Carmen and Kate hid in the corner and cast a few obscuring and covering spells on themselves right after they left their room. And when they saw Rash, the man at the reception’s desk came up to their room holding three ice buckets with plum wine bottles inside. Then when Natalie dragged Rash into their room, they immediately headed down the stairs and straight towards the basement.

The door to the basement was made of metal and had a metal lock on it. But to their surprise, there were no protective charms placed on the lock, nor were there any arrays or symbols engraved on it. It was a simple thick, heavy solid metal lock, one looked like it could easily be picked.

“Should we even try?” Kate asked with a frown: “This is just way too easy.”

“Let’s take a look first.” Carmen held up the metal lock and whispered a word, and with the sound of metal gears cracking, it opened without any resistance or friction.

The door to the basement swung open with creaks one could expect from that of an old metal door, but Kate immediately threw a soundproof spell at the door and contained any further noise it could make.

The space in the basement appeared to be mostly empty, they could see an altar at one end of the room, and there were drawings hung on the walls. Kate, being the one most experienced and equipped to deal with hidden magical traps and arrays, immediately started examining the walls and the floor panels.

“Something’s not right with this place.” Kate kept looking at her watch and a small mirror she held in her right hand: “The energy signatures showed that there’s at least one powerful array beneath this basement, but I can’t trace its exact location - it’s like the arrays are jumping around.”

“These drawings are no good.” Carmen was looking at one of the paintings, and just within a few seconds she felt that illusions and a sense of dread and impending doom were clouding her mind, so much so that she had to bite her own tongue to pull herself out: “Don’t look at the drawings! Don’t even try to sense them - they’re complex True Words drawings!”

While Carmen and Kate were occupied, the metal door started slowly closing up, but due to the previous soundproof spell placed on it by Kate, it did not make even one sound to alert the two in the basement.

“Fuck! Get the door!” Kate sighed and looked up, and found that the metal door was already just a few inches away from completely closing.

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Carmen leapt towards the door, but somehow a sense of weightlessness hit her and Kate, and the floor beneath them disappeared.

It was not a very long fall, just enough for them to realize they were falling and adjust their positions in the air and land on their two feet. They did not land on solid ground, however. Instead, they landed on water, and using some simple tricks, the water beneath their feet turned into a bouncy surface on which they could simply walk.

“Where the hell are we?” Carmen looked around, and found that they were in no basement - they were standing on the surface of an ocean, with no visible land in any directions, and just a giant pillar of sky piercing storm clouds in the distance. The sea water below was giving off a light blue glow and quite clear - they could see some fish coursing through deep waters from where they stood. But this visibility into the depths stopped at a certain point, for there seemed to be a dark and light absorbing seabed underneath the water, with spots of dim yellow glow but no visible underwater terrain, creatures roaming near it or vegetation whatsoever.

“Did we get forcefully teleported here?” Kate checked her watch and mirror again: “The energy signature here is quite different.”

“Any anti-teleportation fields around?” Carmen scooped up some sea water with her palm and examined it.

“... no.” Kate checked her watch and shook her head: “And no other disruptive energy fields either.”

“That’s not a problem, I left a coordinate in the car. Let’s just teleport back.” Carmen nodded and tried to conjure a portal. But all she saw was sparks jumping out from thin air from the position where she intended to place the portal, the portal failed to take shape and collapsed before she could help. “What the...”

Before either of them could say anything or complain, they had a strange and creepy feeling of being watched, like prey by a hidden predator, and it came from somewhere below.

When they looked down, they saw that the dark and light absorbing seabed opened its eyes - the spots giving off yellow glow opened up one by one, revealing eyes of different sizes and with different numbers of pupils below them. All of these eyes were fixated on both Carmen and Kate the moment they were revealed.

The next moment, the giant “seabed” turned, revealing a mouth as wide and long as an actual canyon, with countless tentacles as its tongues and teeth that were as long as the height of skyscrapers.

A strange suction force came from the mouth, Carmen and Kate not only sensed that their bodies were being pulled, but also their mind and consciousness.

“Fuck! Help me with the portal!” Carmen yelled.

Kate’s watch lit up in blue, and she concentrated her power on a new portal which Carmen was trying to construct, while still trying to avoid being sucked down by the creature below with unimaginable size.

The portal kept collapsing on itself due to unknown reasons, and it seemed like the reason was that the portal was not really getting enough magical energy. But as Carmen and Kate strained themselves trying to maximize the energy output, the portal formed with both red and blue magical energy finally took shape.

Kate and Carmen leapt towards with the maximum amount of force they could muster and the portal closed up behind them as they landed on grass and some flowers.

“What the - ”

Kate and Carmen found themselves on a small hill with some trees around, there was a creek nearby, and a smoking volcano at a distance.

“This is nowhere near San Jose.” Kate panted as she sat up from the ground.