Kade gave him one last squeeze, then gingerly released him. Florian leaned his head up to kiss him, their lips cold from the wind as they met. The kiss was tentative and nervous; but feeling Kade against him still helped ground Florian, assuaging his nerves, if only for a moment. When they parted, Florian kept his arms around Kade for a moment longer, savoring the sensation of his partner in his embrace. If he committed it to memory, he thought, maybe it would make it easier to get through the next day, knowing this was what he was coming back to.
“See you tomorrow,” he finally whispered, letting his arms fall to his sides. Kade nodded, watching him take a step away in the sand, then another. Florian joined Rune standing just beyond the tide’s reach.
“All good?” she said softly, the teasing tone gone from her voice. For all her bravado, Florian was sure that she was just as apprehensive about their mission as he was, which somehow made him feel a little better.
“Yeah,” he sighed, flexing his toes in the cold, rocky sand. Getting in was always the worst part. “Ready?”
Rune reached over and smacked his back. “Let’s go.” Without waiting for him to answer, she sprinted across the short length of sand and into the water. Florian sucked in a deep breath and followed her, though at a decidedly slower pace. Part of him wanted to look back, but he knew if he did, he very well might lose his nerve. So he kept his eyes down on the sand until his feet plunged into the cold surf, then the icy water was all he could focus on.
“Shit,” he hissed, but kept on until the water reached his waist. Rune had plunged in ahead of him and was already shifting—the cold water became far more bearable when he wasa sea creature, but the actual process of shifting was still just as unappealing as ever. It didn’t exactly hurt anymore, but the sensation of his body suddenly growing eight limbs and being thirty times bigger than before was disorienting beyond all reason.
But he grit his teeth and started shifting as he waded into the ocean, powering through the discomfort until he was pulling himself deeper into the water with his tentacles, and the frigid sea now felt temperate against his slimy skin.
Before submerging himself entirely, Florian tilted his body so one huge eye peered up out of the water, looking back towards the shore. His vision was not as good in this form, but he could still make out the forms of Kade and Koji. The taller one, Kade, raised his hand and waved. Florian lifted one of his appendages out of the water and gave a small wave in return, then turned away to dive down into the deeper water where Rune was waiting for him.
“Let’s go,” he sighed, swimming past her without waiting for a response. The sooner they were out in the deep, the less he would dwell on leaving Kade behind. Rune hesitated behind him for a moment, as if wanting to say something, but she remained silent and instead followed him at a short distance.
The first leg of the journey was a familiar one—they had planned out the route that they would take ahead of time and had ventured a few hours out from the village in that direction to scout it out and get acclimated to the environment. They’d gone six hours out and six hours back, so the first leg of the journey was a well-known path, though the water was dark and featureless for the majority of their travels.
The most interesting parts of the journey were shipwrecks that had long since settled at the bottom of the sea. A few hours in Florian spotted the familiar small fishing boats that were coated with barnacles and surrounded by fish; but a much larger, oldership marked the furthest they had ventured—like a massive pirate ship out of a story, Florian thought.
When they first reached it during a practice run, Rune had explained that the ship was from before the Blight, manned by invading fae and sunk by kraken warriors. But she’d been unsure which court the fae came from, which only made Florian more curious about it. It was too overgrown with barnacles and coral for any defining features to be visible; but like the others, it seemed to be its own little ecosystem, teeming with sea life that barely seemed to notice them passing by. They didn’t have time to inspect it then, but when they finally came upon it six hours into their journey, he kept his gaze on it until it disappeared from sight. Now, they were truly in unknown waters.
“Here we go,” Rune commented simply as the shipwreck passed from their sight.
“You’re sure you know where we’re going?” Florian wondered, only half-teasing. They obviously couldn’t bring a map, but Rune had meticulously planned out their route and claimed she could navigate from the feel of the water alone. Florian was dubious, but considering krakens could innately communicate through telepathy, he supposed there was more that they could do with some training and effort.
“I’m sure,” she replied, mirth in her voice. “You’re just gonna have to trust me.”
He followed without protest; for all their teasing, she was entirely correct. Without her leading him, he would have no idea where they were or how to get to the Arrow.
The surrounding scenery changed subtly the longer they went. They passed by what looked like coral reefs and strange rock formations, different sorts of fish and other sea creatures swimming nearby. Florian saw a few sharks, and distantly spotted what looked like a pod of whales. Every creature gavethem a wide berth once they realized their massive forms were, in fact, other sea creatures.
But in between the strange and interesting sights was a lot of murky, empty water; and that gave Florian time to dwell, which was never good. For the first several hours of the journey, it mostly gave him the opportunity to think about how nervous he was; but the longer they went, the more hyper-aware he was of how his body felt traveling this far. Some of his muscles were becoming sore, similar to how his feet would hurt when he walked all day. How much worse would it be when they’d been traveling for twelve, sixteen, even twenty hours? The thought made his mind go numb with dread.
“Slow down,” Rune suddenly said, startling him from his thoughts. “I don’t know what that is up ahead.”
They floated motionlessly for a moment, Florian peering through the dim water. There was a large shape up ahead, indistinct from this distance—it was long and narrow, like an eel, but surely massive if it were that obvious from so far away. Were giant eels a thing? Maybe it was a Blighted creature, which made him nervous. If he could have, he would have been sweating.
“Shit, I think it’s coming closer,” Florian blurted as the shape undulated. Without waiting for Rune to respond, he swam a short distance away, as if they could somehow hide from the creature. Rune hesitated, then followed him.
The creature seemed to move in a straight line as it swam in their direction, but not directly at them. As it drew nearer, Florian realized that while it looked like an eel, he wasn’t sure what exactly it was: its front was covered in what looked like whiskers, or perhaps thin tentacles like a jellyfish. It was a mottled orange color with a strangely ruffled fin along its top, and a long tail that ended with stringy protrusions similar to the whiskers on its face. Its eyes were more rectangular than round, and Florian had the distinct sense it was watching themcuriously as it swam past; but it didn’t approach them and continued on its way without incident.
They watched it go for a little while, until finally Florian wondered, “What the heck was that?”
Rune chuckled. “No idea. At least it wasn’t a Blight monster, though, huh?”
That was a small relief. They started swimming again, in what Florian hoped was the right direction.
They saw more and more strange creatures the further they went, some of which Rune recognized, but most of which were entirely alien to both of them. Luckily, as the Blight didn’t reach this far down into the water, none of them seemed to be hostile monsters. They were just strange and different, much like the deep-sea creatures on Earth—their environment was extreme, but not Blighted. All in all, Florian considered, it could have been a lot worse.
Still, exhaustion was setting in, though Florian was sure that they were only twelve or thirteen hours in at most. His body was sore all over—not the muscle soreness of constantly moving, but the full-body sensation of his magic being strained. When he and Rune had held their shifted forms for eighteen hours, he had felt a similar tiredness around the same point, so he knew he could hold his form for a long while yet; but it was still miserable to know there was no relief in sight.
He found himself missing Kade, which was silly. There was no way Kade could help him now, but still, the thought of being together made Florian feel like this whole ordeal might have been a little more bearable. Everything seemed a little less daunting when Kade was with him.
“Florian, I canhearyou feeling sorry for yourself back there,”Rune called from ahead of him, her tone only partly teasing. He paused, embarrassed, but she chuckled. “Let’s talk about something else, hm? I’m tired too. We could use a distraction.”
“Talk about what?” he asked, surging forward to catch up with her.
