Dyllan hit the ground with a thud and coughed out the water he’d swallowed. He could finally breathe again. The air here was thin, and he was consistently just a little short of breath, but he wasn’t suffocating anymore. Slowly, he stood up and began to orient himself. He was inside a tall, white, cylindrical room. There was nothing in it aside from him and Andie, but the bright and sterile nature of the walls and floor gave off a menacingly medical vibe. There were a few doors that Dyllan suspected led deeper into the building, and behind him a large rectangular chunk had been cut out of the wall.

Outside was mostly just water, which was pushed up against the hole like a large aquarium window. If it weren’t for the trail of water droplets leading from the “window” to where he was standing, he would have just assumed there was some form of invisible barrier holding the water back.

Continuing the themes of water and weird mindscape physics, Dyllan couldn’t help but notice that he and his clothing were completely dried out - as though he’d never fallen in the water to begin with. Maybe he should look into that later, it could lead to him figuring out what the deal with Cedric’s mindscape was - hopefully before Andie had some kind of revelation and beat him to the punch again… which if she was going to do, he hoped she’d do it soon. Winning and losing both felt better when it was against someone strong, and, more importantly, he wanted Cedric to snap out of this as quickly as possible.

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“Hey, Andie -” Dyllan cut himself off when he saw Andie flinch in response to his words. She was hyperventilating and tightly clutching her Virtue, which meant she’d been using her Courage a lot. Which meant a lot of strain was being put on her courage. Which meant she was really, really on edge. “Sorry. I’ll give you some space.”

Dyllan wandered over toward the large “window” in the wall and looked out of it. Aside from just water, there were many tall buildings bunched up in thin conical upside-down spires that hung from the bottom of the asphalt islands like stalactites. They were covered in small landing pads and “windows” like the one he was looking out of, which led him to suspect he was inside some kind of hangar. As for what the hangar was for… Well, he suspected it had something to do with the submarines buzzing around everywhere like bees, but the hangars were devoid of water, so he struggled to see how they could move inside them.

They did look awfully similar to the dirigibles above the surface, though.

Wait. Not just similar… They were hard to spot, but the submarines had packed up deflated balloons on top of them, and in between the two propellers on their back was an inactive thruster like the ones used by the dirigibles above. Yeah, that settled it. There were a lot more of them underwater than in the open sky, and they were a lot busier down here too, but they were definitely the same vehicle.

“It’s invisible.” Andie’s voice came from behind Dyllan - her tone strained and overly alert, but focused and steady.

“…what’s invisible?”

Andie walked up to stand beside Dyllan. “Cedric’s Nightmare.”