits.

  To Pan, it kind of felt like home.

  She’d never felt comfortable in her own skin. She’d never been the person she wanted to be, no matter what she tried. Always an outcast, even among outcasts. She’d never known what to do with that.

  But walking these streets, where no one cared who they were supposed to be…. That kind of felt right.

  She leaned on her improvised spear – the dagger Holt had supplied, affixed to a wooden pole – as she made her way to the docks. She tried to affect a limp, or maybe a hobble, or possibly even a stagger, trying to look like she needed the spear as a walking stick. Not for any particur reason. It just seemed like the thing to do.

  She walked down the docks, as was her daily ritual, just to see Gorin, the old ship captain, setting his small ship out for his daily quest. He was just beginning to cast off lines as Pan walked up.

  “Better get on board quick,” he said, blowing out his moustaches in annoyance.

  This was their thing. Every day, she said she’d be joining him, and then was always te. He always waited, and then as he saw her approaching, began to try to leave and say he almost departed without her. It was a good working retionship. She got to annoy someone, and he got to pretend to be annoyed, both of them partaking in their favourite pastimes.

  She leapt onto the ship as if the jump were nothing, and settled into her corner on the deck, shooting him a smile. He pretended to not notice.

  He busied himself with work about the ship. Pan busied herself with a nap. She’d been awake two whole hours. Walking around just took it out of a person.

  When she woke up from a soft kick, it was hours ter based on how high the sun was in the sky. Gorin gave her a dirty look, but said nothing. They had a routine, and it was her turn now.

  Pan yawned, stood up, stretched, and stripped down to her underwear. One thing she was gd for in this fantasy world, the underwear was surprisingly good and not at all some kind of medieval shift or poncy full body covering. It wasn’t quite what you’d find in her world – the real world? There was still a big question mark on that – but it wasn’t worse.

  The water was the kind of blue green you only saw on tourism ads for some kind of timeshare or couples’ resort, but it was ruined by the interspersed reef up ahead. Reef that wasn’t actually reef, but the rocks of a long dead city that had succumbed to the ocean. Towers and pieces of buildings poked out from the surface, and while the architecture was pretty, the waves didn’t care. They’d crash you against it all the same and smoosh you into oblivion if you weren’t careful. Which Pan wasn’t. The amount of times she’d been rocked against those buildings was lumping together into an impressive high score to failure. But that was what she had a Tenacity score for.

  Not that it protected her from the rocks. Or the waves. Or fall damage. But it did let her heal from getting hurt.

  It was the only reason she had the job. Most divers didn’t have the luxury of soul power. It was why she was also very well compensated for what she did.

  “Hoop?” she asked, and Gorin grunted.

  He handed her three metal hu-hoops. Well, they weren’t actually hu-hoops. But they were about that size and shape, and she’d used one of them for just that purpose one time, much to Gorin’s annoyance.

  She didn’t know what kind of metal they were, but they didn’t rust. Iron and steel were supposed to do that if you left them underwater too long, she was sure. But then how many metal boats didn’t rust from underneath? Or did they? If they did, that seemed kind of silly. You’d think they’d go with something that wouldn’t.

  She looped her arm through them until they were resting on her shoulder, and then with her makeshift spear in hand, jumped into the water.

  Cold hit her, but it was a good kind of cold. Bracing. Refreshing, even. It definitely didn’t feel like she’d been punched in the dy parts with an icy fist at all.

  “Breathe,” Gorin said, which was what he always said. Always followed by, “Take it in, then send it out. Cycle.”

  She gred at him, and he answered by tossing her the goggles she’d forgotten yet again to put on. As always, putting them on one-handed in the water was kind of an awkward mess, but she managed, and then descended.

  The water wasn’t very deep. Twenty feet, maybe? And it wasn’t salt water. Apparently this part of the ocean was being fed by underwater caverns and aquifers and something about glyph stones. Pan stopped paying attention whenever Gorin tried to expin it to her. Someone else might find it neat, but it was just another part of the world that she didn’t need to know.

  How to survive until the next day, and then the next, and all the others until she could get home, that was what she cared about. And the best way to do that was to earn enough money to get out of the Jiridion Belt and over to the Siyan Isnds.

  Too bad she couldn’t get a Pact. Old Gorin had ughed himself silly when she’d asked if he knew anything about that. Apparently there was no Dreamer for the Jiridion Belt.

  So that meant she needed protection. And the best pce to get it also happened to be the pce she wanted to go anyway.

  She just really hoped she wasn’t Single White Femaling GrandTheftOtter. Even if she kind of was. Definitely was. Was it really so bad, though? To want to emute the woman you admired so much? There wasn’t anything wrong with hero worship, was there?

  For the hundredth time since finding out who GrandTheftOtter really was, she had to resist the urge to be a creep and message her. Oh, her intentions were probably pure. But there were still intentions. And she felt guilty about them.

  No, none of that. She sucked in a breath, and dove into the beautiful waters of the Jiridion Belt, and began to swim.