“Master. You’ll be back in no time.” Sylvia encouraged at the edge of the oasis.

“Thanks, I’m not too worried.”

However, she shot me a look like I shouldn’t be temping fate with that comment.

“Fine, I’ll take care of myself.”

Kelly grabbed the back of my neck before I could take a step towards the water. “I’ll need you to order me and Lauren to stay behind.”

I rolled my eyes. “I hereby order you two to watch over the oasis while I go under.”

She let me go. “Sounds like a flimsy excuse when Cleo threatens to kill us for letting you die. But you heard it too, right Ruby?”

“Indeed. Now the mouth of the underground river is that way.” Ruby pointed about fifty feet away. “There’s going to be a pretty big shelf after a few yards. Drop down that and you’ll see it.”

Lovely.

I kissed Sylvia. “I’ll be back.”

“You’d better.” She pouted but waited patiently for me at the side of the oasis as I waded through the crystal clear water. It was slow and steading going till the water was up to my chest and I started the plan. Pulling earth up around my ankles, I created two heavy stone shoes and put the pendant in my mouth.

Using a mixture of my sorcery and my physical strength, I walked with the stone shoes to the drop off.

It no longer looked like a beach past this point. Instead, it looked like an underwater world. Monster girls and natural sea life swam through the clear water as beams of lights lanced down, decorating them with shafts of light.

I stepped off of the shelf ledge and let the stone shoes carry me down.

Heights had never bothered me, but seeing the abyss below me that even with the clear water, I couldn’t see the bottom sent spikes of fear through me.

Breathing through the pendant provided some relief, but for now, I just had to wait while I sunk to the bottom.

The surface life of the oasis, large schools of fish and monster girls swimming, boats cruising along the surface faded away.

As I sank deeper, the light failed to penetrate more and more. Simple things in the water, like plankton or small particles of sand, didn’t obstruct vision up there. But down here there was less light. I must have dropped for a full twenty minutes.

I knew Cleo had rerouted an underground river, but just how much of that was sheer vertical depth had been surprising.

Until finally I landed with a soft thud, scattering sand into the surrounding water. I could see maybe ten meters around me, small fish swam in and out of my range of view in a way that was both surreal and creepy. Because knowing how deep this oasis was, only highlighted what sort of large creatures could lurk within.

I’d gone straight from where Ruby had pointed out the opening and it was to the left then. Watching my feet, I made angles with them to chart the correct direction and headed off to where I thought the mouth of the underground river would be.

One foot in front of the other is all that kept me sane. I felt like I saw shadows at the edge of my field of vision as walked.

There it was again. I could swear there was something…

A dark spot to my right grew until I could make something out. A monster girl like a hairless gray mermaid appeared. Except as her tail came closer, it was a tough gray hide with a sharp vertical fin like a… like a shark.

She grinned wide at me, showing off rows of teeth as she started to swim a long languid circle around me, fading in and out of my line of sight, but never close enough for me to touch.

I balled up my earth sorcery, ready for a fight.

But then she disappeared in one of her circles and there were several heartbeats where I wondered if she was gone. That idea was shattered as she burst back into my vision like a torpedo headed straight for me. Her jaws opened wide.

I panicked and rose a wall of earth from the sea floor. The wall shuddered as she no doubt crashed into it. But I could hear the heavy swish of her tail and there she was, coming around the wall with hunger and hate in her eyes.

I’d always heard this is how you were supposed to deal with a shark. Now, it was time to find out.

Punching with everything I had despite the resistance of the water, I smashed my knuckles into her nose. My own force was met with her charge and something crunched under my hand.

She whirled and shot away, clutching her face a trail of pink in the water behind her.

At least that was over.

Looking around at the featureless bottom of the oasis, I had gotten turned around in that brief fight with the shark girl. I did not know which way I’d been going and no landmarks to judge it by.

Fuck.

I was lost at the bottom of the oasis.

Then again, it wasn’t that large, right? Only maybe a few miles across. So as long as I picked a direction and kept heading in it, I should eventually hit a side of it.

At least that was my new guiding principle and about all that was keeping me from tumbling down into a severe panic attack. Then I remembered my goal, to find something precious down here, so I tried my best to focus on the oasis floor. It was mostly powdery white sand, but occasionally there was a rock of some sort sticking out, that I inspected before tossing over my shoulder.

I kept at it this way for another half an hour before a large dark wall loomed ahead of me and I must have hit one edge of the oasis. This was perfect. Now I just needed to follow the wall until I found the underground river.

Progress, that this was progress, was about the only thing keeping me sane down deep underwater. You just don’t know how creepy it is to have your vision restricted like this until it’s happened to you. I’d have a new appreciation for dry land when this was over.

A soft glow precipitated at the edge of my vision and I was curious, but the recent encounter with the shark girl had me wary. So I kept to the wall and waited. Some small amount of comfort at having stone to my back should I need my earth sorcery.

The glow seemed to bob back and forth as it moved through the water. It even came close enough that I could see it for a second. It looked like a small bioluminescent man. But there was no face on it.

As it shifted away, only after I’d seen it did I see the massive dark shadow that followed it. When the glow bobbed back, I didn’t look at it, but at the monster behind it.

And I mean monster, not monster girl, because it was a massive dark fish, large enough to tussle with that shark girl and win. The front of its face was a mess of interlocking bony spines that looked like a swift death to anything that swam to the glowing lure.

I stayed still and watched it pass by. Its milky white eyes didn’t seem to have any vision in them. However, I was quickly learning there was a whole ecosystem down here. One of which I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy my place in.

It was another while, the time impossible to tell till I found a massive hole in the wall with a current pushing out into the oasis. Guessing this was my goal, I crawled up into it and hugged the side. Without being able to see from one side to the other, it was difficult to get the sheer size of the underground river, but if I had to guess, it was twenty-five yards across.

A massive thing, and the thought that Cleo’s magic over sand redirected this river to form the oasis was an incredible thought.

This part I was thankful for my stone shoes, for without them I doubted I’d be able to make much headway against the current. Still, it was tough work.

As the light from the oasis faded, new light bloomed ahead and the river wound till there was a large pocket of air above me.

I exited the river to see glowing fungus covering the cavern walls, giving me scant light to see by. The river had cut a channel through bedrock and there was a ten foot wide shelf of sand on either side. I let my stone shoes fall back into the water and took the pendant out of my mouth, feeling weird to breathe without it.

The air was musty, but breathable. That was a relief.

Stretching, I tried to banish the feeling of suffocation that had occurred at the dark bottom of the oasis and embraced this new area.

Movement caught my eyes as a slime jiggled, rolling over a patch of fungus and dissolved it, only to move to the wall and jiggle just unable to reach a patch of fungus on the wall.

“Even down here there are monster girls?” The slime didn’t have a female form, not like the ones I’d seen before in Verdant going around disposing of garbage. But I was sure it was a monster girl.

I pulled that patch of fungus loose and set it on the ground. For which, the slime eagerly devoured it.

“Oh, do I hear a man?” A sonorous voice echoed in the cavern.

The wet padding of feet revealed a woman with dusky blue skin dotted in scales and fins growing from her arms and legs. “It is a man.” Her hands covered her mouth as she gasped.

Just before she covered it, I could see rows of needle-sharp teeth hiding in her mouth. Even as much as I liked monster girls, that sent alarm bells off in my head.

“Come here, little lost man. Svet will bring you endless comfort.” The merwoman’s hand dipped down between her legs with a wet squelch.

“No thanks. Just passing through.” I said about as casually as one could when they realized they might be in the wrong part of town.

“Then Svet will come to man.” She said, her voice tickling at my ears. Svet walked forward, her fin like feet slapping against the wet cave floor.

I brought forth my magic and summoned a wall of air to push her back. “I insist.” My tone firm.

“Mage!” Svet yelled and dove into the underground river. The second she hit it, she launched through the river like a torpedo. The idea of being in the water with her was suddenly a little disturbing. She’d be able to swim circles around me faster than my head could turn.

The slime came up to my side and gurgled before trying to reach another patch of fungus a little too high up for its reach. It was an interesting slime, different from the ones I’d seen before. Its surface almost like a sudsy bubble bath rather than the gel like slimes I’d seen before.

“You know, Bubbles, I think I like you better than Svet.” I said, pulling off the patch of fungus for it.

 

AN - I was so tired on Saturday night, I swore it was Sunday and posted a chapter while running on fumes. Whoopsie. Oh well, won't deprive you your M/W/F chapters.