The exit was near. Janna’s communion with the stone of the cavern had allowed them to avoid numerous traps and cutbacks, but there was still one major barrier ahead. The way out was blocked by a thick set of doors composed entirely of quartz. It was the first actual light source they had found since entering the well, as the quartz was lined through with scripts that blazed with mana of all colors.

{Any thoughts?} Sunwhisper knew that despite being self taught, his companion was the closest thing they had to an authority on scripts. His own studies had allowed him to collect a few ranks in the relevant skills, but he’d been too focused on advancement to give the subject the attention it deserved.

(Nope. It looks like it would take someone well above the level of any of the candidates to bust through this thing, or to unravel those wards.)

{I thought as much.}

Sunwhisper was scanning the area at the same time as he held a mental conversation with Starscream. The radiance of the quartz scripts cast most of the chamber in an ever shifting spectrum of color and light, with shadows holding out only in the furthest corners or behind obstructions. The chamber was the largest they had come across so far, wide and deep enough to house an underwater mansion.

All that seemed to be present, however, was a garden of kelp, a few sharp coral formations, and various rock fragments. No monsters were present, but there were fish darting in and out of the coral, or glumly hiding in the occasional stable point of shadow. The door itself offered the only clue, there was a keyhole near its center.

Empiti and the swordsman were nowhere to be seen, suggesting that they had either gotten lost in the tunnels or they had already succeeded here and the door had simply closed behind them,

A gleam caught Sunwhisper’s eye, a blue scaled fish briefly visible amid the rich verdancy of the kelp garden. He hadn’t been able to make it out perfectly, but there had been something metal in its mouth.

He got Janna’s attention and pointed to the keyhole, then to the fish among the coral, as the one he had spied was already gone. She nodded in agreement, and swam over to the most heavily populated area to search for keys while he strode over to the kelp.

Being on foot underwater had advantages and disadvantages. He wasn’t as fast as a swimmer, but he had a more consistent perspective, and he could still jump when he chose. It was a little like what he imagined a moonwalk would be.

The kelp was so thickly grown that it was hard to see anything once he was within the patch. But because the water here was still, so were the plants, unless acted upon by an outside force. He kept his eyes open, scanning the area above him as he crept slowly forward, and was finally rewarded with the sight of motion among the stalks.

The blue fish appeared again, and he shot a strand of webbing to catch it. Starscream’s assurances aside, the webbing didn’t fly as fast from his hand underwater as it would have in the air, and when it didn’t attach to anything, it sank limply down to the cave floor.

(This never happens to me.)

{It’s not a big deal.}

The kelp was a hindrance, and though Sunwhisper was loath to do anything that would help his competitors, making the road easier for them wouldn’t matter as long as he reached the end of it before they did. He jog-hopped back into the open and did his best to communicate to Janna what he wanted, gesturing to his eyes and then to the kelp forest until she appeared to understand what he meant. Then he hurried back in and extended his spear.

If the fish wanted to hide, he was going to have to scare them out. With the strength and celerity of a superhuman, he began to cycle through a staff kata from the Path of the Honing edge. While martial arts had not been his main focus, the skills of the tutor Yuyu had hired for him had not gone to waste in his instruction. His IQ statistic was high enough that memorizing sequential movements was something he could do almost instantly, and he now had a wealth of routines to select from.

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It would have been easier with a naginata than a spear, as there was no cutting end to his weapon, only two sharp points, but with enough force he could rip through the stalks anyway, or tear them up by the roots if they tangled him. His spear spun, and he mowed the garden.

A blue fish darted into the open as its zone of safety was transformed into a violent whirlpool, swiftly followed by a second, and a third. Sunwhisper saw one go, but rather than chase after it, he decided to maintain his strategy and trust that Janna would know what to do. If he stopped spinning before the garden was entirely ruined, the fish might go back into hiding.

After about thirty seconds of turning himself into the universe’s most advanced weed whacker, Sunwhisper judged he had done enough damage, and he paused in his assault on the sea grass to assess Janna’s progress. She was indeed chasing one of the blue scaled specimens around the cave, and looked to be in no way enjoying the exercise.

With the strength of her new body, she could move quite quickly through the water, especially when she was in a position to kick off. But her target was small, and improbably maneuverable. This was not her realm, and it kept always just out of her reach.

Sunwhisper spotted another blue flash disappearing into one of the few spaces in the cavern free from the illumination of the quarts, and he paused a moment to consider his options. With his lack of buoyancy, he was even less suited to the pursuit of these jinking, slippery creatures than his companion was.

He was sure it wouldn’t be long before another prospect caught up to them. They couldn’t have been the only ones with a technique like Janna’s that allowed them to suss out the optimal route through the underwater maze. Even if they were the only ones, someone could have made it through on luck and gall alone.

Sunwhisper did a quick mental inventory of his own techniques to ascertain whether there was a lateral thinking solution to this problem, an unusual application of one of his abilities that would allow him to catch a fish.

Then he felt foolish.

Impurities Rejection briefly generated a local and powerful magnetic field that he had thus far only used to launch his spear at opponents like a railgun slug, and as one half of the magnetic bottle that allowed him and Starscream to work safely with titan steel in its molten form.

The other half of the bottle was Impurities Attraction, a solution so obvious that he felt he should have lost a rank in IQ for not thinking of it sooner. So far, he’d never used the technique outside of their makeshift laboratory in Jigoku. It had a limited range, and it wasn’t selective. It pulled at every piece of metal outside of his own body, the power of that attraction diminishing according to the inverse square law. Hopefully, there were no hidden blades resting on the cave floor nearby. He wasn’t even certain what material the keys were made of, but almost any metal would do.

He centered the technique on his spear hand to avoid the risk of pulling in his own weapon and stabbing himself, and with a pulse of mana and intent, activated his Impurities Attraction technique.

The closest fish was still fifteen feet away, but the effect was enough to tug it off course. Though it continued to swim, it began to circle Sunwhisper like a moth circling a candle, spiraling ever closer to its own doom. With each rotation, the pull grew stronger, and the fish was soon unable to resist it any longer, though it still did not relinquish the key.

Janna hadn’t stopped chasing it. The strange behavior of her quarry presented her with an opportunity, and as the fish was unable to escape the spiral, she was able to catch it mid rotation when it was only a few feet from Sunwhisper. She gripped it tightly with both hands, raising it like a trophy in her triumph.

Sunwhisper shook his head, not sure if she had even guessed what he had been doing or if she thought she had caught it on her own while he was pretending to be a statue. Had she been carrying a weapon, it would have been torn from her belt when she came into the magnetic field, but she preferred to rely on her elemental techniques, and Sunwhisper was glad of it.

(Hey…kid.)

{I know.}

Starscream could see the world through his companion’s eyes while safely ensconced in his chest compartment. By the same token, Sunwhisper had access to Starscream’s more esoteric means of viewing the world via electrical signals. It was how he knew they were no longer alone.