“How is holding hands supposed to help us breathe underwater?” Lith had considered several options to solve that problem, but had been forced to discard them after careful thinking.
Creating an air bubble around their heads would be idiotic. The mana required to hold it together under high pressure and high-speed conditions would be enormous and the bubble wouldn’t last long.
Store air inside a dimensional item would have been dumb as well. Taking out the air and bringing it to the nose or mouth required fine tuning. With such a method, every time they had to take a breath they would also need to stop, making it a hassle.
Shapeshifting would give them gills, but they wouldn’t work. Lith had no idea how to extract oxygen from water and then move it to his lungs without giving himself an embolus.
On top of that, his body had never learned how to breathe from gills so he would just die the moment he instinctively used his nose by mistake.
“It’s easier if you see it with Invigoration while we move.” Rem offered Lith her hand who promptly took it.
The merfolk shivered at the contact and the sides of her mouth curled up in an expression of pure disgust for a split second.
Mal, a short but fit merfolk with purple hair would take care of Phloria while Khalia, a female merfolk with emerald green hair and eyes of Tista.
The three pairs dived inside one of the water pools near the Mayor’s office, but they didn’t move for a while. The merfolk wanted to make their human guests get accustomed to both moving and breathing underwater.
Awakened were capable of holding their breath for a long time, but the merfolk couldn’t afford them to panic the moment they needed air. Trust was the first step of their journey.
Lith never stopped breathing, discovering that somehow, the physical contact allowed Rem to share the oxygen that her gills filtered from the water. It wasn’t an innate skill but a spell that channeled a stream of minuscule air bubbles.
The bubbles moved along their skin, filling Lith’s nostrils with every breath Rem took.
“I’ll do my best to match your breathing rhythm, but you need to give me a hand and stay calm. If your respiration gets messy, I’ll bring you to the surface as fast as I can.” Rem’s voice came from her skin as well.
The words reverberated through her whole body as if it was a sounding board and physical contact allowed the vibrations to reach Lith’s ears. He tried to reply, but he only emitted a gurgle.
“Yes, this is how merfolk communicate between them and no, you can’t do it.” Rem said with a chuckle.
Once everyone became able to breathe naturally, they started moving. Slowly at first because they needed to get out of the network of tunnels and faster once they reached open waters.
Moving at high speed required using magic to “kick” the water behind them while creating a stream in front of them to keep their eyes from being squashed by pressure, sand particles, or a random fish.
The deeper they got, the less light there was, making it almost impossible for them to see. Both Fire and Life Vision were pointless. The cold water surrounding them was much thicker than air and made everything look the same.
Lith finally discovered what the tenth of Solus’s fourteen senses was for. It allowed him to see underwater as if he was in a pool and to make head or tails of where they were going, but the girls couldn’t help but be nervous.
Their companion was their lifeline, their guide, and the only human contact in the cold blackness of the ocean surrounding them.
“Don’t rely on your eyes.” Mal squeezed Phloria’s hand to reassure her. “An Emperor Beast friend of mine uses air magic to sense her surroundings. She says that sound spreads faster underwater.”
Phloria knew about echolocation and despite the stress from her condition, she managed to improvise a spell. It allowed her to vaguely detect the shape of everything in almost 30 meters (100 feet around her) but it was better than nothing.
Solus had no such problems and by sharing her senses with Lith they could see underwater as well as on the surface. The ocean was filled with life and dangers in the form of animals and magical beasts.
The merfolk guided them along cold-water streams that most creatures avoided, needing only a well-placed spell to get rid of an annoying predator and a few words to sate the curiosity of the magical beasts they met.
Some had evolved from fish, others from water mammals but they all could breathe underwater and moved with the grace of a ballerina and the speed of a cheetah. Powerful sea creatures on Mogar were so big that in comparison sharks looked like pugs
‘Fuck me sideways, this is nothing like it was depicted in the movies back on Earth. Most of my spells either don’t work or work differently from the surface. Life underwater needs not only you to completely rethink magic, but it also makes human senses unreliable.’ Lith thought.
Even though all the creatures they met were way weaker than him, Lith doubted to be able to kill a single one of them. He had gotten used only to move in a straight line whereas predators could move nimbly in every direction and would easily escape.
The journey lasted for a few hours, allowing the humans to develop spells that improved their mobility and replaced their regular senses. Once they reached the merfolk city, Lith’s childish dreams about Atlantis were utterly disappointed.
There were no lights nor monuments. The buildings were all made of stone from the seabed, giving them a plain appearance. The city had been built so deep in the ocean that there was no light, making everything look cold, silent, and grey.
If not for the bustling activity of the merfolk throughout the city, he would have thought of being in an underwater graveyard.
‘What did you expect?’ Solus said. ‘Light would only make them an easy target, they have no need for colors since salt water would destroy them, and sound spreads differently.’
‘I wasn’t hoping for musician crabs, pet fish, or lantern jellyfish, but this is just sad. I wonder why they don’t move to the surface.’ Lith replied.
‘Maybe because just like this place seems cold and silent to you, the surface world is blinding and deafening to them.’ Solus shrugged.
The merfolk guided them to the top of a spire shaped building and made them enter from what Lith assumed was a window. Only once they got inside, did he realize that Merfolk had no need for stairs or doors.
Each person would build their house vertically, one room per floor, and just move through the openings in the walls, ceiling, and floor.
‘I’m still thinking like a human. Here there is no need for a kitchen or a bedroom.’ Lith thought.
Ren sealed the opening in the walls with earth magic while also emptying the room from the water and filling it with air from a dimensional amulet at the same time. Then, she used light magic to allow everyone to see.
