Thank god her pack wasn’t pulling her down.

Minutes of slowly swimming upwards gave Sera time to recess what her injuries were, and what to do about them.

She could tell her legs were covered in bites, but thankfully the salt water helped seal the wound and help the blood coagulate.

She grimaced at the thought but couldn’t get her wounds and their stinging out of her head, part of it was because each time she swam upwards her wide arm came to greet her.

The bite Iva gave her on her hand was one of the worst, Sera obviously forgave her friend but still, with every motion of her hand cleaving the water the salt dug into the wound.

As her face weakly grimaced at each bite the water gave her, Sera began trying to focus on the blackness above her, she hadn’t seen the light of the tentacles for what felt like half an hour.

She knew Iva was beside her, almost like a puppy following behind her, or in this case swimming behind her.

What if Iva hadn’t been there, I probably would’ve still gone down into the tunnel but if I hadn’t dropped the light...

Feeling her head begin to ache, Sera closed her eyes and continued the laborious motions, zoning out until from the blackness came stripes of light.

Finally.

Moving a bit faster, Sera was already imagining lying down for the rest of the day when she spotted the entrance of the tunnel.

And above the entrance a hole, completely black and grim, unforeseen when entering but in leaving it sticks out like a piece of copper on a sandy cliff.

Sera was about to ignore it until she saw Iva staring into the darkness above the entrance, directly at the hole before looking at her.

“Hahhh god. I’ll check it out, at least we can tell there’s none of the skeletal tentacles in there,” Swimming up to the ceiling Sera focused her eyes and tried looking for any spots of light.

Before reaching for her pouch and grabbing her most important light source.

“If I lose this now…” Sera made sure to grip strongly on to the PID as she opened the basic interface.

The light it produced was barely enough to light anything a few centimetres away from the tablet.

Slowly leaning on the opening Sera began moving the PID close to the ground like a metal detector.

What started off as a slow and thorough search however quickly turned to lazy strokes over the small holes entrance.

As Sera went a few metres in she could see Iva closely following her, but still staring at something in the cave.

That was when she saw it.

Despite holding the PID with what felt like a strong grip, Sera still jumped and dropped it at the sight.

The PID slowly dropped onto the prone being.

Iva quickly swam in front of Sera to protect her, but she could still see it staring at her.

Its head was white, and eye sockets were empty, Sera was about to scream or take flight as her eyes were waiting for any sign of attack but none came.

As her red eyes, which were redder with the help of being bloodshot from the pressure, looked closer, the realisation came.

She was staring at a skeleton.

“It’s...it’s alright Iva, it’s just a corpse,” Gently pushing her red protector away Sera stared transfixed at the sight.

The PID was resting gently on it’s face, illuminating its cavernous eyes and making Sera hold her nonexistent breath.

Tentatively reaching out, Sera pulled from one end of the tablet, avoiding touching the now sombre looking corpse.

“... This must be the neriead who dropped the flare and compass from earlier, but why is he dead, the fish shouldn’t have attacked him without a light.”

Sera felt chills on her back as she suddenly swam out of the small hole and looked down into the deep tunnel.

But all she could see was the same stripes of light adorning the walls as before.

“This place is making me paranoid,” Turning back to the dark hole, Iva popped out next to Sera looking ready to leave.

But Sera was already swimming back inside “I can’t leave without knowing why, don’t worry Iva this shouldn’t take too long.”

Getting closer to what seemed like the end of the hole, Sera began pointing the PID around the floor of the small hole where she found a pair of white discarded feet.

One was a distance away from what looked like scale trousers, which surprisingly didn’t have any algae on it or look decayed at all.

Slowly moving the scanner up Sera found small broken pieces of a rod at his kneecap.

Moving the pieces of unknown technology to the side Sera slowly made her way up, moving the pieces of what felt like broken metal as she did so.

“Pockets,” Sera hesitated before digging her hand inside and feeling numerous circular objects.

“Coins and…” Feeling the other pocket brought nothing.

Her eyes began to feel like weights as Sera sped up, now desperate to rest.

“Shirt, nothing and his back… Oh, it’s almost destroyed but it looks like a pack.”

Trying to pick up the pack with one hand, Sera felt her arm tense as she pulled, feeling a few objects inside move.

Along with the straps weakly falling off the skeleton, Sera poured the belongings out of the pack which surprisingly fell fast despite being underwater.

“Oh, so that’s why he died.”

Throwing the pack to the side, it loosely trembled downwards in the water as Sera looked at his belongings.

The broken rod’s name now came clearly, it was a broken flare but completely destroyed and in his pack was what seemed like a glass object but now was just broken quartz.

“That’s a lot of broken quartz, if I had my scanner I could’ve made one of whatever this is,” Bringing her own pack out Sera began piling the items inside.

“Three silver coins and two copper coins, quartz, another broken flare and… lead.”

That explains why it dropped so quickly.

Peering around the area again, she swapped arms twice before numbly swimming out.

The swim was a flash of blue, green and lastly red before she collapsed.

When Sera woke the PID was buzzing next to her.

Her stomach growled as she looked around the cave, Iva wasn’t resting by her feet, which was as far as she could perceive with the limited light.

As Sera grasped around for her pack, the dark cave slowly gained more clarity and Sera remembered what she decided to craft before collapsing.

It was obviously…

The knife.

It was a hard decision to make but after putting the resources together Sera let herself fall to the soft cushion but not before accidentally touching the PID again.

Which is when she discovered she could stack building recipes, “Definitely one of the worst times to find out,” Munching on what looked like the last of the supplies Sera knew that tomorrow was going to be interesting…

That’s when the buzzing stopped and two objects were ejected into the water one after each other.

“Or maybe tonight,” Putting the last piece of food in her mouth Sera lazily pushed off the seafloor, her limbs were still stinging slightly, but it seemed like nerieads were well adapted to the ocean.

Grabbing the scanner first to use as a light was an obvious choice, even though she was underwater, catching a slowly falling knife would still hurt, albeit less.

Lighting up the space above the PID, Sera spotted her new tool.

Its handle was curved with a thin wrapping around it and the blade itself was long and thin with grooves etched through it, on the edges it looked like quartz was intertwined in the metal to strengthen it.

Carefully grabbing the knife, Sera tried using it and was surprised as it glided through the water faster than she could move her arm in air.

“Holy-The grooves etched in the knife! They must help with aero-I mean hydrodynamics,” Moving the knife through the water, it glided with ease.

That’s when Sera heard a small squeak behind her.

Pivoting around with a newfound speed, Sera tried to scare Iva at the speed but Iva was already laying more seagrass onto the pile.

“Thanks Iva! I swear you’re getting smarter the more I talk to you,” Sera could barely remember pointing at the seagrass and doing a yanking motion to Iva.

The cute seal felt too good to be true sometimes.

“And… this should be enough seagrass, now all we need is scales. Scales and breakfast.”

Smiling suggestively at Iva, the fish bared its teeth similarly before digging into her pack and devouring the last ration.

“I’ll wait for you outside!”

Sera swam out from the illuminated cave, putting away her PID before reaching the vast dark.

Moonlight was much thinner than sunlight and barely illuminated anything on the seafloor, where the sun made the ocean a bright blue, the white light the moons gave off only brought little light.

The occasional fish could be seen however there was an overall lack of noise and movement.

It felt like the ocean had gone to sleep.

Which meant it was the perfect time to gather materials and hopefully any fish that got too close.

Or it could’ve been if her scanner illuminated more than a small blob of space, the only places properly illuminated seemed to be the sand hills.

Which were behind where the caves were located, “It’s a good thing I avoided them during the day otherwise they’d be stripped bare.”

Swimming to one of the farthest sand cliffs, Sera could see Iva swimming towards her as she began using her new scanner, making sure to scan all the chunks she could see.

Scanner Results

Sandstone found!

Lead found!

Red scales found!

Sandstone found!

Copper found!

Sandstone found!

Sandstone found!

Dirt found!

Cracking the rocks off the cliff, Sera quickly navigated to the next cliff.

Scanner Results

Red scales found!

Sandstone found!

Lead found!

Sandstone found!

Sandstone found!

Lead found!

Repeating this a few times, Sera’s bag slowly but gradually grew heavier and heavier until she couldn’t hold it on her back and instead had to drop it on the cliff she was gathering materials from.

Eventually she saw a slow red light come over her.

“It can’t be morning alr-” Talking more to herself than Iva, Sera felt her jaw drop as she saw the red light begin to fall into the ocean.

Before being sparked out almost immediately.

“Fire? But where-” Sera didn’t have to look far to see the inferno almost carve a hole in the water itself.

On the surface, long limbs of lumber began falling to the ocean, flaring and burning brightly before hitting the surface and sinking down to the seafloor.

Sera quickly looked around for the Reaper but found it nowhere in sight-

Was it the fire that kept it away? Or maybe the smell? Either way, if she wanted to act, she needed to do it now.

Sera tried to look onto the deck but the water’s refraction, the flames and the falling debris blocking all sight of what was happening.

“Shit, Iva,” Sera dropped her pack on the cliff before turning to Iva.

“I’ve got to get a closer look.”