[The Twining] 10. Beyond the Lake (Patreon)

Isen fastened the bundle of books around Ros’s neck, using a crude thong made from divine bear sinew to secure it to a few strategic scales so it wouldn’t jostle as the beast moved. He’d picked at least one book from each language, as far as he could tell. He hadn’t grabbed more than he could carry on his own after leaving the depths—seven thick tomes.

He’d picked these specific books because they all contained illustrations that, while infrequent, seemed cultivation related.

Isen would have been worried about the books surviving the journey out of the depths, if not for them being enchanted. Every book in the library was impervious to damage, so far as he could tell. The lower shelves of books near the bear corpse had been drenched in blood, but when Isen picked them up, the blood rolled off like water from wax.

Once, when practicing with Ros, the beast had smashed its tail into the shelf. Its tail had come out on the losing end.

Part of Isen even wondered if he could use the books as armor and a shield in a pinch, but decided against it. It would look ridiculous.

“Ready?” Isen asked, sliding down from between the beast’s shoulders.

In response, Ros walked to the sanctum’s exit. With a tinge of regret, Isen pressed his hand to the control panel, willing for the lights to turn off and for the rooms to all seal, leaving the sanctum as he’d found it.

When the sanctum door swung shut and sealed itself, Isen resisted the urge to turn back and ask for more time. He knew Ros was right. They couldn’t stay in the sanctum forever.

Rather than riding on Ros the whole time, Isen ran next to him, the two stalking through the darkness. After an hour of sprinting through the corridor, encountering almost no monsters, Isen sprung up onto Ros’s back to recuperate.

Fifteen minutes later, he was running again.

The depths didn’t have a day-night cycle, but they had a rough sense of time as the days passed. The first day after leaving the sanctum, Isen had mostly traveled aimlessly, feeling no distinct tug at any of the forks in the path. That had continued for the second and third days.

But on the fourth, he finally felt it. A stirring.

Monsters filled the tunnels in this region of the depths, though most gave Ros a wide berth. Since Isen remained close to his companion, the other monsters left him alone, too. When they stopped to drink at one of the golden lakes, Isen felt a call to opportunity. It was beyond the lake.

“Ros,” he said softly, “why do we always stay on the shores?”

Ros gave him an inscrutable look. “Dangerous beasts live in the water and neither of us are equipped to fight in such an environment.”

“Well… I sense an opportunity out there. Plenty of danger, too, but that’s to be expected.”

Ros just stared at him. “Isen… you may be the death of me.”

He froze. “We don’t have to go for it. There will be other opportunities if we keep going.”

“I think it best we move on.”

And they did. They continued through the cavernous labyrinth. Now that Isen could see clearly in the depths, and wasn’t threatened by most of the monsters, he appreciated the beauty of the caves. The depths weren’t nearly as monotonous as he’d originally assumed. Even after spending a year here, he and Ros had stayed close to the sanctum out of fear that they’d lose their way.

This was the first time he was properly exploring.

He expected Ros to get annoyed at him after the twentieth time he made them stop to investigate some strange natural phenomenon, but the beast never showed signs of displeasure.

It made Isen feel safe. Not physically safe. Safe, in that he could be himself and not worry that the beast would lash out in anger or dismiss him as ignorant and childish.

The two of them rested on an overlook. A large rock swirled over a golden lake like a giant wave. It was marbled with an odd, transparent material, almost like glass. The rock was stunning, the golden radiance from the lake shining through its surface like molten liquid.

Isen sat on part of the rock that was almost completely transparent. Beneath him, he could see monsters bathing and swimming in the water. Looking up, he saw the lake extending into the darkness, unable to see where it ended.

“You still sense an opportunity beyond the water?” Ros asked.

Isen nodded slowly. He’d felt the opportunity at every lake they passed. It suggested that the lakes were actually all connected, which was an interesting discovery.

And not only are they connected… but something important is at their center.

“We could try,” Ros said. Isen looked at him with wide eyes. “But we’d need to prepare. I have no experience fighting in the water. I don’t even know how long I could hold my breath.”

“I can’t swim,” Isen confessed.

“I have swum before,” Ros said. “Not well.”

The two of them burst into laughter. “Why don’t we at least try to learn in the shallow where nothing is a threat,” Isen suggested. “If we realize we’re in over our heads, we can give up for good.”

“A sensible plan. What weapon will you fight with, in the water?”

Isen’s brow furrowed. “The spear?”

Ros just chuffed.

***

The water was warm on Isen’s skin. He’d stuffed his clothes into the bag of books, then stashed the rucksack in a crevice that only large or flying beasts could reach. At Ros’s strong recommendation, he’d also left his weapons.

It was just him and Ros, both of them bare. Isen stared dubiously at the translucent water. “Are you sure no small, sharp-toothed monster is gonna bite me?” He longed for the protection that even thin cloth would provide his unmentionables.

“You’re a cultivator of the second tier,” Ros said, utterly unworried. “If a monster small enough to avoid detection bites you, it’ll be at the first tier and too stupid to live. Your flesh will be poison to it.”

Isen could name countless people too stupid to live off the top of his head but let the matter drop. He was the one who wanted to explore the lake—he needed to suck it up.

Ros led him deeper into the water until Isen had to stand on his tiptoes, the water rippling around his chin. Ros was barely wet. When standing, Isen didn’t even come up to Ros’s elbows. They’d need to go significantly further into the lake before the beast could swim.

Isen could sense hungry eyes all around him, the shadowed forms of second tier beasts hungering for easy prey. For now, Ros’s presence deterred them.

Before trying to swim, he first held his head under the water and counted how long he could hold his breath. He surprised himself by lasting over five minutes. “How long can you go for?” Isen asked.

“I’ll check later, after I know you can handle yourself.”

Feeling emboldened by his breath capacity, he submerged himself underwater and floated. It’s just like a large wash basin, he told himself. Once he was comfortable with floating, he tried to swim.

He’d never seen anyone swim before. There wasn’t a large body of water near Goldbounty, and the settlement certainly didn’t have any pools.

But Isen had observed many monsters swimming in the lake. Their movements were always powerful and unhurried. Not frantic. Isen tried to emulate them, moving his arms and legs, feeling the friction of the water.

He let his instincts guide him.

In the end, it was easier than he’d expected.

“Let’s go deeper,” he suggested. Ros nodded. Soon, the great beast’s body was covered up to the chest. Its tail flowed out like a rudder behind it and the beast’s legs pumped at the water, its claws pressed together into paddles.

“I thought you said you didn’t swim well?” Isen said, frowning.

“I can swim straight well enough, but struggle at maneuvering.”

They swam for several hours, familiarizing themselves with an aquatic environment. It turned out that Ros could hold its breath for over an hour. Isen couldn’t imagine a situation where the beast would need to hold its breath that long.

When they returned to the shore, Isen felt optimistic. Swimming wasn’t so hard, and since he’d already acclimated his body to the lake water, he didn’t have to worry about adverse effects, like his other eye spontaneously changing color.

They retrieved their belongings and returned to the overlook to rest up and cycle. The energy was plentiful close to the water, even with so many other monsters nearby. Isen found cycling easier than ever at the bottom of the second tier. He found it fun to funnel energy at the exact perpendicular through his hollow ring. It was like a game. He felt the ring slowly growing thicker.

The next day, Ros told Isen to enter the water.

Alone.

Isen brought a long dagger made from bear bone with him. He didn’t bring a sheath—he kept the dagger in his mouth. He understood why Ros was skeptical about him bringing his spear into the watery environment. He needed to be mobile in the water. At minimum, he’d need a way to fasten the spear onto his back to bring it with, but even then… Isen knew he wouldn’t be able to wield the spear like he did on land. The water worked against anything that flowed through it. It would be slow, unwieldy.

He kicked forward into the water, hyper focused on the monsters around him. Unlike when he hunted in the tunnels near the sanctum, he couldn’t mask his presence with the mist while submerged. The radiance suffused everything—dense, largely uniform. His mundane sight was ironically more useful in the illuminated fathoms.

His muscles were tense as he swam further out, too deep to touch the bottom. That was when the first monster tried its luck. It wasn’t an aquatic monster but a dark lizard with a thin snout filled with razor sharp teeth. It had been lurking in the water, its head resting on the top, only its eyes sticking out.

It launched at him as he passed its position, its jaws big enough to cut Isen in half.

Isen immediately realized a key limitation of fighting underwater—he couldn’t easily dodge. On land, he’d just kick off the ground and dart away. Here, with the lakebed out of reach, all he had to rely on was his own body in the water.

Danger! the sixth sense warned, and Isen kicked explosively, diving to the side as he grabbed the dagger. The teeth caught his off arm instead. Isen cried out and hacked at the monster’s head with the blade. The sharp edge pierced through the rugged monster’s scales and its glassy eye. It thrashed and rolled, shredding his arm and threatening to twist it off. Isen did his best to spin with the maneuver, preventing his arm from breaking. He nearly dropped the dagger but fought through the agony. He slammed the weapon into the lizard’s eye again. With a jerk, it stilled.

Isen’s brain screamed for air. His breath capacity was five minutes, but clearly that was an overestimate when it came to combat. He’d been fighting for a handful of seconds and felt spent.

Tugging the lizard’s corpse with him, he floated on the surface, his arm limp at his side, the dagger back in his mouth. The fight had attracted the notice of other monsters, their eyes greedy for the corpse… and thirsty for Isen’s spilled blood.

He realized another critical fact. On land, it was easier to run away. He could run and cloak himself in the mist. He was small and quick. Now, he felt like bait. Even relying on his second-tier body, without the use of an arm, he would be much slower. The water’s energy soothed the open wounds but didn’t help the fact that his arm was out of place, like it had been pushed out of the socket. It was incredibly painful, and he didn’t know how to fix it, worried he’d worsen the injury if he acted now.

And I want Ros to take me deep into the lake, where monsters far more powerful than these lie in wait.

He now understood just how crazy his opportunity was.

All of this seemed crazy to me a year ago, he thought, his eyes flashing with cold indignation. These monsters wanted his lizard corpse? He’d give it to them.

He kicked hard with his feet, then hoisted the body out of the water and threw it to the side, his bad arm screaming. The monsters ringing him lunged at the corpse, distracted.

Isen was tempted to attack them from behind, but he sensed that doing so wouldn’t end well for him. He retreated into shallower water, feeling comfort in the sensation of rock under his feet. When he reached the shore, his wounds were already healed, though the fast healing of the water had promoted scarring, leaving his arm scored with off-white stripes.

He dashed for the overlook, kicking an overly curious wolf monster in the snout and bounding past a huge spiked seal that threatened to roll over and crush him.

Ros was waiting for him. “What are your thoughts?”

Isen stared at his injured arm, frowning. “I need more practice.”

“You’ll get it. But first, you should do something about that arm.”