Iris opened her eyes to see a very nervous Milo leaning over her.
"She's awake!" he shouted.
"I'm okay," she groaned, sitting upright from where she'd fallen back on the bed. She saw in his eyes that Milo didn't believe her, "it's just mana sickness, it happens."
He frowned, but relaxed slightly.
She looked around at the ransacked room, "did we get him?"
"Yeah," Eli said, tossing her the bottomless bag, "now let's get out of here."
The glitter spread around the room collected itself into a swirling vortex like a small tornado before reforming into Jacquie, "not so fast, I haven't even found any good loot yet."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Autumn," Eli said, "but his payment was anything he could carry out of here, right?"
"Yep," Autumn said.
"And so far the only help he's offered was telling us where to go, when we probably could have found it ourselves?"
"Yep," Victoria said.
"In that case Mr. Panton," Eli addressed the thief, "I suggest you start picking things up. We're leaving."
Without waiting for a response, Eli stepped out of the room, through the wall of water and into the submerged hallway outside. Cameron followed immediately, and after a moment so did Victoria, Titus and Autumn. Iris gave Jacquie an apologetic grimace as her and Milo made their way out of the room as well.
Jacquie clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. For all his efforts and risks the only valuables he'd collected where a handful of silver forks and spoons stuffed into his pockets. In a flurry, he ripped open the drawer to the bedside table, toppling it over when he found nothing of value. He dropped to the floor and searched under the bed, and again found nothing. He heard a whooshing sound, and the distinctive sound of bare feet slapping against stone. When he shot to his feet, he saw a man he could only assume was the Fish Wizard standing before a rapidly shrinking portal -- with a very angry look on his face.
"W-wait!" Jacquie preemptively cowered, "I'll tell you everything!"
___
The party crossed the devastated throne room towards the hallway they had originally entered from. It had been thoroughly collapsed in the destruction caused by the shark lobster, and they recalled no other exits that led directly to the garden. Victoria passed through walls and rubble to scout for other paths, and returned a few moments later.
"There's a path through the rubble you all should be able to swim through, but we'll have to swim around the outside of the castle to reach the garden. Follow me."
Before the adventurers could start swimming after her, the wall high above the throne exploded. The Fish Wizard came rocketing out of the hole with staff outstretched, leaving a furious trail of bubbles in his wake.
"YOU RAT FUCKS!" The wizard shouted unimpeded by the water, "GIVE ME BACK MY FISH!"
Bubbles and garbled words escaped the mouths of several adventurers as they involuntarily swore in surprise and fear.
"This way!" Victoria shouted, leading the party towards the front of the castle.
When they reached the last hallway before the front exterior wall of the castle, they hurriedly ducked inside. Cameron paused just inside the hallway and waited or the last person to enter. He waited a second longer for Jacquie in case he appeared, but the thief was nowhere to be seen. Removing a pouch from his waist, he left it to float to near the ceiling just in front of the door and swam after the others. A few seconds later the pouch exploded and brought the ceiling and a portion of the walls down in a pile of rubble that thoroughly blocked the path behind them.
They swam as fast they could down the hallway, banked left into the remnants of a destroy stairwell, and swam up through the skeleton of the mostly destroyed section of castle. Autumn crumbled the stone armor she wore and let it fall away, freeing her up to swim, while Titus kicked off the ground to launch himself and reached out to handholds to continue pulling himself upwards. When they reached the third floor they entered a room full of collapsed rubble and were forced to squeeze through tight gaps to cross it. A hole in the wall led to the next room, which had an open door to the hallway.
As the entered the hallway the castle shook around them and they heard unintelligible yells from the Fish Wizard. Chunks of the floor began to fall out from below them, sinking rapidly to add to the piles of debris far below on the ground floor. The Fish Wizard erupted through the floor of the hallway behind them with a furious shout and swirled his staff in a circle. A horizontal whirlpool began to form down the length of the hallway, sucking the water backwards and the adventurers with it.
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"It's right here!" Victoria shouted from a doorway just ahead of them, her spectral form unaffected by the draw of the whirlpool.
Eli was in the front of the group and desperately reached out to grab hold of the door way, but he had already been pulled too far back. Autumn was at the rear, closest to the wizard, and quickly formed a spike from the wall beside her to grab hold of. She reached out and caught the outstretched hand of Titus as he was sucked past her. Iris blipped ahead of the others, inadvertently knocking Milo unconscious with the implosion caused by her blip, and grabbed hold of the doorway. Next she ripped the bottomless bag from her waist and stretched out towards Eli as far she could. Abby's tentacle erupted from the bag and closed the gap between the two adventurers to wrap tightly around Eli's arm.
Behind him, Cameron grabbed hold of Eli's leg. Titus moved his grip from Autumn's hand to her legs and caught the unconscious Milo with his free arm as he was sucked past by the vortex. Autumn formed another handhold just ahead of her current one and began the arduous process of climbing closer and closer to the others, dragging along the weight of both Titus and Milo behind her. Cameron pulled his last full pouch of explosive clay from his waist and dropped it into the vortex, when it reached the Fish Wizard it exploded spectacularly and disrupted the vortex. The pause allowed Autumn to hoist herself forward quickly and close the gap enough to grab hold of Cameron's feet.
The Fish Wizard laughed maniacally as the bubbles and dust from the explosion dissipated. His staff had apparently been splintered in two by the explosion, but he began his vortex once more with a spinning motion of both arms. Iris strained under the combined weight of her companions, squeezing her eyes closed as her muscles screamed for her to let go. She refused her body's pleas, and instead began to flex. Beginning at an agonizing pace, she pulled her companions closer to the doorway inch by inch. Abby's tentacle contracted as well, coiling and pulling the adventurers closer. Victoria summoned all three of her cards on Iris, bolstering her strength, endurance and perseverance, and then shifted to physical form with her feet planted on the inside of the doorway where she grabbed hold of Iris's hand and added her strength to the tug-o-war.
Bubbles burst from Iris's mouth as she screamed and pulled as hard as she could. She could feel the bag slipping from her grip, but the ends of the draw string quickly wrapped around her wrist to hold on. With eyes closed and mouth agape with no more air left to scream, she pushed herself further than she thought possible, finding new strength somewhere deep beneath the surface and pulled her hand all the way to her chest. Relief came suddenly, like a wave of peace and comfort, when Eli was finally pulled close enough to grab the doorway with the hand of his tentacle-wrapped arm. Abby quickly released him and reached down to wrap around Cameron's chest to pull him closer. When Cameron reached the doorway he ushered Iris inside and took her place beside Eli. The pair soon pulled Autumn close enough to grab hold of the doorframe, where she was quickly able to hoist Titus and Milo inside.
The Fish Wizard released a roar that reverberated through the water. He abandoned the vortex and shot forward after them. When he appeared in the doorway, Autumn was waiting for him. She slapped her hands against the doorframe on either side, erupting stone spikes from the brickwork that impaled the wizard and pinned him to the wall behind. Blood escaped from the wounds and mixed with water in cloudy swirls, but the wizard wasn't dead. He snarled and yanked a shoulder forward, snapping the spike that impaled it.
"Let's go!" Victoria shouted, waving the adventurers through a hole in the collapsed outer wall.
Victoria conjured cards on Milo to wake him and imbue him with strength and speed. Iris grabbed his hand and pulled him away from Titus. Unsure of what was happening, Milo followed her lead and began to swim. Most of the party rushed out of the hole and into the open water in front of the castle, swimming as fast as they could towards the corner tower around which was the garden and the portal that would be their escape. Titus lingered in the opening, looking down at the long drop to the seafloor below. He wouldn't be able to swim like the others in his armor, the drop wouldn't hurt him but he would surely be too slow to escape the wizard's wrath -- who was quickly breaking away more spikes just behind him.
Cameron looked back and saw Titus frozen in place. He pulled the grappling crossbow from his waist and shot the bolt towards side of the castle. The water quickly slowed the roped projectile, but a small but persistent blast from a pinch of explosive clay behind the tip propelled it the rest of the way to embed deeply in bricks. He held onto the device as he swam back towards Titus and motioned quickly for him to grab hold. Titus wrapped his arms around Cameron, who used his free hand to pull a handful of powder from a waterproof pouch. Bits of powder escaped his clenched fist and mixed with the water, but it wasn't enough to matter. As the fish wizard broke free from his final spikes and poised to shoot towards them, Cameron reached out and opened his hand. The powder exploded outwards, not with enough force to do any damage to the titan or the structure, but with enough to rapidly propel the two adventurers away from castle as they both kicked off the bricks. The grappling hook acted as a pivot that carried their momentum in a wide arc, wrapping around the rounded tower at the corner and flinging them high above the garden as Cameron pressed a button to sever the rope.
The pair sank quickly, aided by another blast of powder directed upwards, and soon Titus's feet planted into the seafloor inside the garden. The Fish Wizard was already rounding the castle overhead, shooting forward in front of a wake of bubbles in a wide arc. When Titus and Cameron reached the others, they began quickly filtering into the shack one by one. Milo was the first into the portal, with Iris following quickly behind him.
The Fish Wizard stopped in the water above and spread his arms wide, conjuring a dozen thin, pointed vortices that shot forward like bolts from ballistae and rained down on the garden below, exploding into craters where they landed amongst the coral and sponges. The projectiles continued to spawn overhead and crash all around the remaining adventurers as they hurried into the shack.