Emily turns away from Hester, swimming over to collect the eels’ bodies before they sink into the weeds below. She sends all of them into her ste except the st, which she keeps in hand, looking at it ptively.

  How are they able to use lightning so well uer? It didn’t feel hot at all when it hit me earlier, so maybe they just have a differeal image? Or are they just wastira mana to maintain their trol?

  Her focus is drawn to the spines lining their bodies and the glistening growths on the end. Emily takes oween two of her fingers, p in a spark of mana to try and uand them. The anic crystal crackles, resisting the external influence even ih, but she’s able to gleam a perti detail from the iion.

  These crystals are lightning and water attributes. No wohey’re able to use their spells uer: they’re dual element. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ve used highly patible elements to enhance certain aspects like pierg power in my spells before, and eves with low patibility to ter each other in my alchemy. Why didn’t I sider using low patibility elements to remove ive aspects from each other? It will make the spell weaker in attack power, but it will be far more effit than spendira mana and processing power just to forcefully trol a spell.

  Mentally berating herself, she sends the body into her ste and starts one of her cores on quickly building a new spell as she gestures to the twins to keep going.

  They tinue swimming along the kebed, following its gradual dee towards the bottom. They run into anroup of eels in the reeds, sleeping in small burrows that they burst out of as Emily gets close. Luckily, the first attacks only target Emily at the front, and she simply absorbs their hits without fling while throwing up a barrier as the first two sm into her chest, saving her friends from the three follow-up charges.

  After the fish have wasted their first assault, Emily crushes the two that hit her and finishes off the other three with a water bolt each. They don’t run into another enemy before the pnt life c the rock below them starts to redu density.

  The weeds slowly fade away until the rock beh is fully exposed and, a few metres deeper, their goal eheir small area of light. A small, fist-sized hole in the rock, pitch bck despite the magical light around them and seemingly leeg the light away, with dark tendrils reag up into the water above.

  Emily frowns slightly when she sees the hole, not remembering the small dark limbs trying to take apart her light. She holds up a hand to tell the twins to stop and focuses on her water dete spell. Unfortunately, everything around the hole is distorted in her s, the tendrils seeming to pull apart her spell as it gets close.

  Clig her tongue in her mask, Emily swims above the hole cautiously, hoping her infra-sight will reveal any hidden enemies. She gazes in and sees nothing but darkness. Still ed about the strange shadowy limbs, Emily swims down with her left haing at her hip on top of The Clock’s pouch, and a magic circle oher side of her.

  The moment she touches the first tendril of darkness, her caution proves warrahe tendrils all react, suddenly solidifying into pitch-bck tentacles and ing themselves around Emily’s arm. Emily reacts instantly, kig up and pushing herself away from the hole, rippitacker from its hiding pce.

  Her vision is instantly filled with darkness, as the flexible body pulled from the hole expands inte, pitch-bck octopus with six thick tentacles and a dozen thin tendrils. Emily’s eyes widen and she freezes for a moment as she reises the beast.

  Holy shit! What’s an archite doing here?

  She quickly recovers her posure as she s size and ts the number of its limbs.

  Ah, never mind. It’s only sed circle.

  With slight disappoi, Emily releases the two spells held at the ready beside her. One magic circle fires a teardrop of water through the archite’s tre mass, ripping through a few tendrils in the ulverising the giant octopus’ first heart. The other releases a cold blue beam of lightning that cuts through the back of the beast’s mantle, destroying the other two hearts held within.

  It worked! Shame I already have a spell called water bolt. Maybe aqua bolt?

  The remaining tendrils around Emily’s arm release their grip, slipping away aurning to their inal form, melting into shadows for a moment before melding together into two half-destroyed tentacles. As the body settles, Emily taps it, sending it into her ste before floating down to the open hole below.

  It appears the same as the st time she was here, so she gestures for the twins to approach.

  “What was that?” Hester signs, most of her attentioing on the dark maw before them.

  “It was a baby archite,” Emily responds calmly, her eyes fshing with amusement as Hester starts in surprise.

  “That was a titan of the deep?”

  “I knht? Didn’t look much like a titan, did it? It’s only a sed circle baby. It takes them tens of years to grow to full size.”

  Hester nods in uanding, turning her full focus on the hole leaking mana below them as Emily floats a metre away to allow them access. She summons the Diver and presses the release tch, opening the access to the internals. She pulls a winding key from her ste and presses it into ay slot to start winding the internal springs.

  This should give it enough power to move itself for a few days as long as it doesn’t o use the course adjusting propellers too much. After that, hopefully it will tinue moving with the current long enough to find the end. I’m not sure I make a more self-suffit drohat’ll fit, so we’ll have to search blindly if it doesn’t.

  As she prepares the Diver for release, the twins both ihe hole in their own ways. Tom repeatedly dips his hand in and out, like a curious child, while Hester sits on the kebed beside the hole, her eyes shut as she probes the leaking mana with her own.

  Emily finishes winding the Diver, the internal springs pushed to full pression, log the key in pce. She s the internals with her maa, holding them still as she removes the key. She closes the drone’s body and approaches the hole, lightly pushing Tom out of the way.

  She lowers the Diver into the hole, pointing down into the darkness, and releases her hold. The moment her maa i dissipates, the propeller fag her whirrs into motion, ing out water and thrusting the mae down and out of sight.

  Emily moves back after the Diver vanishes, letting Tom py with the hole again as she pulls out the receiver tablet. She ects to it, not engaging the virtual dispy and instead just reading the output directly.

  The signal from the Diver holds strong, quickly spiralling down below them, passing thirty metres while boung side to side.

  It’s still narrow. That’s promising. If it opens up too much before reag The Abyss, my Diver will probably get lost.

  She watches the signal moving down for a short while before it starts to level out and move along sideways. Satisfied that it’s w for now, Emily breaks the e and puts away the tablet, turnitention back to the twins.

  I’ll wait for Hester to be dohis is a good opportunity for her.

  She floats down to the kebed ales against the rock, using a small twisting of metal mana to keep herself anchored down with ease. Time slowly passes and, after ten minutes of sitting with her eyes shut, Hester opens them, looking at Emily and giving her an appreciative nod.

  “You done?” Emily signs.

  “Yes. Thanks for waiting for me to finish.”

  Emily waves off her thanks and releases her mana, letting herself drift up from the kebed auring for the twins to follow. She kicks off, rapidly rising towards the surface.

  They burst out of the water without meeting aance, popping up on the opposite side of the cavern to their friends. Emily reaches up, pulling her Gills free from her fad sending it into her belt as Tom aer rise through the surface beside her. They both copy her, removing the masks from their faces and holding them out to her.

  “Keep em,” she says, juring a current to push them back towards their friends on the shore. “You’ll probably hem again.”

  “Thanks,” Tom says cheerfully. “That was so cool! It felt like my arm was vanishing every time it went in the hole.”

  “Wait. Felt like, or looked like?”

  “Felt like. Why? Didn’t you get the numbness when you put your arm in?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Emily muses, gng to Hester with a questioning look.

  “I didn’t get full numbness,” Hester says, answering Emily’s silent inquiry. “I did get a straingling feeling though.”

  “Iing.” Emily nods thoughtfully.

  I didn’t get that at all. Is it a differen circle? I didn’t get it st time either, so mental resistance maybe?

  “Hey!” Dante calls out as they reach the shore, moving to help pull the twins from the water. “Did it work?”

  Emily pushes herself out with ease, rising from the water in a single unnaturally smooth motion while answering his question.

  “For now, yes. The Diver is heading through the tunnel ected to that hole, now we just have to wait and hope it leads us to the right pce.”

  “Are we waiting here?” Juliana asks as Emily dries herself with a quick cast of se.

  “Yeah. We’ll wait here for a day, then follow the Diver afterwards if it stays on course.”

  “Great! I want to see the writing on the wall,” Tom chirps as Hester dries him off.

  “Go ahead,” Emily says, pulling the barrier dis her belt. “We’ll set up camp here, so you’re free to roam the cavern as long as someone else goes with you.”

  Tom expetly looks at his sister, but she shrugs him off.

  “I want to digest my gains from looking at that hole’s mana. Ask someone else.”

  “I’ll take you,” Enzo offers, standing up and walking over.

  Tom and Enzo separate from the group, the way lit by the light pack still clipped to Tom’s chest. Meanwhile, Emily sets up the barrier disc, turning the dial in the middle a full turn this time and watg as it stabilises mid-air at an odd angle, firing its anchors into the wall and the floor by the water’s edge.

  Satisfied with the barrier, Emily joins Juliana and Dante iing up the group’s bedrolls and a campfire while Hester meditates at the water’s edge, ripples occasionally spreading from her across the water’s surface as she pys with her elemental prehension.

  Emily positions her spiders by the caverrances leading to the se of keshore they occupy, with her boat floating stationary a little way off the shore, ales down beside the fire with Juliana and Dante. She takes out the Diver’s tablet and activates the visual dispy, two small dots of wind swirling into life above it, before pg it down. She then takes out the materials to tinue work on the final set of Gills.

  The two rotating motes of purple wind slowly move apart in an uable path as the day goes by, the Diver treading its lonely journey down into the depths. A single small group of piranhas swims past Emily’s boat’s dete during the day, but she chooses to ig sihey don’t e close, diving down into the middle of the ke quickly after she spots them.

  Early in the evening, an hour or so before the light iunnels should fade, Hester approaches Emily.

  “Hey, Emily?” she asks tentatively.

  “Yes?” Emily responds, pullitention away from Juliana’s head in her p.

  Hester shivers slightly when Emily’s warm smile immediately drops into a ral stare as she looks up, but she tinues uurbed.

  “Could you take me back down to look at that hole again, please? I think I’m close to something.”

  “Oh?” Emily raises a curious brow, a small grin creeping up slowly to join it. “In water or ice? I haven’t noticed you make any attempts at an ice maio, only water.”

  “Both? I’m sure I’m close to something new in my water maion, and I believe that will push me over the start lih ice,” Hester answers, gaining more fiden her words as she goes.

  “I see, I’ll make you a deal then,” Emily responds, catg Hester off guard.

  “A deal?”

  “Yeah. I’ll take you back down if you show me your maions before and after.”

  “What? Sure,” Hester agrees, rexing at the simple request.

  Emily slides out from under Juliana, repg her legs with a pillow and notig a small pout following her as she does. Chug, she leans donts a kiss on Juliana’s head before she stands up.

  “I’ll be ba a bit,” Emily says, catg Juliana’s eyes and receiving a small smile in response.

  She aer head for the water’s edge, pausing before they step in as Emily turns to Hester with expectation clear on her face. Hester closes her eyes, raising her hand before her and whispering: “water.”

  At first, nothing happens. Then, with n, a sudden burst of blue particles washes out of her palm. It disperses slowly into the air as a sed wave rushes out. The patters a few times until Hester lets out a breath and opens her eyes.

  Iing. She seems to be viewing water as waves. I wonder if that will give her spells a different effect than my calmer, more malleable image. Maybe more power?

  Emily nods for her to tinue, so Hester shuts her eyes and whispers: “ice.”

  A few seds of silence pass once again, and then a few faint, pale blue whisps of mana shimmer to life before her hand. The effect is so small Emily ’t reise any disible pattern that may suggest the dire Hester’s mental image is taking.

  She’s certainly not close to achieving a maion. But, it’s not far off her initial maion of water. If she refine her image a little I’m sure she’ll ehe ranks of dual elementalists.

  Hester drops her hand and opens her eyes again, finished with her demonstration. Emily nods, summoning her Gills from her ste and pg them to her face.

  “Thanks,” she says, stepping out over the water. “Now for my end of the deal.”

  She plunges into the icy drink below.

  KeroKeron