“So where are we going anyway? I thought you said things moved around in here?” Eshanai asked as she followed after Sikhez under her own power, though still holding her hand. The younger Naga glared around at their surroundings as they hurried along, and as Eshanai followed her gaze, she saw the small river spirits watching them. They occasionally darted away to be replaced by a new pair of eyes, reporting to their master.

“The treasury,” Sikhez muttered under her breath as they went down a curving flight of stairs. Everything was wet down here. It soaked the bottom of Sikhez’s red dress and made Eshanai struggle not to slip and slide down the steps. Water dripped from the ceiling and poured down the walls, forming tiny waterfalls. Nature had a firm hold on this place. Slimy algae covered every surface, and clams could be spotted here or there with their shells tightly shut. Eshanai wondered how they could survive in here out of the water, but she supposed it must be a wet enough environment for them to get by somehow.

Murky windows were placed in regular intervals, shining light at the lake's dark waters in The Steps. If that was even where they were. Despite the light, it was hard to see anything out of them. Maybe there was movement at the edges, some creature, or just loose debris caught in swirling water. Eshanai had been in the lake before, fishing and gathering the various crustaceans that called the lakebed their home, and she could not remember it being deep enough for it to get this dark, or it was just night right now.

“And you know where it is? It doesn’t move around?” Eshanai followed up as she tried to sense their surroundings. It was strange. Her tremor sense seemed to only travel across the immediate area. It penetrated shallowly into the walls and floor, and anywhere beyond her sight, the vibrations just dissipated as if something was pushing back against them. The smell of rotting flesh had dispersed somewhat as they got away from the hall but was soon replaced by a rank fish smell.

“No, yes, argh.” Sikhez stumbled over her words but kept moving as she looked back at Eshanai. “He must know we are on the move, and I’d rather not reveal where we are going. He can find out when we get there.” She spoke in a low voice, trying to not be overheard by the spirits that were inching closer to them trying to listen in. Eshanai eyed them, and they scurried away as if her gaze could burn. It occurred to her that if she and Sikhez followed the little river spirits, they would lead them straight to the catfish. Eshanai tucked that idea away for now and decided to trust her younger sister. They might find something helpful at this treasury. It couldn’t hurt to look.

They skipped past many doors, but with Eshanai’s tremor sense somehow hampered, she had no way of knowing what lay beyond them. She felt the lack of her abilities keenly as her curiosity almost got the better of her. What could a great lake spirit want with so many rooms on so many floors? This place was practically a castle from a story.

She reined herself in for Sikhez’s sake. The girl was set on her goal and would not react well to any detour. She glared at anything that moved, and her back muscles were tight and bunched up. She held Eshanai’s hand in a death grip. Eshanai squeezed back and smiled at Sikhez, trying to reassure her, but the younger Naga avoided eye contact.

Eshanai wasn’t sure what was wrong. She had at first been happy for any sort of change in her sister. Seeing her miserable and scared had wrenched something deep inside Eshanai, but this was the opposite extreme. Seeing her this angry and tense wasn’t pleasant. Anger made you reckless, and being reckless got you killed. Perhaps Eshanai was putting too much thought into it. Sikhez had a right to be angry after what she had been through. It just meant that Eshanai had to protect her, but hopefully, Sikhez would calm down when they were out of here.

They got off the stairs onto what must have been the ground floor. It was hard to tell without her tremor sense. Eshanai felt practically blind without it. She was used to the feeling of control it gave her, able to sense the tiniest insect crawling in the ground far away in all directions. And it wasn’t like on the beach, where her sense was simply blurry and imprecise. There was simply a border beyond which she could sense nothing. They tasted the air, tongues swaying, but all Eshanai could catch was that rank fish smell, but stronger.

“Anything?” Eshanai asked and glanced at Sikhez.

“Only rotting fish,” she answered and wrinkled her nose in disgust before slithering quickly further down the wet corridor. Eshanai hurried to catch up and grabbed Sikhez’s hand again as she walked beside her. The young Naga sighed and finally gave a slight smile directed at Eshanai.

“You seem tense. I thought you would be glad to finally be getting out of here,” Eshanai said as they slithered side by side, hand in hand.

“I’ll be glad when and if we get out,” Sikhez said stoically, hard eyes staring straight ahead. “Sorry,” she said with another sigh, and all the tension seemed to run off of her as she let her shoulders slump. “I sound like Nala, don’t I?” They both laughed at the comparison to their sometimes overly serious sister, relieving the tension even more.

“A little bit, yeah,” Eshanai answered fondly before she coughed to clear her throat. “You don’t have to worry, you know. I am getting us out of here.” Sikhez stared at Eshanai for a moment, her mouth forming a straight line as she pressed her lips together in uncertainty.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. I do.” She said before she looked away again. “I guess it’s just hard for me to believe that we can actually make it after my many failed attempts,” she glanced back at Eshanai, and in a quiet voice, she asked. “Did you really rip one of his fins off?”

“Yes,” Eshanai answered with a confident smile. “Why do you think it hasn’t shown itself? It’s either scared of me or not done healing.”

“Or plotting how to best dispose of us,” Sikhez added and eyed the many new scars crisscrossing Eshanai’s body. Eshanai looked down at her battered form and smiled sheepishly, scratching the back of her head.

“What can I say? The bastard had me on its home turf, but I was winning before it fled into the water.”

“Right,” Sikhez said slowly as she raised one eyebrow at the overly confident first hunter. But despite her skeptical tone, she led Eshanai through the corridors with new confidence of her own. Her muscles finally relaxed as she believed that they might actually be getting out of here.

Following Sikhez through the wet hallways, the source of the rotting smell was soon revealed. Fish struggled mightily in the corridors, bouncing around on the wet tiles as if just coming out of the water, others laying on the floor gasping for breath. Many looked far older and were the source of the rank smell pervading the corridors. Snails and little octopi feasted upon the rotting flesh, scuttling from fish to fish and hiding in little pools of water like islands of safety when the two Naga passed. She and Sikhez would at least not starve if they were forced to stay here for long.

Eshanai tried to glean what was around every bend and corner to see if she could figure out what was messing with her senses. She didn’t see much, but sometimes she could spot the hovering lights flickering to life just as they rounded a corner. Were they responding to their presence? Growing dark again as they left? Eshanai might have thought nothing of it without the still live lake critters everywhere. Just a neat lighting system. But now she had a bad feeling about this place. Something weird was definitely going on here.

Sikhez unerringly led Eshanai to a set of immense double doors. They were beautifully carved with swirling patterns of crashing waves and frolicking fish. They were inlaid with some type of deep blue gemstone that made the doors shine from the hovering lights near the ceiling. They were suspiciously dry and free of algae. Sikhez went right up to them and started to push with all her might. She looked small against the massive doors, and they didn’t even budge as she put her back into it.

Eshanai stifled a relieved gasp as some of her tremor sense finally seemed to wake up, showing her the room beyond the doors. It was such a relief, like unclogging an ear or finally getting your taste back after finally regrowing your tongue, that Eshanai didn’t even stop to question the strangeness of it at first. Some power was working to control her senses in the corridors, but not here. The hallway back beyond her sight was still blocked to her, but the treasury could be clearly discerned. Obviously, it was the catfish’s doing, but why would it be letting up now?

“So this is it? The treasury?” Eshanai asked as she curiously eyed their surroundings. Their entourage of river spirits was still following, but Eshanai shrugged. She didn’t much care if the catfish knew where they were or not. If it could hurry up and get here already, that would be preferable. Without the spirit, she and Sikhez could be stuck here for a long time. Hopefully, whatever strange effect made the lake somehow deeper than it really was would end with the catfish’s death.

“Yes,” Sikhez groaned as she heaved herself against the double doors. “Now, get over here and help me get this dumb door open.” Eshanai chuckled and went to help.

”Just hope they don’t open the other way around,” Sikhez groaned in consternation and effort at Eshanai’s comment, but with their combined strength, the doors swung open slowly and smoothly with barely a squeak of hinges or the groaning of old wood. Stopping when they had enough room to squeeze past Eshanai and Sikhez slid inside.

The room beyond was far larger than the chamber Eshanai had woken in. It had massive pillars on either side holding up the roof, carved and inlaid with the same pattern as the double doors that stood open behind them. Eshanai gaped as she stared up at the distant ceiling, marveling at the meticulous paint job. The more she stared, the more details seemed to make themselves known to her.

“It’s immense,” Eshanai said in awe, her voice echoing as she eyed the chamber. “And all to store some gold.” It was undoubtedly an impressive collection, with piles and piles of little golden coins stacked against the walls, with precious gems glimmering among the small golden mountains. It was very pretty to look at, but Eshanai had never really understood the appeal beyond maybe making fancy adornments out of it such that Sikhez wore with that dress. Eshanai had often heard of gold featured in stories and the absolute obsession with which humans sought it. Eshanai found it a bit insane, frankly. You couldn’t eat it, couldn’t fuck it, it was soft so it wouldn’t hold an edge for very long, and you could forget making armor out of it. So she found that dedicating a room like this to the useless metal a bit excessive.

“Yes,” Sikhez said thoughtfully. She had one of the coins in her hand and intently studied the little face stamped into it. “But that is not why we came here,” Sikhez threw the little coin behind her into one of the piles as she continued farther into the chamber. Eshanai found as she followed the young Naga, that there were other things in here but useless metal. Scattered among the gold were small pedestals holding various things from jewel-encrusted crowns and painted vases to strange devices and weapons. Sikhez skipped past all of them until they came to a pile of gold like all the others, but with the end of a wooden handle sticking out of it. Eshanai eyed the handle and then met Sikhez's expectant gaze.

“You really seem to know your way around down here. Been here before?” Eshanai asked idly, making casual conversation.

“Yeah,” Sikhez answered, and at Eshanai’s curious stare, she continued. “The great spirit brings me down here sometimes, mostly to brag. Apparently, everything in here was either an offering made to him in the past or something interesting that has drifted down to the lake bed.” Eshanai looked around the room with new eyes, thinking about the implications.

“So a very old Catfish then, or just very large offerings,” she said with a shrug and grabbed the handle sticking out to pull it from the pile of gold. It revealed a long wide blade at the end of a long pole, with decorative red ribbons tied at the end of the shaft, flickering in a nonexistent wind. It was a glaive, and the steel blade was polished to a mirror shine. It looked sharp enough to cut grass, and Eshanai smiled at her own reflection as she admired the weapon.

“I thought you would like it,” Sikhez gushed. She had her hands clasped in front of her, a pleased smile on her face. Eshanai did like it. She liked it a lot. She was more used to spears, but steel was a rare find on the island. Only used by their elite warriors because it was so precious, usually only found in old weapons and relics. The glaive suddenly vibrated in Eshanai’s hands, and she flung it away out of reflex.

“There is only one dominant lifeform in this universe,” a voice hummed out of it as it clattered to a stop amongst the coins. Eshanai groaned internally. It was another talking weapon. She had found plenty of them on her ship, and at first, she had been delighted, but they just wouldn’t shut up. They had kept her up at night with their inane babbling and unhinged ramblings about death and dismemberment. She had eventually had to gather them all up to lock them away in a chest to get them to quiet down, but she still heard them sometimes when it was quiet enough.

“It talks?!” Sikhez gasped with surprise, looking intrigued.

“It talks,” Eshanai mirrored with a groan.

“And it carries a steel-bound sword of vengeance,” the glaive babbled on, and Eshanai groaned even harder.

“What’s the matter? This is amazing,” Sikhez said as she approached the glaive, looking it over in wonder. Eshanai slithered up beside her and sighed as she scooped the weapon up from the floor.

“Have you ever had a dreams, that's, that you, um, you had, you’d, you would, you could, you’d do, you wi, you wants, you could do so, you, you’d do, you cou, you, you wan, him, to, do you, so much, that you could do anything?” The glaive spouted its incoherent nonsense, and the two Naga stared at it in Eshanai’s hands. Their eyes slowly lifted to look at each other, and something like understanding passed between them.

“You sure that there isn’t something better for me to use down here?” Eshanai asked but suspected that she already knew the answer.

“No, ahem, nothing with so much steel in it,” Sikhez answered as she studied the weapon, and Eshanai looked at it with resignation. She would just have to endure, and it wasn’t that bad. As long as the glaive could kill the catfish, that was all that mattered.

“To thine own self be true,” the glaive uttered, and Eshanai’s eyes widened slightly. That was almost coherent. “Shampoo, ehhh, shampoo. EEAAAHHH!!!,” it suddenly screamed, and the two Naga jumped at the noise. Not so coherent, after all. “Hhhhahahaha, ah, soap, kuso.”

“I would take it if I could, but when I try to lift it, it turns floppy and unwieldy, almost squirming out of my hands. At least it seems calm now. Maybe it likes you?” Sikhez said, and Eshanai gave her a flat stare. She was about to respond but jumped again as the doors banged open and the catfish came swimming through empty air, hovering above the floor, into the treasury.

“I see you’ve found a toy to play with, little snake. Careful you don’t cut yourself,” it said arrogantly as it came up to the two Naga. It looked much the same as when Eshanai had last seen it, except it had a big patch of scar tissue where its right fin should be.

“Finally decided to show yourself, huh? Now get us out of here before I remove your other fin too,” Eshanai demanded as she leveled the glaive at the spirit's exposed chest. The big catfish only grinned nastily at the weapon.

“You’ll find that everything within these halls is mine,” it said in that smug tone and brought the aforementioned fin over the glaive. Eshanai’s hands closed over empty air as the shaft disappeared along with the rest of the weapon. It was completely gone, nowhere to be seen. The catfish’s eyes gleamed triumphantly as it looked down upon the two Naga. “And they, obey, my, command,” It flicked its eyes meaningfully over to Sikhez, and the younger Naga shrunk in on herself.

Eshanai’s blood practically boiled at her sister's reaction. It was time to make this siltsucker pay. With a weapon or not, she would make it happen, somehow.