“The perimeter alarm went off fifteen times last night,” Regina complained while Violet was trying to wake her for the day. Regina had never been a morning person, and losing sleep didn’t help.
“I’ll give you another hour to sleep, but you know Zane isn’t going to go easy on you for missing the morning workout,” Violet said with a grin. She wished she was back in bed as well. Every time the alarm went off, everyone woke up ready to fight. When it had only been a crab, falling back asleep was difficult, with the adrenaline still running through her system.
Fiddling with the perimeter stones to see how they worked quickly made it to the top of Violet’s list of things to do. They were likely a product of enchantment that involved spatial magic. While modern magic had quite a few limits she didn’t have, people with enough drive and focus could learn spells from multiple branches of magic. Making new enchants was a lost art, but the old enchants were fiercely guarded and could be reproduced.
Violet left the carriage to join the two men for their morning warmup. Usually, the morning warmup was simple stretching exercises and light cardio to get their blood pumping. Last night, Zane had let it be known that this morning would include the combat training they skipped because of their unwanted visitor.
“I take it she isn’t coming?” Zane asked when Violet joined them.
“She will be sleeping for another hour,” Violet said with a wince. She almost felt bad for the workout Regina would get for skipping a session.
“Ha! Told you so. Pay up,” Zane said with a smirk looking at Rick.
Rick grumbled good-naturedly and then dropped and started to do pushups. Zane was constantly trying to make bets with people. The usual bets he made involved the loser doing push-ups or some other physical torture he could think up.
While Rick was doing his push-ups, Violet whispered to Zane, “Is he in a better mood today?” In response to her question, Zane gave her a slight head nod. He looked like he wanted to say more but just looked over at his mentor and sighed.
For their morning training, they worked on Violet’s awareness. Rather than using both her Water and Spatial shield as a combined shield, Zane had her push her Spatial shield away from her body in gradual increments. His goal was to have her use the shield to let her know about an incoming attack from a blind spot. It was similar to what Avery had done to help her raise synchronization with the two shields, so she picked up on the idea quickly.
Regina ended up waking up and dragging herself out of bed before her allotted extra hour had elapsed. Zane was sad when he saw her up without prodding. He had planned on waking her up with a cold bucket of water. Violet was beginning to wonder if he had a crush on Regina and just didn't know how to express it. He often picked on her whenever he could find an excuse.
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Once the tide had moved out sufficiently to resume their exploration, the four made their way back to the ruins. Regina left a Decoy on the wagon’s roof to watch their camp and the two amberclaws while they explored. Once Regina was at half mana, Violet would take over with a Decoy she created.
“Everyone ready to get wet?” Zane asked when they entered the ruins.
Violet groaned and said, “We need to save the mana on the water repellant. You can turn your light on at the lowest setting, and it should last. If we need more light, we can take turns so we can preserve the enchants.”
“We can keep the water-repellant enchant off until we need to go swimming. It will likely be cold, but we can just get Vi to get the water out of our clothes if we get too cold.” Regina said as Violet nodded in agreement.
The southeastern doorway led to a hallway similar to the one they visited the day before. Thankfully, there were no moss-covered vines that hid snakes from their view. There were still several territorial crabs and water snakes that they needed to cut down on their journey.
“The walls in this section were even more degraded,” Regina said with a sigh.
After looking in each side room, Violet was almost ready to give up on this place being of any use to them. As she was about to speak her mind, her foot broke through the floor where she was walking. She grabbed onto Rick when her foot punched through and avoided falling. The water in this section was manageable and only reached their knees.
“Woah! Watch your footing. The floor is rotten in this section.” Violet said when she regained her balance. Using Water Manipulation, she removed the water from the section her foot had punched through. “Hey Zane, can you make this hole larger?” There was a one-foot by one-foot section of flooring missing, but there appeared to be another floor beneath them.
Zane nodded, and then the hole in the floor began to enlarge. When he finished, there was a four-foot square section open for them to explore the floor beneath. “It’s impossible to see anything from up here. Let’s activate water breathing and the repellant and take a look at what we’ve found,” He said when he was finished.
“Before we go in there, Vi, can you put your Decoy on the wagon, please? I’m not quite at half mana yet, but we’ve been in here for four hours, so it is your turn to take over,” Regina asked.
Zane fastened a rope above the hole and led the group to the lower floor. The ground was surprisingly free of sand in the room they entered. The walls were bare, with no signs of paint or carvings ever being present. A door filled will enough holes to resemble swiss cheese was still present.
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Rather than cutting a hole in the door, Zane opted to cut it entirely out so they would have a clear path to retreat. If Violet had to guess, they had entered this area through a storage room. The area beyond the door was expansive. She could not see the far walls. Several carved pillars were in place throughout the space to hold up the ceiling.
“Don't wander off on your own, and keep the rope near you at all times,” Zane said in a muffled voice when he noticed Rick had dropped the rope to inspect one of the columns. The enchants made it challenging to communicate. They needed almost to yell what they wanted to say to be understood.
Inspecting the columns was almost peaceful. The four of them had not encountered another living thing since they had been down on this floor. The pillars were carved for beauty rather than with any words. Violet wished she could have seen them in their pristine condition.
The group made their way to the center of the room to inspect a giant pillar. “I can make out some words on this one,” Violet said excitedly. Clearing her voice so it would carry, she began to read the inscription aloud.
There is no life without water. Those who control water control life.
“There is more, but I cannot make out the words. It looks like something has been rubbing on this pillar with how smooth it is.”
At the base of the pillar, Violet saw a broken piece of spherical glass and thought, ‘How odd, I haven’t seen any other glass down here. I wonder if it is what remains of a crystal.’ If it was a crystal, she wanted to take that with her. Even if it was broken, surely some knowledge could be gained from it.
“Zane, can you carefully free this broken item, please? If it is what I think it is, we just had a major find.”
After wrapping the broken pieces carefully in a cloth, Violet placed them in her bag for further study. Looking up from her task, she was shocked at how dark it had suddenly gotten. Even after placing her light on the highest setting, she could barely see Regina a few feet away.
“Something is not right,” Rick said as he equipped his swords beside her.
“I can’t see very well all of a sudd---ahhh.” Regina began to say. “Something is wrapped around my leg!”
“I’ve got you,” Zane said as he began to hack at the arm holding Regina’s leg.
Meanwhile, Rick was hacking away at another arm that had grabbed him. It was a losing battle, though. Soon all four had a limb or two wrapped up by a tentacle. They were all helpless as it started to drag them further away from their rope and the direction they had entered the floor.
Thinking quickly, Violet began to use Teleport on the limb holding her arm. It took her two attempts to sever the appendage before she started using the same technique for the one attached to her leg. Their attacker was not moving very quickly, but it had moved them enough to leave the pool of ink that had blocked their vision.
Looking around once she had freed herself, Regina was using her Shadow Blade with success to cut the appendage holding her. Zane was making decent progress using a combination of Gravity and his sword to cut through the arms holding him. Unfortunately, Rick had managed to get caught by three tentacles, one on each arm and one around his waist.
The three of them quickly swam to Rick while dodging tentacles, trying to recapture them. Through an unspoken agreement, they each picked a limb and started cutting. They had yet to see the body of this massive beast and hoped not to find out just how big it was in person.
“Once Rick is free, activate your teleport tokens!” Zane yelled.
Regina was the first to activate her token, closely followed by Rick and Zane. Rather than use her token, Violet decided to teleport herself to her Decoy to avoid landing on the other three party members. Unfortunately, before she did that, another tentacle grabbed her leg, causing her to lose concentration.
She felt a pinch on her leg a few seconds before she had freed herself a second time. Taking no chances, she activated the teleport token right away and landed on the roof of the wagon. Her leg was completely numb when she had time to sit up and look at her surroundings.
“I think that thing had paralysis venom. I cant feel my leg,” Violet said while delving into her system with Analysis. The venom was working fast. After confirming her suspicions, she immediately started using Cure Poison to counteract the venom. It wasn’t working fast enough. While working on her torso, she lost movement in her other leg.
“Get the anti-venom potion!” Zane called to Regina.
By the time Regina returned with the potion, Violet was having trouble breathing. Her lungs had started refusing to work. The venom worked too quickly for her to counteract and make up ground on.
“Sit her up. I’ll pour it down her throat,” Regina said while popping the top off of the potion bottle. As soon as the potion made it into Violet’s stomach, she had the extra push she needed to overpower the venom and banish it from her system. She was not done healing once all the poison was gone. There was damage in quite a few of her organs that needed to be healed, and she needed to cut a large portion of her skin away from where she had been bitten. The skin was dead and had turned black.
“Why isn’t there such a thing as pain block? That hurt!” Violet whined when she had made her final sweep with Analysis and didn't find anything more than fatigue remaining on the results. “What was that thing anyway?”
“If I had to guess, it was some kind of giant squid or octopus. To have limbs that long, the thing had to be massive. I will not be going back in there.” Zane said.
“I’m going to have to agree with Zane, we could have died in there, and other than pretty carvings, we don't have anything to show for it,” Regina said.
Violet carefully unwrapped the crystal shards she had collected and displayed them to the others. “This may have been worth it. I am hoping this is the remains of the crystal in that building. There may be something I can learn from these.”
“We head out tomorrow then?” Rick asked. With the four of them in agreement, Violet got up to start making dinner.