The Innkeeper

Chapter 1994: Positive thinker

Lorelei Kinari had had a pretty eventful life. That was the most positive way of describing her life possible, and since Lorelei was a generally very positive mermaid, that’s how she looked at it. Yes, she totally didn’t consider her life to be a complete shipwreck, filled with the most stressful, most anxiety inducing, most horrifying series of events of all.

It all started on the day she was born. A bunch of steroid pumped sharks killed her entire freaking tribe and swallowed her whole while they were at it! Then, some serpent dude called Havval or something saved her from a death she wouldn’t have remembered if it had happened, and she cursed him for it every other day. Of course, she also thanked him on alternate days, so it was kind of balanced out in her positive opinion. Yes, she was a positive thinker.

It was exactly because she was a positive thinker that she assumed that when that Havval dude sent her off that planet, into the arms of some fat, hairy elephant dudes, he was trying to protect her instead of selling her off like a slave. Nope, he was definitely trying to protect her.

All sarcasm aside, Havval was a pretty solid snake, since he had even sent his own daughter alongside Lorelei. They were supposed to grow up together, as friends, protected, and that’s what happened for a while.

To be specific, they enjoyed seven whole days before getting embroiled in some pretty spicy politics. Beasts, as it turned out, were pretty beastly. So, after seven days of leisure, some fat, hairy elephant dude showed up and said he wanted to get engaged to Havval’s newborn daughter. It seemed child marriage was widely supported among beast royalty.

From then onwards, her life became a relentless chain of political intrigue, assassination plot, marriage proposal and perilous pursuits, one after another. But at least the food was good - when it wasn’t poisoned.

Anyway, those happy days continued until she unlocked her bloodline ability. It was a pretty simple one, really. She could swim from any one body of water to another. Or, to be precise, from one liquid body to another, as long as it was large enough to hold her body.

Ah yes, then came the humans. The finless merfolk with hearts of abso-freaking-gold. As soon as her bloodline appeared, some old Jotun fella started to plot against the fat, hair elephant dudes. He sent many messengers to her, promising fame, power, money, gold, and a bunch of other entirely useless things as long as she agreed to leave the elephant dudes.

As if that kind of stress was not enough to give a young mermaid wrinkles, other races started to target the elephant dudes because of her, so the dudes came up with a plan.

Now, as a positive thinker, she liked to assume they were sending her off to a better, richer home, as one does sometimes. She’d heard stories of these things called arranged marriages where everyone pretends to be happy while a bride or groom is sold off to another family in order to throw a fancy party with good - preferably non-poisoned - food.

She thought her situation was like that. At least there would be a party. But nope, there was only bloodshed - as if she didn’t already have to deal with enough of that every month.

Fortunately, her days of hunting for her own food every month were at an end. She was successfully kidnapped at last!

But, she was a positive thinker, so she looked at that as a sort of opportunity for growth, and growth she had!

Some might say that she had a stress induced panic attack. She preferred to think that it was, in that moment, she gained full control over her bloodline. So, she swam away into a new ocean.

Except, the new ocean was made of mercury. She had no idea where she was, and mercury was not good for her complexion, so she escaped again.

Turns out, she fell into the water tank of a restaurant where they cooked living fish - or something like that. The best part was that she was out of energy, so she could not escape any more.

But, the positive thinker that she was, took that as an opportunity to get some blood tests done - you know, to see if she had any parasites or anything. The restaurant owners did it to see if she was edible, but at least she learned that her blood type was S+, short for stress positive!

Long story short, she escaped a bunch of times. Years of being hunted made her stronger. More importantly, she lived an active lifestyle so at least she never grew a double chin. Can you even imagine? Being chased by slavers was one thing, but being a mermaid with a double chin was totally unacceptable.

Just when she was getting used to that kind of life, some super powerful beings from outside the realm put a bounty on her, and that’s when things got really messy. So, she escaped to an ocean in another realm, because apparently she could do that.

But the thing about universal bounties was that they were active throughout the universe, so...

With her positive thinking, she took it as an opportunity to meet the locals. After all, how awkward is it to enter a new realm and not know anybody?

Her new friends chased her all the way to death. Or, to be more specific, to River Styx. Now that was a nice river, and the water was so refreshing it was to die for. Unfortunately, she hadn’t scheduled an untimely death for that day, so she had to use her bloodline again and escape.

One thing led to another, and she found a brochure for Heaven. It sounded like a fun place. It was kind of unimaginable to think there was somewhere that people wouldn’t try to kill her. What would she even do with all that spare time and lack of anxiety?

Who knows, because Lorelei never reached Heaven. No, she reached freaking-Arch-Heaven, and my goodness she was popular over here.

But, she was a positive thinker, so she took this as motivation to explore and do a little sight seeing. After all, one might become lazy and even relax a little without a horde of monsters trying to hunt you down. But, sure enough, all it took was a single horde, and she had all the motivation in the world to go sightseeing. Oh boy!

Just as Lorelei was counting her blessings, she spotted a sight she hadn’t seen before. A human, a wolf and a goldfish, all riding red bulls flying in the sky, were posing up in the air ahead of her, trying to take some kind of self portrait with a polaroid. She took a moment to pose and hold up a V sign with her fingers. If she was going to appear in a picture, she needed to make sure she looked good.