I’ve never been reversed summoned but I was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to feel like I was drowning. My arms and legs kicked at the water that suddenly pressured me in every direction, my limbs swayed in a half panic, half attempt to swim but I hadn’t even bothered to open my eyes yet. I pushed and kicked, trying to break the top of the sea and return to my apprentice and Zabuza.

However, when I did open my eyes I quickly realized there was no top of the sea, there was no surface I punch through. There was only a pitch black screen that mirrored the world beneath back at me.

“Be calm, Yagura.” Isobu’s voice reverberated through fresh thoughts of dread and panic; if there was no surface then…then I’d drown eventually, no matter how good a swimmer I was. “Be calm.”

At his words I almost let out a breath but caught it before it could seal my fate. I looked around below me, at what the endless watery sky mirrored and there was a single light in the extreme distance. The light wasn’t so much below me as we were nearly at the same height but it was dim and didn’t illuminate much more around it.

Around myself the water felt clustered and as I hung, suspended in it, waves and ripples dashed everywhere— something else was in here with me and it was far too dark to see them.

A different person might lash out at the dark and those hidden within it but even though I wasn’t expecting to drown in ocean depths I prepared my mind well enough for the summon realm. I let my body drift through on its own until it stabilized in the water, calm and serene even as my lungs lurched.

I’ve only got about twenty minutes of not breathing in me. I made out the glinting light in the distance and kicked towards it, hoping it was at most fifteen minutes away.

I was swimming blind, trusting that as long as I had the light in my sights there’s no need to see whatever else swam beside me. My Water Perception would have allowed me to discern what exactly they are but the water here was murky, oily and far slippery to my senses than any I’ve encountered.

I wasn’t surprised, such places like summon realms would have natural defences beyond the ken of shinobi. They were far more secretive creatures than we were.

“Do you sense anything?”

“Only your escorts.” Isobu replied in a tone that didn’t give much to be alarmed.

Water Perception didn’t let me see as clearly as I would back home but I could easily tell I was being followed on every side. My ‘escorts’ made good effort not to reveal themselves but the rippling waves of their movements spoke against them as well.

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What kind of creatures are they? I wondered. They could swim very well, that much was certain, and we were trapped in a world of water with literally no escape so they were definitely aquatic. The scroll spoke of the Requiem of Whirlpools, the implications to the Uzumaki clan weren’t lost on me but for the life of me I couldn’t pull any animal associated with the clan from either of my memories.

The light grew stronger as I and my escorts drew closer. I could make out some of the ocean floor as there were more lights coming up from it, we’d crossed over some kind of boundary at last, one I likely swam right over. Behind it the light that led my way shone high atop a towering structure perforated by a serpent.

As the lights from the ocean floor, flora glows of blue, green, and red began to bath the watery world I saw what I was swimming to was a massive tower standing amongst a graveyard of serpents, some winged and others limbed. The tower itself had a serpent of many scales and feathers snaking through its every level, wrapping around it until I couldn’t make out its head no matter how far back I craned my neck.

“What is this place? Where have you brought us?”

As if to answer his question my escorts circled my hovering form and they were not all shaped the same. Some were literal mermen and regarded me with spears in their webbed hands, others were still mermen but horrid looking abominations if the fish head forced into human shape counted.

Asides from the fish men, there was a single large animal swirling behind them, eying me intensely. From the various seafood dishes that met my dinner table I could tell at a glance this was an eel, an unagi.

Unlike its smaller brethren which I hesitantly devoured upon occasion, this one was as large as a Class-C summon, meaning it could hunt humans. I didn’t wither under its gaze though; I’d come for far more than a small fiend summon animal.

My ‘escorts’ surrounded me, the fishmen poking at me with tridents and spears, urging me towards the unagi slithering its tongue at me. Asides from its immense size the unagi was marked in a manner I could only think mystical.

Its body glowed yellow along the lines of its marks and it bore tufts of white hair behind what looked like the beginnings of wings, though they looked awfully short even on its elongated body.

As it regarded me its flailing barbels flickered over my head and underneath my feet, I felt as though I was being tasted before being swallowed and Isobu seemed to share my concern because he flared his chakra through the seal.

The unagi reared away, its dark green eyes narrowing dangerously. I raised my arms in the best show of submission I could muster, “It’s okay, Isobu, I bet they haven’t had visitors in a while that’s all.”

It was a shame I couldn’t speak underwater, I would have tried to appeal to it, let it know why I’m here. But by all means it should already, I signed the contract after all.

At last the unagi seemed to come to the same conclusion as I and it communicated something to the fishmen who then started poking at me again, albeit with more legroom this time. The unagi swam away and I followed it towards the imposing tower at the centre of all the light in all the darkness.

The colossal serpent entwined in the tower intrigued me and I was eager to find if it was dead as they others laying at the bottom of the glittering ocean or if it was the one summon animal that could give me what I’d come for.