I sighed as my vision returned to my usual body. As they focused in once more, I was met with the view of the ocean that I had left to. It was a bit darker now, but not too much. It did serve as a reminder of the time that my friends had been missing and how imperative it was that I do something about it. I picked myself up and looked around.

Around me, there was nothing but strange rock formations and the massive emptiness of the open ocean. It was a little scary to look at so late at night. In the distance, I could see lots of different glowing fish swimming around in the darkness. These creatures had made the darkness their home and it was quite interesting to observe. They swam along in school, lights dancing hypnotically.

I had to force myself to look away and focus on the actually important task at hand. The biggest problem with that was the fact that I actually had no idea where to go. Despite the fact that these captures wanted me to find them for some reason, they hadn’t given me directions to the collapsed tunnel. They had probably assumed that I would actually remember where it was and I probably would have, usually, but my mind was still a bit foggy and wasn’t functioning as good as usual.

Another way I had of tracking them might have been useful, but it was unfortunately out of commission right now or so I could assume. I flicked my hand in an attempt to activate my observer’s eye. It did work, sort of. It was like the first time in the city where I had no control and there was just the essence of everything. It was nauseating not just from the visual overflow, but also the fact that it was draining the immensely small supply of essence I had going right now. Not wanting to pass out, I removed the seal. I steadied my breathing before attempting to form a new way of locating the tunnel.

Wondering why I had been so stupid and not thought of it before, I check my hand. The three tendrils of essence were all pointing in almost the exact same direction, so that was pretty helpful, but it still didn’t provide me with anything too concrete considering it didn’t give me anything like up or down and in the ocean, there were a lot of different ways you could go. Not only that, but there was also the fact that once you got far enough, it became like a labyrinth of tunnels and any of them could be the right one to go down, but without already knowing, I was bound to get lost. Unfortunately, the only people who probably did know what direction was the right one to take were the ones back at camp and that might take too long.

I had to find some way of figuring out exactly where I needed to go and I needed to do it quickly. I began to head in the direction the compass was pointing. I passed by many different locations that I thought looked familiar, but I really didn’t know. Not only was I angry with whoever captured my friends, but I was also angry with myself for not being able to think properly and remember exactly where I should be going after having gone there twice. It was so infuriating to know that you should know something, but being completely unable to properly remember it. The only thing worse was the fact that I simply didn’t have the time or really energy to be angry right now. I had to focus on not remembering where I was going and to try and figure out where I should be going.

After about twenty minutes of swimming in one direction, I hit what I had been dreading all along. In front of me, like the pits of an angry beast, were fourteen or so massive gaping caverns leading out to somewhere. Unfortunately, because of the limitations of the essence compass, I was left mostly in the dark as to which tunnel to take. I could get a general idea of which to go through, but not exact because of the layout of the tunnels.

I began swimming from one edge of the tunnels to the other, finding the center of the compass point as precisely as I could. Eventually, I had it down to two tunnels that were simply impossible to differentiate between because of their strict vertical alignment. It was now up to a roll of the dice. I swam through the lower tunnel and continued along.

The cavern was composed of an interesting look blue-green stone dotted with plants and small branches that would have been impossible to fit in to. Occasionally, there would be a strange kind of glowing plant of something along the walls that cast strange light throughout the tunnel.

Hopefully, the tunnel would be a completely straight shot with no crazy detours to speak of, but I highly doubted it would be quite that easy. So far, it was straight with some slight bends and turns, but the compass was still pointing in the direction I was heading.

In the back of my head, I couldn’t stop thinking about the visions and my chat with Sylak. Everything felt so strange right now and that was really saying something. On top of all that strangeness, I felt like I was missing something with this kidnapping. Something that was in plain sight that I just wasn’t putting together for some reason. I couldn’t place it and it was killing me. Everything was just so frustrating and confusing right now and it was all boiling together. I could feel little sparks jumping up my arms. I had to force myself to calm down. Hopefully, I could relieve some of this on whoever kidnapped my friends, but that wasn’t really looking like a good possibility.

Eventually, after some time, I made it to the first new part of the tunnel, a massive open cavern. It was quite the spectacle. The cavern was massive and filled to the brim with plants and animals. Scuttling along the floor were tons of different kinds of special crabs and lobsters as well as something I was having a very hard time believing was a snail. Kelp stretched all the way from the floor to the ceiling and had bits of glowing buds mixed in with the green leaves. Similarly, on the ceiling, there were several bulbous plants that glowed and illuminated the entire cavern just like the ones above the City of Waves.

Swimming in schools around the cavern were more fish than I could even try to guess what they were. Some looked somewhat familiar and others looked completely alien. Some literally looked like aliens. However, the cavern wasn’t just filled with plants or animals. It was also filled with noise. I felt bad for any potrons who could actually understand what all these creatures were saying because it must have been absolutely deafening mess of words. To me, thankfully, it just sounded like a bunch of random chirps, growls, and everything in between.

I was about to just move through the tunnel and avoid all contact with the many different fish, but then something caught my ear.

“...reaper was running from that darn village with its tail between its fins like some kind of wimp. I tell ya, it was pathetic.”

I frantically scanned the cavern for the source of the voice. Was it possible that the group was in here somewhere? This wasn’t the collapsed tunnel though, it couldn’t be. I closed my eyes, focusing on the sounds and waiting for the voice, but I heard another one respond to the first.

“How the mighty have fallen. Those assholes used to swallow entire villages like it was nothing...”

I opened my eyes. I had figured out the direction where it was coming from and I shot off that way. To my surprise, when I got to the source of the voices, I was met with a group of strange looking fish. They were definitely on the normal side, compared to the other fish in this cavern, but they certainly didn’t look like your average tuna. There were six of them all gathered together in a group, discussing the attack on the village by the Current Reaper.

The fish looked vaguely like catfish, but also skewed more toward the cat side, even having fur and more defined whiskers than a usual catfish. They were all about the size of me except for one much smaller one that was about half the size of the others.

The catfish continued on with their conversation for some time before one of them seemed to finally notice that I was just floating there listening to them. It screeched and the other catfish noticed what it was looking at before swimming backwards, defensively hiding from me.

“Is he here to kill us?” asked one of them.

“He has ears and isn’t here to kill you. I just need some information and, from your conversation, you may be able to help me,” I answered.

It was hard to tell, but their expressions seemed to be something close to scared and confused. That was understandable since I highly doubted they had ever encountered a ninx who willingly came this far in the ocean and stopped to chat with catfish. To be fair, I was just as confused as they were as to how I was able to communicate with and understand them since normal catfish weren’t actually cats, that’s just what we called them.

The catfish all looked at each other once they recovered and apparently made a silent decision to swim away. All except for the smaller one who actually swam up to me. It circled me a few times before floating in front of me.

“How are you able to understand me, mister?”

I was shocked it actually wanted to talk to me. “Unfortunately, I don’t really have the answer to that myself. I would have asked your friends, but they don’t seem to like me.”

“Yeah, they aren’t really a fan of human. Even if they do kinda look like us,” it responded, seemingly referring to my ears.

I nodded. “Yeah, we do look a lot alike. However, that raises the question, why didn’t you leave with them?”

The catfish mindlessly swam in circles as it answered, “I dunno. I don’t see a reason to not like humans. You guys are all so unique. Plus, you’ve been really nice to me.”

“You’ve talked to other humans?”

“Yeah, at the village. They give me food all the time,” it answered, cheerfully.

I perked up at hearing this. “Are you talking about the village that was attacked by the current reaper?”

The catfish nodded.

“So then you know how to get there?” Hope had returned to my voice. I had most likely found hope in a very unexpected form.

“Of course I do. Why do you ask?”

I explained the situation that was happening with my friends and despite the fact it didn’t seem to be paying much attention, it understood the important part, that I needed to find the collapsed tunnel and rescue them. On top of that, it actually knew exactly where that was. It agreed to help lead me there and we headed off down the tunnel I’d come in through. Unfortunately, I’d chosen the very wrong tunnel. I hadn’t thought about the turns that the tunnel could take. The tunnel that I actually wanted was all the way to the right of the one I’d chosen.

As we swam along my heart and mind began to race. It was strange that this catfish could talk to both ninx and potrons alike. If it were actually a cat, it would be able to only talk to me and if it were a fish, it would only be able to talk to potrons. It made no sense unless this fish was actually a cat and a fish, but that kind of corss-breeding was even impossible for this world, unless...

Against my better judgement, I used what little essence I had recovered to briefly activate my cursed eye and look at the aura of the catfish. One glimpse was all it took for my suspicions to be confirmed. I deactivated my eye and began shaking furiously. I could feel bits of electricity sparking over my skin. This cat fish was actually a cat-fish, a hybrid of the two animals. I could make a pretty good guess who made the first one too. The aura of the fish was a creation aura fused with a water aura via wind essence. There was only one many I knew who was stupid and drastic enough to create such a thing and I was unfortunately related to him.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to think about that as we came up on the collapsed tunnel

“Here we are!” the cat-fish exclaimed.

“So then how do we actually get inside?”

It motioned its flipper for me to follow and it led me to a bit of loose rock off to the left of the collapsed rock.

“If you hit this rock, it’ll give you a nice tunnel that leads right in to the tunnel on the other side. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze, but you’re skinny enough to fit.”

I nodded. “Thank you so much for your help.”

The fish wiggled joyously before wishing me luck on my endeavor. I hit the loose rock and watched as the tunnel opened up under the collapsed rock. I slipped inside and made my way out in to the open tunnel where I came face to face with Viktor, Julian, Lilith, and their captures.

“Hello, Avien. We’ve been expecting you.”