To Fly the Soaring Tides

What the hell is that crazy witch thinking?! I’m going to die! Lomp’s thoughts grew increasingly dark as the tunnel he decided to drown in at high speeds did the same. Meanwhile, a certain sorcerer was more than a little irritated.

What the hell is that crazy moron thinking?! He’s going to die!

The river bored through the salt was massive. A lot of water moved through it. To put it in perspective, it was about the circumference of that little trading post with all the beef.

Ever wonder why a sorcerer changes clothes so often—no, let me rephrase that. Ever wonder why any sorcerer worth their salt changes clothes so often? It’s because you never know when you need to take advantage of a little extra boost in abilities. It was a mark of skill as well, as only experienced sorcerers had an outfit for every occasion.

The Cerulean Robe set would be the difference between Lomp’s life and death. You see, the rock is made entirely of salt. On top of being deep underground with the oppressive earth mana, the dry environment further lowered the prevalence of water mana, even while fully submerged. Water wasn’t her specialty, and she needed more power to save the truly stupid.

The staff to this set was actually a ring. When activated it turns water into a state separate from liquid or solid, forming a staff bound to her hand that moved and flowed just like water at her whim. She stretched the staff out above her, expanding her influence over the water. Like this she could manipulate the water to compress from above, drastically increasing the pressure around her to her shield’s limit and slowly pulling the water down faster.

She had to act quick or the foolish layman would drown. Cira had another ring for that. She was good for an hour on a single charge. After that, she’d just fill up her barrier with air. She was really excited to see where the salty current took her, but now she was saddled with responsibilities.

Aquon the Staff of Springs spread out like a river delta above Cira’s head, searching for the reckless guard with a myriad of watery feelers. After thirty seconds Cira started getting worried and wasted even more of her precious mana to channel Spatial Sight through the branching staff. The overload of information made her head burn as she was seeing in three dimensions, through each of what she discovered to be the twenty-six appendages of Aquon.

Lo and behold, she found the idiot kicking and trying to swim upstream, as if he instantly regretted his decision and thought he could do anything about it. She refocused Aquon’s many streams into a single tentacle and used it to grab onto the man’s ankle, yanking him down to her.

When she finally got him in her grasp, he turned to her with wide eyes and a look of relief from having been rescued from mortal peril, but the eyes that stared back were cold and withholding a young woman’s potent fury. Lomp was losing consciousness at this point and experiencing a whirlwind of emotions, but Cira couldn’t wait indeterminately to dole out at least a fraction of her anger.

She headbutted him, causing blood to ripple out of his nose into the current. The look in his eyes was as if Cira was twisting a dagger into his back as the last bubble of air from his lungs escaped and his eyes rolled back.

Cira then forced a ring onto one of his stubby little fingers and held her glare fixed on him as he opened his eyes in a panic, grasping his throat for lack of oxygen. The look of shock remained as he slowly realized he didn’t have to breathe, only to freeze over again after realizing Cira’s cold gaze remained. She wrapped him up in Aquon and attached it to her waist, letting it—him, Lomp—trail behind her.

Cira crossed her arms pouting, unable to shake the irritation as she sped down the underground river. They were going way faster than the elevator ever could. Chip had mentioned getting to the salt nymph’s lair would take a day and a half by elevator. There was a special one with cots to sleep in that goes straight there.

By her estimation she could make it there in an hour or two. The thought of a return trip had not crossed Cira’s mind yet, but she was busy living in the moment. After a while of letting the calming water rush by at high speeds, Lomp dragging along flailing all the way, Cira’s rage had subsided. The problem was handled, it was just a high-tension situation.

She hated having lives forced upon her. Her father said it was a sorcerer’s burden, but he never mentioned how often it was due to stupidity and not a legitimate crisis.

These were just some of the things you had to get used to up here. There’s another saying. As there are as many islands as stars, there are as many idiots among those island. Truthfully, Gazen made that one up.

An hour in, Cira recharged the ring on Lomp’s finger at considerable cost, turning this journey into one dangerous for even her. Of course, there was another danger closing in. Cira passed many branches to the river where the water flowed out in different directions through the island, and with each one the tunnel she was being flushed down narrowed considerably, shrinking to about Cira’s arm span in width.

Lomp had long since passed out, being dragged along like a ragdoll, slapping against the sides. If he were conscious he could take the same pose as Cira with her legs together and arms at her side. She was falling with the current like a knife sinking blade down.

Come to think of it, Lomp was probably getting whipped around a lot from my excess speed. Why does this have to be my responsibility? She couldn’t really do anything for him at this point. What, manipulate his body with telekinesis like a puppet? Ugh. Fine.

It was impossible to drink another mana potion while blasting through miles of salt completely submerged in fast-moving water. Well, there was a way, but Cira was going to be livid if she had to use it.

By the time the river’s tunnel narrowed to just barely wide enough for Lomp to fit, the current had slowed down and they were moving at an angle now, sliding against the salt. In addition to her robes incapability of getting pulled up or off from the current—yes, this included her hat—Cira’s Cerulean robes granted her protection from damage caused by rushing water.

Getting slapped with a rival spellcaster’s Water Whip, scraping against the sea floor, or miles of salt-on-saltwater abrasion, could ostensibly be considered damage caused by rushing water. In tandem with her shield, she was fully protected against this little escapade. It’s almost like she planned it! The same could not be said for Lomp.

Again?! Cira cast a shield around him as well, drawing entirely from her own mana instead of a ring. Her reserves were rapidly dropping at this point, and she was getting nervous. Soon, they were hardly going down at all, seeming to have bottomed out, sliding on their back in the water’s current. Lomp apparently woke up at some point and had his eyes glued open in terror, muscles tensed up and stiff as a board—not that he could move until Cira released him.

They had reached the two-hour mark and their speed had dropped even further. Cira was really starting to sweat as the tunnel continued to narrow, without any more offshoots and no sign of air pockets. Here mana was getting dangerously low too. She was mentally kicking herself for being forced into such a reckless situation. She should have just turned around and thrown him out before they got too deep, but she just didn’t have that idiot saving reflex. Cira had to make do with the situation as it developed.

The whole thing was reckless in its own right, but by herself even if the tunnel narrowed too much to pass through, it wouldn’t be the death of her so long as she saw it coming and could slow down to a stop. Then her old friend geomancy would save the day, allowing her to burrow out. It would probably take a long time, but there were supposed to be tunnels all throughout the rock like an ant colony.

Burrowing in one direction then probing the salt rock with a combination spell of earth and spatial mana to search for voids in the rock, she could find a mine and a way out. This was the spell she used to find iron in the ground and she called it Spatial Prospecting. I guess I could do it with him in tow if I had to, but come on!

Finally, Cira was running out of mana. She had to do the thing she really didn’t want to resort to or they’d both die. Reluctantly, she used Aquon to float a healing vial up into her mouth, and bit down. Blood filled her mouth mixed with elixir. Her mana shot up to just above halfway in an instant and her body reeled anxiously as she was unable to expend any energy just laying there like a stick.

After wincing in pain and waiting until the elixir’s effects had finished, she spit the glass out and healed herself. Lomp owed her a bottle.

With another hour of mana in her, Cira double down, dumping it into Aquon to increase their speed through the water. No sooner than she had begun, the tunnel opened up. Within another minute, they fell off a waterfall over a deep chasm while the river they followed exploded behind them.

Cira heard Lomp desperately sucking air in and using his first breath in hours to scream as they fell. Cira quickly cast another Lamplight as her other couldn’t keep up and was long gone. Lining the chasm were more waterfalls just like the one behind them. Relying on Aquon again, she merged it with the waterfall and used it to carry herself and her baggage, decreasing their speed as they approached the bottom.

Lomp didn’t stop screaming the whole time, having clearly pent up a lot of it during the last few hours. Cira’s Lamplight burned brighter than usual as she also had some spare energy, and it lit up the plunge pool beneath them.

The sound of water crashing in all directions echoed around the chamber and Cira stopped them right on the surface like a platform, stretching out her legs and cracking her back. She relaxed as the tension left her body, until her face landed on Lomp who’d just finished gathering his bearings.

“Are you crazy?!”

”Are you stupid?!” They shouted at each other in unison.

Slap!

Cira slapped him right in his dumb face, “How dare you thrust your life upon me as if it is my burden to bear! A lesser sorcerer would have left you for dead! Do you have any idea how many different spells kept you from death over the last three hours?! I had to eat a glass bottle! You owe me a new one and give me my ring back!” She ripped it off his finger, before rinsing it and muttering, “Dad made it…”

Lomp was stunned, but eventually managed a few words, “I’m sorry… I saw you jump in and acted without thinking.”

She couldn’t believe it, “Are you trying to suggest you were trying to save me from drowning?!”

He grew red and looked away, “Y-yeah… I guess so.”

“Idiot!” She sighed, “Forget it… Do you know where we are?” She looked around and saw a dock built from wood. The first she’d seen on this island. It was old and rotting but still looked functional. Just a little dock to sit on and watch the waterfalls. This brought a smile to her face—she liked finding places like these.

The sky was full of dangers and the stiff winds of fate could sweep you away faster than you could blink. Everyone either had a problem or somewhere to be, but every now and again Cira stumbled across a place that was created with tranquility in mind. That’s the impression she got from this dock at the underground lake. The white noise from the waterfalls breaking the surface seemed to block out the world.

With that thought in mind, Cira channeled more mana into her Lamplight and it grew in size, illuminating even further into the darkness past the dock. At the shore there were people standing with frightened looks on their faces, watching the spectacle that just fell from the abyss above.

“I don’t believe it,” Lomp replied, “I think we made it to Deep Falls. We’re only a few layers up from the salt nymph’s lair.”

“Deep Falls, huh?” Cira said thoughtfully, standing atop the water, “Nice place.”

“That’s one way to look at it… but the lake wasn’t this high last time I was here. I think there’s more waterfalls now too.”

“Well, you saw how much water was spilling out of the spring. A lot of other places are surely the same.”

It stood for reason. Cira was bewildered about how this island even existed anymore. The amount of water that spring created was like nothing she’d ever seen, and it was the most water-soluble island she’d ever set foot on at that. Some areas of the salt rock, she noticed, eroded slowly. With Spatial Prospecting the best she could tell was that some areas were just denser than others. Given the spring’s few feet of drop each year, the island had to be millennia old.

“That’s true,” Lomp continued, “But there shouldn’t be flooding this far down.”