Wilk awoke hearing high-pitched noises that only animals could hear from behind the cabin door. Wilk reacted as if the sounds were unnatural and painful to his little ears sending him into a howling fit. Psarás rolled over, turning his back to Wilk while unconscious in sleep. Sensing the danger, the young wolf jumped onto the bed and licked Psarás’s face to no avail. After a few seconds of frustration, Wilk bit Psarás’s big toe waking him spontaneously. Wilk ran to the door and scratched it while howling. Rubbing his eyes, Psarás attempted to come to his senses. Pétur’s scream, followed by a loud splash, provided the necessary adrenaline to his body.

After Wayde had sent Pétur to the bottom of the ocean, he dumped his ale-filled mug on his shirt and pants. Realizing Psarás would emerge from the cabin in mere moments, he began bruising his face with the mug. Wayde threw the cup across the deck and leaped into the air. With a loud crash, he landed flat on the deck face down. He closed his eyes and waited for Psarás to emerge from his cabin.

Wayde’s timing was perfect as Psarás swung the door open mere seconds after closing his eyes. Wilk burst between Psarás’s legs sniffing and investigating everything. He found his way to the spot where Pétur was lifted from the deck and began howling while looking at Psarás. Psarás called out to Pétur to no avail. He surveyed the ship in haste, noticing Wayde face down on the deck.

“Wayde! Wayde!” Psarás screamed in a mixture of rage and panic as he ran to Wayde’s body. He flipped Wayde over, revealing a bruised face and a noticeable alcoholic stink. Psarás shook Wayde while screaming at him.

Coughing, Wayde slowly opened his eyes as if he was drunk. “What … where …”

“Where’s Pétur?” shrieked Psarás.

“Sea monster. Pulled him …” Wayde struggled to get the words out before appearing to collapse unconscious.

Hearing the ruckus, Dulani started up the stairs to the main deck, unaware of the chaos ensuing.

Psarás ran back into his cabin furiously, searching for something. He began throwing things and tearing apart the room in his search.

Dulani looked out from the top of the stairs seeing Wayde unconscious and no one on deck. His instincts told him to stay quiet and watch. Dulani had survived many turbulent things over his lifespan, and this scene had all the same violent signs.

Wilk continued sniffing around for Pétur’s scent turning his focus to Wayde. As if he could sense Wayde’s malice, he began snarling at the man as he lay on his back. The growling grew as Wilk approached him in an attack stance.

Wayde opened his eyes to see Wilk preparing to strike. “Quiet, you infernal thing!” whispered Wayde. Noticing that Psarás was in his cabin, he quickly flashed his bright blue aura. It produced a painful sound audible only to animals that sent Wilk whimpering away. Sensing Psarás’s return to the deck, Wayde returned to his feigned blackout.

Psarás came out of his cabin, holding onto a jeweled pink conch shell. He began running towards the side of the deck, leaping into the cold waters below. Psarás swam about ten feet deep, putting the conch to his lips. He aimed it down and pushed all his breath through the small opening at the tip. The shell broadcasted an audible trumpet-styled sound in all directions. With empty lungs, he returned to the surface, taking his fill of the air. Diving down again, he repeated the calling of the conch shell. Over and over, this repeated until he had lost the will to do it again. Tears streamed down his face over the possibility of Pétur’s demise as he floated in the open sea. With nothing left inside him, he prayed to Dásos, the guardian spirit of the Delfíni family.

After a few minutes, several young women and one man dressed in skintight cyan and green uniforms emerged from the water. Psarás knew them as members of the Manō family of Aeqor. Their hair ranged from dark brown to black, but their complexion sat between Psarás’s and Pétur’s skin tones. Their leader had a tapered haircut with the elongated top portion parted to one side. She wore a silver-leafed circlet that opened in the front, highlighting her pink hair.

The girl with pink hair spoke, “Who has called us from the depths?”

Psarás frantically responded, “Please, save my godson! He has been dragged down by something.”

“We are not in the habit of saving sailors or their kin,” she coldly responded.

“Wait! I am a Delfíni, and the boy is the only grandson of Ekeka of Kítos,” insisted Psarás.

The girl sighed, looking almost bored, wondering how a lowly Delfíni got ahold of a royal conch.

“She is the High Priestess of Koholā! By their blood bond and the law of our people, you must help him,” demanded Psarás.

Rolling her eyes, she replied, “Fine. But I make no promises that I will return him alive.”

She nodded at her compatriots, who immediately dove into the sea. Looking back at Psarás, she commanded, “Wait here, and we will return shortly.” Diving, she moved over thirty miles per hour into the dark depths below.

***

Pétur drifted lifelessly into the deeper part of the ocean. The silver and moonstone pendant floated its way free from Pétur’s shirt. As his life left his unconscious body, so did the feelings of love and warmth. His mind faded to black, releasing all emotions to the nothingness around him. The spherical moonstone reacted to this liberated emotion as if it was physically tangible and persistent in some way. The stone gradually emitted moonlight and, in a violent magical explosion, pushed all the water away from Pétur’s body. The pendant transformed into a spherical bubble of light and air. As Pétur’s floated to the base of the globule, the water in his lungs moved as if it were alive. It crawled out of his body and to the edge of the bubble before rejoining the sea.

With a gasp of air and coughing, Pétur was breathing once more inside the illuminated bubble. He could not believe he was alive, let alone the vibrant miracle surrounding him. Silent, shaken, and weak, he confronted the astonishing fact that magic was real. And if magic was real, then his babka’s stories were real too. This fact meant that his dream about Sileny was not madness and that he actually did break into the church in the middle of the night. He felt a slight trace of remorse as he remembered how he treated Sileny that night. Despite the insanity of this situation, all Pétur could feel was love. Inexplicably, he could sense it as an extension of his own body, like a protective aura. It occurred to Pétur that the magic in the pendant manifested his loving feelings for everyone into a physical force.

After recovering, Pétur looked around in all directions, unable to pierce the ocean’s darkness with his sight. As he looked down, he saw an unexpected golden twinkling light. Pétur felt drawn to the light like a moth to a torch. Some unexplainable inward part of him called to the light wishing it would come closer. And like magic, the light seemed to respond by moving towards him. As the radiance became brighter over time, Pétur realized that it was not the light getting closer but the bubble sinking deeper into the ocean. Within a few minutes, he was sitting on the ocean floor with an underwater stone shrine directly in front of him. At the center was a beautiful golden stone that sparkled like the sea on a sunny day. It filled the surrounding area with an amber glow warming the water slightly. Pétur stood up and attempted to walk toward it. Surprisingly the bubble moved with him rotating like a rolling ball. Rocks and plants on the ground seemed to pass in and out of the magical sphere without issue, reassuring him that he was safe. Pétur reached the small pillar where the stone sat, twinkling away like a living thing at play. He had the strangest sentiment that the stone was talking to him with its patterned flashes and glows. As Pétur stared into its translucent facets, it was almost as if he understood the chaotic display. A strange sensation overcame him, and like a distant voice on the wind, he thought it spoke to him. The amber-colored stone beckoned Pétur to touch it. This whole scenario seemed logically insane, but the urge became stronger until he could no longer resist.

Pétur placed his hand on the stone and felt incredible amounts of power. The light from the stone grew brighter as it shifted from a solid object into a viscous amber liquid. The stone was now like honey and crawling up Pétur’s arm of its own accord. He should have been frightened, but somehow, it felt like a warm embrace. It spread across his body like ivy around a tree, absorbing into his body with a bright flash. He experienced dizziness until he fainted gently onto the floor of the shrine. He was safe, albeit unconscious, again. His body began glowing golden like the sun while the bubble shined silver like the moon. The two lights competed until they finally merged, forming a single cyan incandescence. Pétur gleamed and glittered like the stars in the night sky. The bubble and the stone were gone, but he was not in danger. The joining of the two magics had transformed Pétur, allowing him to breathe underwater effortlessly. The intense water pressure and near-freezing temperature of the deep had no impact on his new form. His body was adapting to his surroundings, with every cell in his body saturated with magic. His body continued glowing as he rested, calling out to the ocean.

***

The one male in the search party swam deeper than the others. As he approached the ocean floor, he noticed the strange light from a distance. Within a few seconds, he came upon Pétur's glowing body. He reached out to grab Pétur and pull him to the surface, only to be electrically shocked. He tried again, yielding the same results. The young man barely older than Pétur closed his eyes and called out to his leader in his mind.

"Marcela. I found the boy, but there is a problem," he said with uncertainty.

"Amarus, do not refer to me casually when we are on patrol," corrected the girl with pink hair.

"Yes, princess, but …" Amarus tried to communicate before being interrupted.

"Just take him to the surface," Marcela instructed.

"That's the thing. I can't. He shocked me like an eel," Amarus explained.

"He what? The Kítos talk to spirits; they do not electrocute people," Marcela dismissed.

"Be that as it may, he is glowing with more magic than I have ever seen. Even more, than your mother has." Amarus marveled at what he could sense emerging from Pétur.

"I am on my way to rendezvous with you," reassured the princess. In less than a minute, she found Amarus and the glow of Pétur's body. "You weren't kidding. He is emitting waves of power. Even if there was no light, I could've felt his presence from a mile away."

"Maybe you could …" Amarus started to suggest.

"I know what I need to do," she scolded. Marcela caused her magic to flood her hands as she laid them on Pétur. She closed her eyes and tried to sense what was happening. "He's still alive, but he absorbed something powerful. It was a powerful magical artifact."

"Uh, princess," Amarus said, interrupting Marcela's sensory spell.

Marcela removed her hands from Pétur and turned to look at Amarus. "What?" she yelled with an accompanying look of disappointment.

"Something is happening to the boy. Open your eyes and look!" Amarus pointed to Pétur's body which had reacted to Marcela's touch.

Pétur's starlit aura pulsed brighter and faster. The two Aeqori stared in amazement, unsure of what was happening. Pétur, still unconscious, was dreaming the same dream he always did. All the elements in his head kept leading back to the girl. There was no monster this time, just her. Unlike previous dreams, Pétur could clearly see her. He reached his hand out to hers and greeted her with a smile. She appeared familiar to him as they drew nearer to one another. When she was close enough, she opened her arms to embrace Pétur like an old friend. She felt different then Sileny. The girl was not a love interest but instead felt like an unknown family member. Waves of closeness and happiness washed over him. Tears streamed down his eyes in the dream until all was blurry with light.

Unaware of his mind, the princess and her friend watched as Pétur's body transformed. Not knowing what to make of it, she gave quiet instruction for Amarus to guard Pétur's body while she returned to the surface. Moving as fast as possible, she found the surface with Psarás having returned to his ship. Dulani was standing next to him, trying to calm him down, with Wayde nowhere in sight.

With her voice and not her mind, she called out to Psarás. “Delfíni, I have located your godson. He is alive and safe, but I cannot return him to the surface."

"What do you mean you can't return him to the surface," demanded Psarás.

"Something has happened to him. It feels like a kind of magical reaction. I do not understand it, but we will need to take him to see my mother," Marcela explained.

"You will do no such thing! By Zale, you have no right," Psarás screamed.

"You misunderstand. I am Princess Marcela, and my mother is the Queen of Aeqor. She can speak to Zale to discover what happened to your godson." Marcela maintained her poise and air of elegance.

"What has happened to Pétur? Please tell me." pleaded Psarás.

Marcela took a calming breath before speaking. "We found him at the bottom of the ocean, unaffected by the cold or pressure. He breathes water as my people, the Manō, do. He is saturated in magic, glowing like a star under the ocean. And he, um …."

Psarás giving way to hysterics, screamed, "He what? Out with it, princess of sharks!"

Marcela decided to directly say what she and Amarus saw at the bottom of the ocean. "Your godson Pétur transformed into a girl."