The second my body hit the water, I immediately felt a hot wave of pain shoot through my body. Even though we had each straightened ourselves out to minimize the impact of the jump, we had jumped from several miles in the air. There was no way this jump wasn’t going to hurt at least a little bit. I could only imagine what it would have been like, had we not straightened ourselves out. I was imagining crushed raspberries.
My next instinctual thought was to surface as quickly as possible, but then my brain caught up, remembering the potions we had drank just moments before. Breathing in water was quite the new experience. Although we hadn’t grown gills or any kind of new organ to convert the oxygen in the water much like a fish, we were still fully capable of doing just that. I could see a slight blue glow coming from inside Viktor’s mouth which I assumed was a seal converting the water to breathable air.
The frizzy-haired earth apprentice had been gasping for normal air that wasn’t there before his body caught up as well. I looked over to Lilith whose flaming scarf was currently creating a large mass of steam around her. Once she noticed, she angrily stared at it until it seemed to back down out of fear, the steam subsiding with it. Julian kept opening and closing his mouth, seemingly testing the new way of breathing. I don’t think he realized just how hilarious he looked as he opened and closed his mouth while looking down at his nose like he was trying to stare through his head.
Once we all had our bearings, we swam together in a small huddle.
“So, does anyone know-” I stopped short, noting just how odd my voice sounded. It was exactly how you would think it would, like I was trying to talk with a mouth full of water, which I sort of did. “Woah... That is kinda crazy to hear...”
“Purple phoenixes!” Viktor shouted, excitedly testing out the new voice modulation provided by the ocean.
“Viktor quit messing-” Lilith stopped, inquisitively looking around as she spoke. “Okay. That is pretty weird... Big blue ghostly octopus!”
Julian chuckled, playfully rolling his eyes. “Carrot on a stick.”
Now that we had all seemingly gotten our laugh out of this new situation, I decided to continue my question. “Anyway... As I was saying, does anyone know where exactly we are right now?”
We looked around and I got my first real look at the place where we had landed. Several hundred feet underneath us, sliding off in to a chasm, was a large bed of bright white sand. Dotted amongst the sand were dozens of small rocks and coral formations of all different colors. Surrounding us on all sides except behind, there was nothing but clear open ocean and small schools of fish that were definitely not normal. Behind us, looming ominously was what I could assume was the main continent of the World of Essence. I would think, given its most likely magical creation, it would be pretty clean cut, almost perfectly flat, but it looked to be very worn by the age of the several hundred years it had been in existence.
After we had all taken our look around, Lilith answered, “Well, I believe we are currently right next to the main island that makes up the world. That puts us pretty far away from the City of Waves, but we should be able to make it there in just a few hours if we really push it.”
“Alright, so does anyone know which way we should head then?” I asked.
Julian pulled out a compass and quickly turned around for a bit before point in a direction. “That way.” He created a small seal and then placed a small bit of metal on the compass to mark the proper direction.
“Alright. I think, before we head out, we should make sure that everyone still has everything they left with,” I said. Everyone nodded and I opened my bag slightly to check for my books, samples, and most importantly, the Jade Grimmoire. I then checked around my neck for the wind mystic earring. Thankfully, it was. I quickly dropped it, having accidently touched the crystal. I shook my hand nervously, watching as the glowing green burns slowly faded away, leaving behind a slight stinging pain. I looked back to the group and they all nodded, so we started heading on our way to the City of Waves.
We swam along for an hour or so in silence before I began to get really bored. Although, that wasn’t my only problem. Being in this vast empty ocean, I felt so thoroughly out of my element. Even though the earth was the opposite of the air, this just felt so much more out of place for me. It may have partially been due to my feline DNA that I felt so uncomfortable, but it may have been something else.
Even if there were fish and plants and even the occasional fun rock outcropping, I still felt so alone here. I had my friends by my side or... in front of me, as it were, but that didn’t make it any less of an empty space. The closest bit of “solid” ground was no less than five hundred feet below and the surface was at least three hundred. Despite the ability to breathe, I had this ever-present fear that I was going to drown any moment now. After all, I had no idea how long it would last for. That was definitely something I was going to have to look in to once we got to the city.
I then realized that I had the ability to take this environment in to my own hands. In a way, this place was no different from being in the air and even though I still wasn’t the most amazing flier, I could certainly work with this. It would take a lot more effort to push myself forward and around down here since I’d have to move water as well as myself and deal with a lot more resistance. Unlike, the water apprentices, I couldn’t just use the water in the way I used air to fly.
I formed a seal on my left and right hand so that I could get a bit more control than focusing it all through one seal. I stopped in place and conjured a blast of air to push me forward. On land, the blast would have been able to shake the apples off a tree, but down here, it barely moved me two inches. I was going to have to use a lot of power to get myself moving. I straightened myself out and began generating wind that pushed against each of my feet as I slowly increased the power.
My body slowly began to move forward and so I did the same with both of my hands. Now, I could essentially swim like normal, but I would have a lot more force pushing me forward. I continued like this for a bit, performing some fun maneuvers and such to entertain myself as we swam to the city, but even that got a little boring after a while. It was time to turn up the speed to something a bit more extreme.
I focused on each of the seal currently pushing me forward before looking forward and pushing them as far as possible. Much to my surprise, my vision did not slow and I went barreling right in to darkness. My vision quickly adjusted to accommodate the new setting. I swallowed hard when I looked around and saw where I had ended up. Surrounding me on all sides were massive walls of stone crowded with dozens of very unfriendly looking creatures. My eyes darted around, searching for the opening. Once I found it, I quickly shot right back out of the cavern and came face to face with Julian, Lilith, and Viktor.
“Where in ser were you doing?!” Lilith shouted, fuming.
“Guys, I would really love to talk about this, but there are about a hundred really angry sea creatures about to burst forth from that cave and try to murder me, so I think we should probably get ready to fight. I highly doubt we could outrun them.”
They briefly exchanged glances before drawing their weapons and getting in to a battle stance. This was going to be our first battle underwater, so I had no idea how this would end up going. I drew my sword, noticing some serious drag as I did so. This was definitely going to be a lot harder than any of us were probably expecting it to be.
Unfortunately for us, when I had come flying out of the cave, I had kicked up a lot of sand and loose rocks which were currently obstructing the soon to be battlefield quite significantly. I attempted to fire a giant gust of wind at it in an attempt to disperse it, but it only succeeded in spreading it out and widening the area of effect.
We didn’t have to wait very long because, just after I sent out that gust, the creatures all came charging out of the cave. Much to my ever-growing dismay, the debris seemed to have very little effect on them as they came out and immediately began attacking us. Even though we could barely see them or each other, for that matter, we still were holding our own at least somewhat alright. Unfortunately, the water was dragging so much all I could really do was block.
When I looked to the others, I saw them having the same problem. Without any real practice in an environment like this, it would be very hard to do anything. Lilith was at even more of a disadvantage since she could really use magic without expending massive quantities of essence to get her fire hot enough. A really bad idea came to me, but it may just work. I used my seals to quickly zip around and grab each of them before darting behind an outcropping just a few hundred feet away.
“Alright. I need to make this quick because I’m sure they can figure out where we are pretty easily,” I said as the group met me with nods. “So, we’re not doing so hot right now. We can defend, but I’m fairly certain, in a battle of underwater endurance, they’ll win. I do have an idea though. If you guys go back there and lead them this way, I can create a giant bubble of air big enough to contain us and all the creatures. All you have to do is take them out before they can get back to the water.”
"That’s insane! That will consume way too much essence if you do it!” Lilith shouted.
“It’s all we’ve really got though,” Julian reasoned.
I nodded and Lilith sighed before we looked to Viktor who just looked between us, “What are you looking at me for? If you can do it, go for it, dude. Our part is easy. We just have to kill some big ugly fish.”
“So, we’re doing this?” I asked.
"Yup.”
“Alright, let’s go,” I said before they rushed out from behind the outcropping back to the creatures.
I did the same and concentrated on placing a seal in the middle of a flat section of sand. I waited, watching in the distance as a bunch of small black specks began to come in to view and grow much bigger. I counted to four and once they were all inside the area, I slammed my hands to the ground, pouring a massive amount of essence in to the seal. I may not be able to do complex things, but I had a massive supply of essence for doing stupid simple things like this.
The massive bubble of air opened up and the four apprentices got to work taking out the creatures before they could make it back to the water. A giant, blue, demon-lobster looking thing came charging at and I winced, but Lilith kicked in right in to the sand, burning it in the process. She then motioned for Viktor and Julian to clear out which they promptly did, leaving only her and fifty or so sea monsters. A brown construct magic barrier appeared around me and before I could question it, the bubble was engulfed in flames and then a massive explosion.
The smoke cleared and the barrier dropped to reveal Lilith standing in the center surrounded by nothing, but burnt monsters. She smiled and shouted, “You can drop the bubble now!” She jumped back in to the water as I removed the seal and the water came flooding back in to the empty space.
I hadn’t realized how much essence I’d used until I dropped the bubble. My vision got blurry and it took everything I had to keep from passing out. I sank to the ocean floor and I felt a hand on my shoulder picking me up. I looked up and saw Viktor smiling down at me. “Good work, dude!” He reached a hand out and I took it, picking myself up to meet the faces of the rest of the group.
“You are the most insane person I've ever met, bubble boy...” Lilith said, but I could see the concern in her eyes.
"Right back at you, explosion girl,” I said, laughing nervously.
She looked away. “Oh yeah... I guess I got a little carried away, eh?”
“Of course not! That was super sick!” I exclaimed excitedly.
“I’d have to agree,” said someone causing us to all spin around.
We were met with what I could only reason to be a mermaid.
“Hi there! My name’s Amus!”
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