32.1 As you kiss the mermaid, you begin to feel like you are suffocating. You gasp for breath, but it is to no avail. Your hands, feet, and head begin to tingle. Suddenly the mermaid grabs you and pulls you out of the airship, and you both crash into the water below.

You are instantly revived by the salt water. You can breathe freely again. The mermaid seems to be draggind you downward.

"Open your eyes." She whispers into your ear. You open them. You can see perfectly underwater.

A vast undersea city stretches before you, with shrines, palaces and towers. It is filled with a strange luminescence.

"Did your people build this city?" You ask.

"We have no need to. Many cities have vanished beneath the waves, more than you can imagine, cities of the humans, and of those that came before, and those that came before those that came before. And sunken ships are our playthings. But we maintain the them, and sometimes improve them in small ways." She says, pointing at a column with engravings that must be in the mermaid style of art. They are like nothing you have ever seen before.

"We have been to all of them, save one, the land of the race from which we are descended, whose streets our ancestors walked when they still had legs, forsaken Eridae, city of the lords of the atlantic."

"You don't like it then?" You asks. She shudders in silence and does not reply to your question.

"You must know," She then says, "that if my sisters see you, they will never let you go. Humans are too interesting, or at least, the sort that would dare to kiss a mermaid are. But I must be fair; mermaids are not especially virtuous, but each of us has a single virtue, and to that one virtue we are absolutely faithful. And my virtue is fairness. So I will give you a choice. You may either go back to your dry, boring world above the waves, or journey with me to the beautiful magnificent city beneath the ocean.

>If you return to your dry, boring home, go to 36.4

>If you journey to the undersea city, go to 51.1