Though it was clearly the last thing that anybody on the ship wanted to do, they changed their course and set off towards The City of the Lost God nevertheless. The occupants of the Neptune's Treasure were quite distracted from the task ahead, by the mysterious objects that they had obtained from within Amphitrite's Star. Ethan, for one, was swinging his sword around with vigor, examining it with awe-filled eyes. The burnished silver shone through the water like torchlight. Arrluk, Jino, and Duat had still not managed to decipher what the small, runic slabs embedded in its hilt meant, but they could tell that they would obviously play a great part in whatever came next.

Kayla did not seem very interested in the necklace of pearls that she had received. In fact, after a few minutes' examination, she set it aside in a distant corner of the deck and turned to watch Ethan brandishing his newly acquired blade.

Arrluk, on the other hand, was still trying to work his way around the Book of Enoch. It was a miraculous thing, filled with ancient, powerful spells that he had never even heard of during his studies back in Tethyia. At the front of the book was the key to the forgotten language in which they were transcribed, which helped him to decipher what the unfamiliar symbols represented, and he subsequently spent a great period of their journey testing the spells that seemed the least dangerous.

He could not explain to himself why, but the magic he was performing now seemed to be cast much smoother and more powerful than he had ever managed before. Neither Jino nor Duat could read the book — not because they were struggling to understand the text, but because, according to them, the pages were completely blank. Arrluk had seen such magic before: records of advanced magic enchanted by teachers to conceal their contents from students who had not been granted permission to view them.

But now, Arrluk was on the other side of the situation. He had access to secrets darker than those that the ancient tomes lining the shelves of the libraries in his home country held, while the adults were left baffled and ignorant.

There was one particular spell that he found after nearly two hours of his perusal of the volume, which he thought would likely be an excellent asset against the enemy ship, though, like many he had passed before it, it needed time for preparation and ingredients that he could not procure at this time.

"Mandragora root . . . Hydralily . . . mermaid scales. . . . None of these are available in any part of the sea around us," he murmured. He had never heard of such a combination of magical plants. Instead of trying to prepare that spell, he began to set up the spells that would enable them with a number of useful potions that would be sealed inside large, seed-like pods, so as to preserve their contents.

Duat manned the wheel, keeping an eye on the water ahead of them, while Jino assisted Arrluk in gathering the necessary items. Kayla too joined in, using the whale-tooth knife to neatly cut the indicated ingredients and sorting them in the right amounts as Arrluk described to her, because she, like Jino and Duat, could not find any words on the page.

"What?" she said, rather defensively, looking at Ethan, who was watching her with a cocked eyebrow. "I do know my way around a kitchen, you know."

He turned away and began to examine his sword again. "Are you sure you don't know what the symbols mean?" he asked Duat, for the fourth time.

"Yes, I'm quite certain," Duat said patiently. "The most I can offer is that the first of the plates in the series is similar to a symbol I found in an old book long ago, during my own studies. The symbol, if I am remembering correctly, was that of 'love.'"

"Love?" Ethan repeated, looking bemused. "It's a sword, it's supposed to be used for hacking and stabbing, what the heck does love have to do with that?"

Duat shrugged his massive shoulders. "I couldn't tell you. But you received the sword for a reason. I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out."

Ethan looked a little disappointed at this, but said nothing. Several more minutes passed in silence while everyone else tended to their own matters. Then, quite suddenly, Arrluk shouted, "Aha! This could work!"

"What? What is it?" Ethan demanded, hurrying over to his side at once.

"I found a spell, one that may be exactly what we need right now, and we have all the ingredients in our stores at this moment!"

"Really? What kind of spell is it?" Kayla asked eagerly.

"A communication spell, one that can operate over long distances."

Ethan's eyes widened. "You mean, we can talk with —?"

"No, no," Arrluk said, shaking his head. "Not Desmond. At the moment, I believe that would be a particularly bad idea. Right now, his captors — presumably — are unaware that we managed to escape from Charybdis. This gives us an advantage."

"The element of surprise," Kayla said.

"Exactly. I imagine that, especially since he seems to have caused quite a commotion earlier, trying to escape, Desmond is now being closely watched. If we attempt to commune with him now, we run the risk of our enemies discovering that not only are we still alive, but that we're now heading towards them. We need to retain our cover, in order to launch a successful assault and rescue Desmond."

"So who do you want to talk to, then?" Ethan asked, nonplussed. "Everyone else who can do anything is on this ship right now."

"Not everyone," Arrluk said with a wry smile. "Do you mind, this spell requires some assistance?"

They set to work, helping him gather up the ingredients he needed from the cupboards, while he used a stick of chalk to trace the strange symbol illustrated in the book onto the coral floor. When Arrluk had finished copying the image, with satisfying accuracy, and they had set the indicated additions inside the circle along with flickering stubs of Hyrule around it, they drew back and Arrluk began to chant, reciting the spell written below the image. His voice issued hoarse and deep, ringing around the deck.

The circle he had drawn began to glow a faint white; after a few seconds, the tiny balls of Hyrule burning around it blazed upwards and bent towards the interior of the circle, pouring flames upon the items reposing in the center, lighting them ablaze. They vanished in a whirl of sapphire and violet, and the circle he had etched upon the floor rose smoothly from the deck, leaving not a trace of chalk behind.

It revolved for a moment in front of them, then came to a halt, in a vertical position like Charybdis's mouth, and the inside shimmered. Within seconds, the image of King Hatak's throne room came into view, displayed in the water as though it was an image captured by an armoured chiton, the tiny, rock-like creature he had shown Desmond the very first day they had met.

There was Hatak's throne, an immense chair of polished alabaster, with a crown carved into the backrest; to its left stood queen Jesa's, smaller and more elegant, made of a special crab's shell covered in many large, coloured circles; and on its right stood Arrluk's, fashioned from sapphire and inlaid with many less precious, but still superb jewels.

There was someone sitting in his father's chair, his head in his hands, with another person floating beside him, speaking in a low voice.

"Father!"

The figure in the chair jerked upright and looked around wildly.

"Arrluk?"

He looked terrible. His usually neat seaweed-coloured hair was wild and disheveled around his head, like a tangled jade net. His chin was spotted with stubble, and his eyes bore dark purple spots beneath them, his ornate cloak ripped and filthy. Beside him, the figure Arrluk had taken to be Unak looked around, and Arrluk saw that it was an unfamiliar advisor.

Hatak rose from his seat and swam towards the vertical screen. "Arrluk, what — how —?"

"Father, what is going on? Why do you look like that?" Arrluk demanded.

Hatak sighed. "One problem at a time, my boy. Why are you calling? Have you finished your quest? Are you returning to Tethyia?"

"No, not yet. Unfortunately . . ." Arrluk hesitated.

"Unfortunately?"

Arrluk drew a deep breath and forced himself to speak. "Our quest is not yet complete, because we've lost Desmond."

"You've what?" Hatak's response was an undignified yelp. "What do you mean, lost? Died? Lost in the water?"

"No," Arrluk said. "The people who had targeted him above land, they attacked us while we were distracted in Charybdis's domain, and they succeeded in taking him."

"Charybdis?" Hatak looked horrified, appalled. He drew a breath in turn and with a sudden yet not altogether surprising return of his usual regal manner, said, "Explain."

And so Arrluk did. He told him of their first attack, the Rasulka appearing with its invisible aid; how it had tried to take Desmond yet failed due to the timely arrival of Desmond's new pet shark, Kato. How they had moved forward to Ashay's palace, requesting permission to travel through the Oxidaze Tunnels, how he had refused and, during a forceful interrogation, learned the secret of Desmond's abilities; how their pursuers had shown up once more, giving them the chance to break free, yet pursuing them to the Tunnels, where they were knocked off course and ended up in the Silent Sea.

Here, Arrluk paused, because his father was frowning in contemplation, though he still looked shocked.

"The Silent Sea? I've never heard of a Tunnel there. If Ashay had known about it, which I'm sure he would have, it would have been destroyed, or at the very least sealed off."

"But it wasn't. We're not sure exactly how we ended up there, but that's what happened." Arrluk continued with his story, of the short yet still unpleasant period they had spent drifting through the horribly empty waters, until Desmond had the idea, in his desperation, to explore. He hesitated again here, wondering whether he should gloss over what happened next, in fear of his father's sanity — he did look as though he'd been through a terrible ordeal recently — but went on anyway: he needed to know. He told of how Desmond had seen the strange dark shapes looming beneath them, how he had convinced Arrluk to take a closer look, how they had entered the water below to find that the scenery had changed, and that the ancient Kaijus of legend were residing directly below them, sleeping peacefully. He went on to explain how they had met Magorian, who explained to them the way they could escape the Silent Sea, and the risk. He explained that they had chosen to accept and take the Trident.

If the King had looked shocked before, it was nothing to how he was now. His eyes were bulging in their sockets, his mouth agape in a manner unbefitting of a ruler. In that moment he looked as silly as the court fools that his father had sometimes brought in to entertain him when he was younger, who had adopted some of the most absurd facial expressions he had ever seen. There was a long silence, which Arrluk thought was better his father broke.

"The Kaijus?" he whispered at last. "They're . . . real? They will wake . . . in two days' time . . . if you don't finish your quest before then?"

"Yep. So, no pressure, of course," Ethan said, with a sardonic smile.

"Arrluk," Hatak said, "this . . . this is insane! This is bigger, much bigger, than anything you could have hoped to set out for! This is no simple war, those — those creatures could destroy all life within the Seven Seas in mere days! Or less!"

"There's more," Arrluk said grimly. He progressed in his tale to Desmond opening the portal that brought them out of the Silent Sea and into Charybdis's domain; how they were on their way across, but then were attacked and Desmond had been kidnapped, and how they managed to escape and move to Amphitrite's Star, and the sudden message they'd received in the form of a conch shell.

"And now we're headed towards The City of the Lost God. We know it's a Taboo, but we have no choice. The only way to restore the Trident is by first securing Desmond. The reason I called you is because the crew aboard that ship is vast and dangerous. We need a stronger attack force to successfully overwhelm them. Is there any way you could provide us with reinforcements."

Hatak looked deeply uncomfortable. "Unfortunately," he began, "all our soldiers are presently occupied."

"Doing what?" Arrluk said, surprised.

"It was just after you left. . . . Unak, it transpired, had been working against us for quite some time."

"What?" Arrluk, Jino, and Duat chorused.

Hatak nodded. "Unbelievable, I know. He's been in cohorts with, presumably, the same people whom you're headed towards, since the very day you arrived here with Desmond, or earlier. When he was tired of pretending, he brought with him an army of his own. He's trying to claim Tethyia."

"That's impossible," Arrluk gasped. "Unak is — he —" He had never liked Unak, because he found him to be a simply unpleasant person, but to be a traitor?

"I thought so too. But it is very real. We are currently working to stave them off, but, if we're being honest, we're struggling. We cannot help you."

"Very well," Arrluk said after a slight pause. "It seems we have our own storms to brave. . . . Good luck, Father."

"And you too, my son."

The circle shimmered once more, and the image faded.

There was another long silence.

"Unak," Duat said, stunned. "How . . ."

"We don't have time to worry about that," Arrluk said through gritted teeth. "My father will deal with the traitorous Unak, we have our own task set before us. Full speed ahead. We're going to rescue Desmond."