The royal hunting troupe was led deeper and deeper into the jungle by emperor Poh. As the hours dragged on, Lonka’s three brothers and Brahman seemed to only gain in enthusiasm. All Lonka–who reluctantly kept up at the back of the pack–could think about was how terrified he was to be going to The Lake of Eels again. On his first and only previous visit, he had been a child, and now he felt as if he were one all over again, fear prickling along his nape, anticipation welling in his gut, and a slight spasm in one of his eyes that was growing stronger and more annoying with each time it repeated again.

The sky was still as thick as pitch and twice as dark. But even the dim, ambient light provided by scattered bio-luminescent flora was enough for Ooura like them to see just fine. Unfortunately for Lonka, his sense of time seemed to blend together the closer and closer they got, and suddenly, though it had only felt minutes since Banon had departed them, The Lake of Eels came into view, and the sky above it was beginning to show the first colors of sunrise. Its shores were marked distinctly by the clustering of taller Mew trees lining them, giving the vast lake a distinct silhouette even from a distance. There were Mews sprouting further out from the shore as well, but since the lake bottom was so deep, even the colossal Mew, when rooted to those depths, ended up with their above mat portions being no taller than the other tree species whose roots clung directly into the mats floating on the water’s surface. Further out even than that, there were no trees at all, no mat either. Just open, deep, foreboding water.

From there, it felt only a blink of an eye until Lonka, Tyube, Dartome, Tamil, elder Brahman and emperor Poh were already trotting out onto the main lake, their feet squelching with each step over the saturated mat, un-fathomable depths of water below them. As embarrassing as it was to say–being that Lonka’s entire identity revolved around fishing–he was terrified of deep water. The way he saw it, the aeropaima and mid-sized krakens that roamed their home waters were more than scary enough as it was. His missing finger twitched with phantom pain ing response to the thought. Here, walking on a floating mat of weeds above more water than any one lake had business possessing, Lonka couldn’t help but imagine the weedy ground suddenly giving way into the mouth of some megolithic fish that decided to swallow them all whole.

Considering what Lonka knew actually did lurk under there, his fears weren’t entirely far off.

“Well,” Poh called over his shoulder to the rest of the troupe trailing him. “I believe this is a virgin visit for all here but Lonka, myself, and elder Brahman, eh?”

Tyube, Lonka’s fellow Banon-supporting brother, shot Lonka a curious look. “So,” Tyube began, “why does he look like he's about to shit himself while father struts like a red peacock? You both have been here before, like he says, no?”

Lonka fidgeted nervously, unable to look his youngest brother in the eyes.

“To be honest, I have always been curious about that too,” Tamil added, looking back towards Lonka briefly as well. “You never tell us what actually happened. Father won't either, which is odd for him.”

Dartome was the only son of Poh who appeared completely unmoved, marching straight forward just like his father, a wide, snail-eating grin on his lips. “You all never figured it out? Poh is a Kothai. Lonka is not. They came here together and encountered exactly what you should expect in the deep jungle; monsters. Only Poh did as Kothai do, and killed, and Lonka did as Lonka does, and pissed himself.”

Tyube and Tamil glanced at each other, sharing a look of uneasiness, apparently not so convinced that Lonka’s discomfort was unfounded. A small part of Lonka was warmed that Tamil wasn’t immediately dismissive of him for not being Kothai, given Tamil and Dartome had both completed their rite. Most of his mind, however, was overly preoccupied with terror.

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Tyube nudged elder Brahman to get his attention–taking after Banon in his disregard for authority, it seemed. “So, are you going to tell us then?”

Brahman didn’t acknowledge the question at all. However, the fact that his eyes were constantly scanning and his posture projected poise and vigilance seemed to only make Tyube and Tamil all the more uneasy. Their walk was surprisingly uneventful as they went further and further out from the shore. The foliage was sparse, the fauna even moreso–which wasn’t surprising in the least, given the things Lonka knew lurked beneath the mat. This place, Lonka genuinely believed, might be a small pocket of hell that spilled over into the world.

The unexpectedly boring stroll eventually came to a halt when Poh raised a hand. Lonka’s stomach dropped when he saw Poh drop to a crouch and begin to half-crawl along the ground, poking and probing at the mat with his hands and feet both. After enough testing, Poh seemed satisfied with the level of give in the mat here, and a small smile graced his lips. Lonka shuddered and began frantically looking around for nearby trees. Thankfully, there were a couple of mat-growers closeby enough.

“What? What is it? What in the world has gotten into the two of you?” Tamil asked.

Poh stood up slowly and turned to address his royal hunting troupe, gaining all of their attention immediately without needing to signal or say anything. “Tell me, have any of you noticed how thin the mat has gotten as we continued further from the shore?

Tamil and Tyube looked around their feet. Tamil even tested its give like Poh had been with a few short jabs with his foot.

Lonka’s fear was rising with every passing moment.

“This,” Poh began, arms raised out wide, “my sons, is a unique quality to the lake of eels alone. For some reason, the mat out this far is never all that thick, yet quite uniform and strong, making it so I can do… this.”

He then began to jump up and down. Or, Lonka supposed, it would be more accurate to call it bouncing, since his feet weren't leaving the mat. In fact, what he was really doing was kicking down into the mat over and over again, then, in between each push downwards, bending his legs to ride the rebounding force caused by the buoyancy of the mat. Since the mat was so thin, the slimy green ground acted more as a membrane than something solid, and moved almost as if it was just an extension of the liquid beneath it, rippling into larger and larger waves of green as Poh continued.

In under a minute, Poh had become the central point of a several-foot-high wave of mat rippling in all directions outwards from him. This was possible because the ground itself was only a thin layer of floating entangled weeds. Certainly strong enough to walk on, and stay intact despite the stress caused by the rippling, but not so solid that it couldn’t be moved with a little deliberate coxing. It helped in no small measure that Ooura had such exceptional leg strength. Poh, at some points, had his entire body disappearing below the level of the waves–from where Lonka stood, anyway.

Lonka’s stomach twisted in anticipation of what was coming next.

“Boys,” Poh said, “the Dryad’s favor for any man to pluck ten eels, and her ever-lasting servitude for the first man to shave even a finger's worth of meat from the Orux eater.”

“Orux eater?” Tamil asked incredulously while they all rode Poh’s ever-increasing waves.

Lonka almost fainted on the spot just hearing the mention of its name again.

A dull sound began to emanate from beneath them, muffled by the mat in between the shrieking creatures and the Ooura they were trying to get through to.

“What is that noise?” Tyube asked, drawing his knife.

“Dartome was right,” Lonka said, drawing everyone's attention even though his words were quiet, his voice shuddering and his left eyelid twitching uncontrollably. “Monsters.”

All at once, dozens of black shapes burst through the mat, their shrieks vastly louder now that the creatures responsible were above the mat with them.

The royal hunting troupe scrambled into action as chaos erupted around them.