Maleki:

After a few hours of being careful not to nod off and keeping an eye on our surroundings, we proceeded down the long, damp hallway. These lamps scattered evenly against the chamber walls and flickered a bright green without wavering. The path was long, and water splashed away from my footsteps as I walked the hallway, Miko close on my heels. I would have let Miko use it to sweep the path ahead of him, but he couldn’t hold it, so I was doing it for him. It didn’t make sense, but I think the extra sounds and vibrations gave him more information to read his environment. I was glad that the weapon wasn’t a hindrance any longer; it had served me well on this journey so far. We received gifts growing up, but this one was different, something special that I didn’t age out of. This one was different from the tools on the farm. In the stories I heard, swords always had names. Should I give my weapon a name? Isn’t it weird to give inanimate objects names?

“Did you name your weapons, Miko?” I asked aloud.

“Yeah, the left one is Larry and the right one is Steve.”

“How do you know which one is the left and which is the right?”

“Whichever one is in my left hand is Larry, and the other one is Steve.”

“Wait, for real?” I asked, turning my head.

“Nope.” He laughed. “I don’t have names for them. Never thought about it before, just now.”

“You actually had me there for a second,” I said, laughing and scratching at the back of my head.

“Are you thinking about naming your scythe?” Miko asked.

“Yeah, it’d make it sound cooler, right? All the heroes in the stories named theirs.” I said, proceeding down the black-stoned hallway.

“What name are you thinking about?”

I thought about his question, grabbing at words in my mind. “Sidereos. How’s that sound?”

“Not bad for your first try. That’s a big word for a pea brain, though.”

“Hey!” I retorted back. “I know some words, too. You can learn stuff outside of books, you know?”

“Sure.” He laughed before pausing. “Wait, do you hear that sound?”

“Sound?” I questioned.

“Wait.” He said as he stopped moving, which I quickly noticed and mimicked. “It sounds like rushing water….”

I looked down at the ground. The water line was higher than it was just a few seconds ago. My hand was resting against the wall, and I began to feel it too. It was a vibration sound like water pouring down a stream but violent. A few seconds later, water began streaming out of metal gates in the walls behind and ahead of us.

“Maleki, I have no idea where we are, but I think it’s about to get much wetter.”

“Keep moving. We need to get out of here and quick.” I demanded.

We splashed more harshly through the water as the gates emptied increasingly faster.

After thirty feet, the splashing turned into trudging as the water line reached below our knees.

Sixty more feet, I couldn’t even see the end of the tunnel yet, and it was up to our waist.

Miko was slowing down now. It was tough to move through these waters without using your arms to help you push and pull forward. We have to get out of here fast. The water isn’t just filling up; it’s starting to force us along like a river before a dam.

The water was up to my chest now, and I was tugging Miko along by his shirt behind me since he was shorter and couldn’t stay above the water while moving. The end of the tunnel was ahead another twenty steps, still well-lit by the torches on the walls, which were somehow unaffected by the water moving through.

I took several large breaths to prepare myself for what was coming next as the water behind me rushed forward, engulfing both of us. I opened my eyes underwater and was surprised to see everything around me with a bright green glimmer. I pushed my scythe behind me, tugging Miko along with me as I swam forward to get to the end of the tunnel. I felt the air in my lungs slowly dissipate as I let tiny bubbles float around me. The water pushed forward quickly, making it difficult to stay in one place. As we drew near the exit, I realized we were totally blocked in, like during the fire trial. A similar off-white stone locked us in with the water and prevented our path out. I pulled Miko towards me with Sidereos, placing my palm against his chest and repeating a motion like clicking something into place. He understood my gesture and floated off to the opposing wall to find a pressure plate on the floor near us. His current method of swimming was a wiggling motion combined with swift kicks of his feet.

We searched around us quickly, and my eyes caught a unique shape a few feet down. A rune covered the stone, but I could not interpret its meaning, so I pressed against it as hard as possible. It moved ever so slightly, but I couldn’t generate enough energy while being fully underwater and pushed against by opposing forces. My lungs stung from moving around, and I was running out of stored-up air. I pushed off against the wall and grabbed Miko, aligning his hand to the stone on his opposing side. He ran his shoulder along the rune and pushed at it to a similar result as I had. We both pushed together, and the stone clicked in. Nothing changed in the door at the end of the underwater hallway.

Damn...I can feel my body fighting for air that doesn’t exist. I swam back to my side, but I watched Miko’s plate unclick as I got over to it. These things are on a timer, and we both have to be together to click them into place. I tried to kick horizontally at the pressure plate by stretching my body toward Miko, but I couldn’t stay upright.

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My body convulsed, demanding air. Miko grabbed the bottom of my scythe with his feet and pulled it between us to his side. I held the other side in my hand as he pushed into it by driving his heels together and slamming his shoulder into the stone. My brother’s a genius…

I jumped into position, mirroring his movement, but instead pushing my feet into the top metal of my scythe’s blade. Since it was only sharp on the inside, I could push on it with everything left in my body. The hallway was too wide to reach each other with our heels alone, but with the scythe, we could create a connection point to push against, similar to using a wall to generate more force. Moving together, we pushed our shoulders and back into the pressure plate, moving them slowly together until they both clicked into place.

The stone doorway began to let light through from another room as it fell onto the floor, giving the water a new destination to push us through. My vision was going black, and I coughed as water tried to get into my lungs. I moved over to Miko, grabbing him into my side as the water carried us onto a grated metal room. We hit the grated floor hard as the rushing waves fell through the grates and left us in a coughing fit. I looked through the gates that were supporting our weight. Below was a rocky reef that was now being filled with the water from the tunnel. The walls around us weren’t even walls — they were made of water, but it was shifting around us as if a barrier prevented it from coming through. The room was in the shape of a circle, like a bubble at the bottom of the sea.

“What is this place?” Miko asked aloud.

I raised my back and analyzed the room. “Looks like it was someone’s home once upon a long time ago.”

In the middle of the floor was a stone flooring with the same dark stone texture as the hallways. Metal poles rose from the grated disc on the floor and held green torchlight at the top that lit up the bubble completely. This place looked lived in at one point, but everything in the center stone disc was archaic and dusty. We walked to the middle of the room, where a few desks and cabinets were strewn about randomly. Any remaining parchments were thin and looked as if they would crumble from the strength of a fingerprint. I was used to my brother searching these places for important objects or information, but fortunately for me, there wasn’t much to go off of. Outside of the stone furniture, all that remained in good condition was a leatherbound book with thick, dark yellow pages. The leather wasn’t made of any material I had seen before; it actually looked more like bark than leather. Picking it up carefully, I opened the book to the first page. The words were not written in a language I couldn’t read, but as I looked at them, they translated into words I did know. Contrary to Miko’s belief, I can read — I just choose not to.

Travelled far into waters unknown, a seed of doubt was sown

All alone, I found another in a tree the shade of bone.

Explored together did we, only to return with a message unexpectedly

Beware the divine sea; they harbour an ancient enemy.

“You’re awfully quiet. Is something wrong?” Miko asked.

“I’m not sure. I don’t understand what I just read.” I repeated the message to him, which he repeated aloud several times.

“I can’t tell if this is relevant to our situation or if it’s a warning of another.” He said promptly after inspecting the words in his head.

I set the book down on the table back where I found it. “Best not to worry about it then.”

“Only worry about what we can control,” We both sarcastically said in unison.

“You know — we shouldn’t make fun of Grandfather. He is right...”

“Yeah, I guess,” Miko murmured. “Anything left of value?”

“No, that was the only important thing left. We should probably get a move on.” I responded as I moved toward the watery walls of the bubble. Now that I thought about leaving, how were we supposed to get out of here? There aren’t any other doors or traditional exits, and most of the floor is made of metal grates that lead to the seabed below. I don’t see any other pressure plates, which tells me this odd bubble is our only way out. My brother’s feet shuffled softly behind me as he followed me over; he stood there with a blank face and his bag tied around him. “I’m not even going to try and explain what we are in front of, but I think it’s the only way out of here. I’ll hold onto your arm just in case, but it looks like we’ll be swimming again, and the surface looks pretty far away. He nodded his head in acceptance, and I strapped Sidereos back into place on my bag and took a long breath that would hopefully hold me for long enough until we got to the top.

Here we go.

I reached our hands together. The water swirled up our forearms with immense strength, pulling us. I resisted the forces against us, attempting to hold onto Miko and rise to the surface, but the vibrating waters were too mighty. From the inside, the bubble looked like a thin transparent layer of water, but it was denser than I had realized. We were now being forced through like there was a vacuum outside the bubble. My grip on Miko’s arm began to weaken as the waters pulled us away from each other.

“Miko!” I screamed out underwater as the words fizzled out into empty bubbles.

I lost my grip entirely as the forces weighing down on me shifted my vision to black. What the hell is happening to me? I blinked several times as the water shot us through the barrier with immense speed and force.

“Noooooo!” I gargled as my body struggled to resist, watching my brother drift away between blinks. This was a hundred times stronger than a riptide, and I could do nothing to fight it. My last thought before I lost consciousness was a worry for my brother.

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A cough rose in my chest as a cold sensation pushed up my body and crested at my back. Salty water spurted out of my throat in small batches as my lungs expunged the liquid back up and through the sides of my mouth. I didn’t dare open my eyes and acknowledge that I was alive. That was too difficult. Even now, I was tired, yet my body kept moving. My body had begged for rest all throughout this journey, and I ignored it, and now I was pleading with it to let me rest. My eyes tracked red light through my eyelids. Now even the sun would not let me be. I rolled onto my side, and the seawater splashed against me as grains of sand pressed into my face and soaked one side of my head. This water was warmer than other places, but it was like ice to my skin in this sun. I shook in frustration and grabbed the sides of my head with my hands. My eyes fluttered, blinking twice to accept my choice, though I would have preferred to rest.

Opening my eyes, I embraced my surroundings with an annoyed sigh. My scythe was tightly bound to my bag’s loops, which lay a few feet from me. I pulled the bag to me in a lackluster motion, undoing the straps slowly with a slight aggression. The leather hide bag slapped over my left shoulder while I used the scythe to stand straight. I stood there in a daze. Where was I? The area around me was a stone culvert cut away from a beach line by several hundred feet. Ahead of me was a creek that poured softly into a bulky wall of trees. Moving through the tangled web of tightly wound vines and branches would be difficult, but my blade would surely sharpen a path.

What was I doing before I woke? We were on some sort of mission to a place. We were doing the trials, I thought. Wait, we? Who is...

It all collected in my head, and I scrambled around in a realized panic. Peering my head in all directions in quick jolts of confusion, I analyzed my surroundings. How long had it been since I had seen him? How long was I asleep? If we washed ashore together, maybe he went to find food or get a lay of the land. Surely he would have left something for me to find...

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