For the first time since he had been underwater, Desmond couldn't breathe. Mrs. Hathaway's tail coiled around his neck, alarmingly tight, as she pulled him out of the ship and pelted away. Cackling loudly, no doubt in savage amusement at the soon-to-be fate of the Neptune's Treasure and its inhabitants, she seemed utterly unaware that she was draining the life out of the very one she had been so desperately seeking. The Trident had fallen out of his hands and was now drifting somewhere in the roiling stream, ready to be swallowed the moment Charybdis took her next huge gulp; Ethan, Kayla, Arrluk, Jino, and Duat were incapacitated on board the ship. There was no help coming. He was alone, and they were going to be submerged.

They approached the hull of the black ship, still sporting its monstrous masthead, at speed. A compartment slid open and she hurtled inside, heaving him along. She finally came to a halt, dropping him onto the dark, unnaturally warm stone floor, and her tail's grip loosened, though she kept it in place around his neck. Gasping, Desmond tried to massage his aching throat, but the huge tail made it impossible to reach it.

"You deserved a little punishment," Mrs. Hathaway said, her mouth fixed into a leer. "After all the trouble you've put me through."

Desmond glared at her, but didn't speak, partly because his throat was still burning, and partly because the ship had just lurched into motion, wheeling around and shooting off, propelled by Charybdis's wave. They were going, going . . . gone.

He stared at the floor, his eyes stinging now, but glanced up almost at once: he had just noticed they weren't alone. A huge ball of Hyrule was burning a bit farther ahead in the room, the flickering, blue, flame-like substance unperturbed by the water around it. It cast a wide pool of light that illuminated some of the most horrid creatures he had seen in his time below the surface — though not as horrid as Kaijus.

There was a six-foot-tall jellyfish that looked as though it was made out of actual jelly. A thin, transparent exterior housed a viscous, cobalt-blue membrane in its head, which was glowing. There was a Nogard, the opposites to dragons, as Desmond categorized them, more alligator-like than he'd thought up close. There was another hybrid, like the Tethyians and the Rasulka, but unlike either, its lower half was not of a fish or a serpent, but a crab, and of its two arms, one was an enormous, beetle-black pincer. There was another, which looked like a kind of underwater troll, the most normal-looking of the bunch, and a small, scaly monkey. All of them were eyeing Desmond with malicious satisfaction.

Mrs. Hathaway finally removed her tail, flexing it behind her as she stared down at her ex-student. "There's no need to tie you up; you're not going anywhere."

Still glowering, Desmond massaged his throat. "Thought there were more of you creeps on deck," he rasped, when he could finally speak. "What happened? The other monsters cash in their vacation days?"

"It's your fault!" Mrs. Hathaway spat, real anger flaring in her unsightly face. "Some of our crew was lost in the Oxidaze Tunnels when your crew summoned that tidal wave to knock us off course!"

Tidal wave?

"What are you talking about, what wave?" he asked, with genuine bemusement.

"Don't play coy with me, boy!" she hissed. "You know full well what you did. And a lot of good it did you," she jeered. "Ended up in the Silent Sea, did you? Almost ruined everything. There's no way we could have freed you from there. Imagine our surprise when we picked up your trail again. How did you get out, I wonder?"

From her tone, Desmond surmised that she was asking with genuine curiosity. Which meant that she had not seen the Trident, or had not realized what it was. It had fallen from his hands when she had attacked him, had probably been washed away when the sudden flood overtook the ship. But he had the strangest feeling that if he explained what it really was their ship would turn right around, scouring the deep for the Trident despite the odds being they would never find it. The danger of Charybdis was almost nothing: they had followed him to her domain even without knowing that he was carrying such precious cargo anyway.

He shrugged indifferently. "Just stumbled across a path."

"Oh what rubbish!" she snapped. "There's no way out of the Silent —"

"How would you know? You've never been there," Desmond retorted. Though she could not flush, she blinked in an embarrassed sort of way. "Now," Desmond went on, pleased at this reaction, "do you mind telling me why you keep trying to steal me away, Mrs. H? Isn't it against some kind of teacher's oath to do harm to children, or something?"

"Do not call me that! My name is Keyira, 'Mrs. Hathaway' was nothing more than a cover while I observed you, and there is no such oath, you dolt! Oh, how I loathed being a teacher. I knew humans were unpleasant, but children are the worst of the whole bunch! Snobby, rude, unappreciative of the hard work we do for you — I mean, you spend three hours coming up with homework exercises, and nobody does them!" she said indignantly to her peers. "All they do is keep their eyes glued to their stupid phone screens, or to hide in some empty classroom and smoke, or gamble, or whatever the —" (she said a very nasty word she had once given Desmond detention for saying a few months ago) "— else these snot-nosed brats do!"

"Well, to be fair, we didn't like you much either, you know," Desmond said earnestly. "And you didn't answer my question — what do you want with me? And how did you keep finding me?"

"We're not tellin' ya nuthin', boy!" the crab-man roared, clicking his pincer angrily. "Who d'you think ye are, demandin' to know our plans, eh?"

"He'll have to know, you idiot," the jellyfish said, in an exasperated, strangely warbled voice, as if it were speaking into a voice modulator. "If we don't tell him, how will he know what to do?"

There was a short silence, in which the crab-man seemed to digest the truth of these words. "Oh," he said, sounding embarrassed, and he mumbled something about needing to polish his pincer and moved away, in an odd, sideways manner, like an actual crab. Desmond followed his progress until he managed, after several seconds and two failed, extremely awkward attempts, to disappear around a corner.

"Not the sharpest crustacean, is he?"

The surrounding monsters all sighed in a confirmational sort of way.

"So, what exactly is it that you want with me again?"

"We are well aware of what you can do, Desmond," Keyira hissed. "Our sources led us to that wretched high school, certain that the one whom we sought was there, but unknown, and I kept watch, waiting, observing, until I confirmed that it was you. Unfortunately, by the time I did, the term had ended and you'd managed to slip out of the country. Then you escaped again, but it was easier this time, to track you. By now I'm sure you are aware that some remarkable creatures exist below the surface. Have you heard of sea hares? Useful little creatures, they are," she went on, before he could answer. "Like the bloodhounds of the sea."

Desmond gaped at her. "You used a slug to track my scent?"

"If you'd ever thought to open a biology textbook in your life, you may have known what you would inevitably end up dealing with!" she snapped. "As I was saying, we tracked you, and we heard some tell from a friend in the Tethyian palace."

She paused here, clearly to enjoy the effect she had created with these words: Desmond was staring at her, eyes wide. She had a spy in Arrluk's home?

"Of course, even with our forces it was still unwise to launch an attack against such a powerful kingdom as Tethyia, so we waited until you'd set out. You are on a quest, using your abilities to hunt a legendary creature. We want —"

"— the same, is it? Me to help you find the Ophiotaurus?"

"Well . . . eventually. The Ophiotaurus has managed to evade Thalassian notice for thousands of years by wading through the most treacherous of waters. Even worse than the Silent Sea and Charybdis's domain, if you'll believe it.

"We're not ready to go on such a wild adventure just yet. For the moment, we need you to localize something a little more . . . stationary."

"Which is what?"

Keyira smiled. "I want you to listen, Desmond, really listen. Close your eyes, focus on the sounds around you. I think that you'll find a very distinctive voice has been reaching out to you for quite a while, if only you'd been paying attention."

There was a silence in which Desmond scowled at her. She had always been this vague in classes too.

"Wait!" he said suddenly, sitting bolt-upright. "I — I think I do hear it . . . It's . . . old, very old. . . . and deep . . . and powerful. . ."

The interest around the room sharpened palpably.

"You did?" Mrs. Hathaway whispered. "What does it say? Tell us!"

"It says . . . it's telling me . . . to tell you . . . to go screw yourself."

The surrounding crew members let out roars of outrage. Desmond burst out laughing.

"You should have seen your faces! Hahaha! Wait, actually, I do not recommend that. Seriously, stay away from mirrors for your own health."

"You think you're funny," the jellyfish said coldly, and Desmond stopped laughing, "but there are other ways to make you comply, boy."

It moved towards him, and for the first time Desmond felt a genuine stab of fear. Its horribly slimy, transparent tentacles were writhing furiously around its body, and an odd, glowing, scarlet fluid was now seeping through them, like clogs of luminous blood.

"Woah — what are you —?" Desmond tried to stand up, but the Nogard roared, so loudly, so ferociously, that Desmond fell back to the floor in fright; it was as though the sound had run through his body, oscillating through his very being. He had once read that a tiger's roar was so savage that it could paralyze its prey, but that was almost nothing compared to this. Terror gripped him, holding him frozen on the floor.

The tentacles whipped around him, and he felt the most unpleasant sensation he had ever experienced. It was worse, far worse, than even the Hydra venom.

It started as a sharp, painful sting, then, as the coils wrapped more firmly around him, he felt a kind of electric charge surge through him, as though he had touched a metal gate in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. His body was falling limp, no longer reacting to his violent attempts to break free, as though he had gone numb — yet he could still feel the steadily increasing pain of his skin breaking, like a thousand tiny needles were piercing through his skin, right down to the nerve cells. His skin was blistering; it was too hot, too cold, all at once. It was pain worse than he could imagine, and he was slipping . . . slipping. . . .

"Damn boy!" he heard a voice roar overhead. He became aware, gradually, that it had released him. He was shaking convulsively, as though he really had been electrocuted.

"I thought you said it would work on humans!" another voice said furiously to someone out of sight.

"I thought it would!" the jellyfish replied. "It always has, before! There's some kind of barrier in this one's mind, preventing me access."

"Well, find a way to get past it!"

"I can't! Look at him, if I try to drill any further he'll die! And then where would we be?"

"Gah, take him down to the sleeping quarters!" Mrs. Hathaway snapped. "Let him rest, and watch him!"

Seconds later, a pair of huge, clumsy arms pried Desmond from the floor, cradling him like a child, and carried him away.

How long it took for him to recover, to regain control of his body, Desmond didn't know. Time slipped past him while he slept, as his mental faculties slowly regenerated. He sat up now, very slowly, and took in his surroundings for the first time. The room he was in was small, solid black, and he was lying on a thick, highly uncomfortable blanket on the floor. The door was wide open, but the huge, blue-skinned troll was standing guard at the doorway, its massive arms folded across its chest.

"Finally up, are you?" it said aggressively.

Desmond didn't answer. He couldn't even if he wanted to. His tongue felt like a bag of wet mud, heavy and limp in his mouth. He leaned against the wall and glared at the giant, letting the reality of the hopelessness of his situation wash over him.

"Quite some jolt you took," the troll said, snapping him out of his reverie. "Extremely unusual thing, though. Nahg'tar is a Silipudi," he said as if Desmond had asked. "All sorts of mental powers, that species has. You'll find most jellyfish have those kinds of capabilities. You were in Tethyia, you must have heard of the Oracle."

Desmond remembered, in some distant part of his still-foggy brain, Arrluk telling him about the gargantuan squid that had called a meeting with him days before they had met, to issue an ominous warning about events yet to unfold, and which had implanted images in his mind about their quest, which had ultimately led him to Desmond. He repeated none of this, though. But the other didn't seem to require an answer either way.

"He should have made a connection with you," it continued. "But you turned into mush the moment he tried. Should have been an easy, painless act. But something about you repelled him. Though he says that he should be able to get through that in time." He gave a nasty grin, revealing teeth the colour of Desmond's eyes. "Now that you're awake, and can move, it's time to try again." He made to withdraw, but turned his head around again. "Oh, and it makes no sense to try to run, kid. Most of the people on this ship love a chase, and you'll find that there's not too many places you can hide anyway. Best sit down and prepare yourself, it's gonna be a long night for you."