“You do my people a great honor.” Rem bowed her head. “Yet please, keep it to your family only. Otherwise in case our relationship with the land dwellers goes south, not even the ocean will be safe for us.”
“Sure thing.”
After a few minutes, Orion managed to keep the burning of his lungs to an acceptable level since mistrust and paranoia kept messing up his breathing rhythm.
“Maybe this can help.” A second male merfolk took Orion’s other hand, doubling his oxygen provision.
A third and a fourth grabbed respectively his left and right ankle and at that point, albeit feeling constricted, Orion had all the air he needed.
During the descent, the merfolk pulled his arms and pushed his feet, making up for Orion’s inability to move on his own. For a while, the abundant oxygen and the speed gave him an exhilarating feeling.
Then, when they reached a point too deep for the light to reach anymore, his panic became even worse. Suddenly everything was black. He couldn’t tell up from down or left from right.
The fact that he was completely lost and depended on others even for breathing made it one of the scariest moments of his life.
‘Calm down.’ Mal said. ‘I can feel that your heart is about to explode.’
‘Get out of my head!’ Orion thought.
‘Before you ask, I’m not in your head. Only Awakened can use mind links, remember? I’m talking to you by making my words vibrate through my body and then into yours.’
Once Orion managed to calm down, he recognized that it was nothing like the mind links he was used to.
‘Your species can’t do this, so you can only listen. If you understand, squeeze my hand once for yes and two for no.’ Mal said and Orion squeezed once.
‘Good. Now I’m going to teach you how to see underwater so listen closely.’ The spell Mal taught him required both air and water magic to conjure effects similar to echolocation.
Merfolk didn’t really see but they could discern the shape, speed, and size of anything within hundreds of meters of distance. The sound spread through the water faster than any beast could swim, giving them the time to correct their course and the predators a wide berth.
‘Shit!’ Without Solus’ tenth sense, Lith was as blind as Orion.
Life and Fire Vision were useless underwater and the tier four Sonar spell didn’t give him enough information to quell his rampant paranoia.
‘Why so nervous? I remember you were a lot calmer the first time.’ Rem asked him in confusion.
‘Dragon instinct. Being away from my daughter is hard for me.’ He lied through his thoughts.
‘Because the last time I could actually see.’ He actually thought.
With the excuse of needing reassurance to overcome their “fear”, Solus was holding Kamila’s hand, sharing her tenth sense with her.
‘Great Mother almighty!’ Even while swimming at high speed, Kamila’s enhanced senses noticed the bizarre fish who had become blind due to the perennial darkness of the deep.
Ancient beings halfway between fish and reptiles still lurked there, along with creatures so big that they rivaled the size of a lesser Divine Beast.
‘Yep. That thing on Earth has a smaller version called “Giant Squid”. That must be an Emperor Beast.’ Solus nodded at a tentacled creature longer than 20 meters (66′) from the tip of the head to the end of its tentacles. ‘Hopefully.
‘Because if it’s just a magical beast I’m going to piss myself.’
‘Giant squid? Seriously?’ Kamila replied with a sneer. ‘What a lack of imagination. And how did they call that one? Big teeth?’
‘No, Megalodon.’ Solus was true to her word when she saw the massive life force of the creature and its cyan core.
Luckily, the titan barely registered the puny merfolk and focused on the bigger and juicier meal.
‘That sure sounds better. What about that one?’
‘By my Mom, that’s Nessie!’ Solus froze for a moment as the thing she could only classify as a dinosaur swam popped out of the darkness below and gave chase to the Megalodon.
‘Nessie? I swear, people from Earth have the weirdest naming sense ever.’ Kamila said with a chuckle. ‘By the way, thank you for sharing this with me. If I couldn’t see I’d be shitting myself right now.’
‘You mean you didn’t? I mean, you’re welcome.’ Solus could see and was barely holding her bowels together.
Tista and Lith, in their blissful ignorance, had only perceived something big they had dismissed as a whale or something equally harmless to a Divine Beast like them.
By the time they arrived at the bottom of the sea, Orion had barely managed to grasp the position of something within ten meters (33′) from him, and only if it was at least the size of a cat.
Creatures smaller than that escaped the detection of his amateurish technique while those bigger he noticed but he couldn’t distinguish a humanoid from a shark.
On the bright side, Orion had been so focused on practicing the spell that he hadn’t the time to be scared or worried. His breathing had become stable and regular, leaving more than enough for the four merfolk to expedite the trip.
‘Here we are.’ Rem had signaled the group to huddle up so that the vibrations would travel through everyone’s body and her words be heard. ‘Welcome to Zhen’s twin city, Yhen.’
‘Okay.’ Lith did his best to keep a neutral tone but feigning enthusiasm was beyond him.
He could sense something big in front of him, then many much bigger things spread at a distance from one another that he could only assume were homes to the merfolk, and the merfolk.
The only impressive thing about that place was the massive amounts of world energy filtering from the seabed. It was strong enough that Lith could perceive it even without Life Vision while Solus felt her strength recovering just thanks to the Sage Staff at her neck under the armor.
‘Look, I’m touched by your kindness but I really don’t see the point in bringing me here.’ Orion said once he joined the mind link and was able to reply. ‘I’m sure that this place is amazing but I can’t see anything. I’d-‘
‘Gods, you are too kind.’ Solus’ words didn’t make sense until she shared with everyone what she could see with her tenth sense.
Lith was right about the buildings and the humanoid figures swimming and floating around them, he had simply forgotten about the importance of the monument that rested in the middle of a merfolk city.
Merfolk didn’t communicate with words. That was something that they learned to do in order to interact with the surface dweller or to reassure them while guiding them to the depths of Mogar’s oceans.
They used vibrations to communicate, express complex concepts, and even feelings. For that purpose, their homes were built with materials capable of amplifying the vibrations both from the inside and the outside and were shaped to have excellent acoustics.
Every house was carefully placed so as to add its sounds without interfering with the others’, creating to the merfolk’s sensory organs the equivalent of the noise of a bustling city while to a human’s ear, it sounded like music.
