They went to the edge of the cliff to see the passage down below. The violent high-pressure jet of water that wrecked a gash through the island was nowhere to be seen but it was still pouring out a lot of water. About a fourth of what was coming out on day one. And the passage was gurgling, like a soda bottle when it pulls in the air while it's pouring.
"I did some calculations, and I think that the caustic ocean has around sixty square kilometers of surface area," Noah said. "And in four more days, the water flow will cease. Can you feel the wind?"
Robert extended an arm over the chasm. He could feel a downdraft of air pulling into the passage. "Is the passage sucking in air?"
"You bet it is," Noah said. "Started a few hours ago but I didn't want to interrupt you until your tempering session was done. For now, this is just a curiosity. Can you see how the water flow increases and decreases? I think the ocean there is experiencing waves for the first time. The waters there must be churning."
"I'll keep my puffblooms away from the passage. I don't want them to be sucked in," Robert mused.
They went back to their tempering but the passage was not an enticing tourist attraction. In just a few days, they would be able to cross the passage and stay on the surface of the ocean.
"We are going to need a boat. I can grow and shape wood," Amanda said.
"I was thinking we should make a stone boat," Noah said. "I can reinforce it with some runes and make it very sturdy. Because we are going to get attacked while sailing in that ocean. That whale was not the biggest creature living down there."
"I will enter the passage and scout it in my fairy form," Robert offered. "Who knows, maybe we can find some land."
"Don't get your hopes too high. The bottom of that realm is almost a mile down from the top," Noah warned.
"Okay."
*
*
Four days later, the situation had changed dramatically. The water now only poured out of the passage sporadically. Robert imagined it was when some high wave crashed against the passage on the other side and some water came out of it.
It was time. He was dressed in a cotton suit, full of essence, invisible, and up in the air. Robert floated slowly down, following the acid-scarred cliff face. He reached the passage level and saw what was on the other side. An ocean of blue waters was softly illuminated by an omnidirectional blue light that seemed to be coming from above. The waters were churning angrily. With a deep breath, he flew through the top of the passage.
The air smelled of brine and iodine. It kind of stung Robert's nose and eyes.
Immediately upon crossing, Robert went up. He rose three hundred feet and looked up. He could only see what seemed like a blue sky on a cloudy day, where the clouds only blocked the sun and were out of his field of view. But no. The sky, which was the top of the realm, was glowing with a pale blue light. The waters below reflected it and created the image of the perfect ocean, cerulean and, from this high up, serene.
Curious, he went up, trying to reach the ceiling. The blue light became brighter the higher he climbed and soon it became too hot to proceed. Robert estimated he was four hundred feet above the passage.
He descended back to three hundred feet above the passage and flew around in a spiral pattern. He searched for landmarks, other passages, monsters, ships, people, anything. All he could see was water, waves, sea foam, and the ominous blue sky. A thousand feet away from the passage, he stopped and looked in the distance. Robert wished he had a spyglass. He vaguely remembered seeing one back in the abandoned city but didn't take it. He was too focused on the books.
Assuming the passage was in the middle of the realm, the edge should be around two and a quarter miles away from it. He looked to the distance and saw what he first considered to be a horizon. The blue "sky" met the waters, and that was it. He did one more lap, keeping one eye on the passage to make sure he wasn't moving closer or away from it, and the other on this horizon. Around a quarter of a lap later, he spotted the horizon closer. He took his clockwork timepiece and checked the compass. The needle was moving erratically, pointing out that this realm had no magnetic field.
Great. No way to orient themselves.
Next, he flew back to the passage while he kept both eyes focused on the waters below. He couldn't see anything underneath it. No rocks, no sand banks, no creatures.
Halfway to the passage, he stopped. What he wanted to do was stupid but it could shed some light on the nature of this realm.
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Robert ignited his two stars and fired the widest zoltraak void lance he could. It came with fifteen feet of width, going toward the furthest "horizon" in a diagonal. The spell hit the water and disintegrated a cylinder of liquid god-knew how long. He fired another four lances, almost bottoming up his essence. Robert rose to three hundred and fifty feet, darting away from the point of origin of the spells.
The waters churned. Several monsters surfaced, a few of them wounded. With blood on the water, the predators started a feeding frenzy. But the blue light from the ceiling made the blood look almost black.
While they were distracted, Robert flew back to the Puffbloom Islands.
*
*
It took another day for things to calm down in the other realm. The smell of carrion and acidic blood was overwhelming. Robert's stunt might have lowered the water level by eight millimeters but was it worth it? He didn't think so.
But Robert knew that doing things halfway was worse than doing nothing. He fired another volley of void spears, four this time, then conjured a shield voidling near the surface of the water before darting away. He watched. The monsters surfaced again, this time with three giant ones. Some went for the voidling, dying as the void tentacles cut and bashed them. The voidling died soon after, overwhelmed. It didn't last longer than with the monkeys. The water became almost pitch black because the blood didn't reflect blue very well.
The two giant ones were having an all-you-can-murder-and-eat buffet.
"Eat well, you freaks," Robert mumbled. "And then go to sleep so you won't bother us any longer."
But Robert was tapped out. He zipped into the passage and out the other side.
*
*
The next day, he didn't go. Instead, he worked on his tempering and polished his sword skills in the liminal void. Noah and Amanda were busy designing the boat so he left them to their own business.
On the sixth day since Noah noticed that the ocean levels had dropped to the passage height, Robert went into the realm again.
This time, he wasn't going in to stir trouble. No. Once on the other side, he scouted the place for a while and found three other passages located far above the current water level. He hoped one of them led to the next realm in their journey home, the Deserts of Desolation. He flew to each of them and checked. Jungle, quartz caverns, and, finally, a desert.
They would need to somehow reach the passage a hundred and seventy feet above the water level but that was a problem for another day. With any luck, Robert could set a grappling hook on one side of the passage and use that to anchor a vine Amanda grew or something like that.
He flew back, noting the distance and direction. Though it was hard to orient oneself in this shadowless place, he was using the front of the passage to the Puffbloom Islands as north. The desert was south-southeast, then. Back near the passage, he did one last test. Activating his talent, he went to the void. Robert then landed on the water and found it was solid just like any other water. There went the idea they could move underwater in the liminal void.
*
*
Robert waited for four days until the acid dissolved all the blood and corpses. Back to its pristine blue conditions that Robert was starting to feel sick of, the Caustic Ocean was ready for its first crafted vessel.
The Ether situation at the Puffbloom Islands reached an equilibrium with only a marginal benefit. The two realms exchanged nine cubic kilometers of water for nine cubic kilometers of air, plus some monster corpses that were devoured by the idyllic realm. Though it was a net positive for the Ether-starved place, said Ether permeated around the whole place and the Puffbloom Islands were way bigger than the Caustic Ocean.
"The boat is ready," Amanda said. "I have it here in my main storage ring, ready to deploy."
"Good. Let's depart, then," Noah said.
They walked through the desolate island one last time. The flight markers and platforms were completely destroyed, making flights out of this place nigh impossible. If anyone wanted to use the Puffbloom Islands ever again, they would need to open the way through the slime caverns or none at all. They could do as the explorers of a century ago did and trailblaze the glider trails but... The data from the markers still existed. But without the precise calibration at the spot that no longer existed, it was close to useless. A deviation angle of even two degrees could place you on a completely different island or even down a path where no island existed within ten miles of the haze.
Reaching the passage cliff, they looked down. While Robert was busy promoting a gruesome spectacle for his weary eyes, Amanda had carved stairs down the cliff, complete with railing. Nobody wanted to fall down and splatter themselves onto the island ninety seconds later. She also created a platform underneath the passage with a runway channel so the water wouldn't pool there.
"Noah?" Amanda said. "I need a platform to assemble the boat on the other side."
The teacher reached the passage, leaned through, and cast a spell. "Natural Disaster: Ice Age."
The ocean around the passage froze, forming a massive iceberg. The scale of Noah's magic was scary. But then again, the teacher was a three-star elder.
Robert flew through first. The iceberg was firmly anchored because it reached the passage and got stuck there. This place shouldn't have any currents, unlike Earth's oceans. In fact, it was just a huge box full of acid, monsters, and despair.
"It's safe," he said.
Amanda crossed. She tip-toed around the uneven ice. Then she set to work, placing down the enchanted plates that would form the boat. She shaped the stones to weld them together. Noah's runic ingenuity made it so the enchantments on each plate synergized together to create a stronger and more solid hull. The process took hours. They built the lower hull and then sealed a pocket of air with more stone. This way, the hull wouldn't flood unless punctured and they had the enchantments to keep this worst-case scenario from happening.
She anchored the forty-foot-long hull to the passage and then started to make the upper decks.
The ice suddenly cracked under the weight of the stone vessel and split in two. Both ends drifted away as the boat splashed into the water. It quickly stabilized and enchantments on the railings kept the acidic water splashes from spilling over them and onto the main deck.
With the seaworthiness of the boat approved, everyone got on board and they set sail.
Two puffblooms and one Taulusian made great use of their Wind affinity to make it so.