Things went easier from there. Trap detection didn’t automatically flag traps, but while she was using it, she could feel it tugging at her attention when there was a trap nearby. She successfully activated four additional traps before stepping near them with its help and even gained another level in the skill.

They passed through two more rooms on their way, one was empty, the other containing two much smaller and weaker spiders. Alyx disposed of both before Cass had even had a chance to attack, which was just fine in Cass’s book.

At Salos’s instructions, they followed the flow of the channels upstream, until they reached a room with a wide fountain against one wall. From it, four channels ran out to each of the four doors that lined the walls of the room, including the one they stood in. There might have once been a statue adorning the top of the fountain, but now only rubble stood in the center of four jets of water.

Hmm, Salos hummed to himself. This is it.

This is the right place? Cass asked.

I was expecting a statue there, he said. But this is almost certainly the right place. Unless something significant changed, there is only one fountain nexus.

Seems like a bad maze design to have a bunch of lines leading to the goal, Cass observed.

Only if it is obvious this is the goal. And for most, this is just another room. Though it is physically close to the Lord’s room, you would need to go through the Gauntlet still to get there. Normally, that is. And the entrance to the Gauntlet is always quite far from here.

Alright, so where now? Cass asked.

Into the fountain, he said. There should be a passage underwater along the back there.

Right, Cass approached the fountain with trepidation. The water was clear at least. It looked clean. No guts or monsters lurking in their depths.

I guess we should explain to Alyx, Cass said. You couldn’t call it stalling if it was an important step.

I think you need to explain to me too, Salos said.

Right. Elemental Manipulation.

You can’t summon enough air for her to breathe and then move it with her for the entire trip. You can’t possibly have enough Focus for that.

Correct, Cass said, that isn’t the plan.

If he had eyes to roll, they’d be rolling.

She suppressed a chuckle and explained. That was actually my first idea, but I ran the numbers the same as you and realized there was no way I have the control or power to do that, especially not for the amount of time we need. My next thought was to summon new balls of air for her as she needed them. But that was still a little too expensive.

A little? He asked.

I realized the problem was I didn’t have the Focus to do it all at once, she barreled on, but any individual air pocket would be easily doable, the issue became how to pin the bubbles where we need them for any length of time.

You don’t have a skill for that, he observed.

Don’t I? Cass was grinning now. I have Elemental Manipulation.

I still don’t see.

I just need to carve pockets out of the ceiling and then trap my summoned air in them.

Trap air in the pockets? Salos asked.

Basic physics, Cass said. Air floats up in liquid but it can’t float through stone. This is a classic video game tactic actually. Can’t tell you how many cave systems I’ve explored with this.

It can’t be that simple, he said.

We’ll have to see, Cass agreed. Now help me explain that she needs to stay here while I prepare the path.

It took a few minutes for Cass to explain what she needed to do to Alyx, who looked even more perplexed than Salos sounded, though that may have had more to do with Cass’s halting Jothi than the complexity of the plan.

In the end, the instructions boiled down to “Wait here, I’ll be back in a little bit.”

Alyx nodded and sat herself down on the fountain’s edge, her sword in her lap. She said something in Jothi, her expression grave.

Salos? Cass poked him for the translation as she walked up to the fountain’s edge herself.

Just a pointless warning that you should hurry back and not leave her waiting too long.

Cass looked down. Oh.

Was Alyx worried Cass was about to run off without her? Salos’s words about trusting strangers floated back to her. Did Alyx believe such things too? Was that how she looked at Cass? An untrustworthy child looking for an angle to exploit her?

Cass could do better than that.

“Wait!” Cass took a step away from the water.

What? Salos asked. Alyx similarly made a confused sound.

“I’ve got something in my pockets that shouldn’t get wet.”

You are going to have to come back for anything you leave behind, Salos said. There is no way to avoid getting whatever it is wet.

“Nope. This is staying here,” Cass said as she Elemental Manipulated a ring of stones from the ground beside the fountain. She pulled all the Flintshrooms from her pocket and dropped them in the ring. “Those will be useless to me wet. Might as well burn them now.”

She lit them on fire before Salos or Alyx had a chance to protest. They ignited with a puff of smoke and the bubble of warm safety descended over the room.

Why? Salos asked with a sigh. They would have dried out again eventually.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Alyx is still injured, Cass said. She’ll heal faster in a camp, especially mine. Besides, you said the Lord is just on the other side of this waterway, right?

Yes, but—

So, after the Lord, we’ll be leaving the Deep and we’ll have plenty of wood to make into campfires again.

But what if something unexpected happens? Salos demanded.

There is no way those mushrooms would dry before I leave the Deep. I can’t use them again anytime soon. Using them for her to recover faster is how I get the most value out of them.

She could feel he was unconvinced.

Besides, now I have a camp to come back and recover my Focus in between air bubbles. I know for a fact those mushrooms will burn for hours.

Fine, I see your point. I still wish you’d told me about all this first.

Why? So you could try to stop me anyway? Cass asked.

He didn’t confirm or deny that, instead, he said, Just get moving, would you?

Alyx said something else as Cass walked up to the fountain again. Cass only caught the words ‘thank you’ among them and Salos apparently didn’t feel like translating the rest.

Cass smiled and waved back to her. “I’ll be back soon.”

Now all that was left was to do it.

Cass stood at the edge of the fountain, looking into it, her smile evaporating. You’re sure there won’t be any monsters down there?

Yes. No fish. No eels. No octopuses. Maybe there might be some small spiders. Nothing much bigger than you will fit.

That somehow failed to be reassuring. But Alyx was watching and Cass had already cheerily said goodbye. She would look silly if she just stood here dreading the water.

Reluctantly, she stepped into the fountain.

The water was cold. It immediately soaked through her socks, the fabric unpleasantly sticking to her feet. She splashed toward the wall. It got much deeper as she got closer to the back. A few more steps and her head would be under.

She closed her eyes as the water came up to her chin. She could do this.

And you are sure that breathing is entirely optional? Cass asked again.

I have heard it is unpleasant for Slyphids, but yes, you can survive just fine without air.

That did not make her feel even the slightest bit better.

You know it's very required for humans, right? Cass asked.

Yes.

We suffocate without air. That’s an entire word that just means to die with no air. Her heart pounded in her chest. It was all she could hear.

Yes, they do, Jothi has a word for that as well.

We’ve got another word for specifically suffocating on water. Drowning. You know, I never really thought about how specific that word was before. That’s like having a specific word for death by burning or falling from a great height. Cass’s hands clenched around her staff like it could somehow protect her from the water. From her biology.

You’re babbling, Salos said. And stalling.

I’m terrified of drowning, Cass admitted.

Well, you don’t need to be anymore. There was an impatience to his words. He didn’t get it. You physically can’t drown.

Cass shook her head. But what if you’re wrong?

I swear, Cass, stick your head underwater. Hold your breath if it helps. Just get going.

He was probably right. She was probably not going to drown. He didn’t want her to drown. Her dying uselessly at the bottom of a fountain was the opposite of useful to him.

He could still be wrong though. He wasn’t a Slyphid.

They didn’t know that her body was normal. It could be weird. It had been a human’s before after all. It had lungs that inflated and a heart that thrummed in her chest. Maybe normal Slyphids didn’t need to breathe.

Maybe Cass wasn’t a normal Slyphid. Maybe her lungs still needed air. Maybe her blood still carried it through her body. Maybe she could still drown.

Oh, God, she hated this. She hated this so much.

Was this worse than jumping into a fight with a vastly more powerful foe? No.

Was this worse than running for her life from an army of venomous centipedes? No.

Was this worse than being jumped by a demonic cat creature and nearly having her throat torn out? No.

No, no, no. It wasn’t.

Objectively, this was one of the tamer things she’d done since arriving in this stupid world. And yet, it filled her with a rising terror no less than any of the things before.

“One step at a time, Cass,” she muttered to herself. There was nothing scary about putting her head underwater. She took a deep breath and dunked her head under.

The cold enveloped her. It sunk deep into her bones.

The world was gone. She couldn’t see. There was only cold.

Her pounding heart thrummed in her chest, the only thing moving in the world.

She opened her eyes. The cold stung. The dark surrounded her. She couldn’t see.

No. That wasn’t strictly true.

She blinked, focusing on what her eyes were telling her. Doing everything she could to ignore the screaming fear in her chest.

Ahead, the submerged channel continued straight onward, lit by the same ghastly green light as the corridors before. The light was ethereal and shifting in the water.

But she couldn’t see. That was the only way she could explain the feeling. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t do this.

She surfaced, gasping wildly. Her lungs ate up the air. It was clear. It was earthy. It was sweet. Sweeter than candy. Sweeter than life.

“Hell!” Cass screamed. “You said I didn’t need to breathe!”

You don’t.

“Well, what was that!” She was still panting. Still greedily trying to inhale all the air in the room.

How should I know? You just started panicking! It scared me just as much.

Alyx said something behind her. Cass jumped.

She hadn’t forgotten Alyx was still here exactly. But she hadn’t been thinking of the other woman when she’d started screaming. She took another deep breath, centering herself, and shot a smile and a wave over her shoulder at Alyx.

Alyx did not look reassured.

Cass gave her a pair of thumbs up and a wider grin. She was okay. Everything was going according to plan. Everything was okay.

Alyx’s concerned frown only deepened.

Cass looked away before the concern turned into more questions.

Everything really was okay. Her heart had slowed to an ordinary beat. Her breathing had stabilized. She could see again.

She closed her eyes and thought about that feeling. What exactly did she mean by ‘see’?

Even with her eyes closed she didn’t feel that panic she’d felt beneath the water.

But then, even with her eyes closed, she could feel the room around her. The air was still, but she could feel the way it rippled up above the fire and tumbled down again as it cooled. She could feel where Alyx stood beside it, how the air, barely moving yet never truly still, shifted around her. Could feel the displacement of air as Alyx shifted her weight as she watched Cass from behind.

Atmospheric Sense has increased to level 8.

Cass’s eyes flickered open. That was all Atmospheric Sense. Was that what she’d been missing underwater?

She bit her lip. She didn’t want to go back down there. She didn’t want to test this. She didn’t like the answer she suspected.

But she needed to. She needed to know.

She took another deep breath and dove again.

Immediately, the blindness enveloped her. It was a blindness. A deafness. It was neither and both.

She held her breath and reached out to Atmospheric Sense. The skill reported nothing. There was no atmosphere here to sense. There was nothing wrong. There was nothing of note. There was nothing.

That’s all it was.

She just hadn’t noticed how much she used Atmospheric Sense so hadn’t been prepared to lose it. Listening to it was just that natural now, apparently. Just another subconscious process. The same way she didn’t think about seeing or hearing.

Perfectly natural for a Slyphid.

She shoved that thought aside. She had things to do.

She paddled forward through the water, ignoring the discomfort that still pinged against the inside of her skull as ‘not being able to see’. She held her breath, but there was no pressure there to exhale or to draw another. That was a whole nother bag of discomfort she was doing her best to ignore.

Instead, she paddled down the tunnel behind the fountain. After about a minute's worth of inefficient doggy paddling, she stopped and put a hand on the ceiling. She activated Elemental Manipulation and willed a section of the ceiling to separate. Once she’d made a pocket she could fit her head into, Cass started summoning air. It filled the cavity, pressing the water out and down. It took several casts before it was sufficiently filled.

One down, eleven or so remaining!