Explorer of Edregon

The five of them all looked at one another, before peering over the side of the cloud they were standing on. Already, some of the marine life was returning with the monsters gone, but none of them could see further than a few dozen feet below the surface of the water. There were fish and bits and pieces of the late Reginald’s Ride…

But no Alka.

“I tried finding her with a wide cast of Sense Magic… But I didn’t hit anything,” Vin admitted. “I don’t know where she went.”

“Most likely, another one of those monsters snatched her up and swam away with her,” Shia pointed out. “We know there were at least two, wouldn’t be very surprising if there had actually been three.”

“You seriously think a monster could kidnap Alka of all people?” Scule snorted, frowning down at the fish below. “That just seems ridiculous. Come on, it’s Alka we're talking about here.”

“I know she’s a terrifying killing machine, but don’t forget her golem body is only about as strong as a single prestiged warrior,” Vin reminded him. “If she got her arms bound like I did before she was ready…”

Silence stretched across the group as they pictured Alka cursing and struggling as the shark monster dragged her miles away, gnawing on her indestructible head all the while. It wasn’t like she was in any actual danger, but the problem was going to be actually finding her.

“At least she’s not alone?” Shia offered, smiling weakly at them. “She’s got Epli with her, right? I doubt schlimes need to breathe air, so it should be fine.”

“That’s good, because it might be a bit before we can get to her,” Vin admitted. “I don’t have the faintest idea of how to comb the fragment to find her. I don’t know how deep the fragment is, but that monster swam at least a few hundred feet down with me before I tricked it into coming back up toward the surface, which means we have a lot of water to cover.”

“Xaril taught you how to empower your sensing spells, right?” Lumel asked, wringing her hands nervously. Vin could only imagine how worried she was about one of her very few friends being dragged away right under her own nose by a monster. “Can you try doing that to find her? Like how you made your ‘sense Earther’ alteration?”

“I don’t see why not… I could probably adjust Sense Magic to cover an entire fragment, but it would be risky. Even if the people of this fragment don’t have any artifacts or magic of their own, if there’s any naturally occurring magical plant life or rocks or anything like that, I’ll fry my own brain again. We’ll have to wait for my divine boon to reset before we give it a shot.”

“In that case, should we try to keep heading toward the center of the fragment?” Scule asked, kicking the cloud under them softly. “I can’t say I’m a huge fan of standing on temporary clouds after what happened to us in the sky fragment.”

“Can you sail the cloud like you did the lily pad?” Shia asked, peering at the shattered remains of the mast. “You know, after I repair that?”

“I don’t think so… It’s hard to explain, but making the clouds dense enough to stand on makes them heavier too. The mana keeps them afloat in the air, but I don’t think I can move them that much. It’s why I use lots of little clouds with barely any mana when I’m cloud stepping. I did see one of the Cloud Whisperers flying around on a cloud, but I have no idea how they did it.”

“It was probably some passive or Capstone of theirs,” Shia said dismissively. “Well, without Alka, we could go back to the sky fragment method of travel now. Warping from lily pad to lily pad if we wanted. That’s probably a lot safer as well.”

“I've always been a fan of safety,” Scule nodded, earning an eyeroll and an irritated squeak from Reginald. “And it’s not like we’ll forget where we lost her thanks to your Mental Map, right Vin?”

“Yeah, I’ll be able to bring us back to this exact location no problem if it’s needed for some reason,” Vin said. “Though I doubt the shark just dove straight down and stayed there. I would have sensed her if that were the case.”

“Then I guess we head off and keep hunting for the locals,” Shia shrugged. “Best case scenario, they have some method of dealing with these monsters that makes retrieving Alka all the easier.”

“Don’t forget why we came here in the first place though,” Vin reminded them. “Two of the missing Earthers are here in this fragment. Obviously, I want to rescue Alka as fast as we can, but the fact of the matter is she’s not in any actual danger, and like we said, she has Epli with her to keep her company. If we have to prioritize one or the other, the missing Earthers come first.”

“She’s gonna tear us a new one once we have her back,” Scule muttered.

“Should I start warping us toward the center of the fragment then?” Lumel offered, looking like she didn’t want to sit still with one of them missing.

“Yeah, we might as well keep going,” Vin nodded, casting ‘sense Earther’ once more to check on their targets’ locations. “The two missing Earthers are actually together, which is a serious stroke of luck on our part. Makes retrieving them that much easier at least.”

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“Let’s hope whoever lives here is friendly and doesn’t have them locked up as food or something,” Shia grinned, walking closer and gently placing a hand on Lumel’s shoulder. Once they were all touching, the world shifted around them as Lumel cast Mass Dimensional Shift, and they warped a few hundred feet over to a distant lily pad.

While traveling with chained casts of Lumel’s spell was safer than trying to create a second boat, it was distinctly slower. Carrying so many people so far was much more draining than casting her personal Dimensional Shift, which meant she had to pause and take breaks every so often. Not only that, but sometimes the nearest lily pad wasn’t quite in the right direction they needed to go, forcing them to zig zag their way toward the center rather than head in a straight line. The journey took them long enough that they ended up stopping for a rather lackluster lunch of trail rations at one point, but eventually, they found what they were looking for.

Or rather, the people of the fragment found them.

After warping to yet another lily pad, Vin went to help Lumel find their next target, before realizing the next closest lily pad wasn’t actually empty. In fact, it had a makeshift sail attached to the center of it not unlike what they themselves had done, and the people manning the boat were coming straight toward them. Vin could only stare at the strange-looking people as they approached, amazed by how they got around.

The people of this fragment looked like humanoid frogs, and according to his Common Ally passive, they were called warana. The warana were short and stout, only around five feet tall with large bulbous eyes, similar to the divine warrior. Thankfully, they appeared to have eyelids at the very least, as Vin still recalled being grossed out at how the divine warrior had had to lick his eyes every few seconds to keep them moist.

The most interesting thing about the warana was their ability to inflate, not at all unlike a frog back on Earth. Though while they were able to suck in enough air to expand their body nearly twice as wide, doing so served a far more interesting purpose. Vin watched as two of the warana worked in tandem behind the sail of their raft, moving together with the ease that only came from years of practice. One of them let out a powerful gust of air by exhaling, their body slowly deflating as they breathed into the sail with enough force to actually propel the boat forward. While they did that, the warana behind them rapidly reinflated their own body, sucking in air to replace that which they’d lost moments before. The moment the one breathing into the sail was out of breath, the two rotated, staying back-to-back and switching jobs. They alternated about every ten seconds, sending a near-continuous stream of wind into the sail and keeping the boat moving forward.

“That’s incredible,” Shia said, laughing as the boat shot toward them across the water. “Guess they don’t have a need for repeated casts of Create Wind when they can just do that.”

"It's also more complicated than it seems," Vin muttered, trying to make sense of what Common Ally was telling him as the distant boat grew closer. "I know it looks like they're taking in plenty of air when they inflate their bodies to double their regular size, but they're actually taking in a lot more air than they should physically be able to. I don't fully understand where the air is going, but it's a magical trait of their race. I guess that explains how they move so fast. They're basically summoning air just like I am with Create Wind."

“Greetings!” one of the warana not currently breathing into the sail called out, inflating slightly and actually croaking in greeting as they pulled up a few dozen feet away. The warana didn’t wear any sort of clothing, but Vin couldn’t tell for the life of him if the person he was speaking to was a man or a woman. They had green-ish blue skin that looked almost slimy to the touch, and other than the primitive spear the being was carrying, they didn’t have much else on them. “What brings you to these waters?”

“We’re looking for some of my people who got lost,” Vin said, seeing no reason why they should hide the fact. “They look like me, and would have appeared in your waters within the last day or so. Do you happen to know where they are?”

“Yes, more strange dry-folk,” the warana said, pointing off in the distance with its spear. “We found one of them drifting in the water two days ago, and the other lying on a pad yesterday. Neither of them were able to speak, so we brought them back to the gathering to try and figure out what to do with them.”

“That’s fantastic, thank you for helping them,” Vin said, letting out a sigh of relief at the good news. Guess they didn’t get warped together after all if they were found in totally different locations. “Can you bring us back to your gathering as well so we can get them?”

“Fine by us,” the warana said. “I am Tud, Fisher for my people. These are Murk and Pin, Sailors of my pad. Who are you?”

“I’m Vin, an Explorer,” Vin said, before going down the line. “This is Shia, a Druid. Scule and Reginald, a Rogue and his companion. And Lumel, a Mage. We actually have one other person with us, but we were attacked and they were dragged off by one of the shark monsters. Long story, but she doesn’t actually need to breathe and… can’t really die, exactly. Do you know how we can get her back?”

“You have someone who can’t die?” Tud repeated, slowly blinking at the news. “If you point us in the right area, we can hunt and kill monsters for you. Retrieve your strange friend that does not make sense. Is it possible to learn this undying skill?”

“It’s not a skill, it will make sense once you see her,” Vin said, hopping over to their boat as Murk and Pin carefully brought their pads together. “Thank you again for all your help. If there’s anything we can do to repay you, feel free to ask.”

“We are simple worker warana, but maybe the gathering has an idea,” Tud said, openly staring at them and their strange forms as they boarded his pad. He seemed particularly interested in Scule and Reginald, who made sure to stick quite close to their larger teammates. “Those two… not bait, but friends?”

“No, not bait,” Shia said, trying and failing to contain her laugh as Scule glared at her. “Though I bet Scule would be fantastic at attracting fish in a pinch!”

“Keep laughing, elf, you’re going to wake up one of these days with a lot less eyelashes,” Scule threatened.

“They’re friends,” Vin confirmed, deciding to jump in before things could devolve any further. “Please, could you bring us to the others like me?”

“Okay,” Tud said, turning toward his companions and pointing with his spear. “Full breath ahead! Back to the gathering!”