"Live, for, The-Water-God! Kill, for, The-Water-God! Die, for, The-Water-God!"

Many offer you gifts and blandishments, most either you reject out-of-hand or they reject you out-of-hand.

Some are more notable, such as the goddess of the elves: Asihlliel.

"Well met, Dame Dragon, what you have done for me and my people is beyond price. I cannot possibly express the depths of my gratitude for your granting Delathwyn's wish and restoring my direct access to this world. Know that among the elves who are all my children, you are now known as 'Illithwey: Friend of the Elves' and will be made welcome among their numbers in such manner as they are capable of accommodating. Even though you have already done so much, and it may seem ungracious to ask more of you, I'm afraid I have **** but to do so. Please, aid me to restore my children to what they once were before the sundering. I fear that Andea means to destroy them utterly and leave them as slaves to the human's pleasure. I know you were once human also, but you have made it a point to ally with many Elven Companions, so I hope that you will be willing to settle me with your PACT and do more in my service." Asihlliel begins, and you entertain the thought for a moment.

"Hang on, I'm getting another call." You growel, and switch to the god of the sea.

"Hello, you have reached the 6th Greater Dragon's office, whom may I say is calling?" You say as your opening line.

"Heh, humor, how refreshing. I am Nectos, God of the Seas, and you, are the sixth greater dragon. I'm sure you are being offered many Pacts, but I have seen what you have made of yourself, and it has put you in a position where I can give you far more than most others. It is true that I have few worshipers on land, but almost everyone who lives beneath the waves is my devoted deciple, and in this manner, I can offer you rulership of an empire which Eclipses any on land that exist today or ever has existed in the past."

You're a touch skeptical. "I'm feeling similar offers being made by other gods; you're going to have to sweeten the pot," You counter.

"It's true that the others may offer you empires, but are any of them offering you their own Daughter as a Companion?" Nektos asks.

"Now you have my full attention," You respond, and observe closely as a swirling sheen of water forms a flat disk showing a distant place beneath the sea. There you behold an haughty and proud princess, who seems to be able to sense your gaze and looks at you, and her father, with anger and resentment, but also a dignified refinement, not naked rage, but a deadly bitterness at her father treating her not even like a pawn instead of a queen, but rather a mere bargaining chip.

"Yes, she is angry now, and proud, it's true, so she will take more convincing than the average person that my offering her to you as a Companion has ultimately been for the best, but patience and diligence will ultimately bring her around, especially if you are patient and diligent in my service, as she has always known that it is her destiny to serve me and my goals as one of my daughters, and that this might include a political marriage. Think of her, in the parlance of your previous world, as a Tsundere. Angry and resentful at first, but with an inner core of slowly growing desire, which she will of course fight against, but her nature is to serve my interests, and if you serve my interests the rising of her love for you shall be as inexorable as the tide and as hungry as the seas."

"But she couldn't join me on land." You muse, considering his offer.

"Not quite true." Nectos says, and the image in the swirling water changes. "This is The Amulet of the Seas, one of seventeen such that I forged in the days leading up to the sinking of Atlantis, as your world called it, where I was known as Poseidon, or Neptune. Atlantis was a great power that had found ways to dig water tunnels between the pools in the astral that you mortals think of as worlds, and though I was **** to punish them by the other gods for their sins, a few handfuls of people deserved to be saved for their immense devotion to me and my teachings, thus, the Amulets, which let those born to the land grow the tail, fins, and gills of a fish in the water, while those of the seas grow legs and lungs in the air. How they became distributed to various different pools, not just the world of Atlantica, is a very long and involved tale that I might tell you someday, but suffice it to say that on this world, for the moment, this amulet is unique, and couldn't be replicated by any mortal artisan, no matter how skilled or powerful." Nektos, who is apparently also Poseidon, explains.

"I see. Assume, for a moment, that I were to accept these gifts, what must I DO to earn them?" You ask.

"Your tasks would be three fold," Nectos begins, "first, whenever you come across a ship that has ventured further from shore than can be seen from the deck with the naked eye: you must sink it. Oh, you don't have to patrol the entire Ocean, but keep a close eye out for anyone trying to move between the continents. My brother Memnoph and I have a long-standing agreement to protect the world by keeping the pieces of the arkenstone separate, and to do so my part of the agreement is to keep people from moving between the different continents. However, sea-traffic has increased in recent years. It used to be the terrible storms I put in the sea lanes between the continents was enough to dissuade them from venturing more than a mile off shore, at most, but not anymore. Especially you have to be on the lookout for people trying to get from Southern Kaldagrim to Northern Andor and back, as that's the highest percentage of sea-traffic in this age. (As opposed to shore traffic, which I couldn't care less about if I tried.)"

"The reason why you need to do that is my Brother Memnoph tasked me to cut-off contact between the continents in order to protect the four pieces of the Arkhenstone, a magical artifact that he created in order to protect this world from various types of external threats that are trying to conquer and/or destroy it, and/or kill us. One piece of the Arkhenstone was hidden on each continent, I don't know where and don't want to either, knowledge that I don't have is also knowledge that I can never betray: however, I do know that the one kept on your chosen Continent of Ixtacotak was directly in my brother's possession and that someone has, at some point prior to 300 years ago, stolen it from him. Since he has been unable to keep it safe and I have made a PACT with him to do everything that I can do in order to prevent the Arkhenstone from being gathered back together, which renders it ****, I am asking for you to locate the missing piece. I'm fairly sure that wherever it is it's located somewhere on the largest island of the archipelago that makes up the "Continent" of Ixtacotak, because I would have sensed it being taken across the sea lanes between islands if someone had tried to take it off the island but that's still hundreds of thousands of square miles worth of terrain it could be located anywhere in..." He paused. "Except for the beaches, coastal cliff-faces, or sea-caves, my domain extends in there often enough that I would have located it by now if that's where it had been re-hidden, but that doesn't even cut down the area you have to search significantly, a few thousand square miles at most." Nectos elaborated. "Once it's found, you must then transport it to the capital of my under-sea empire, Nectopolis, located on the sea-floor near the center of the Great Inner Ocean which is between the continents. If my brother can't properly protect it on land, then by the terms of his own PACT it falls to me to keep it safe, and even if they are able to get all of the pieces from the surface world together, keeping the fourth one beneath the Sea will make it nearly impossible to get all four of them into a single location to destroy them."

You're a little bit confused about what is so important about the Arkhenstone so you ask a question. "Okay, so, destroying the Arkenstone would be BAD, but what exactly does it DO?" You query.

"Honestly, I don't understand how it works, not really, and again I don't want to, not knowing also reduces the chance that it could be bypassed or the like: but somehow it projets some sort of barrier around the world that keeps the most dangerous types of hostile entities which might attempt to conquer and/or destroy it from entering without help from inside the barrier, or something like that, and keeps anything like that powerful enough to do those things EASILY from entering at-all, even if they did find inside help somehow." Nectos explained a bit more.

"Okay, yeah, I don't want the world to be destroyed or invaded by demons or whatever: so even if I don't outright accept your PACT I'll still help out with this if I can..." You agree.

"Good, well the third task is the hardest: you would have to utterly destroy the "Abyssal Lords", ancient abominations that live in the deepest trenches of the oceans which have warred against me and my followers since both I and they first came to this world. Each of them is immensely powerful, so strong that even elder Leviathans find them a very tough fight, and only a Greater Dragon like yourself would be able to really break the deadlock between me and my followers control of the sea-floor and the areas above that, and their position in the trenches along the edge of the continents. They also have their own ****-races that they send out to raid the outlying districts, so, be on alert for them too. If you can destroy them, I will not only grant you the rewards already offered, but that would prove yourself worthy to rule the underwater empire of Nectopela in my stead and reshape it in your own image as my most favored ally and Imbued Demigod of my bloodline."

You don't have to consider the offer long, "Okay, done, on all counts, but I think it's required for you to grant a third boon for agreeing to a third quest, not merely in reward for completing it, but just for accepting the pact and to aid my attempt?"

"You've clearly paid attention to the old-laws: and that speaks well of you. My third Boon is the Might of the Seas, as long as you keep the majority of your body submerged in the water of the oceans or seas all of your Draconic Features will be boosted to the next level, although there's a few exceptions, such as your mind and magic, your burrowing and crawling, your fertility, anything you didn't bother to specifically develop at all when designing your new form, and anything you already developed to it's absolute pinnacle at level 4. Other than that, you get a major boost in power, and I can already see enough to know that your swimming at least would become far-and-away stronger, as would your fins, in the sea you would be numbered among some of the fastest and most agile beings that have ever existed, let alone that exist today."

"Sweet, let me contact the other goddess who I talked to and inform her that I've unfortunately accepted a different offer. That being said, you won't mind if I help her out too if I can, right? Not 'PACT' wise but the same way I was going to with helping you secure the Arkhenstone even if I didn't take the PACT as such just because it's the right thing to do...?" You ask.

"Why in the world would I mind that?" Nectos asks in confusion.

"Cool." You say, and switch back to Asihlliel.

"Look, I'm sorry, but because I am an Aquatic Dragon, when Nectos offered his entire oceanic empire and his own daughter for my service I couldn't pass it up, but, I am not unsympathetic to your position, and he already said that he didn't mind my giving you a hand as long as it wasn't a formal PACT, so, if you want to give me a relatively simple task to do when I can to help your children the elves just out of the goodness of my heart, I would be happy to help you out, okay?" You explain immediately.

She looks disappointed, but understanding. "Thank you for your kindness in this matter, and I do have such a request. Many of my people are being held as slaves in Northern Andor, if you get any opportunities to free them and bring them to the southern half of the continent where they would be treated better and have an opportunity to possibly join their fellow elves I would take it as a kindness. Even though you have not accepted my PACT, you will still be counted amongst the friends and allies of Elven kind and welcome among us if you visited our lands."

And with that, time snapped back to it's proper speed, as you hurtled toward the lagoon on the edge of the island that, for now, you would be calling "Home"...