I shot up, nearly smacking a dark figure with my forehead. I backed up quickly before my vision refocused and I could see that it was Viktor that I had almost based in the face. I was laying in a bed surrounded by the whole group. Viktor and Lilith were on my left with Julian, casually watching on the right. They were all very worried, for some reason, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. Then, I remembered that I had passed out the night before.

I sighed. “I’m really sorry guys I-”

“Are you seriously apologizing for passing out, something you literally can’t control?”

I stared at Julian in shock. He was not the person I would have thought I’d hear that from. He actually seemed to care about me. Even if his message was very to the point, his expression was much softer.

I smiled back at him before looking down at the bed. “I just feel like I’m going to end up causing us trouble with these stupid visions if they happen in the middle of a battle or something.”

“Well, think of it this way: You can barely control your actions down here, so you’re not all that much help in the first place. You blacking out can’t cause too many problems. You do keep breathing, after all.”

“Julian!” Lilith glared at him.

“I’m just saying,” he said, shrugging.

“Don’t listen to him, dude. You’re plenty useful!” Viktor placed his hand on my shoulder to comfort me, but I just shook my head.

“No. It’s okay. He’s right. I’m just a little annoyed because they’re happening so much more frequently than with the last ones. I really hope I can figure out what they mean soon and that they aren’t followed by more.”

The group nodded. I looked around the room once again. I was laying in a large bed in the center of a fairly nice room, but every room in this city was probably pretty nice. There was a chair to the right of me with Julian’s coat on it. To my left, there was a sleeping bag and leafy hammock where Viktor and Lilith had probably slept. I felt a little bad that they had all had to stay in such shabby accommodations while I hogged the only bed, but I didn’t want to say anything for fear of getting scolded again.

I did want to ask about something else though. “Do any of you guys know about how I might control these visions?”

Julian, who was now slipping on his coat, looked over and gave me an inquisitive glance before shrugging and turning back around to finish packing up his things. I turned to Viktor and Lilith, but they gave me similar reactions. I fished around in my bag for the Jade Grimmoire. Thanks to the permanent seals I had placed on all of our important things, they were all totally dry. Even if I couldn’t utilize it very well, having this much essence was helpful. It barely took a dent in my supply to be constantly keeping these things wet and luckily, we hadn’t encountered anything that was so demanding I had to use a ridiculous amount of essence, so I was fine.

I leafed through the book quickly, making sure to concentrate on not absorbing all the knowledge it held, which, as of now, was all I could really do to prevent it. In the section on eyes of observation, there was plenty of information, including how to prevent visions, but the real problem was that what I needed was a certain kind of leaf found only in the south forest. Unfortunately, the people controlling that region weren’t exactly the friendly or trading type, so even if I could find some being sold, it would be very expensive and I wasn’t going to make Julian spend his money on something like this. I closed the book and threw it back inside my bag.

I checked my neck to make sure I still had the necklace. Sure enough, the bright green crystal was still soundly secured on its chain. Usually, it didn’t burn that much, but the fabric of my bad was far too fragile to hold it and I wasn’t going to risk my jacket. I’d seen what such concentrated essence could do to my skin and without knowing exactly what kind of magic held this jacket together, I wouldn’t let the crystal touch it. I tried encasing the crystal in a small layer of solid essence, but it shattered almost instantly. We were going to see the master of earth and crafting, so hopefully, I could get her to help me out. I’d already had something else I wanted to ask her about, but since she probably creating the mystic earrings, she could also probably contain them.

I got out of bed, grabbed my sword from the corner and looked at the group. “Are we ready to go?”

They nodded. It had become somewhat of a staple for us to discuss over breakfast our plans for the endeavors of acquiring the help of both the master and the camp.

We made our way out of the room, thanked the owner for letting us stay the night, and headed outside to find a place to eat. After some heated discussion over what kind of food we wanted, we made our way to a place that a passerby had said made the best powder bread ever. I didn’t know what it was, at first, but after they explained it to me, I realized it was basically just their term for french toast. The only difference being that it was made by magical chefs would could literally sew the sugar inside of the bread.

We took our seats and ordered our food before we began talking.

“So, from the directions Amus gave us, Camp II is a lot closer to us than Pototangaros’s palace, so it would probably be better for us to go there first and then make our way to the palace to meet with her,” said Lilith.

“What if they end up being total dicks like Jaynice and Camp III?” Viktor asked, huffing angrily.

“Hey... The campers weren’t all bad and she did agree to help us... eventually,” I replied sheepishly.

“Listen, Jaynice was a horrible person and I highly doubt that any of the other commanders will be quite that awful. If they do refuse to help and we end up needing Pototangaros’s help, we’ll go back or tell her to make them help us, alright?” Lilith answered, shooting me a strange glance.

Viktor nodded and before we could say more, our food arrived. We took some time to eat the food. It was just as delicious as I imagined it would be. I quickly scarfed them down and smiled as the server came back to take our plants and payment.

“So, do we have our plan all good and down?” Julian asked.

"Yup!” I said, smiling.

We got out of seats and began swimming in the direction of the camp. “Why don’t we just swim straight to the camp over the buildings and such?” I asked.

Lilith rolled her eyes. “Just because you can do that whenever you want in Aertol doesn’t mean that they accept it everywhere. A lot of places, including the city we’re currently in sees it as pretty rude. Notice how no one else is doing it?”

I shrunk back. She was right, everyone else was swimming along just like normal. “Yeah...”

“I think it’s as stupid as you do and I don’t think they’ll remember us if we were to do it and come back, but I also like to at least try and be polite, so can you just take it slow for once?”

When she put it that way, I felt kind of bad for even asking about it. “Yeah. Sorry.”

She gave me a strange look and seemed to blush before saying, “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Let’s just keep moving...”

I was a little confused by this, but I decided I probably shouldn’t let it bother me. Although, oddly enough, I did feel a compulsion to check in on another someone. I closed my eyes as we continued to swim.

“Hey, Sylak. Are you there?” I questioned in my head.

After a few seconds of silence, I heard the ever-familiar voice respond, “It’s not like I can leave.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well yeah, but you have a tendency to ignore me sometimes, so it’s best to just check first.”

“Alright, mom. I’m here. What do you want?”

“Just checking in to see how you were doing.”

I couldn’t see, but I felt like I could hear him stifling a laugh. “Hilarious. Why do you care? Wondering when you can use me to beat up someone again?”

I sighed. “No, I was just checking, but you seem to be perfectly fine, so I'll just leave you to that.”

“Try not to die!” he retorted.

I sighed and opened my eyes back up. I don’t know what I had expected or why I wanted to check in on him, but him being hostile towards me wasn’t really helping.

After that, we continued on for some time before finally reaching the gates to the camp. They were just as grand as the rest of the city, being adorned with plenty of flowing designs and images of fish. Funny enough, in one of the corners, I saw a dragon, just like there had been on the sides of Jaynice’s main pavilion. I kept seeing all this dragon imagery and such, but so far, the only dragon I had ridden on was the one to get to camp and that seemed to be quite tame in comparison to these.

I was about to ask about it, but a guard had swum up to us and was looking very stern and not like the kind of person who wanted to know about the world’s fascination with dragons.

“What business have you here at camp?” He asked, his voice much smoother than his appearance.

I took initiative and swam forward to meet him. “We’re here to speak with your commander. We were led here by one of your members named Amus. He was actually supposed to meet us. Is he here?”

He frowned. “Amus Ferthy left earlier this morning and mentioned that some people would be dropping by. He did not specify who, but I will assume you are not lying. I will let you in, but if you even think about pulling anything, our guards will be on you so fast, you won’t know what happened.”

“Duly noted. We can promise you we won’t cause any trouble though,” Lilith said from behind me.

He smirked before opening up the gates and letting us inside the camp. It went without saying at this point, but the camp was absolutely beautiful. Although similar, each building had a different design style which led me to believe that they had each been built by someone different. It made sense and only made the camp more impressive.

From behind us, the guard called, “Commander Jace is waiting in the central complex. It’s the sort of bubble-looking one.”

I waved back, thanking him as we swam towards the middle of camp. Just as he’d said, the central complex looked a lot like a bubble. If the bubble were on fire and had giant strips circling the whole thing. The entire thing looked incredible. The strips that swirled around the partial sphere culminated at the top to form a sort of exploding fountain shape. The entire bubble was submerged partially in the ground and since it was made of glass, you could see down to the lower layer of the building.

We headed inside and were met with some strange looks from the camp members as we made our way to a large circular desk in the center of the middle floor. Sitting at the desk was another potron similar to Amus, but this woman was a bit less fishy. Her only really defining fish feature was her ears that looked like fins. I would have questioned how she heard, but I had some strange ears myself.

“Hello there. What can I help you all with?” she asked very unenthusiastically.

“Um, we’re here to see Commander Jace. We have something very urgent to talk with him about,” I replied.

“Third door on the right. Try not to dawdle,” she answered, quickly returning to some papers on her desk.

Her annoyance kind of pissed me of, but I didn’t think too much on it. It wasn’t worth getting mad over. We swam our way over to the door that definitely looked like it would lead to the commander’s office. I knocked and we waited. After a few seconds, a muffled voice came from inside. “Come in!”

I opened the door and we slowly made our way inside the man’s office. To say that Jace was not what I was expecting would have been a significant understatement. From the way his campers had treated us, I figured he would be a tough as nails angry guy, but he was pretty much the opposite. He definitely had the physique to match my vision, but his outfit was all wrong. Jace had bright blue hair that vaguely glowed just like mine did. He had piercing eyes as blue as the ocean to match, but that’s where it stopped. Below all this, he had on a plain white t-shirt with a happy shark and a pair of jean shorts. He had the biggest grin I had seen since I met Viktor and he looked like one of the happiest people you’d ever met.

“Well don’t just float there gawking! Come in!” His voice was smooth and energetic to match his outfit and expression.

We swam all the way inside and made ourselves comfortable in front of a large desk covered in blueprints. “Commander Jace, we came here today on some very important business,” I said.

His expression changed to a more serious one and it almost scared me. “Alright then. What is it?”

I swallowed hard. It never got easier to say this. “Basically, Zeraph is going to break out of his prison in Ser sometime very soon and we need the help of all the camps and masters for the approaching conflict.”

“Yes,” Dale said causing a bit of confusion to me.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, my camp and I will provide aid to you in the coming battle.”

I blinked a few times. “Well, that was easy.”

“You said this was a serious matter, so I am quite inclined to believe you are telling the truth. If you would like me to talk to Lady Pototangaros for you, I can do that as well.”

I shook my head. “We’re actually going to be heading to speak with her next.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

After an awkward silence, we said our goodbyes and heading back out in to the main area of the building. Suddenly, from outside we heard shouting and after exchanging looks, we rushed outside to find out the cause of such commotion