When the triplets exhausted all of the trouble they knew how to get into, Matayal breathed a sigh of relief. They would certainly find new trouble to get into eventually, but she hoped they’d grow into some understanding of consequences before that point. They were able to move freely around the clan, though there was always someone watching them- and it was usually not Matayal. She had clan business to deal with, and when she didn’t she was training. It would be a shame to reach the Consolidated Soul Phase and just stagnate.

The triplets were trained as well, though more in the department of control rather than improving their rank. They’d so far avoided serious accidents involving use of spiritual energy, and Matayal fully intended for it to stay that way.

When she found the time, she took the children to the beach. On Pualani nothing was ever far from the beach, and the inner shores of the island were known for their calm waters. Matayal watched as her children interacted with the beach in different ways. Tirto was the only one who knew how to swim. He was no expert, but she wasn’t constantly worried about him. When either of the other two were in the water she couldn’t take her mind off of them, even though her grandfather was also present along with a handful of guards. It was still a mother’s instincts to watch out for her children.

Melanthina spent some time splashing about in the water, but she also enjoyed relaxing in the shade. Ursel occasionally recruited her to help build sand castles, but Melanthina’s pieces were significantly less structurally sound. It couldn’t be helped since Ursel was basically cheating by using spiritual energy. Still, Matayal was glad for any time her daughters were occupied together instead of getting off into separate forms of trouble, which was most common with the two of them.

“Look! I found a crab!” Ursel held up her hand, where a crab dangled from her finger by its pincers.

“Is that so? How… wonderful,” Matayal smiled. She wasn’t sure if she should tell her daughter to put it back or worry about how tightly it was clamping onto her. Ursel seemed to have unconsciously protected herself so she wasn’t exactly in any pain, but Matayal still expected her to be a little scared.

“I think it wants to be my friend,” Ursel wiggled the crab hanging from her finger. “It won’t let go!”

Matayal pondered how to tell her daughter the crab was attacking her without diminishing her curiosity about animals. “Why don’t you set the crab down, honey? It’s probably getting tired.”

When Ursel complied and the crab touched the sand, it let go and skittered off. “Aww, where is it going?”

“Probably to find food. Animals don’t have the same sorts of houses as people.” Matayal thought for a second and then began to explain about how some animals could be dangerous. It appeared it wouldn’t be the same ones as for normal children, but there would certainly be some.

Overall the day passed without any serious incidents, and Matayal was happy for a day of peace and time with them before they would be apart. It wasn’t yet time for them to go back to the Tenebach clan, but she was going to be away for a bit.

-----

Pillars of stone rose from the water, enrobed in kelp that could grow to as thick as a man was tall. It was a familiar place, one Matayal had visited several times for training, and nearly died once. Now most of the training was beneath her, barely able to provide any challenge. But she wasn’t here for the surface challenges, but to visit the depths. After the previous incident the Brandle clan had kept watch for the rapid fluctuations in water that had formed a whirlpool pulling down John and Matayal, but though they’d spotted a few incidents they didn’t know how to predict them.

Matayal might have preferred to descend more rapidly since much of the danger seemed to have been concentrated in the middle range of the area, but she was almost an entire phase ahead of where she had been when they ran into trouble in the Kelp Spire Forest. And now she was prepared.

“Livna, Yonit, are you ready?” she asked the two guards who were always with her. They nodded. Matayal turned towards several others that had come along. “The rest of you are to wait here, as planned. We shouldn’t need your assistance, but if we do… having people waiting and fresh will be best.”

With that, Matayal and the two others leapt into the water. Livna and Yonit followed Matayal’s lead, and she wrapped a bubble of energy around them. Spending time with her husband dual cultivating had made her more used to handling more than just water energy, and incorporating just a little bit of darkness for its trickery aspects allowed her to feel just like the open sea. At least, a fair enough representation of it. Most creatures would not bother them during their descent. And if they did… Matayal would be ready to fight.

The light began to fade above them as they descended into the depths. Various creatures swam around them, from schools of fish to sharks to jellies. As they went deeper they were less able to use their eyes, but their spiritual energy senses were more than sufficient to make out the underwater world around them. Less familiar sorts of creatures were present, some strange even to Matayal who had spent many days in the deep sea. Some provided sources of light meant to bait the unwary, but those were of no danger to thinking humans.

Matayal circulated her energy through her body and especially her lungs. The air element was obviously the best for purifying one’s breath, but she had worked to develop another system for it. She was able to use the minimal air element required for herself, but she wouldn’t have been able to refresh Livna or Yonit. Instead, it was a pure water technique, where she exchanged fresh and spent air with the water around her. It wasn’t a technique that was easily usable at a low cultivation, but the two guards were more than capable in the late Soul Expansion Phase.

Despite her increased cultivation and confidence in the area, Matayal kept their movement slow and steady. She avoided any unknown creatures to the best of her ability, and when they reached the rift she stuck to the edge. Part of that was to check on their temporary home. Inside she thought she recognized some figures, but they could have been similar fish or crabs.

They continued further down into the depths, where the pressure continued to grow in strength. It was a constant effort to resist the pressure, but their energy protected them. The vast abundance of water elemental spiritual energy also meant that as long as they didn’t exhaust themselves, they would be able to maintain their reserves.

When they reached the furthest depth Matayal remembered, she paused to take in what was below. This was the point at which a lack of caution could lead to greater danger. There was always danger in the life of a cultivator. Without danger, there was little growth to be found. But those who overestimated themselves and stepped into danger too great didn’t grow, they died.

Ever further beneath them in the depths of the ravine was something. A great presence, almost undetectable by its magnitude. The sea god, or at least that was what they had called it. A creature of great power could provide that to cultivators, either directly like the Tenebach clan’s guardian beast or indirectly through study. Matayal doubted that such a vast creature would be interested in being a guardian beast even if it could speak, but there had to be something to learn from it.

When she felt comfortable where she was, she began to move closer. This was a creature that should not be disturbed, but she felt no signs of it stirring. No whirlpools formed by great breaths in and out.

Matayal was comforted when she felt various life forms around her. First there were microscopic organisms. They would feed on tiny particles in the water, likely scraps from up above- or anything else that died in the area. Then there were fish. Strange flare ones, bulbous misshapen ones, ones that were more teeth than anything else. Many of them seemed to possess their own amount of water elemental spiritual energy, though that wasn’t strange in an area with such high concentrations.

The three cultivators came to rest on a shelf where they were pleased to find not only deep sea corals of some sort but also barnacles. They moved with caution, taking note of everything around them. Trouble from the sea god was one thing, but there could easily be other beasts of great power in the depths. It would be stranger if there weren’t, but so far they had avoided them without issues.

As Matayal was inspecting one of the barnacles, strange wide lumps on the rocky shelf with little feelers reaching for particulates and the tiny creatures that lived in the waters, she sensed something odd. Reading the flow of energy in the area could be difficult with the sea god’s presence suffusing everything, but she sensed great power in the ground itself. She was not an earth element cultivator, but her senses were able to reach deeper and find that it was not quite so rocky as she assumed.

She wasn’t quite certain of her find but as she moved laterally throughout the area she found more shelves of ‘rock’, covered in various forms of life and possessing little ecosystems of their own. Yet only the surface level of the area was stone, with something alive underneath.

Her inspections continued as she sent her senses as deep as she could into the ground. Her senses couldn’t not penetrate far through the creature, but she was able to confirm it was one creature of which many- but not all- of the shelves appeared to be parts of fins covered over by the ground itself. The bulk of the creature continued deeper into the cliff face.

Yet she also felt the same source deeper, indicating just a portion was reaching up to where she was. She and John had assumed that the sea god was some creature that lived deep in the depths. They had even assumed it to be very large, but for it to reach from the furthest points she could sense it up to her current location, they had clearly underestimated it.

The question that remained in her mind had answers with significant consequences. Was it an ancient beast that slumbered so long that the land grew up around it? With all the volcanic activity in the area that was possible over a long timespan. Or was it something else… such as it being imprisoned? She didn’t feel any current struggle, but why would there be, if it had been trapped for an unknown period of time? Obviously it would have to conserve its energy to survive, or it could have simply broken out immediately.

It was an interesting theory, but Matayal was still leaning towards the former idea. It wasn’t necessarily trapped, but perhaps hibernating or something of the sort. The timescales of cultivators were extended greatly, and ancient beasts with vast cultivations could live for unknown centuries, sometimes more in the right circumstances. An extended hibernation was a stretch, but less so than believing that somebody had the ability to trap such a creature.

Livna and Yonit seemed to be reaching their limits of comfort concerning the pressure, so Matayal took a break to give them time to acclimate themselves. Her cultivation was in the beginning of the next Phase and she had prior experience, so it wasn’t a surprise that they had more trouble. She could have pressed a bit deeper on her own, but Matayal quite liked being alive and didn’t think saving half an hour was worth risking trouble that she couldn’t fight on her own. Or something she could defeat that would injure or poison her, which would be just as bad.