“Okay, okay, okay,” Marisol grumbled, sitting upside down on the ceiling with her eyes closed and her arms crossed, “I knew you’d talk my ear off once I actually have time to just sit around and listen to you, but… when I said I wanted to learn about the Whirlpool City, I ain’t meant I wanted you to start far back. I’ll have you know I graduated from general school with perfect scores in history.”

  “Uh-huh. Next, you’re gonna say something along the lines of… the Swarm God showed up in Year Seventy, threatened to destroy all Six Swarmsteel Fronts by herself by working with the Six Greater Insect Gods, but then the Worm God—the legendary human who’d been fighting the Swarm since Year Sixty—showed up and beat her ass. After that, he also showed up in the Deepwater Legion Front, created the Whirlpool City, trapped Corpsetaker at the very bottom, and then established the wandering bug-slayer faction known as the Hasharana and gave them all special systems. Case-in-point, you. The Archive.”

  the Archive said curtly.

  “Of which there is only one.”

  the Archive added.

  “Well, I wish I could… send him a mental letter or something,” she mumbled, cracking her neck left and right as she did. “What’s taking him so long? The hell is he doing wherever he is?”

  The Archive shrugged on her shoulder, and she opened one eye to peek out the window. It was a really, pretty day outside. ‘Black Storm’ still hadn’t receded outside the city, but within, it’d been nothing but never-ending drizzles and brilliant shafts of sunlight falling through small gaps in the clouds. She could see the bustling main street right out the window, and that made her all the more impatient, all the more irritated. The man hadn’t even bothered visiting her the past week she’d been cooped up here.

  Cabin fever was real. And she’d gotten used to talking aloud to the Archive instead of simply thinking in her head. Though she'd spent most of the past week sleeping the last bits of drowsiness from her coma off, she simply felt she’d go insane if she didn’t hear voice every once in a while... so it might as well be her own, given the innkeepers didn’t seem so inclined to talk whenever they showed up to deliver her meals and change her sheets.

  To entertain herself whenever she wasn't sleeping, she’d spent a fair amount of time skating up the walls and sitting upside-down on the ceiling. Honestly speaking, being able to sit upside-down on the ceiling with her ‘Basic Setae’ mutation was incredibly fun. It was now her favourite pastime.

  Her next goal was to be able to sleep upside-down.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  She missed home.

  She missed that little one-room sandstone house at the edge of her desert town.

  She wanted to see her mama again.

  “… That’s it,” she muttered. “I’m leaving.”

  The Archive snapped its head at her as she dropped from the ceiling and flipped around, landing softly on her glaives.

  “Through the window. Duh. And I ain’t leaving the city. I just wanna… you know.” She skated towards the window, throwing the glass panes open and sawing slowly through the steel bars with her elbow apiclaws. “Anyone will go insane being kept in solitary confinement for seven days straight. I just wanna look around a little, have some fun, do a bit of sightseeing… maybe I’ll even dance a little for a crowd! I bet most of these folks ain’t never seen a Sand-Dancer before!”

  She smiled a little, yanking in the hacked-off steel bars one by one and stuffing them under her bed. “They ain't gonna know what hit them, then. You think they’ll toss me a few coins if I do a good job?”

  “It ain’t a crime if nobody finds out. Come on, Archive—thirty minutes, in and out. Nobody will even know.”

  the Archive sighed, waving her off.

  And, with the Archive’s ‘permission’, she flung herself out through the window and onto the curved roof on the other side of the main street.

  Her whole body relaxed immediately. The drizzle falling upon her skin was cold, but not freezing—it was rain at the right temperature to make the air feel cool and crisp. Quickly then, she slid down the side of the building and stumbled into the main street as discreetly as possible, not wanting to be spotted trespassing on private rooftops or something of the sort.

  Now, she finally let herself marvel at the city built around a volcano, eyes wide and sparkling.

  the Archive muttered,

  It was morning, just thirty minutes after she had her breakfast. She assumed most people had finished theirs as well, because the main street was already bustling with activity: shops and restaurants flung open their doors, the scents of freshly baked bread, roasted meats, and herbs wafting through the air. Down the street, cafes and taverns placed their tables outside beneath colourful canopies, and patrons sat sipping on wine, nibbling on tapas, and watching the city stir to life.

  The grand upper city was regal in the afternoon light. Women were draped in flowing silks and embroidered clothes, walking arm in arm as they admired the latest fashions displayed behind panes of crystal glass. Men, too, were dressed in tailored tunics and coats the likes of which she’d never seen before, browsing the stores with casual affluence. Streetside jewellers showed off necklaces that sparked with oceanic gems, artisans gathered crowds around them by openly painting seascapes and volcanic sunsets, and the perfumers—Marisol coughed as the perfume store right next to her opened its window shutters, letting out strong floral fragrances her nose was sorely not used to.

  But it was all so pretty, and it was all so new. She cast only one last look at the Highwind Inn before skating down the street, weaving through the crowd at breakneck speed.

  she mused, sniffing as she skated past sparkling fountains, slanted gardens and plazas. She felt revitalised just being out in the open, and it wasn’t because she’d spent the past week cooped up in a little room.

  the Archive explained.

  She drew closer and closer to the lower city, and eventually came upon a checkpoint—the same one she’d darted past a week ago—so to get around it, she slipped into a back alley, scaled a building, and then slid down. She ended up a good fifty metres away from the checkpoint before dropping back down onto the main street, laughing under her breath. Even the terracotta roof tiles and the cobbled streets of the lower city felt smooth to skate on.

  The style of buildings gradually changed from elegant stonework to rougher and weathered buildings as she skated deeper into the lower city. The main street here was narrower, but more cluttered with shops and stalls with charming hand-painted signs. Freshly caught seafood were displayed on wet shelves, bundles of herbs and spices hung from reed cords, and most windows were covered in grime and morning dew.

  But the streets here were more with people.

  Fishermen, sailors, street urchins, and merchants of all kinds went about their morning with boisterous shouts, going here and there with a sense of urgency, with a sense of purpose. It wasn’t the same as the refined men and women in the upper city. They haggled with merchants, they slunk through the alleys, and they navigated the thin spaces between crates and barrels just like she was. She immediately felt more at home in this part of the city. There was the air of grit and survival, camaraderie and the raw energy of life spilling out onto the streets.

  She had half a mind to just find an empty spot, set up a donation basket, and start putting on a show like some of the street performers juggling twelve torches with four insect hands, but then she skated past a particularly eye-catching building squeezed between two fish markets.

  The walls were shabby and daub, exposed timber beams jutting out the collapsed roof—it was evident nobody lived inside anymore—but the front door was still intact, albeit a little cracked and splintered from decades of neglect. Something about the subtly different scent wafting out the top of the abandoned building had given her pause, and it wasn’t until she squinted at the little iron plate on the door that she realised who the building once belonged to.

  the Archive murmured.

  She skated up the porch and touched the iron plate, wiping dust off the carved ‘Vellamira’ name.

  If her mama hadn’t left the Whirlpool City, this two-story building would’ve been her home, and the fish market folks her neighbours.

  In another life, would she have somehow discovered Sand-Dancing if she’d grown up in the Whirlpool City?

  Her lips twisted, her eyes watered, and she had to force herself to turn away from the old Vellamira Household.

  “And it ain't like we ain't gonna let you go home at all,” Victor said, and his voice made her whirl. The bandaged man was leaning against a stack of crates with a bottle of ale in his hands, and he took a swig by pouring the ale right through his bandages as she scowled. “Sorry about the wait. Took me... a while to put things in order, what with the... Guard you punched... and the prison cell I cut through. Right now, though… the reason why we can’t let you leave… well, there’s many reasons, first being the fact that you physically can't leave with 'Black Storm' active… but the main thing is—”

  “—finish your drink first—”

  “The Imperators could use your help,” he finished, tossing the glass bottle into a back alley where it shattered faintly. “No matter what anyone says about you, you kill the Mutant-Class shrimp without any formal training, and that makes you an indispensable asset in the Imperators’ eyes. They'll force you to fight for them. They'll make you work yourself down to the bone for as long as you’re alive, and while being an acting Flower Cape under my protection will give you a considerable degree of freedom most Imperators don’t have, it won't be easy.”

  She scowled even harder and frowned at the back alley. “I can tell you guys are busy.”

  The old man ignored her. “You ain’t trained for this, lass. Just say the word, and I'll pull a few strings to get you out of this. Just stay a civilian and wait until the Imperators deal with 'Black Storm', and then the city will resume selling vials of healing seawater again. You can spend your time up here earning enough Scales to pay for it once the store reopens."

  She pursed her lips as he crossed his arms, waiting for the response he already knew he was going to get.

  “... But what if I wanna help?”

  "You ain’t trained for this."

  "But I help, I’ll get to accompany the Imperators on their missions down into the whirlpool?"

  “Yeah."

  "And if I help, I can get down to that 'Depth Eight' or whatever myself?"

  "Sure."

  "And if I get there, no one will mind if I, you know, secretly bottle a vial of healing seawater myself?"

  "I suppose you won't have to work for Scales up here if you bottle it directly at the source."

  "Then I'm helping," she said firmly. "I'm diving down to Depth Eight whether you want me to or not. My journey ain't over until I'm back home, sand-dancing with my mama."

  In response, he smirked under his bandages as he pushed off the crates, trudging slowly up the main street while beckoning her to follow.

  “Then take it up with the Harbour Imperatrix in Lighthouse Seven,” he said. “He wants to meet you, in any case. And be polite. He's only the most powerful man in the entire city."