“We got another one coming,” Augen said as Lera and Wu nodded with the latter writing down a scribbling of numbers on the notebook over his arms.
“So the patrols occur at a regular interval of fifteen minutes traveling at…” Wu murmured as Ver put her hands up and counted down in her head. Then, she gave him ten fingers.
“So that’s ten seconds covering the distance of two hundred meters…” Wu continued his mumble when the outcomes of his calculations finally presented themselves on the page, “approximate velocity of twenty meters per second, which converts to 72 kilometers per hour… I have never seen a chariot Cast go that fast on its own, have you?”
Lera shook her head before she looked towards Ver who seemed to be communing with the Kraken, “When we were at our top speed, maybe we could go that fast in the water…”
“So this is a brand new technology that we are dealing with…” Wu shrugged, “Just really adds a whole new layer to whatever’s going on in Necrovia, doesn’t it?”
“So what’s the plan?” Augen asked when Wu rubbed his hands excitedly.
“We spring a trap, and catch one of those capsules.”
As the next capsule rumbled through the underground river with bolts of electricity connecting its body with the walls and the river water underneath, a dark whirlpool suddenly opened up in front of it, swallowing it whole before anything could even happen as the thick fluids from within the Kraken's domain started rapidly decelerating the capsule while it became enveloped in darkness.
The change in velocity threw guards sitting in the chairs straight to the front side of the capsule Cast before the goods they were transporting were slammed against their backs, adding insults to injury.
“Wha…what the hell is going on?!” The pilot for the capsule pressed himself away from the front of the capsule and moaning bodies of his squadmates as he looked around with confusion and reached towards his communication Cast, however, a figure emerged from the shadows and knocked his hand aside through an attack shot straight through the outer surface of the capsule before a second hit from a Wave orb knocked him out cleanly.
“Now this is fascinating…” Wu murmured from behind his visor as the lines of flowing Wave became presented as a network of nodes in front of him, “And everything leads back to…here.”
Looking down at a small scroll that’s been embedded on the surface right in front of the now knocked out pilot, Wu then grabbed onto the scroll before pulling it out as the capsule’s outer shields became dissipated and the goods and the soldiers started floating away amid the Kraken’s dark fluids.
“Take them away somewhere safe.” Wu instructed when Ver whirlpool them back to the side banks of the underground river and brought Wu back out from within too. He tossed the scroll towards Augen who caught it with one hand.
“Yep, that felt right.” He nodded, flipping the scroll in his hands a few times before injecting a shot of Wave as a spherical structure expanded from within, recreating the capsule Cast that the rest of them then got on.
He rested his hands on the small platform that the scroll became embedded in, and a map of the underground river branches became projected in front of them. However, there are no signs showing where they actually are on the map.
Glancing at the spider net of a map, Wu suddenly started to regret his overreliance on GPS back on his world…
“I’ve got it.” Lera said, projecting the branches of the underground river she detected through her Cast array, then she swirled her hands through the air, rotating the piece of her ‘map’ until it matched up against a fraction of the map of the entire underground river network, “Maybe it’s this…? Or here…?”
“Assuming that they use the cardinal directions of North, West, South, and East…” Wu said, when Ver reached out with her tentacle and pressed into the bottom right corner of the map.
Lera let out an "Ah" before overlapping her piece with the map, and with that, the branches and the locations on the map became meaningful.
“There. The outer branches towards the East...” Wu pointed out, “That must be the locations of the border towns.”
“Then let’s get going.” Augen said as he pressed forward with a firm pressure onto the scroll to speed up the capsule slightly, “How much to you trust the piloting of a blind man?”
“I’ve got a license on my world, but I hate driving.” Wu sat back down when he instinctively reached for a seatbelt, only to find nothing to grab onto. However, Lera was there to his rescue with the Trapping Casts. She also wrapped it around herself and Augen for good measure, with Ver taking advantage of her very own tentacles.
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“A blind man it is~” Augen laughed as the capsule started picking up more and more speed with every passing second and bolt of lightning started to reconnect the surface of their capsule with the white rocky shells above and the underground river under them.
The piloting was easy enough to do, but taking the capsule out of the underground river and up to the surface was a far less intuitive process. Despite Augen’s best efforts at pushing and pulling the scroll in all sorts of directions, bringing Lera to the brink of vomiting, they were still stuck banging their heads against the upper and lower sides of the walls and making absolutely no progress.
Perhaps that was the security process, as those without full proper training would only be trapped under the layers of earth with no way out.
Knowing that another capsule could come at any moment, they reverted back to using Ver as their tool of transportation, to which the Kraken attempted to protest before Ver overrode its vote just as quickly. They left behind the scroll in a small floating capsule and allowed it to flow downstream to wherever the water takes it.
When the group next saw the sun above, it was already approaching the other side of the horizon at the start of dusk. The sand under their feet was warm after a whole day of baking, and a light breeze brought along some cool and the sights and sounds of the nearby towns. Augen was first to pick those up through his generally heightened senses, and the group started making their way towards it.
As they approached the series of towns, stopping on the tip-top of a dune overlooking the series of stone structures half-submerged in the sand, more and more people started to come out of their houses right as the sun was finally setting after a long day or journey through the sky.
It wasn't long before sounds of chatter and chants filled the air, though the sort of rowdiness felt different than what Wu had experienced in other towns before. He spotted a series of glowing light Casts that arose and flowed along the streets before all of them centered around one of the houses with the shouting of the people becoming more and more synchronous.
“Death to the witch! Death to the witch! DEATH TO THE WITCH!”
With everyone’s attention paid forward, the four of them departed and snuck through the outer boundaries of the town before blending smoothly into the crowds. As the sweaty bodies pushed against one another, Wu found himself pushing slowly towards the front of the rows as the density of the people increased the closer they got to the house that looked particularly run down.
“What is going on here…” Ver murmured when one of the villagers stepped forward and slammed his hand onto the door to rock it open, but a defensive Cast activated on it and bounced him away.
“Let’s just get out of here, there are too many people, and there's no way she's here...” Wu said into his piece of the Kraken's shell as he turned around and started heading away when more and more people started trying to break through the doors, the movement of the mob starting to bring him along.
Why the hell did they come here in the first place?!
“STOP!” A small voice pierced through the door before it was opened from the inside, and a slim girl with brown skin, blue eyes and long black hair stepped out with her eyes glowing with a strange pattern, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”
A shock wave pulsed out from within her body and swept through the crowds. The villagers at the front became frozen in place, however, those that stood behind them shouted even louder to try to break the other ones out of the spell.
With a wince, the girl held onto her head and stumbled backward, her body bumping against the door frame before she disappeared into the dark again as the door swung to a close.
However, before her body hit the floor, she felt a firm hand catching her along with a chilling breeze brushing past her body, and when she looked up through the dim lights of her room, she saw Augen’s green hair, his pale skin, and his flowing bandanna.
“I am sorry I took so long, Tonya.” Augen said, looking back towards the door when Ver, Lera, and Wu stepped ahead, and Ver swept everyone away with a swipe of the hand, leaving behind the crowds to their own devices.
“A…Augen…what are you doing here…” As Tonya tried to fend off the pulsing pain in her eyes with Lera kneeling down next to her to check on her health, “I thought I…”
“Well, you have your tricks, and I had mine.” Augen smiled as he probed into the Wave inside Tonya’s body, and the Wave emanating from her eyes somehow felt far more entangled and messed up than before, “How much of your eyes did you…”
“Every night…I had to push them back…” Tonya said as tears flowed uncontrollably out of her eyes with the glowing crown pattern persisting despite her attempts to retract that power, “It’s okay…I can control it…I can…”
“It doesn’t feel that okay to me…” Augen softened his voice and let Tonya lean back onto the sand, “Lera, what did you see from it?”
“Tonya, can you shut it down?” Lera asked, “If you don’t, it’s going to keep draining Wave away from your body.”
Tonya opened her mouth, but she quickly pressed her lips together and shook her head.
“I can shut it down for you.” Wu said as Lera backed away, and he quickly noticed the blood vessels bulging on the surface of Tonya’s eyes, “It may be a little disorienting initially, but…”
“You can handle it.” Augen added before glancing down at her and turning to Wu, “She is strong.”
“I don’t feel that strong…” Tonya joked as she closed her eyes and sighed, “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Ok. Here I go.” Wu cracked his knuckles before pushing forward a small pulse of Void Domain onto the small area of Tonya’s face. The crown symbols glowed through her eyelids one last time before it’s patterns finally settled down and vanished.
Tonya was quiet for a while, and then, she opened her eyes only to see Augen still holding onto her shoulders.
“It’s…it’s so quiet…so quiet now…” She murmured, touching her face with surprise, “I…How did you do that?”
“That’s the other thing about my friends.” Augen smiled with utmost satisfaction as Ver opened up another set of Whirlpools for them to get away with, “They are full of tricks.”