While the weight of Titus and Autumn's armor allowed them to descend the steps of the stairway on foot, the others descended by half swimming, half propelling themselves off the walls. Suspended particles in the stagnant water were highlighted by the shimmering white streak of light that floated above Titus's upturned palm. Even the bright magical light struggled to penetrate far through the murky water, and Iris felt a strange sensation in her gills that somehow reminded her of breathing dusty air, despite feeling wholly different.
The third flight of stairs deposited the party into a mostly empty chamber with grey, rough brick walls. The only furniture was an old wooden desk off to one side, which had long since begun to rot and decay. On the back wall of the room, opposite the entrance from the stairs, was a thick iron door with an external mechanical lock. A small, barred window in the door revealed a narrow hallway with cells on either side.
Autumn grabbed hold of the exposed lock in preparation for ripping the door off its hinges, but Milo quickly swam up and frantically waved for her to stop. He pointed at the rusted metal of the mechanism, and made a motion with his hands like snapping a twig. Realization crossed Autumn's face, and she withdrew from the door. She turned and looked to Cameron, who shook his head. He knocked against the metal of the door, then held his hands across from each other to convey that it was too thick.
Iris swam over to the desk and slid open each of the drawers, disturbing clouds of dirt and rust as she yanked them open. One of the drawers ripped apart in her hands, the soft, rotted wood squishing beneath her fingers. Her search ultimately found only an old, rusty pair of handcuffs and a keyring. The handcuffs were far too disintegrated to be useful, but the keys were in decent shape. She swam over to the door and began comparing each of the keys to the mechanical lock, finding that they were all much too small to fit into the unusually large key hole of the mechanism.
Milo positioned himself in front of the door and made a "give me" motion towards Iris, who tried to hand him the keys. He shook his head and pointed at her bag, and she realized he was asking for his tools. She pulled out a small folding leather case, within which were his smaller, more delicate tools, and handed it to him before pulling out larger tools like a crow bar, wrench and hammer which she leaned against the wall beside the door.
A faint boom emanated from somewhere in the castle above, and all eyes momentarily turned towards the stairs. Autumn motioned for Milo to move quickly, so he got to work. Though the body of the mechanism was mounted exposed on the front of the door, the internals were shrouded by an iron case which he first had to remove. Any screws which may have been visible had long since rusted over, but it was easy enough for him to pry the face plate off with the crow bar. Inside he found a relatively simple mechanism of gears, levers and pulleys, and a series of stacked metal discs with shaped grooves on their edges that acted as the tumblers for the lock.
Milo didn't have any experience with locks, but the stacked discs were similar to a much larger mechanism used to regulate the sequence in which different pieces of the printing press in his workshop were able to move, so he was able to work out the exact mechanics of the lock pretty quickly. The most difficult part would be manipulating the fragile rusted pieces without breaking them, so he worked with a delicate hand as he manipulated the discs into place one-by-one. Once the discs were properly aligned, the lock was in the same state it would be if a key were inserted but not yet twisted, and the next part was the one that worried him the most. He had one hand shoved into the mechanism with each finger holding a different disc into place, and with his other hand he inserted the straighter end of the crowbar into the large keyhole. With a nervous pit in his stomach, he applied delicate pressure to the crowbar and the mechanism began to twist. There was a loud snap as rusted metal buckled, causing him to flinch and let go of the discs. His stomach sank as he thought he'd failed, but when Autumn tugged on the door it cracked open.
There was another boom above them.
Autumn hurried through the door and looked through the bars of each cell while Milo packed up his tools. She found several skeletons, each either hanging from shackles bolted to the wall or crumbled in a heap below said shackles. There was no sign of the fish they were looking for, or any fresh bodies that might have been his human form. She shook her head back at the others.
Another boom came, this time shaking the walls around them like a quake.
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It only took Victoria a moment to locate Jacquie's aura through the walls of the castle. She watched the glowing outline of his aura through the walls as he swam up through a collapsed ceiling and into a room on the second floor. He was moving quickly, probably fleeing from her after she called out his name and a few obscenities, but Victoria didn't chase him down and reveal herself yet. Instead she trailed him, always keeping at least one wall between herself and the annoying thief, waiting for him to do something worth confronting.
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Victoria was less than pleased about his inclusion from the start, but hadn't argued because -- much to her chagrin -- it did make since to have a professional thief on the crew. The problem was with this particular thief. He'd probably like people to believe his fine clothes and all his jewelry were stolen, but his clothes were tailored and too many of the jewels matched perfectly. The worst part was the way he spoke with the unmistakable cadence of a spoiled rich brat. Every time he opened his mouth, she became more and more convinced he wasn't just a thief, but a poser. She trusted him less than she did most thieves, so she simply followed and observed, waiting to catch him doing something that proved she was right about him.
When he stopped in a room for some time, Victoria risked poking her head through ceiling to see what he was up to. The room small, lit with natural light through a small window, and filled wall to wall with silver plates, bowls, goblets and utensils, of which he was attempting to carry entirely too many. She sighed, knowing she'd wasted too much time on her petty grudge already. Breaking away from the group to loot was annoying and decidedly not part of the plan, but it was hardly enough of a transgression to justify distracting herself from the mission as well. She drifted through the ceiling and lowered down into the room behind Jacquie, crossing her arms and coughing.
"Oh fu--" his arms released the collection of silverware he was holding, which flailed about in the sudden current as he kicked and spun around in the water to face her, "Vic, hi, I was just looking for fish bowls--"
Victoria flew forward, her ghostly form not so much as disturbing the water as she passed through a twirling plate to place her translucent face an inch from his, "do not call me Vic."
"Y-yes ma'am," Jacquie stammered as he struggled to free the breath stuck in his lungs.
Victoria's eyes flicked away from his to inspect the bubble that surrounding his head and allowed him to breathe, "can that bubble pop?"
"I don't-- no, definitely not."
Victoria glanced at a fork floating nearby, "are you sure?"
"Yes! It's impenetrable! Not even worth testing!"
If the look on his face wasn't already enough to know he was lying, the stress she could see in his aura definitely was, "you're here to do a job. I don't care if you pick up stuff along the way, but the job comes first. Go find the others or we'll find out what happens when I stab that bubble."
"Yes ma'am," Jacquie gulped.
Victoria backed away and gave the man room to kick and sputter his way into swimming. She smirked to herself as he fled, and then her eyes went wide when she saw an aura in her periphery. Her head snapped towards the outer wall, a huge aura grew closer as something blocked out the light filtering through the window. She flew towards Jacquie, shifting to her physical form to collide with him and push him through the doorway and into a hallway.
There was a loud crash and a crack split through the ceiling of the hallway as a bright red lobster claw the size of a carriage smashed through the outer wall and thrashed about in the room they had just fled. Victoria shifted back to her spectral form and shouted at Jacquie as the lobster claw withdrew from the room.
"Run! Swim! Just-- GO!"
Jacquie was gasping for breath and flailing his arms. He was too panicked too swim. Another loud crash, more cracks in the ceiling, the outer wall caved in and the lobster claw reached deeper into the castle to slam against the interior wall that separated the room from the hallway. It bulged slightly under the impact and a few bricks fell loose. Victoria swore and shifted back to her physical form, grabbing Jacquie by the collar as she kicked off and swam as hard as she could. The screaming thief smacked her in the face with a flailing as he tried to worm free of her grip. The lobster claw returned again with another boom, this time shattering the interior hall and bursting into the hallway just behind the pair.
It wasn't working, there was no way she could swim fast and strong enough for the both of them while he was screaming and struggling, especially without any way to breathe. She held out a hand and conjured two cards, the Queen of Pentacles and the Knight of Swords, and placed both effects on the panicking thief. His gasping breath caught in his throat and his flailing stopped. He turned to her in anger and swatted her hands away.
"What did you do to me, witch?"
Another crash. The outer wall completely gave way and both lobster claws crashed through the inner walls and into the hallway as the ceiling began to crumble above them. Victoria left the cards to float circles around Jacquie, shifted back to spectral form and flew down the hallway towards the throne room.
"Swim!" She shouted over her shoulder, not bothering to look long enough to see if Jacquie was following.
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Eli pointed at the second floor mezzanine on the far end of the throne room from where they had just emerged from the dungeon. The giant jellyfish that floated overhead were quickly fleeing the area, and a slow moving dust cloud was rolling out over the edge of the mezzanine as the loud crashing continued. Victoria's ghostly form flew out of the dust cloud without disturbing and into the open space beneath the throne room's vaulted ceiling. A few seconds later, Jacquie erupted out of the dust swimming over the mezzanine railing as fast as he could. An instant later the mezzanine collapsed and a pair of giant, bright red lobster claws emerged from the dust.