What Sleeps in the Sea Below

What Sleeps in the Sea Below

“O h, ow…” I moaned, as I made my way toward consciousness.

“Morning, sunshine,” I heard Gourry say, but I was barely able to make out his silhouette in the darkness.

“Mmmm… hold that thought.” Still groggy, I brought my hands together in front of my chest and shouted, “Light!”

A faintly glowing orb formed between my palms. I tossed it into the darkness. From what little I could make out of our surroundings, we were atop one of five pillars rising out of a giant, water-filled room. It was roughly the same size and shape as the room from which we’d fallen, and the pillars were spaced such that each corresponded to a point on the pentagram in the room above. It was too dark to tell how deep the pool around us was.

“Rune Breaker,” I muttered, frowning.

“Huh? What’s that?” Gourry asked.

“Simply put, my power is diminished inside this field. That’s why that levitation spell didn’t work when we were falling.”

Originally, Rune Breakers were designed to reduce the damage caused by offensive spells, weaken curses, that kind of thing. They don’t usually sweat the small stuff, like levitation spells. My best guess was that the two chambers above and below ground had combined to multiply their effects exponentially, to the point that they interfered with and absorbed all types of magic. Even the radiance of the lighting spell I’d just cast was weaker than usual.

I guess Daymia didn’t make vice chairman for nothing.

“Huh. Sounds like we got ourselves a sticky wicket,” observed Gourry.

Sticky wicket, indeed.

“So I guess we need to destroy the field, right?” Gourry said, like it was easy.

I sighed deeply. Sure, it would be nice if we could break the pentagram, thereby destroying the Rune

Breaker… it would also be nice if someone would toss us down a rope, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath for either one.

“Well, yeah. But to do that we’d need to destroy these five pillars, get it?”

“You can do that with your magic.”

One of these days, Gourry…

“Have you been listening at all?”

“What…?”

“I told you, my magic’s weak here! I can’t do that sort of thing right now. That’s the whole point!”

“Oh, I was wondering if there was a point to all that.” Gaaaaaaaaah! I seriously thought I was going to pop a blood vessel, right then and there.

“What’s the matter? You got a headache?”

“No,” I sighed as I stood, a fair bit of water dripping from my clothes. We were both pretty wet, but my layers weren’t completely soaked through, meaning I couldn’t have been underwater too terribly long.

“We have to do something about these clothes,” Gourry said, shivering.

“Good point. We sit around like this much longer, and we’ll catch colds.”

“Yeah. So…” Gourry started, smiling. “Think we should strip and cuddle for body heat?”

Oh, in your dreams!

I pressed my palms together and started chanting. Gourry’s face turned a funny color—the color of fear.

“H-hey now, Lina, wait! I was kidding! It was a joke, I swear! Look, I take it back, o-okay,” Gourry shuddered.

“Fireball!” I shouted, launching a bright orb of steel-melting heat straight into Gourry’s chest, striking squarely and exploding! Or, that was what he thought, anyway.

“Aaaaaaarrghhh!” He cried out as his body was enveloped in heat. Then, when he realized he wasn’t dead, he stopped and stared down at his torso like he wasn’t sure it should still be there.

My fireball could normally melt steel, sure, but inside the Rune Breaker, it did little more than heat the air.

“Your clothes are dry now, aren’t they?” I laughed.

Boy, I crack myself up sometimes.

“Okay, now that that’s taken care of…” I said, turning my eyes skyward. We needed a plan.

“Any bright ideas?” Gourry asked uneasily.

Bright ideas. Ha ha, I get it. Don’t tempt me to do it again, Gourry.

“Hmmm, not yet. This is a tough one,” I said, thinking out loud. It looked like the hole we’d fallen through had closed. The lighting spell wasn’t radiant enough for me to make out the details, but it was clear that everything above us was pitch black.

“Okay, so we can’t destroy the ward,” Gourry muttered. His gaze shifted to the pool around us. “I wonder how deep that thing is. What’s it here for, anyway?”

“Daymia’s probably a water person,” I said, realizing as soon as I’d said it that Gourry wouldn’t get it.

“Huh?”

See, I knew he wouldn’t get it.

Okay, how to explain this… hmmm…

“Well, you know how some people are cat people and some people are dog people?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Gourry nodded, with me so far.

“Well, some sorcerers have an affinity for fire, and others have an affinity for water, see? It’s a lot like the cat-dog thing.”

Though I limited my explanation to the four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—used in Shamanic Magic, the same principle can apply to Black Magic, curses, Astral Side Shamanic Magic, and even White

Magic. But explaining all that would just confuse him, so I kept it simple.

“So, when a sorcerer with an affinity for water uses water-related spells, the effects are more powerful—it’s like they’re kicked up a notch.”

“So when you say, ‘Daymia’s a water person,’ you mean, ‘he has an affinity for water,’“ Gourry clarified.

“Yes. When a person uses some spell or other, if it’s related to his personal element, the spell’s power increases. Or, they could make an effort to include the element—like putting water over a ward to amplify it.”

“Huh…” Gourry folded his arms. “So you’re saying when Daymia made this ward to weaken magic, he used this water to make the effects even stronger?”

I nodded heavily. “Yep. But this is all speculation. The real question is what to do about this water.”

I cast another lighting spell, tossing the orb of light through the water’s surface.

“What the—?” Gourry gasped as the orb broke the water’s surface. As the light flickered and shone underwater, he looked to me for an explanation.

“You’re wondering why the water isn’t putting it out, aren’t you?”

“Uh… yeah, pretty much.” He nodded.

“A lamp has a burning flame inside it, so it produces both light and heat. However, lighting spells are made of magic. There are no flames of any kind, so water can’t put them out.”

“Wow, that’s pretty cool,” he said, crossing his arms and gazing into the pool. “Oh, holy crap.”

My thoughts exactly.

That pool was deep—I mean really, really deep. It wasn’t packed with piranhas or anything, but it didn’t need to be.

At the very bottom of the pool, we could make out the outline of the ward’s pattern. And in the very center…

“Hey, what’s that there?” Gourry asked, pointing at what looked like some sort of jewel in the center of the ward. It was emerald and had something inside of it, but because the water distorted the image, we couldn’t make out any more than a wavy shadow.

“I’m not sure,” I replied, and the two of us stared at it in silence.

Finally, Gourry spoke: “Am I crazy, or does it look like there’s a person in there?”

“Maybe?” I hadn’t seen it until he’d pointed it out, but now that Gourry’d said so, it did look kind of like a person.

“Yeah, it definitely looks like a silhouette to me,” Gourry said, becoming more certain by the moment.

Gotta hand it to him; he’s got pretty good eyes. I’m confident in my powers of observation, but I couldn’t pick out anything more than a dark shadow until he’d pointed it out.

“We need to find out for sure. If it is a person, I have a hunch as to why it’s in the center of the ward like that,” I said.

“How do we find out for sure?” Gourry asked.

“Like this…” I said, and booted him from behind.

“Dwaaa! Aahh!” he shouted as he tumbled.

Ker-sploosh! He made a satisfying splash as he hit the water.

“Hey! What did you do that for?!” he cried out as he resurfaced and cleared the water out of his nose.

Heh heh.

I squatted on the edge of the pillar, giggling as I looked down on him, and said, “I was hoping you’d jump in and check it out for me, Gourry. Thanks! I really hate getting wet.”

“Ho ho ho,” I laughed, nearly busting a gut, until…

“Uh, waaah…!”

Gourry heaved himself up and grabbed my foot.

Sploosh!

I plunged deep into the water, reflexively sucking the liquid into my mouth, and then… lights out.

* * *

“Uh… uh… ugh…” I convulsed two or three times as I came to.

“Morning, sunshine,” Gourry said for the second time.

“What the hell did you do that for?!” I demanded.

“Hey, you don’t have any right to talk—you started it! But…” He turned and looked away from me as he went on. “You scared me. I thought you were gonna drown, so I had to give you CPR to get you breathing again.”

“You gave me wh-wh-WHAT?!” I gasped, choking on my words. CPR?! Gourry gave me mouth-to-mouth?! Blood rushed to my head. I stole a glance at Gourry’s face and steeled myself to ask: “Uh… what does that mean, exactly?”

“I laid you down on your stomach and kicked you in the back.”

Whack! I bopped him on the forehead, as was becoming my habit.

You did what?! Is that any way to treat a lady?!

“What? You didn’t think by CPR, I meant mouth-to-mouth, did you?” he asked, teasing.

“No! I most certainly did not!” I replied.

“Yes, you did! You’re blushing—look at you!”

“Oh, never mind, will you—a-anyway, will you please focus on the ward here?!”

His gaze shifted to the water, and he sang under his breath, “You’re blush-ing, you’re blush-ing…”

Jerk.

“All right, back to business,” Gourry said, mercifully. “A person would never be able to go long enough without breathing to make it to the bottom.”

“Right,” I agreed. Still wet, I folded my arms and sank into thought.

“Don’t you have a spell for breathing underwater?” Gourry asked.

“A what?”

“A spell for breathing water, I mean.”

“Not one that I’d depend on under the circumstances,” I said, scratching my head.

“Really?” Gourry looked both genuinely surprised and dejected.

“No, but now that I think about it, there might be another way…” I tossed him into the water once again, just for the heck of it. “Let’s see if this’ll actually work.”

Having just dried off, I began preparing myself for an underwater adventure.

Okay, “began preparing” makes it sound a bit more involved than taking a deep breath and casting a simple spell. And really, that was all there was to it.

The way I figured it, there were two ways to go about this: The first was to cast a water element spell which would, assuming it functioned properly despite the influence of the ward, allow a person to breathe water; or, the second option was to use a wind spell. I reasoned that I could create a field of air around myself that would travel with me as I walked underwater—like moving around inside a big soap bubble. I chose the latter, for the former had a significant disadvantage. Namely, I’d have to get wet. Again.

“Ray Wing!” I chanted, and the air began to shift around me, hugging my body and lifting me gently from the ground. A moment later, I plunged into the water with considerable speed.

The Ray Wing spell was originally developed for high­speed flight, the drawback being that it was difficult to maneuver. I determined fairly quickly that it didn’t get any easier below sea level. And, of course, it didn’t escape the effects of the Rune Breaker either. The wind barrier was weaker than I’d hoped, and even given the different viscosities of air and water, I was moving more slowly than I’d expected. Still, I was dry, so I had that to be happy about. If I suffocated, at least I’d die dry and smiling. (Not that I should have been treating the possibility of the air in my wind barrier running out before reaching the bottom as a laughing matter, but hey, some­times if you don’t laugh, you’ll scream.) I resolved that if I noticed I was running low on air, I’d head for the surface right away.

Happily, it wasn’t necessary for me to follow through on my resolution. Only moments after I’d had that thought, I arrived at my destination—the giant jewel! Looking down at it from atop that pillar, it had been difficult to gauge its size, but it was easily large enough to contain a person.

“Hmmm,” I pondered it. The light from the lighting spell I’d tossed down earlier was too faint to reach here. I cast another and tossed it nearby.

I gasped aloud at what I saw: There was, without doubt, a single man sleeping within the giant jewel… or so it seemed.

“Holy sleeping sorcerers…” I mumbled, lingering alongside it, cocooned within the Ray Wind barrier. I couldn’t afford to be too relaxed, though; we were at the very core of the Rune Breaker, the place where its effectiveness was at its peak.

The man who lay inside the emerald-cast jewel had long hair, and his body was wrapped in a robe and mantle clearly indicating he was a high-ranking sorcerer. He was neither tall nor short, neither old nor young. With his eyes closed, he looked almost handsome. I couldn’t make out the color of his robes through the emerald-colored filter, but a thought did occur to me…

He couldn’t be…

I tried to put the idea out of my mind.

But, if by some chance, this is him…

I moved closer, until my wind barrier brushed against part of the emerald. At that moment…

Who’s there? I heard a voice in my head that wasn’t my own.

“Telepathy!” I said aloud.

A woman? You… you bear me no malice, I sense… which means that you are not an ally of Tarim and Daymia.

“H-hey, whoa now, slow down a minute!” I said aloud, trying to parse out who was talking to me and what the heck he meant.

There’s no need to shout. I can hear your thoughts.

I blushed at the very idea.

Telepathy is a technique whereby one transmits thoughts to another person. Vocalizing language is unneces­sary around a telepathic sorcerer. Talented telepaths are born, not made—and needless to say, I wasn’t one of them. So, the fellow in the jewel was using telepathy to send me his thoughts, and to hear my voice in return. Of course, it was entirely possible that his ability was not magical in nature. If it had been, I doubt he’d have been able to use it under the circumstances—at the very center of the Rune Breaker.

“So, what’s going on with you and those two—Daymia and Tarim?”

For a moment, it almost looked like he was smiling.

I apologize. I should have introduced myself immediately. I am the Atlas City Sorcerer’s Guild chairman, Halcyform.

“H-Halcyform?!” I shouted. I’d thought he couldn’t be, but… I tried to quiet my thoughts and listen.

If it pleases you, miss, may I remind you, there is no need to shout.

“Yeah, okay, sorry about that. B-but, well, you surprised me. I mean, you disappeared half a year ago!”

I did not disappear. I was made to disappear.

“By… ?”

Tarim and Daymia, of course.

WHAT?! I’d figured Tarim was hiding something about the incident, but…

They both had their eyes set on the position of chairman. On that day, Tarim … He stopped.

“… Tarim did what?”

I’m sorry, but I don’t even know your name. Nor do I know how you found yourself here, in this place with me.

“I’m Lina. Lina Inverse.”

Ah, so you are, he said—or thought—as though the whole thing suddenly made sense.

I explained the course of recent events to him as briefly as I could, stopping a couple of times to renew my wind barrier. “… and that’s how we’ve come to meet here,” I finished.

I see… you give quite a psychological description, but you’ve explained the key elements sufficiently. It seems that you and I are both victims of Tarim’s deceptions. He lured me here as well, sealing me in this strange place. He is a more cunning man than I had imagined.

Cunning? Sure. He ought to have something going for him. He certainly isn’t a looker, I thought to myself.

… a looker, you say?

Ah, damn it! I’d transmitted my thought.

“Uh, it’s nothing, really. Anyway, since I’m involved in this now, I’d be grateful if you could bring me up to speed.”

It began on that day some six months ago when Tarim called for me, saying he had something very important to discuss. I agreed to meet with him, of course. He specified the Daymia residence—that is to say, he asked that we meet in the center of that room far above us. Moments after I arrived, something resembling slime overtook me. I was unable to defend myself. And when the slime solidified, I was sealed… in this.

“So this emerald-colored stuff is the slime’s hardened form?”

Correct. It would seem that Tarim and Daymia conspired to oust me, each assuming he would take my place in the chairman’s position. Of course, the two fell into discord. It’s funny, really.

It was not funny! Talk about detached, jeez.

What was really getting to me, though, was that bastard, Tarim! I knew he was hiding something when I asked him about Halcyform and his demeanor changed. I just couldn’t have imagined something like this would be the reason why!

Unforgivable! For what he did to Halcyform, and for lying to me, Lina Inverse, I’d give him a thousand deaths!

Again, I must ask you to please tone down your thoughts somewhat. It’s distressing.

Oops. I did it again.“Uh… heh, sorry about that. Very rude of me… er, anyway—! Do not fear. I vow to avenge you!”

Well, while that is very kind of you, since I am not deceased, I was hoping instead that you could release me from this prison. I would be most grateful.

“Oh. Uh, release, huh? Hmmm, guess that would mean breaking the shell, right?”

Guess so… Halcyform replied a little flakily.

My apologies for the flakiness.

Telepathy can be a real pain in the butt.

“Gourry!” I shouted as soon as my head popped out of the water. “Gimme your sword! Now!”

“Wha—? Who, huh, what? What do you mean, popping out all of a sudden and ordering me around!”

As I surfaced and started shouting, he awoke from his nap on top of the pillar, startled.

Why, that little… A person’s doing dangerous stuff under­water, and he takes a… nap!

“There really is someone locked inside that thing! I need to get him out, but to do that, I’ll have to use your sword to break the shell around him.”

“Oh, right! Gotcha.” Gourry grasped the sword on his hip with his left hand and pulled a needle out of a side pocket with his right. He pricked a spot on the sword’s hilt with the needle, and a small metal fastener made a tinny sound as it hit the floor. That fastener held the sword’s blade and hilt together. Leaving the blade in its sheath, he handed the hilt to me.

It wasn’t a joke or anything.

I took the hilt, gripping it before me with both hands.

“Light, come forth!” I called, and a blade sprang forth—a flickering, shining blade of light. This was the legendary Sword of Light that obliterated the Demon Beast of Sairaag City.

Actually, that sword was more than half the reason that I was traveling with Gourry. The blade was the physical manifestation of a person’s mental power. I thought it would make a marvelous subject for research someday.

Within the warding field of the powerful Rune Breaker, I expected the magic contained within the sword would be weakened, but the blade’s length and brightness were completely unchanged. I really thought I’d be dealing with a sword about half its normal length.

Hmmm, perhaps this sword is comprised of a different kind of magic?

Whatever the case, I wouldn’t know for sure until I’d spent plenty of time researching it.

“Hey Gourry, feel like giving me this sword to keep yet?” I asked. He replied with a tedious wave.

“No, I don’t—and I’m not gonna. Get going already.”

“Meanie,” I muttered as I took a deep breath and cast the same spell I had already cast more times than I cared to count.

“Ray Wing!” I went back underwater, having lost track of how often I’d done that today, too. I wanted that trip down to be the last, if at all possible.

“Val Flare!” I shouted. “Dam Brass!”

Ka-boooom! Twin flares of light shot from Chairman Halcyform and I, smashing through the ceiling far above us. Light from the room above shone through the dust and countless fragments in freefall. The three of us shielded our eyes and gazed skyward through our fingers.

While freeing the chairman, I’d also managed to destroy the pillars maintaining the ward.

It wouldn’t have done much for my rep if Gourry had sliced the guy up by mistake, so, after taking a little moment to explain the situation to him, we used a levitation spell to return to the floor above—that is, to the ceiling through which we’d just smashed.

Insane laughter echoed above us.

“Mr. Halcyform, I should warn you, Daymia has a couple of fairly powerful Mazoku working with him, so please be careful.”

“Thank you. Yes, of course, I will be,” Mr. Halcyform replied cheerfully. Cheerfully? I wondered if he’d really be all right.

The three of us thrust beyond the demolition and came back down, landing on an undamaged section of the floor.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I said to Daymia, making an effort to answer his maniacal hyuks with a grin and a laugh of my own. Gourry squatted down, not paying much attention.

“Wh-wha?!” Daymia cried out, falling on his rear. “Ch-Ch-Chairman Halcyform!”

“Well, hello there. It’s been half a year, has it not, Vice Chairman Daymia?” Halcyform cracked a smile, sounding almost… casual.

He was starting to really scare me. Daymia’s face paled as well.

“W-wait! N-no… it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me at all,” he stuttered.

That was pretty rich—saying “it wasn’t me” to a guy locked up in a ward constructed under your own floor.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Who was it, then?” the smiling Halcyform inquired.

I’m telling you, he was scary

“T-Tarim! H-h-he talked me into this! I never meant to do anything like this to you! I’ve never borne you any malice! Please… please, forgive me!”

Now just a…

“Really? I see. I will set off to speak with Tarim, then,” Halcyform said unexpectedly. I was taken by surprise.

“Ah…” Daymia’s face lit up with hope. “Y-yes, indeed! Ah, yes… indeed, this is why you are the great chairman of Atlas City! Yes, indeed it is!”

“Miss Lina, Mr. Gourry, let us be off.” With that, Halcyform turned around, paying no attention to Daymia, and departed, walking toward what I thought was the exit. The two of us followed in mild shock.

“Is this all right? I mean, leaving him like that?” I asked as I caught up to him. I inadvertently glanced back toward the chamber and caught Daymia absorbed in another fit of maniacal laughter.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” the chairman purred softly. “Though he has not been a person capable of a reasonable conversation for some time, he’s correct in his assertion that Tarim is more responsible for my watery imprisonment than he is. In any case, I will inform Duke Rithahn and settle this with the Council in a day or two.

“Oh,” he added, “should you meet him first, please do not inform Tarim of my return.”

“Of course not, but I have to tell you, we don’t intend to return to Tarim’s place. Since he deceived us, we’re unilaterally voiding the contract. We have no intention of assisting that man any further.”

“Oh, I think that’s wise,” he said, with a seriousness that seemed put-on.

For some reason, something about the whole situation felt odd to me.

The three of us left together. With the sun already up, we could make out the forms of passersby in transit.

“Well, then, I must first return to my own residence,” Halcyform announced by way of goodbye.

“I’m sure Rubia will be glad to see you.” As I spoke, he flinched, then broke into a smile.

“You know Rubia, then?”

“Your assistant? No, we heard about her from Tarim is all,” I lied. I didn’t really know why I did. Gourry backed me up with his usual poker face. Of course, he might well have simply forgotten we’d met Miss Rubia, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, shall we?

“I see. You be careful as well, of course. Tarim may still have some tricks up his sleeves. I may even need to call upon your help once more,” he offered in a friendly tone.

“Sure. We’ll be staying at the Silver Dragon Inn downtown. You take care of yourself.”

“I will. Well, then…” He waved as he turned around, his white mantle flowing behind him. For no particular reason, I watched until he was out of sight.

* * *

We had gone back to the inn where we’d left our belongings, and I’d hit the hay just after eating breakfast, but it was early evening by the time I woke up.

When I did manage to open my eyes, lunch and dinner were both sitting next to me. So was Gourry. He didn’t need to say a word.

“I guess this is thanks from Chairman Halcyform?” I ventured.

“Yeah,” he replied.

I stuffed some salad into my mouth while Gourry grimaced and made a sound of discontent.

“What?”

“Sorry, I just… a little thing keeps bothering me. If Daymia was keeping those two Mazoku around, why didn’t he call them when we were breaking into the house?”

I nibbled on a bit of pork steak.

“I hadn’t really thought about it, but my best guess is because of the Rune Breaker. The ward decreases all magic power within it. Since demons draw power from magic, they probably wouldn’t have been able to help.”

“But what about after we destroyed the ward and escaped? He didn’t think of calling them over and making it three on three? Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s what a sane person would do, but that guy didn’t think like any normal person.”

“That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

Gourry looked surprised that I was offended.

“What? It’s no big deal. It’s just that, well, you don’t think like a normal person, so I thought…”

It is too a big deal, buddy!

“I dunno. It just didn’t seem like they’d let us escape that easily is all. Maybe they have something else in mind? And, well, now that we’re on the subject, if Tarim and Daymia had it in for Halcyform so badly, why didn’t they just kill him?”

“Well… uh… they probably had some other use for him. I guess. Probably.”

“I see…” He nodded, but I could tell by his face that he wasn’t buying it. He made a not especially elegant sound as he drank some watered-down herbal sake.

I sipped some warm milk.

“The real problem’s Daymia’s next move,” I offered after a bit. “We can’t predict what someone like that is going to do next.”

“I agree.” Gourry nodded sullenly.

I could think of about a dozen different scenarios, and I had no idea which one he’d pick. And it would probably be something I hadn’t thought of anyway! It was entirely possible he’d try to eliminate Chairman Halcyform and us. Although I could be confident that he’d act in the interest of his own survival, I didn’t know enough to calculate what his other priorities were. It was possible that he’d attack Tarim to try to get Halcyform to spare his neck. Of course, that might actually put him on thinner ice by making him look guilty—but would he realize that? Another possibility was that he might simply stay at his house, shaking with fear. Or he might try to flee the city altogether. Halcyform held back when he had the chance to take him out. I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do.

“I’ve been thinking about Tarim, too,” I said. “He might try and pull something when he figures out we’re not coming back. He might even get in touch with Daymia.”

“You think they might join forces again?”

“They might. If they do, we’ll just have to…”

“Keep our heads down and back up Halcyform, I figure.”

“Yep. We’re just helping him out a bit, though. Anyway, we’d better hurry up and finish our meal so we can get moving,” I said, wrapping up the topic. “Hey, pops, another blue-plate special over here—pronto!”