Once inside the city, we were quickly met with just how beautiful the whole place was. I had expected the city to be pretty amazing considering the skill of the people behind it, but even so, the City of Waves was putting every other place we’d visited to shame by a wide margin. Even if its people were responsible for the other cities, they clearly had not put nearly as much time in to them as they had their own.

The first big thing you noticed when entering the city would have to be the centerpiece of it all. What it was was still left to speculation, but its beauty was not. Hovering a few hundred feet above the city was a giant, luminous, shifting blue ball. The form of the ball was unstable and constantly changing, but the center of it was not. In the center of the ball was a smaller sphere that glowed pure blue.

Out of curiosity, I flicked my hand over my eye, activating my observer’s eye. I narrowed my vision down to just water essence and looked up to the orb in the center. As I had though, the orb was a giant mass of water essence.

“What is that thing?” I asked Amus.

He chuckled. “That, my feline friend, is the heart of the ocean. It is intrinsically linked to the power and aura of Lady Pototangaros.”

I didn’t really like the way he addressed me, but his answer did make at least some sense. I didn’t really want to pry too much as to what it did or anything like that, at this point, so we just continued swimming along.

I was about to deactivate my eye, but then I looked around the city and found everything above the walls of the labyrinth seemed to have a blueish tint to it. This must have been the aura of Pototangaros. It was interesting to see that the auras of the masters seemed to completely encompass their respective cities. Maybe there was some sort of reason for that, but that didn’t really matter right now.

As we continued through the city, I couldn’t help but continue admiring the buildings that I couldn’t even describe with the limited architectural knowledge I held. One thing I did see a lot of was arches. I thought this was a bit interesting.

“Amus, why do you all use arches in your buildings so much?”

He turned to face us, now swimming backwards. “Well, arches have always been something important to us. Lady Pototangaros’s palace was constructed with more arches in it than any other building in the city. No one knows why she built it that way, but everyone else just sort of adopted them in to their building style.”

“So, you all do it without even knowing why?”

He furrowed his brow and frowned back at me. “I don’t see anything wrong with that, do you?”

I wanted to argue that everything should have a reason, but I also didn’t want to be strangled by someone who could currently do it with little possible resistance from me. I guess that gave me one other thing to ask Pototangaros once we finally met with her. Regardless of the lack of meaning, they were quite beautiful and they tied the whole city together with one unifying quality.

With no real reason for me to keep it on anymore, I finally deactivated my eyes, feeling a wave of fatigue wash over me. So far, I was still trying to find out how both of these eyes weren’t cursed. Even if it did give me the ability to see auras, without much training, it still left me quite fatigued after and that didn’t even mention the stupid visions.

I still had no idea what any of them meant and so far, I wasn’t getting any real answers as to when I would be finding out. At least, with the visions of the grimmoire, I had found out what they meant pretty quickly. But with these recent visions, I was still left completely clueless. Not only were they physically taxing, but they were simply frustrating.

I had inadvertently annoyed myself and I think Lilith could tell because she gave me a worried. I waved it off. Burdening other people with my problems wasn’t really my thing, even if they were my friends. This would just make them upset over something that they had no way of controlling.

I tried to perk up. We were about to be halfway done with our quest and for once, I was pretty confident. We’d already done this twice before with good results, except for the whole crazy half-sister thing. Amus seemed like a cool person and if the descendants were any indication so far of what the masters were like then Pototangaros would prove to be a pretty calm person too. Hopefully.

As we continued swimming on, I noticed a small gathering of people off in the distance. Once we got closer, I saw that they were all gathered around what looked like a small purple fire. I swam over to the group and found that the fire was burning inside of a small stone spiral that curled around it. Unlike a usual fire, it seemed to slowly shift and twist in and around itself instead of rapidly flickering like usual.

The rest of the group stopped and gathered around me as we all watched the people make their way up to the fire and place their hands on the spiral. Their hands would glow slightly blue for a moment and the energy would pulse through the spire before culminating at the fire which would move in what looked like a dance of victory. I flicked my hand and watched as the auras around me appeared. Surprisingly, nothing appeared around the fire even though it was clearly mystical in some matter.

I poked Amus in the arm. “Hey. What is that?” I whispered, motioning to the purple flame.

He chuckled before giving me a concerned look when he realized I wasn’t kidding. “Oh. You’ve never seen a memorial to the dead before?”

I shook my head.

“Well uh... That thing is called a memorial to the dead. It’s created to honor a dead person’s soul once they die. As you know, once a person dies, part of their soul is left behind as a little fragment of essence like this,” he said, motioning to the flame. “People stop by and give their blessing in the form of passing their essence on to provide them happiness in death.”

In a strange way, it was a really happy thing. In the mortal world, people simply had to hope that their blessings and good wishes were reaching the dead, but here, here you knew they were reaching them and providing them with a sense of real joy and happiness. It made me a little sad though. My mother had died outside of this world. Her soul fragment was still in the realm of mortals. It would never be able to receive this kind of love and happiness.

Lilith came up next to me, looking to Amus. “Who died?”

“An illusionist, many years ago now, but the killer still has yet to be caught. Reports of his exploits crop up all the time. She was his first victim though.”

He seemed so down. “Did you know them?”

He shook his head. “No no. We just see this memorial so often. We can’t help but remember her.”

“Did she die 2,198, by any chance?”

I looked over to Lilith, puzzled.

“Yes... How did you know?” Amus seemed just as puzzled as I did.

I could see Lilith’s scarf beginning to steam, glowing brighter and much wilder. “Lilith...? Are you alright?”

The scarf turned blue and the flames began dripping downwards instead of flaring up like usual. When she turned towards me, the look on her face could be described as nothing short of absolute dread. I immediately wrapped my arms around her, the flaming scarf, making my chest uncomfortably hot. I dismissed it for her sake.

“Damien... Damien Dastra... The man who killed this woman. He’s the man who... The man who killed my mother...” Tears streamed down her face with every word until she was sobbing uncontrollably.

I held her even closer, shielding her from the crowd. They didn’t need to see her like this and I could guess she wouldn’t want them to. She wrapped her arms around me in return, burying her face in my chest as I patted her on the back. “It’s okay. I know how you feel...” I knew how hollow those words usually felt coming from others, but it actually seemed to make her feel a bit better. She knew what I had been through and knew I did actually know how she felt right now.

Once she had finished crying, she released her embrace and I did the same. She wiped the remaining tears from her eyes before moving forward up to the memorial. She reached to her scarf and picked off a piece like cotton candy. It burned just as brightly as the rest of her scarf. She set it down right next to the memorial, watching as it slowly changed to purple fire almost exactly like the soul fragment. Before returning to the group, she leaned in to the memorial and whispered, “I will avenge you. I promise.”

Once she had returned, I pretended like I hadn’t been eavesdropping on her little promise. Amus turned to us with a nervous smile. “Are you guys ready to keep going?”

I looked back to the group and was about to say yes, but then I remembered something. “Actually, is there a potion shop nearby?”

He looked a little puzzled, but he nodded. “There’s one just a few streets over. Follow me!”

He swam off and we quickly followed behind him, crossing over a few streets before reaching a corner. On our left, there was a shop with a wooden door sign with the image of a potion bottle on it. Amus motioned towards the shop and we headed inside to be met with a similar clustered layout as the shop in Arachni. Behind the counter, I kind looking young woman smiled and waved us over. “Welcome welcome! Please, what can I help you with, darlings?”

We walked forward and I could see the woman had vibrant blue hair that flowed down in a curly mess from under a white headband. Her outfit was a simple blue dress with a pocket on the left breast that held a small white flower. She spoke quick, but with a very sweet tone.

When we got to the counter, everyone else looked at me. I then remembered they actually had no idea why we were here. “Oh, right! So, I was wondering if you could tell us how long these potions are going to last?” I pointed to my throat.

After some momentary confusion, she seemed to realize what I meant. “Oh! You want to know how much longer you’ll be able to breathe for! Well, do you, by any chance know what kind of potions you drink and what they were made with?”

I nervously looked at the rest of them, but they just shrugged. “I can’t exactly remember. We never really asked what was in them.”

She nodded and then smiled. “That’s perfectly okay. Can I borrow one of you for a moment then?”

I nodded and stepped forward. “What f-” Before I could finish, she rushed forward and placed her hand over my heart. A blue seal formed over it and after a few strange upward glances at me, she removed her hand.

“After... looking through your... interesting blood, I found that the potion should roughly last two days after it’s consumed. Are you looking to buy some refils?”

I shook my head. “No thank you. We can just get them when we leave, if we need. We shouldn’t be here much longer than three days.”

She smiled. “Of course. We can provide them to you once you need them! Please visit again,” she said as we walked out, waving back to her.

As we continued on, I noticed that everyone else was moving a bit sluggishly, Viktor a little less so, but I stopped for a moment. “Amus, could you just tell us where a hotel is nearby and give us directions to camp from there? If you’re still there in the morning, we could just meet you at the entrance.”

He pondered it for a moment before nodding and motioning for us to follow him again, which we did. After swimming for a few minutes, we stopped in front of a small building in the middle of a street. The sign above the door read, “Mesias’s Logging" It looked about as impressive as any other building in the city, but hopefully, it wouldn’t be too expensive.

We made our way inside and once we got our key to the room, Amus gave us directions to camp from here. After we exchanged farewells, he headed off and we made our way to our room.

While on our way there, I felt myself getting a little dizzy. My vision flashed pink and green, causing me to collapse to the floor. The last thing I heard before blacking out was a strange voice saying the word, “Soon...”