“Sorry guys, just taking a slash.” Chaser emerged from the trees to their left a few moments later.
“You fuck,” chided Rhys as Chaser jumped into the back beside Bob.
“Would you have preferred I piss in the car?”
“I would have preferred you let someone know where you’re going,” replied Rhys. “Why’d you have to go so far into the bush anyway?”
“I like to feel the air on my arse, it’s more freeing that way. Figured our new friends didn’t want to see that the first time we meet. You gotta work up to those things you know. Anyway I was only gone a few secs.”
“Guys! Check out that waterfall.” Odessa pointed through a gap in the trees, as they rounded a bend in the road.
“Oooh, nice!” exclaimed Bob. “That looks like a great natural slide, all smooth and slick. Possibly a bit of a canyon up above that too. We should do it on the way out.”
Odessa eyed him. “With your leg?”
Bob shrugged. “I’ll tape a dry baggy over it.”
Odessa snorted.
“You can’t judge me,” Bob pointed a finger at her. “You’re not technically supposed to be diving either.”
“What? Why isn’t she supposed to be diving?” asked Rhys.
Chaser glanced over with a knowing grin and to Odessa he said, “I heard you got the bends in the Devil’s Web?”
Odessa shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m fine now.”
Rhys narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to take several weeks off from diving if you get the bends?”
“It was over a month ago,” Odessa replied.
“Five weeks,” corrected Bob smugly.
“Yeah, well the doc gave me this heart monitor and said as long as I don’t overexert myself I should be fine.” She tapped her wrist. “He didn’t explicitly say no diving, he just suggested it.”
“Wasn’t that thing beeping when we were on the wall?” Rhys asked.
“Only for the last little bit. Then we relaxed and watched the sunset, remember?”
“Mmm, who’s bright idea was that?” Rhys queried.
“It would have been dark by the time we got to the bottom anyway,” Bob replied grumpily. “Anyway, if it wasn’t for me falling in that hole then we wouldn’t be about to get the pay day of our lives.”
Odessa leaned forward and poked her head between the two front seats. “Donny, you didn’t answer my question before about how deep this cave system potentially goes. Like they must have some idea?”
Donny nodded. “Some people reckon it might be over 300 metres deep.”
“Fuck!” exclaimed Rhys. “That’d be a record to set.”
“But there’s also a lot of tunnels between 10 and 60 metres. Not sure what the deepest someone’s done in this cave is. Deepest report I could find went down to 70 metres and reckoned there was a lot more cave below that.”
“What else does that report say?” Odessa asked.
“That’s it. Just the one blurry picture to go with it.” He handed her his laptop.
He was right. There wasn’t much to see. “Looks pretty wide and weirdly smooth.”
“That’s the main tunnel.”
“Well, I hope there’s plenty of interesting side tunnels cause there’s no way we’re doing a 300 metre dive.”
“Why not?” asked Rhys.
Odessa snorted. “Because nobody’s ever cave dived to 300 metres before and it would take several hours of decompression time. I’d rather be exploring new places than sitting in the water waiting to go up.”
“That how you got the bends? By being too impatient to go up?” Rhys inquired.
“No, I stayed down a minute overtime. One measly minute.”
“A minute’s a lot when you’re under the water,” Rhys replied. “You should have increased your safety stop times.”
“I know what I should have done,” grumbled Odessa. She didn’t need Rhys reminding her. Now that Bob had told him about her bends incident, he was probably going be an extra stickler for the rules. She knew them well, she really did. She’d just made one little mistake and she’d paid for it. She wouldn’t make it again.
“Either way, if we do a deep dive you should probably stick to a shallower depth,” Rhys continued.
Odessa glared at him but Rhys was too busy maneuvering the vehicle up a steep incline to notice. “We don’t have have the equipment for a dive that deep anyway,” she retorted.
“Oh, yes we do. Our new friends have organised an equipment drop with our benefactor. Quite literally, they’re porting them in today. It should be there before we are. I added a few things to the list.”
----------------------------------------
“A few things, huh?” Odessa remarked as she stood in their new campsite and stared at the large treasure trove of tanks, masks, and other equipment that Rhys had organised delivered. It was definitely more than a few things.
Behind her lay a turquoise pool, surrounded on one side by a rocky mound and jungle on the other three. It wasn’t overly wide, about 15 by 15 metres but it did look dark and deep in the middle. Green moss grew on rocks around the edges.
“So, we doing a dive this evening?” Chaser asked the group as all seven of them looked at the gear.
“Sure, why not?” Odessa replied. “Gives us overnight to off-gas. How bout we do 30 for 30?”
“30 metres for 30 minutes?” Nico clarified, “That’s outside the no decompression limit no?”
Odessa took a moment to study the beauty of his physical form before shrugging and replying, “So we add some safety stops. It won’t be more than a few minutes for that.”
“May not need to with trimix,” replied Bob as he nodded toward some of the labels on the tanks.
Odessa hesitated. “I’ve never dived with trimix.”
“Neither have I,” admitted Nico, “But I’m pretty sure that still requires a safety stop, at the very least a standard one at 3 metres.”
“Well, we won’t guess, we’ll check the dive tables,” Rhys agreed.
Chaser shook his head. “I agree with that but I do think 30 metres is a waste of the overnight surface time we’ll get. And if we’re using trimix then we might as well make the most of it and go deep first. At least past the known deepest dive. If we go to 100 metres and spend say 10-20 minutes there then we should be able to get down and up within three hours and be off-gassed by morning.”
“Don’t guess, check the fucking dive tables,” repeated Rhys.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“I know that Rhys, I’m just ball-parking.”
“You’d be looking at about 5 tanks of 3 different mixes,” commented Triss. She’d been mostly quiet since they’d arrived, just listening to the others talk. Nico had been warm and friendly, chatting to everyone and asking them a bit about themselves, and listening with a rabid interest to anything anyone said. Triss seemed like an ice queen in comparison. Nico had said that she was the more experienced out of the two of them though.
“One of the most common mistakes that a diver makes is breathing in the wrong gas,” Triss told them. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable doing a dive with that many gas mixes at that depth when we’ve only just met each other. Have any of you dived with trimix before?”
Rhys pointed to himself and nodded.
Chaser and Donny shook their heads.
“I have,” answered Bob.
Rhys shook he head. “You are not going to be doing any diving, Bob.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not like I have to put weight on it in the water.”
“Yeah, but how are you gonna get your wetsuit on?” Odessa asked.
Bob paused and looked thoughtful. “Hmm, good point.”
Chaser chuckled and shook his head in amusement.
Nico spoke. “I agree with Triss. I thought we might start with something a little easier, just to get to know each other yeah? And probably best to keep it to uninjured individuals, at least at first yeah?”
The others nodded.
“And we’ll probably want at least one surface support person, ideally two.”
Donny raised his hand. “I volunteer. Me and Bob can manage things up here.”
While Rhys, and some of the others sorted out the gear, Odessa put on her wetsuit and then grabbed one of her cameras to take some pictures of the pool. She’d do a video for her fans tomorrow while off-gasing between dives. In the background she could hear the others listing items.
“Masks.”
“Check.”
“Pony bottle.”
“Check.”
“Oi, don’t throw the gas.”
“It was a light punt.”
“Line marker.”
“Check.”
“Dive sausage.”
“Dive sausage? I don’t think we’ll be needing that here.”
“I was just being prepared. We can practice sword fighting later.”
While she was crouched down low, getting a picture from the perspective of the moss, a figure stepped up behind her.
“Nice shot," Donny remarked.
She turned around.
He was looking at the picture she’d just taken on her camera.
“Thought someone was appreciating my arse for a brief second there,” Odessa teased.
Donny shook his head. “That would require you to have one.”
“Ohhh, low blow.” Odessa grabbed her chest like she’d been shot in the heart and fake staggered a little. Then she rightened herself and gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “Hey, how’d that footage from the drive in turn out?”
Donny grumbled and gave a small shrug. “It’s okay. The first bit was good. I shouldn’t have switched to the telekinetic cam. It’s always harder to hold straight. Except for that bit when Rhys made the goblin illusion. That was fucking epic. I’d post that online but Chaser would probably be pissed since it’s a video of him driving into a hole.”
“Nah, he posted that picture of you in Baroga.”
“Oh yeah, he did, didn’t he? In that case, I am so totally posting this online when we get back.”
“Ahhhhhhhh!” a loud scream echoed through the jungle.
It was Rhys.
Everyone rushed over.
“What?” Chaser asked in a worried voice.
Rhys lifted his hands. In them was a watch.
“It’s a Rovex.”
The tension immediately evaporated.
“A what?” Odessa asked. She figured he was referring to the watch but she had no idea what a Rovex was.
“It’s like a Rolex but it’s 100% witch made.”
Odessa cocked an eyebrow. “Except for the name.”
“What are you talking about?” remarked Donny with a conspiratorial grin, “It’s obviously a completely different name, it has a V in it and everything.”
Odessa sniggered.
“You screamed because of a watch?” inquired Chaser incredulously.
“Must be some watch,” added Nico.
“Oh it is.” Rhys replied. “It’s one of the few really good infused watches. Don’t ask how me how it works but it takes regular samples of your blood so it can actually measure how much dissolved nitrogen is in your body and give you a precise decomp plan right down to the millisecond.”
“How does it work?” asked Odessa.
Nico gave her a look. “I don’t know. Ask Bob, he’s the sorcerer.”
Odessa grinned and looked to Bob.
Bob was seated comfortably on the ground between different piles of equipment. “I am not a sorcerer. Dad might have been one, but I am most certainly not. I am a common man. One of the people.” He sat up straight and laid his palms up as if in some kind of meditative open pose. Bob had grown up rich and basically been a luxury bum his entire life, but he was, as he said, very down to earth. He was also the most knowledgeable about many strange places. He always knew the cheapest places to stay and where to find good food.
“Your dad’s a sorcerer?” inquired Nico. “What are your powers if you don’t mind me asking?”
Odessa had learnt one thing very fast when she’d first entered witch society to go to uni, and that was that there was a right way and a wrong way to ask about what a witch’s powers were. It was never the first thing you asked, not if you were being polite. But it could be the fourth or fifth thing, depending on how the conversation was going. For some people, their power was like a badge of who they were and they’d blurt it out early and casually in conversation. For others, it was a very personal secret. For people they were going cave-diving with, it was probably useful information to know. The topic was bound to come up at some point before they entered the water.
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” replied Bob, and he summoned his flame.
Odessa watched as Triss and Nico’s eyebrows both shot up. Firestarters were uncommon enough, and they made some people uncomfortable but despite their initial surprise, neither looked too worried.
“What about you two?” Bob asked.
“Oh, I’m boring.” Triss smiled, perhaps the first smile Odessa had seen her make, then with the flick of her wrist she telekinetically lifted a air cylinder into the air. “Nico’s is more interesting.”
“I’m an empath,” Nico explained, “And half chikari.”
“Half chikari!” Chaser exclaimed. “Don’t you need to be in the sun all the time?”
Nico shook his head. “As long as I get enough of it during the day, I’m fine.”
“Doesn’t pair well with being a cave diver though,” Odessa observed.
Nico gave her a dashing smile. “No, it doesn’t.” After a pause he asked cautiously, “Are you a vampire? Or part?”
“Oh, because of my eyes?” Violet was not a standard witch or human colour. Odessa shook her head. “No, I’m-”
“Odessa’s human.” Rhys jumped in.
Nico looked even more surprised than he had at Bob being a firestarter, which she supposed was to be expected. The small number of humans that integrated into witch society this side of the splice didn’t usually make their living adventuring. It was dangerous enough work for a witch. In addition to having access to magic, witches aged slower, their bodies were built stronger, their bones were harder break, their hearts could take more stress. It didn’t hep that Odessa had been born with a hole in hers. Sometimes witches could fix things like that, but her healer roommate back in her uni days had told her that congenital conditions were difficult to deal with.
“You’re a human?” Nico repeated.
Odessa nodded.
“Shit.”
Triss didn’t look surprised, probably because she’d seen Odessa’s blogs and videos. Odessa always made a big deal about being ‘everyone’s favorite human’ online. It was a strong selling point. Some of the viewers she was sure just watched cause they didn’t expect her to survive. Odessa didn’t care. Dancing with death was what she lived for.
“But your eyes? That’s not a human colour.”
Odessa shrugged. “Fully human, according to mum and dad. “But who knows, maybe there was some secret nookie going on back in the day. If so, it’s well back in my bloodline.”
They quickly covered off everyone else’s powers; Donny’s telekinesis, Rhys’s Illusions, and Chaser, the rare voodooist, manipulator of dolls. He hated when Odessa called them dolls though. They were poppets and Chaser was one of those people who didn’t really like to talk about his powers. It was always something Odessa had found surprising given the rest of his personality but she’d never asked him about it. As their conversation about powers ended and everyone got back to getting ready for the dive and setting up the last of camp, Odessa noticed Chaser walk idly off into the jungle. She didn’t follow. He always got serious when magic was the topic of conversation. He probably wanted to be alone.
Instead, she walked back over to Donny, who was peering into the pool.
“You sure you want to skip the first dive?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’ll probably be dark by the time you guys get in the water. I’ll get better pictures tomorrow. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll see you when you resurface.”
She stared down at the inky black of the middle of the pool. It was so still, not a ripple on the surface. She wondered what lay waiting for them below.
“Where do you think the water comes in from?” she asked.
“From an underground stream.”
But it wasn’t Donny who answered her.
Odessa glanced up.
Across the clearing, quite some way away, far too far for him to have heard her question, stood a very tall, very square-looking man. He had light brown hair, and it was slightly too long because it was definitely getting in his eyes. He was wearing a suit half way between tan and dried mud colour. It wasn’t a fancy suit though. It looked more like the sort that archeologists used to wear before they went out of fashion. It didn’t quite fit him either. It hung loose on his large form making him look somehow even bigger.
There seemed to be someone standing behind him too, someone much smaller, but whoever they were they were hidden by his oversized body.
Nico spotted him and stepped forward. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet our benefactor, Mr Pits.”
Mr Pits brushed his hair out of his face. The two men shook hands.
“Good to see you again,” Nico told him with a smile.
“Please, Kevin will do just fine. I’m glad to see your equipment arrived without issue. Is everything to your liking?”
“Oh, shit yeah,” replied Rhys.
Nico smiled politely and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
Mr Pits smiled as well, and replied, “Please do let me know if there’s anything you need. Now, let me introduce you to the lovely lady who will be joining you for some of you expedition. Everyone this is my grandmother, Daisy.”
From out behind Mr Pits, stepped a little old lady. She stood with a slight bend, shoulders hunched forwards. She was tiny and fragile looking, like large wind might just bowl her over. Her long snow white hair was piled on top of her head in bun, loose strands dangled about her head. Her eyes looked like they were barely open.
But then in a loud, sharp voice, with a surprising amount of energy behind it, the old woman replied, “You can call me Hoots.”