Touch of Fate

Chapter 85: Sinking Sensation

Chapter 85: Sinking Sensation

Mike started kicking his way to the surface, until one of the tentacles wrapped around his waist and started dragging him even further down. Evidently the creature was trying to take him down with it.

[This thing is pretty presumptuous for calamari.]

He struggled against the rubbery mass, but couldn't get good leverage against the slippery surface. Now, starting to run out of air, he began to panic a little, trying desperately to come up with a plan to escape.

Being submerged in water was having a serious effect on his magic. Fire and Air Magic were almost completely unusable. The former merely heating the surrounding liquid, while the latter could only really be used to form air bubbles. Earth Magic was mildly useful, but he was having trouble making something solid enough to penetrate the Kraken;s skin, as his earthen structures tended to soften and disintegrate after a while.

Water Magic was of course usable, and indeed even easier than normal, but he was having trouble applying it in a manner that would help him.

While he was trying to work through the issue, he was clipped by another of the swirling tentacles, knocking the wind out of him. As the last of his air escaped his lungs, Mike couldn't help but take a reflexive breath, inhaling a mouthful of cold, lake water.

[OH CRAP! I'm drowning! I'm...]

He was able to breathe normally, even underwater. With only a little extra effort he could draw the water into his lungs and expel it without any of the pain he associated with drowning. It was a bizarre feeling.

After a few moments spent exploring this new form of respiration, he recalled one of his titles, Undinekath, actually granted him the ability to breathe underwater. Apparently it also helped compensated for the issue of pressure and temperature, since he was fairly comfortable in his current situation, minus the tenticular death grip. Now that death was no longer immanent, he had some time to work out a solution to his problem.

Feeling a little embarrassed about freaking out now, he noticed that the Kraken had pulled him very deep. It had gotten to the point that what little light had initially filtered through from above, was almost completely obscured, leaving him in increasing darkness. If he wanted to escape, he would need a means of generating light or seeing in the dark.

[This would be a great time to gain a night vision skill. Right, System?]

He continued to sink into the darkness.

[Alright, fine! I'll figure something else out. I wonder how light magic works.]

He tried summoning his mana and directing it to crate light, but all he achieved was some weak Fire Magic that was promptly extinguished. Trying to recall everything he knew about electromagnetic physics and the interaction of photons with matter, he sought to approach the situation scientifically.

[So fire is basically kinetic energy caused by vibrating molecules, so obviously, Fire Magic works by creating those vibrations...except when I use it create semi-material fire I suppose. Although that could be some kind of electromagnetic field acting like matter when it interacts with an object...]

Mike gave himself a headache trying to apply his world's physics to the way magic worked in Ea. He finally concluded that the laws of physics themselves were probably pretty similar, but that mana, and by extension magic, were somehow able to override them.

By this point he was floating through inky blackness, and was unable to see his hand in front of his face. The Kraken seemed to have died somewhere in the intervening time, but the tentacle maintained its hard grip.

[Aren't these things supposed to float when they die? Did I hit some kind of buoyancy sac? Also, how deep is this lake? I feel like I've been sinking for hours.]

Desperate to see something, or anything of what was going on, he tried creating light once more.

[Alright, just imagine it. Excited electrons move to a higher energy state, releasing electromagnetic radiation as photons. It can't be that hard.]

The water instantly quenched the ball of fire he summoned into his hand.

[Damn it! Alright, I got to keep trying. What else can I try? I mean, it can't be as easy as flipping a light switch. That would be silly.]

As soon as he imagined the light switch going on, a steadily glowing ball of white light formed in his hand, illuminating his surroundings.

While he was busy cursing the fickle nature of the System, he took a moment to check his surroundings.

He found himself sinking through clear water. The Kraken, now clearly dead, was still clinging gamely onto him as they sunk ever deeper. The light in his hand did travel far enough to illuminate much else, but he could vaguely make out some sort of pale color wall to one side of himself.

It looked a little strange to him, so he added mana to the ball of light, expanding the radius of the revealed water. What he saw there was mind-boggling.

A wall of cream colored material seemed to stretch as far as he could see in almost every direction. It was seemingly carved in an odd rippling pattern with slightly irregular shapes. After a few more minutes of examination, he began to feel that there was something familiar about the structure, it almost looked like a set of....teeth.

With a start he realized he was looking at the skull of a phenomenally large creature. The sheer size of it beggared his imagination. Each of the teeth was easily dozens of meters in length. If the rest of the creature was proportional it would be truly gargantuan. A monster that would dwarf even the titanic beasts that popped up in the movies and TV shows of Mike's old world.

[Is this the Great Wyrm Tempestus? No wonder such a large lake formed when it crashed. This thing is the size of a small city.]

Mike suddenly caught the distant strains of some kind of music. It was ethereal, almost unworldly, but heartrendingly beautiful all the same. The subtle tones almost seemed to be telling a story, one of loss and grief. But as he kept listening, he felt a slight shift, as the music grew warmer, more hopeful.

He noticed a soft, blue light deep below him, and as he approached it the music seemed to grow louder, and more joyful. Soon he was close enough to see the source of the light, or rather the absence of it.

The flickering globe of sapphire luminescence floated above a small bundle resting in the center of a massive skeletal hand. Once Mike was on the same level as the light, it seemed to bob in his direction, before vanishing like the flame from a candle. The music ceased soon afterwards, silence once again reigning over the scene.

Certain that something of great importance was in that bundle, Mike began fighting in earnest against the entangling tentacle. Having little luck with physical efforts, he decided to try using his newly acquired Light Magic.

Concentrating a large quantity of mana into his hand, he forcefully compressed and willed it into a beam of radiance. With some time and effort, he was able to direct it to severing a piece of the tentacle, just enough to allow him to slip free.

He floated there for a second, apparently neutrally buoyant for some reason, watching as the Kraken sunk into the depths of the lake.

[Seriously. How deep does this thing go?]

Right before the body of the beast sunk out of the range of his light, he caught a glimpse of furious motion. Something....multiple somethings were tearing the Kraken apart.

Heart rate spiking, Mike decided that he'd had quite enough of his underwater adventures, and hurriedly swum back to the bundle. As he was doing so, he kept seeing flashes of pale white things moving in the corner of his vision.

The bundle turned out to be a roundish object wrapped in a piece of black colored leather. Not really wanting to take the time to investigate, he scooped it up, and started heading back to the surface.

Evidently something about this act attracted the attention of the things that were following him, because he became surrounded by increasing amounts of furious motion. Whatever they were, they were remaining just outside the radius of his light. With a sudden burst of impatience he quickly dumped a large amount of mana into his spell creating a brilliant glow that shone for hundreds of meters in every direction.

The light revealed that he was surrounded by hundreds of pale skinned, vaguely humanoid creatures that looked like a cross between a human and a piranha. Their limbs ended in webbed appendages tipped with wicked looking claws. Long pointed teeth were visible in their gaping angler-fish mouths. However, the most horrible aspect of these creatures was the featureless expanse of skin that covered the area where their eyes should be.

[Nope. I'm done.]

Once again drawing deeply from his mana, Mike created a powerful jet of water, pushing himself towards the sky like a torpedo. After a few minutes of slightly unpleasant travel, he broke through the surface, firing up almost a hundred meters into the sky.

The storm had almost subsided, and streams of sunlight were breaking through the cloud cover. Spinning while still in the air, Mike caught sight of the ship. It was a few kilometers away, so he threw himself toward it with a blast of Air Magic to generate forward momentum. Repeating this process every time he got close to the water's surface, he quickly traveled across the intervening distance.

Soon enough he was landing on the deck, amid the astonished murmurings of the crew and passengers.

"Mike? You're alive?" Brenden asked from his position near the gun whale. It was a little hard to tell because of how rained soaked they all were, but he looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"Yeah, sorry about that. Got tangled up in something on the way back." He said with a lighthearted laugh, hoping to defuse the tension he felt.

There was a soft impact against his side as the silver-haired Oracle wrapped her arms around him in a relieved hug. Before he had a chance to return it, or even react, she broke the contact. After punching him in the stomach with much anger, but little effect, she stormed off. The effect was largely ruined however, when she turned green and had to run over to the side of the boat again.

"She was worried. Needed faith." Tal said walking up with that enigmatic, almost-smile on her face.

Mike sighed. "I really am sorry. I never meant to stay down there that long, but I ran into some interesting things while I did." He held up the bundle.

"What's that?" Brenden asked having approached as well. Mike pretended not to notice the redness of his eyes.

"Something I found underwater, I'll tell you more about it later. First, I want to get a look at it."

Pulling of the strangely heavy black leather, he revealed a round gemstone-like object about 30 cm in diameter. It was a opaque, misty blue, and virtually glowed in the post-storm sun, reflecting the light into a number scintillating rainbow patterns.

The three of them gasped when they laid eyes on it. A gem that size would be worth a fortune, but something bother Mike about the shape of the stone.

It wasn't perfectly round, and the surface, although smooth, lacked the polished finish he'd expected from a cut gem.

For some reason, it looked an awfully lot like an egg to him.