Turtles All The Way Down

I'm beginning to think this thing is a myth, Deidriu thought as he cast out his line again. Reeling the hook in slowly, he thought back to his run-in with Marcia Chase earlier that day.

“Any Northrend angler worth his salt knows about the pygmy suckerfish,” Marcia said. “It's not edible, but sometimes useful to alchemists. There is, however, a stealthy fish that hides among the suckerfish in the River's Heart of Sholazar Basin. The Phantom Ghostfish. When out of water, they become increasingly translucent until they fade away completely. Some hypothesize they return to Sholazar, and others are more... superstitious.”

When it came to superstition, Deidriu gave no quarter to old wives' tales and hearsay. “Bah! I'm sure there's a logical explanation. Hell, I'll go fish on up myself right now and discover this 'mystery'!” And with that, he turned from Marcia and sped off to Krasus' Landing where he'd left Aeondormu, the bronze drake he had befriended after saving a dragonspawn of the bronze dragonflight.

Deidriu sighed as he pulled in yet another barrelhead goby and placed it in his bag to sell to a vendor later. He briefly thought about how badly he needed to wash that bag, after all the strange and pungent items he'd stored in it before, then cast his line out again. Aeondormu returned from hunting elsewhere in Scholozar, a tuft of matted rhino fur dangling from his jaw.

“I take it hunting was good?” Deidriu asked.

Aeondormu spread a reptilian grin before lowering his head to drink from the waters of River's Heart. Though dragons could more or less speak telepathically, Aeondormu tended to conserve his words. After a few laps of water, he lumbered off to curl up in the shade of the nearby cliff, one lidless eye trained on the hunter he had chosen to travel with.

Deidriu's own eyes caught a slight splash off to one side, followed by a second and third. His night elven eyes focused in on the commotion and quickly identified it as a school of nettlefish. Might as well fish the pool and get some of those nettlefish, they'd go great with the glacial salmon and musselback sculpin I've got in storage, he thought. ''Hell, maybe I'll catch one of those sea turtles Gracandrea was yapping about. Apparently they love feeding on schools of fish.''

With a silent chuckle to himself, Deidriu cast out his line again. It landed just to the left of the school, but he figured it was close enough. After a few seconds, he felt a bite and pulled in a nettlefish that had a pygmy suckerfish attached to its' belly. After placing them both in his odorous bag, he cast his line out again, this time landing it dead-center of the gently frothing pool.

Suddenly, he felt a tug. A hard tug.

What in the...? he thought as he pulled the line back, reeling as fast as he could. The line was taut as a bowstring, and his fishing pole bent to a worrisome degree as he wrestled to bring in whatever monstrosity had taken hold of his line. Aeondormu lifted his head and watched intently as Deidriu fought. The struggle only lasted a few minutes, but after what felt like hours the hunter was able to pull his catch up onto land.

Whatever it was, it was HUGE. Vaguely spherical, it was hard as a rock and mostly green, with 6 holes in a rough line around it. There was a lip connecting and bordering above the holes, and the green above that lip was much darker than that below it.

Deidriu bent over to look inside one of the holes. A sudden stream of water shot out of the hole, hitting him squarely in the face, and Deidriu leapt back and yelped, prompting a roar of laughter from the bronze drake curled in the shade. Deidriu shot his companion a withering look, then watched as a smooth, but scaled head emerged from the hole. As it did so, four legs and a tail also emerged, and Deidriu realized what the thing was. 

A sea turtle! Deidriu could hardly believe it. ''Gracandrea was right! Oh, she is going to HATE me...''

Gracandrea had spent months fishing various schools of fish trying to catch one of these turtles but to no avail. As the self-proclaimed “Turtle Girl,” the paladin loved all things related to the reptiles, and owning one of these seafaring versions was one of her life's ambitions.

Grinning to himself, Deidriu jumped up on top of the turtle and quickly whispered the incantation that would bind it to him. The turtle put up no resistance, but rather looked pleased to become Deidriu's newest mount. As the final words of the spell left his lips, she (the turtle was female, Deidriu sensed) looked back up at him and blinked before gesturing to her side. Deidriu looked to where she was directing him, and saw a fish attached to her shell like one of the pygmy suckerfish, but this one was red rather than the usual green, and as Deidriu watched it slowly began to disappear.

Acting quickly, Deidriu snatched up the phantom ghostfish and swallowed it, hoping to learn from the effects of consumption what the ghostfish was doing. As he did so, the world around him fell into shadow, and he realized that the ghostfish merely passed into the aether, a dimension that Deidriu had visited many times before as a spirit when his physical body had failed him, and a dimension he had left just as many times when resurrected into his body once again.

As the effect wore off and Deidriu returned wholly to the realm of the living, he grinned and jumped down off of his new turtle, gesturing Aeondormu over so he could climb up on top of his shoulders for flight. The turtle sighed and slid back into the water until he would call it again, and Aeondormu spread his great, leathery wings to take off into the sky. 

What a story this is going to be... Deidriu thought to himself as Aeondormu carried him off toward Dalaran.

--Sangheilioz 19:12, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

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