“There is no way that I will go down there. Nothing. Never. Not a chance.”. Anise glared at the grasping waves. He flinched as another wave charged him, smashing against the rocks and its foamy fingers reaching out towards him before being dragged back into the murky depths. The waves seemed to move as though they were the ripples of some monstrous heartbeat. 

“What, you scared of a little water?” Ibbi stared incredulously as the azure stalker flinched as another tiny wave lapped gently over the rocks. 

“You do realise that we need to dive all the way down, and THEN somehow cleanse corruption from two very angry large fish snake things?” Anise’s reply was sharp and angry. His fear making the normally placid stalker lash out. “We need magic to do that. Strong magic. And Shroom is the most useless piece of slime I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting, and I don’t think Pidge even has a brain! All the while, I’ve heard that Gormlaith is part viper, those things are often venomous. And you want me to deal with a giant blue venomous snake thing underwater? And reports say that Alusaru is always followed by her minions. Creepy eel things that glow. What am I supposed to do against an army of glowing eels?”

Ibbi just blinked at him, unbothered by his anger. “This mission is important. Besides, you’re a wyvern. And you’ve got me, and two others. What could possibly go wrong?” 

Anise eyed the brightly coloured warden. The youth certainly made for an impressive figure. He was bulky, young as he was, and he towered over the other stalkers. 

Anise’s musing about exactly what could go wrong was interrupted by a loud crashing splash, and he flinched away from the icy water that he was showered with. A loud shrieking and keening noise followed. And he looked over to see a tangle of limbs and wings. From what he could tell, Pidge had probably pounced on something shiny. And Shroom… being rather partial to shiny things but with an unnerving habit of staying in the shadows and remaining unseen seemed to have pounced on it first. The result was a tangle of limbs across the dark rockpools as Pidge continued to try to get to whatever had caught her attention while Shroom tried desperately to get away from under her. 

“What could possibly go wrong?” Anise said snidely, watching Shroom and Pidge flailing around together. “Yeah, I see we cut a ferocious team”. 

Ibbi sighed, and then unleashed a roar so powerful that Anise was sent stumbling backwards from it. Various bits of seaweed fell off her. Pidge squawked and stumbled back off Shroom, who seemed to be trying to blend into the dark jagged rocks themselves. Ibbi thought about the dark water, and he thought that he could feel the corruption coming off it. A result of the corrupted rayfins lurking in its depths. He shook himself, chastizing his errant imagination. 

“Okay, enough fooling around now. You know our mission, we’re going down there and doing our best to assist the Rayfins. We have reports on the locations of ones known as Gormlaith and Alusaru. We don’t have plans for any other particular individuals, just the first one that we encounter. We will have to see what shape we are in after that first encounter and reevaluate whether we can continue, or whether we will need to pull out. Understood?” He eyed his disorderly companions.

Anise nodded reluctantly, his delicate head bobbing ever so slightly. Shroom let out a hiss that could have meant anything, and Pidge had found an enormous anemone that she was gently poking a talon into. 

Ibbi rolled his eyes to the skies and prayed to whatever gods might be listening. This was not his ideal team. But it was what he had. “On the count of three, we GO. I’ll be behind you all, and you had better hope that the corruption takes you if you hesitate. Because it will be far more pleasant than what I get up to”. 

Before any of them could respond or think about the implications he bellowed out his count, and his companions scrabbled into the water. Anise flinched visibly as he entered it. Pidge shrieked with apparent joy and made the wyvern equivalent of a cannonball, splashing water all over Shroom. Doused in cold water, Shroom was clearly reconsidering his life choices, but one quick glance backwards towards Ibbi’s face convinced him, and he slithered into the dark grey water. 

Ibbi followed his team, determined to make the best of what he had. 

The surrounding water was dark, and the group swam quickly, unconsciously bunching together. Tendrils of seaweed snaked up towards them like arms waiting to drag them down and keep them. The ocean itself was quiet. There were no fish. No signs of life beyond the ominous fingers of seaweed. As they swam deeper, the light started to filter out, and even the seaweed started to vanish. Despite himself, Ibbi shivered. And all the time, so soft that he was certain he imagined it, there was the thumping of a heartbeat. 

The group continued their journey through the depths. Within the eerie dark, he found himself wishing the rayfins would jump out at them. This waiting was giving him the chills. Even Pidge, usually oblivious, was quiet and sticking with the group. Shroom was almost invisible. Somehow managing to stick to shadows where according to all science and reason there should be none. Anise was swimming so close to him that he kept bouncing off the warden's tail. 

Just as Ibbi was about to turn and snap at the stalker, Pidge let out a hiss, her crest rising up and her tail beginning to lash. Ibbi turned to see a glow in the water. Something pink and massive was making it’s way towards them. Something that added an eerie, half-dead light to the water around it. A creeping keening song echoed through the water towards them. 

Alusaru had arrived. 

Ibbi dashed into action, trying to rally his team. He turned to give orders, only to crash head first into Anise. Pidge’s continued shrieking was deafening him. And Shroom…. Shroom was nowhere to be seen. Somehow the slimy stalker had found a place to hide in open water. It seemed impossible. There was nothing to hide behind. And he knew the stalker’s magic didn’t involve illusion. 

Before he could think about Shroom’s disappearance further, Alusaru was on top of his team (or at least the team that he could find). The pink rayfin was big. Bigger than anything he had expected. Ibbi’s head pounded with the sound of a heartbeat that deafened him enough to block out Pidge’s screeching and Anise’s cries of “I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead”. 

Despite all his talk, and scolding of Anise, Ibbi could only stare. Frozen in awe and terror. Alusaru’s heart was visible, the source of the sound. Her ribs stood out, literally, from her body. He could see them. Her great muzzle turned towards him and opened, and the thought that this must be where he died. 

And then a flying ball of feathers hit the rayfin in the side of the head, staggering it. Pidge’s little brain had acted and in the split decision between flight or fight it had chosen to fight. The small feathered stalker was smashing into the rayfin, head hissing and snapping at the ethereal eels that surrounded it. 

Snapping out of his stunned state, Ibbi shook himself and joined the fray. He had no idea where Shroom was. He put the pale stalker out of his mind and joined Pidge. Alusaru was huge. Dwarfing himself and Pidge easily. A small part of his mind started wondering where Anise was, and then he was swiped at and nearly sent spinning by one of Alusaru’s great fins. He dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding a shrieking ball of angry Pidge who was being battered about, but coming back in for more and seeming angrier and angrier each and every time. Ibbi managed to get a bite in, his teeth sinking deep into Alusaru’s flesh and was just beginning to congratulate himself as Alusaru shook him around like a dead fish when another sound reached his ears. He was struggling to hear over Alusaru’s snarling, Pidge’s shrieking and the sounds of the ocean. But it was high-pitched. And it sounded vaguely like someone shouting. Not just shouting. Screaming. And not the enraged shriek of Pidge. A terrified shout. A scream of primal terror. 

He risked a look over his shoulder and received a sharp blow to his head for his pain. As he drifted away, he had the outlandish impression that Anise was attached to the head of a great blue serpent. But that couldn’t be right. 

• -  -

Shroom was not having a good day. Not at all. It had started out well. Quite promising in fact. He had been rather unwilling to join the expedition. But had figured that he might as well make the most of it if he had to attend. Besides, Ibbi was pretty big and strong and very impressive. Pidge was…. Well. Pidge. And between the two of them, he felt they would be able to handle anything. He was ignoring Anise. 

But then Pidge had wanted to try and eat every single treasure that he had tried to collect amongst the rocks. Once they entered the ocean, he had started to calm down. Pidge had left him alone, Ibbi spent all of his time comforting Anise, and the water was getting darker and darker. He liked dark, damp spaces. Admittedly he liked them a lot more enclosed. But the inability to see further ahead than 50 feet was certainly helping make everything feel enclosed. As the group swam, he thought that he saw something glimmering in the darkness. At first, he thought that he had imagined it. But then it flickered again. Dim in the dark, but present. Curious, he swam towards it. At first, he thought that he had lost it. But then it would appear again. Each time it got brighter and stayed visible longer. Enchanted, he kept following it. It was difficult to judge the distance with nothing around in the dark waters to compare for scale. Eventually, he came up close to it, enchanted at its softly pulsing yellow. It was then he noticed another two glints. One’s suspiciously like the glint of lanternlight off an eye in the dark of the night. Curious, he ventured a little closer. And realised what he was looking at. Gormlaith was grinning at him from out of the darkness. The great water serpent’s dark blues hid it from prying eyes. Gormlaith blinked at him slowly, and his grin grew ever so slightly wider.     

They were both startled by the strange, strangled noise from behind him. It sounded as though a cat with a sore throat had just been stood on. Shroom flinched, and even Gormlaith blinked in surprise, his grin fading. Unable to help himself, and dreading the sound heralding the arrival of Alusaru he turned around. And was faced with a bedraggled Anise. Where the blue stalker had come from, he had no idea. But before he could think about it further, the memory of Gormlaith resurfaced. Unavoidable. And he turned with dread. Gormlaith too it seemed had shaken off the surprise arrival of Anise. And he was coiling up. His lithe body tensed, and he surged forward, terrible jaws open. Terrible breath emanated from between them, and he lunged past Shroom and right towards Anise. 

Afterwards, neither Shroom nor Anise could say how it happened, but somehow the stalker ended up splayed over Gormlaith’s great head. His wings blinded the leviathan. Unsure what to do, Shroom instinctively grabbed Gormlaith’s tail as it flicked past. Enraged by his Anise-shaped blindfold, Gormlaith surged forward, thrashing and it was all that Shroom could do to hold on. Anise’s screams bubbled past him, almost deafening. Well, Shroom reflected. It’s been a nice enough life. A pity that I didn’t manage to get any shinies on this voyage.

—-

Pidge was angry. Very angry. She didn’t have many thoughts at any single moment. But that just meant that the single thought that she did have could occupy the whole brain. And that left her with a literally single-minded focus. And she was determined to take out this oversized pink worm. She hadn’t liked it much to start with. And then it had knocked out her friend Ibbi. She liked Ibbi. He sometimes gave her snacks. And he was careless with his food and sometimes left it lying about, perfect to be stolen and eaten. Her whole mind and focus was on taking out the stupid big pink worm and its annoying little pink worms. And so it was a huge surprise when a blue worm barreled past her, with what she thought was her blue friend attached to its face. She also thought that she glimpsed the purple and white wyvern. But she cared a lot less about that. He kept on getting in her way whenever she tried to play with her new shinies. The blue worm kept going and crashed into the pink worm, creating a tangle of bodies and muscles. The shockwave of their collision sent her flying back through the water. As she flapped and squawked trying to regain her balance, the worms turned on each other. Biting and ripping. She wasn’t going to let them have all the fun! She threw herself right back into the fight. 

– 

The fight continued for what felt like forever. Alusaru and Gormlaith ripping and tearing, each unable to get the upper hand (or jaw?) over the other. Anise had managed to dismount Gormlaith just in time to be caught up in the collision. And he had found himself next to an unconscious Ibbi. Desperately he hovered near his friend, unsure what to do. Pidge had returned to the fray, and Shroom still hadn’t let go of Gormlaiths tail. The fight went on and on until the serpents began to tire. Their movements grew slow and laboured. Eventually, their movements ceased. The corruption had caused them to spend every single ounce of energy that they had. Ibbi was starting to come around again. Anise sighed with relief. It seemed that by some miracle they would be able to take the rayfins back to base so that the experts could work on cleansing the corruption. Now someone had to just convince Pidge that the fight had ended.