I touch your face, I’m in your hair, you see me not, but I am there. Without me you cannot be, and I cannot be beneath the sea. What am I?

“What the hell does that mean?” Alice said.

Blake repeated the riddle to himself. “What touches tour face and hair? Your fingers?”

Theo frowned. “You can live without your fingers. Skin?”

“You can have skin beneath the sea,” Blake said.

“Fish don’t have skin, though,” Alice said.

“But whales and dolphins do,” Theo said.

“All of these are things you can see. This is invisible, and its in your hair and on your face. And can’t be beneath the water. And without it, we couldn’t exist. It’s…” Blake started, faltering.

“Air!” Theo said, realizing. “It’s air. Air is always touching us, it’s invisible, and we’d die without it. But there’s no air underwater.”

Blake nodded, considering. “I mean there’s dissolved oxygen, but…”

“Do we think the riddle from the fish wizard cares about DO content?” Theo said, “it’s got to be air.”

“Okay, so… we solved it. What now?” Alice said.

Theo stepped forward, towards the giant stone wall that looked like Kal’ech’s head. He adopted his most theatrical voice. “The answer to the riddle,” he said, “is… air?”

A moment.

Then nothing. The room stayed exactly the same.

“Maybe it’s the wrong answer,” Blake said.

Theo shook his head. “What else would it be?” he asked. “There has to be something else. A door, a latch or something. Start looking.”

Alice grumbled and starting tapping the walls with her bow, looking for any sign of a door. Blake raised a flame-filled hand to illuminate the room and did the same.

But Theo was focused on the giant stone head in front of him. He tapped the facial fins with his staff, searched around the lips… and noticed that the mouth was slightly open. He looked into it, but saw only blackness. Like it was a tunnel reaching deep into the stone. He thought for a moment, then had an idea.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to do it. He had an idea, though. To make sure, he pulled up the description for his Call of the Wild ability.

Call of the Wild (Rare)

Nature hears your song, oh Druid, and heeds your call. From the lowliest vine and the smallest insect, to the greatest monstrosity and the tallest mountain, one day all of nature will bow before thee. Allows for the manipulation of plants, animals, and the elements based on your Wisdom. This Skill is a gift from DEITY UNKNOWN.

It was the same as before, but he noticed that there was an addendum afterwards. He had to imagine that his Druidic Knowledge was allowing him to see more than before.

Your Call of the Wild ability is fickle in nature, and unlike many Wizard spells, is deeply linked to emotion. Its power will vary depending on your emotional state. In moments of great stress, you may be able to tap into a deeper power. However, with most common levels of Wisdom, the Call of the Wild ability will allow as Druid to manipulate only small amounts of plants, animals, and elements. Call of the Wild is an exosystem variant of the Druidcraft ability, which in turn is the Druidic equivalent of Minor Magic.

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He frowned. The clarity was appreciated, since it wasn’t very clear the first time he got the ability. It seemed like a good spell still, and it had certainly helped with the Velocirabbit, but he hadn’t been able to reproduce anything close to that since. It made sense that the spell was a Druidic equivalent of Minor Magic, seeing as to it was basically a general druid spell, capable of generating several classic Druid effects. But what did it mean that it was an exosystem variant? If he broke down the latin, exo- meant from beyond. So a spell from beyond the system? How was that even possible?

He shook his head. The only important thing was if the spell could perform now, when he needed it. So he gathered his mana, taking several deep breaths, and held his staff in front of his face.

The runes on the staff began to glow, and a wind whipped up around Theo, tussling his hair. When he’d charged enough mana into the staff, he swung it forward, using the steps he knew from Staff of Nature’s Power, and whipped the wind around him forward. It followed his command, and a strong wind flowed from the tip of his staff, directly into the mouth of the stone head.

“What are you doing?” Alice asked.

Theo didn’t say anything. Instead, he waited and listened. From within the stone head, he could hear a clicking sound, like gears turning, following by a loud clanking sound. Then, slowly, he could hear the grinding of stone. He stepped back as a fissure opened in the stone head, releasing a cloud of steam and a pneumatic hiss.

The whole room shook as the head cracked open, revealing a long hall beyond.

“Nice!” Blake said, “what did you do?”

Theo shrugged. “The answer to the riddle was air. So I gave it some air.”

“Simple enough,” Blake said. “We ready?”

Theo examined the door and used his Druidic Knowledge skill to Identify it.

Turn back, Traveller! You are entering the Sanctum of Kal’ech, Priest of the Deep Ones!

“Let’s chug some health and stamina potions first,” Theo said, “make sure we’re tip top. It looks like the big boss is just around the corner.”

Theo produces health, stamina, and mana potions, which they split among them. He could feel the stamina potion wash his fatigue away. He felt a kind of jittery energy wash over his muscles. The health potion healed the myriad cuts from the squid’s teeth and tentacles. They sealed as if glued together, and left only crusted blood on his scale armor. The mana potion not only replenished his lost mana, but seemed to bolster the rate at which it returned to him. He played around with the air again, moving it between his hands, and practiced Staff of Nature’s Power, moving between some basic fighting forms. As he struck the air with the staff, he could see the wind moving around it, whipping up dust. It wouldn’t do much in a battle, but it was good to know that basic elemental control was in his grasp. He tried to control some water and earth, but couldn’t manage more than moving around a few droplets or a couple of pebbles. Again, not much for fighting, but if he practiced, he bet that there were myriad applications for Call of the Wild.

When they were all ready, they set off down the tunnel. Their marching order was the same: Theo at the front, holding his illuminated staff. Blake next, followed by Alice and Tiberius. The long hall dropped even deeper into the caverns. The temple seemed to grow more warped, detailed carvings turning into stalactites and glowing crystals.

Eventually, they came to a large chamber, better illuminated than the dank halls. It was a huge cavern, spacious enough that the ceiling was difficult to see. Waterfalls pouring from openings high in the walls, thundering into a deep pool that filled most of the cavern. In the center of the pool, more like a small lake, was a small pyramid of terraced steps. Water flowed down each side of the pyramid, trickling in little waterfalls into the pool.

“There,” Blake said, pointing to the wall behind the pyramid. “Our way out.”

A door sat in the wall behind the very top of the pyramid, suspended in mid-air. No steps led to it, but within the door, Theo saw a ladder going straight upwards. A way out. A way towards Jessica, and to righting his wrongs.

“How do we get to it?” Alice asked, “I skipped rock-climbing day in gym class.”

“Don’t know,” Theo said, “but I think we have bigger problems. It’s on the other side of Kal’ech.”

“What?” Alice asked.

Theo pointed. At the top of the pyramid, barely visible, was a sarcophagus. It was caved with cryptic runes, and Theo could barely see a figure carved onto the top. A figure of a fish man, holding a staff. Kal’ech.

“He’s in there?” Alice hissed, “like what, he’s dead?”

Blake frowned. “Or asleep.”

“Can we get around him?” Theo asked, “if we can get to the door, we won’t have to fight him.”

“And lose all that Universal Power? Besides, I don’t think we’ll be able to get out of here while Kal’ech lives,” Blake said.

“Well I don’t want to fight the fish wizard. I’m stealthy, which if I got over there and used a grappling hook…”

“I don’t think that’s an option,” Theo said.

“And why is that?” Alice asked.

Theo pointed his staff at the pool. From the depths, several webbed hands were reaching into the air. They clasped the stone lip of the pool, and scaled creatures began to slide out of the dark water. Theo looked into the fish-like eyes of two monstrous finfolk, clambering out the pool, holding crude shark-tooth spears in their hands.

“Because we’ve got company,” he said.