After testing her blip a few more times, Iris elected to avoid using it as much as possible. Not only was the intense pressure of each reappearance taking a significant toll on her body and threatening to cause her to black out each time, but she consistently caused an underwater explosion in her wake with every blip. As the water crashed in to fill the void she left behind, it released a flash of light and a powerful shockwave that was strong enough to briefly knock fish in the vicinity unconscious, and much to Iris's dismay and regret it even outright killed a few smaller fish. What's more, rather than pushing things away like a normal explosion, these ones seemed to suck things in. Neither Iris, nor Victoria or Jacquie, had any idea why it was happening. Cameron seemed to understand, however, and tried to explain by spreading his hands wide, then clapping them together before spreading his fingers as if they held a small explosion. Iris couldn't quite decipher what he was trying to say, but once he'd become thoroughly frustrated she gave up and simply nodded as if she understood.
"Now that that's over with," Jacquie said with annoyance dripping from his tone, "shall we go loot the castle?"
Autumn shook her head vehemently and pointed at a ghostly Victoria gliding towards them from the castle.
When Victoria reached them she explained what she'd found while scouting ahead, "I flew through much of the ground floor, there's lots of hazards inside but no sign of our target. I found the entrance to what looks like a dungeon, but the walls are warded and I can't move through them. We'll have to break in the old fashioned way."
Autumn made two hand signs, the first meaning "stick together" and the second meaning "let's move."
Autumn and Titus walked across the seafloor through the winding paths of the garden while the others swam and Victoria hovered above in a fashion indistinguishable from how she floated in air. When they reached the castle wall, they found a large wooden door banded in rusted iron. It was clearly not the main entrance to the castle, and presumably served as simple garden access. There was an old fashioned keyhole on the door, and no other visible mechanism to open it.
Victoria poked her head through the solid door for a moment, then withdrew and shook her head, "there's no way to unlock it from inside."
Cameron repeated the hand sign for "fall back" several times, then moved up to the door. He reached into a pouch on his waist and withdrew a glob of a squishy, clay-like putty, which he stuffed firmly into the keyhole. Next he withdrew a thin metal cylinder, about an inch long and not much wider than a large needle, and pressed it into the putty. As soon as the piece of metal was in place, he twisted and kicked off the door to swim away as fast as he could manage. Only a few seconds later a shockwave shot out from the door, kicking up dust from the seafloor that mixed and swirled in the water. When the dust parted enough to reveal the door, the party saw that only a splintered hole remained where the keyhole had once been, and the door was now slightly ajar.
"Move straight down this hallway until we reach the throne room," Victoria instructed.
The hallway was narrow and built of old stone bricks overgrown with algae and barnacles. Amongst the barnacles were small coral structures that resembled roses of various colors, each one glowed with a faint luminosity that lit the hallway in dim, multi-colored light. As they swam, they passed several doorways to other rooms, including a storage room with garden tools both mundane and exotic lining the walls and a room that appeared to be some manner of underwater cellar for storing harvests from the garden. The castle looked thoroughly disused and neglected, and debris from the slowly crumbling walls had begun to pile on the floor of nearly every room.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
At the end of the hall they passed through another door -- this one unlocked -- into a huge chamber with stone pillars holding up several mezzanine floors between the ground floor and the tall ceiling. The hallway deposited them beneath the overhang of a mezzanine above, and the large chamber was likewise lit by scattered coral flowers glowing various colors. At the far end of the room to their right were huge double doors of wood and iron, and to the far left was an elevated throne carved from stone and overgrown with coral. Above the throne floated the ripped and shredded remains of two banners, their emblems long since lost.
"Be cautious in here, there are creatures," Victoria alerted, pointing towards a floating blob-like creature with translucent flesh and dangling tentacles.
The creatures were alien to Iris, but Autumn seemed to recognize them. It made sense, as she had the most experience out everyone with ocean life -- even if it was in the context of preparing them as meals. Autumn held out a hand with dangling fingers to imitate the tentacles of the creatures, then moved her other hand to lightly touch one of the dangling fingers. The moment the finger touched her skin she yanked her hand back, shaking it and wincing in mock pain. Then, she made the hand sign for "understand?"
The others nodded.
Autumn looked around for a moment, and then an angry expression crossed her face. She pointed at each them, one by one, then held up her hands with seven fingers extended. Iris glanced around at all the faces surrounding her, Jacquie was missing.
Victoria sighed, "I knew he wasn’t worth bringing. I'll go find him. Cross the room, third door from the throne on the other side will lead you to a stairway. Take a left at the fork and you'll find the entrance to the dungeon. We'll catch up."
Victoria floated off down the hallway they'd come from, repeatedly calling out Jacquie's name and occasionally replacing it with douchebag or dumbass. The others made their way into the center of the throne room, watching the dangling tentacles of the floating creatures overhead with great unease. They all froze in place when a loud thud reverberated through the water. Slowly, and with great apprehension, they all turned towards the source of the noise -- the giant double doors to the throne room. Milo moved close behind Iris to take cover while the others exchanged nervous and uncertain glances. They waited for several moments, but nothing happened and no additional sounds followed.
Autumn signed "let's move" in the direction Victoria had told them to go.
Milo and Iris were eager to follow after her, while Cameron, Titus and Eli hung back for a moment with gazes lingering on the doors. The looks they exchanged told everything, none of them liked that sound, and all of them expected a fight from it. They glanced up at the tentacled creatures floating overhead, but they seemed to have had no response to the noise. After another few moments with no other sounds or movement, the trio reluctantly turned and followed after the others.
The door Victoria had instructed them to use didn't seem to be locked, but rather jammed shut by the abundance of barnacles growing around the frame. Autumn threw her body against it shoulder first, and it budged slightly but didn't open. She grunted and tried again, but still no luck. Iris had no doubt that the stout woman be able to knock the whole door off its hinges if the water weren't slowing her down. Titus stepped up and placed a hand on her shoulder, moved her slightly to the side to make room for him to join in. She nodded and held up three fingers, counting down one by one until she clenched the hand into a fist and they both slammed theirs shoulders into the door. It burst open, sending loose barnacles tumbling and swirling through the waters.
The hallway on the other side of the doorway was much darker due to fewer glowing corals. The water seemed stagnant, with suspended particles of dust floating almost stationary down much of the hall. Autumn looked behind her to ensure everyone she expected to be present actually was, and then moved down the hall. The hallway forked as Victoria said it would, and at the end of the left passage they found a staircase that turned away from the hallway at a ninety degree angle. It went down about a floor, then angled ninety degrees again and descended out of sight. There were no more glowing corals visible beyond this point, and the waters quickly grew dark as the stairs descended.
Autumn looked back at the others and once again signed "let's go."