I rushed down to the village as fast as I could. I was absolutely seething at this point. The trail of wreckage that followed in the wake of the two earth apprentices was extremely distressing to look at. Broken walls and shattered houses all throughout the village. That stupid fish had done such a number on this village that it was really hard to look at. Several unmoving bodies floated inside of houses with broken windows.

Finally, I reached the landing spot of the two boys. They looked about as bad as the village did right now. Their bodies were covered in cuts and an immense amount of blood that was really not making me hopeful right now. I desperately fished around in my bag for some healing elixir. Once I found it, I forced open their mouths and poured down the golden liquid. I anxiously waited for what felt like an eternity, hoping for their wounds to heal up and the color to return to their skin.

Finally, after far too long, the blood began to dissipate and disappear altogether as their wounds closed and broken bones mended. Colored returned to their skin and their eyes weakly fluttered open. I rushed them, wrapping my arms awkwardly around the two boys as I began to sob.

“Hey... buddy...” Viktor managed, weakly.

“Avien, you’re crushing us.”

I sniffed and backed away. “Sorry. I was just really worried about you guys. I wasn’t sure if you would...”

“It’s going to take a lot more than that to kill us,” Julian said, smiling faintly.

I was about to hug them again before I heard, “Hey guys! Good job!”

We turned around to see Lilith and Ameila coming to us from behind. In toe with them were several dozen villagers that did not really seem to share their joy. Then I realized something that didn’t quite make sense.

“How did you guys know to come back right now?”

Lilith rolled her eyes. “We saw the reaper furiously swimming off with a trail of blood behind it. Its body was glowing pretty dimly, so we generally assumed that you guys had beaten it and that it was safe to come back.”

I nodded. It would have been a smart idea to keep at least somewhat close, so that they could come back once we’d defeated the Current Reaper or run if we’d died. The villagers were gazing on their ruined homes in solemn silence.

“I’m very sorry about the village... We tried to finish things off quickly and ake sure that the village didn’t sustain this much damage,” I apologized.

The villagers didn’t say much, but then Viktor and Julian swam up next to me. “Do you people, by any chance, have the original blueprints for the village?” Julian asked.

The villagers looked puzzled, but then, one of the older villagers came forward. “Assuming they weren’t destroyed in the attack, they should be in that building over there,” he said, pointing to the large building they’d all been huddled in before we came.

“Lead the way, dude,” Viktor said.

As Viktor and Julian went with the old man, Lilith and I had some time to talk, recounting the fight.

“You mean to tell me that you did all that damage?!” She exclaimed.

I sighed. “You know, you don’t have to act so surprise...”

“You are pretty weak, to be fair,” came a voice from inside my head. It had been some time since I’d heard from the purple monster. He sounded just as annoying as ever, so at least that hadn’t changed.

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just... very impressive is all. You just learned magic not too long ago and now, here you are, taking down a crazy dangerous monster.”

“You make it sound like I did it all on my own. If the others hadn’t been there to help slow it down and keep it from wreaking havoc, I would have very much died,” I offered.

She shrugged. “Well yeah. You aren’t that strong. It’s still quite impressive though. I was trying to give you a compliment, bubble boy.”

I sighed. “Are you ever going to stop calling me that?”

“Probably not.”

“Of course not...”

She punched me in the shoulder and I looked to see her smiling at me. I smiled back. It was nice to have someone who actually wants you to succeed. Even if her motivational techniques were a bit... painful.

Before I could even ask, I saw the buildings around us begin to shimmer with essence. Slowly, piece by piece, the buildings and houses reformed in to what I could only assume was their original states. After only five minutes of work, the village had been completely repaired and much like the rest of the architecture down here, it was absolutely beautiful.

Julian and Viktor descended from the ground and handed the blueprints back to the old man. They both looked a bit drained as I’d imagine they might be after rebuilding an entire village. It may have been easier because of the existence of materials already, but they must have had to create some stuff and that was probably quite taxing to do.

The old man explained that he was actually the leader of the village and the one who’d sent out the emergency call. “I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you not just for defeating that damned creature, but also for repairing our village in such an efficient and effective manner.

Viktor and Julian simply gave him a weak thumbs up. I smiled at him, giving him a two-finger salute. “Of course, sir. It’s our job as apprentices to help those in need. We wouldn’t be very good apprentices or people if we didn’t help your village,” Maxim added to our gestures.

“We don’t have much of value in this village other than money that we can give you as payment and nothing that really seems fitting enough for what you fine people have done for us.”

We exchanged looks before I responded, “Whatever you are willing to give will be payment enough.”

The many smiled before directing us to the large building and asking us to wait outside. After a few minutes, he returned with a small bag of chips.

Maxim looked at us. “How shall we split this up?”

“You three can have it all to yourselves,” Julian responded, causing us all to look at him inquisitively.

“What? I have money. That means you three also have money. What do we need any more for?”

He said it so casually and he was right, but I did feel a little bad relying on him for paying for everything, even if he was okay with it. Despite that, we all nodded that the three of them could have it all. Now that we’d divided up the money properly, we decided to head out. We said our goodbyes to the extremely grateful village before we swam off to Camp II.

Thankfully, the way back was mostly smooth until about halfway through. We heard a rumbling in the distance like that of a massive earthquake that persisted for almost ten minutes before coming to a grinding halt. We didn’t pay it too much mind as we continued to swim on our way.

The whole time we swam, I tried to get my eyes to work, but it just wasn’t going anywhere. My vision would flash light green for about a second before returning to normal and leaving me dizzy for a few minutes. After a few tries, the dizziness started lasting longer and longer until it was a constant feeling of nausea. I thought it was just from trying to hard to get my eyes to work, but maybe it was something else, considering how long it was lasting.

Unfortunately, everything got even worse when we reached a point where I thought we were almost there. One of the underwater passageways that we’d used as a shortcut to get to camp was blocked. Viktor and Julian moved their hands to the blockage before turning back to us.

“Yeah, this is a serious block. There’s about a half mile of stone between us and the rest of the tunnel.”

“Can you guys remove it?” I asked.

Julian shook his head. “On a normal day, definitely, but considering the amount of essence the two of us just expended putting together the village and fighting that reaper, we’d be lucky to get ten feet in before collapsing from exhaustion.”

I nodded. We’d all used a lot of essence today. “What about you three? Any way you can like, maybe expand the water inside the cracks of the rock?” I asked.

"Unfortunately, that’s not possible. Strange as it may be, this rock is totally solid. Not cracks to speak of,” Viktor chimed in.

That was something that definitely didn’t make sense. If there were no cracks, that meant that this was probably done intentionally. But who would want to collapse this exact tunnel? I was about to put some more thought in to it, but then I felt a deep pain radiate throughout my head. It was like someone had set my skull on fire. I doubled over, collapsing to the tunnel floor.

“Avien! What’s wrong?” I could vaguely hear the voice, but it sounded muddled and far away.

“Head... burns...” was all I could manage before I blacked out.

When I woke back up, all I saw was a haze of blue and white. It took a few minutes for my vision to fully clear up and I realized I was facing up towards the sky. The water rippled and shifted above me in a hypnotic fashion. It was starting to put me to sleep already and my lightheadedness hadn’t really gone away.

A dark face appeared above me and once it focused it, I could tell it was Viktor. “No going back to sleep just yet, dude. We have questions.”

“Fine...” I answered shakily.

“Well, what happened to you back at the tunnel?”

I shrugged. “I just sort of... collapsed. Then I woke up and here we are.”

“Why did you collapse?” he asked.

“I felt a burning sensation in my head and the I felt super dizzy,” I answered, feeling a similar sensation brewing now.

“Do you still feel it now?”

“Yes...” My vision was beginning to fade again.

He looked at me with concern. I probably looked absolutely dreadful and that seemed to be setting in to him. “Okay. We’ll just let you rest then.”

I didn’t say anything. I just faded back to sleep, the sound of the waves helping me along.