Aikel felt the force of the shock wave slam into his back and send him flying. As the bulk of force sped past him, he fell all of two inches and landed on something soft. As he did so, he gasped and felt his lungs fill with something solid. He sat up and forced it back out only to instinctively inhale it again.

He felt scales press against his face and arms subdue his head. He fought in vain against the grasp and had something small hard and vile-tasting put down his throat in the same way one gives medicine to animals.

As the arms relented, he thrashed in panic. By the time he felt free, he’d become dizzy. The blues, greens, and purples surrounding him spun, and he collapsed back on what he assumed was a bed. He lay there gasping for liquid-like breath and stared at what seemed most likely to be the ceiling. It was a deep purple. Once his vision slowed its spinning, he saw that it looked porous, like a giant sponge. Whether it was really porous or if it just had odd black shapes painted on it to make it look so, he couldn’t tell….

Still inhaling forcefully, he sat up slowly and look around. The bed was covered in navy-blue cloth that billowed about as he moved it. The wall a few feet beyond the end of the bed was the same texture as the ceiling, but it was colored lavender. The floor was dark green and mossy-looking. There were crystalline pyramids jutting from the floor in regular intervals, and they emitted the purple glow that lit the room.

Aikel turned his head left. There was an identical but much tidier bed a few feet away. On the right side of each bed, there was a roughly cylindrical mound of porous rock that looked to be pink prior to the purple lighting. A woman stood just beyond the second bed. She had one hand, which was covered in a glove of turquoise scales, on the rock—the rocks were flat on top and were probably meant to be tables—and her fingers were wrapped around the hilt of a dagger. He long green hair seemed weightless, for it floated about her as if submerged in water…. She looked at Aikel warily, as if wondering whether or not he’d attack her. Had be been able to command his limbs properly, he probably would’ve lunged at her without thinking.

There was a large round opening in the wall beyond the woman. It seemed like a door despite its shape. A girl—green-haired, like the woman—hopped through the opening and drifted down to a landing on the floor. She put her scale-covered hands on her hips and spoke to the woman in strange words using a tone full of exasperation. The woman turned and growled back in similar words. She was clearly angered by what the girl had said, and she pointed he dagger at Aikel.

Just as the girl was about to respond, a third voice piped up. This one was the most disturbing, for though the words were strange, the voice was very familiar. "Fera?!" Pegasus demanded, coming up to hover beside the girl. "Kippey panton wa ferax a ferani; ferani teneo nihilum alioki! Alikise forsa actian asper to ferax illeto en la eliyan prass, nis tu an domushi. Curi tu actian bardu fera?" He was speaking clumsily, and he put emphasis on "fera." His wings flapped at less that half the speed they would’ve had to keep him in the air the way he was….

The woman’s eyes flashed with anger and she whirled to face the girl and Pegasus. She rose, and Aikel saw that the scales below her waist were not a garment but a long sleek fish-like tail that left no room for legs. She yelled at Pegasus and held her dagger up.

"Ei wa Pegasus lev Hanetsuno!" Pegasus growled back. "Tu no koroshi a yei!"

I am Hanetsuno’s Pegasus! Aikel couldn’t understand the rest, nor could he comprehend how he’d picked up the first part… or what the first part actually meant.

Aikel attempted to fling himself from bed, but his limbs moved sluggishly and he stumble. He fell slowly and made a soft landing with his knees upon the mossy floor. Pegasus’s scowl melted into a smile as he approached. He spoke in the strange words he’d used before.

Aikel tried to say, "What?" but the unairy substance he breathed made no sound save gurgling as he pushed it out his throat.

"Can’t you swim?" Pegasus asked. He giggled. "Just because you don’t have a tail like the merfolk doesn’t mean you have to drift along like dead fish bait."

It’s water, Aikel realized. The temperature of the water surrounding him was similar to his body temperature. He swung his arm, felt the water push against his palm and slide through his fingers. He noticed there was a glowing blue band around each of his wrists. He fingered one and looked at questioningly at Pegasus.

"Don’t take those off," Pegasus said, "or you’ll drown."

Aikel cast a wary glance at the girl—she had scaled arms and legs with webbed hands and feet, but no tail—and the mermaid again, before he looked to his right for the first time. There were four other beds in the room. Kyri’s prostrate form was spread out on the nearest one, Yousei was curled up on the next one, and Himeki lay on her back with her hands over her chest on the third. Gelrini was on her side on the furthest bed, which led Aikel to conclude that his companions had been forced into unconsciousness by whatever way he had. Had Gelrini gone to sleep by her own will, she would have preferred to remain standing. Unicorn, the only one who was awake, sat silently beside Kyri’s head.

"Hold your breath a bit and keep your mouth shut tight," Pegasus told Aikel. After about ten seconds of obeying this, Aikel was allowed to breath again, but it felt like there was something sticky trying to glue his lips together. He notice that Pegasus seemed to have a bubble shoved into his mouth. "You ought to be able to talk now," Pegasus told him. He remained silent for lack of something to say.

"Au tu—" the mermaid girl began but cut herself off. She corrected with, "You do know what happened you yelv friend?"

"What?" Aikel asked, feeling lost.

The girl started to repeat herself but turned to looked at Pegasus helplessly instead.

"She’s asking if you know what kind of poison they gave to Himeki," Pegasus said to Aikel.

"She was poisoned?" Aikel squeaked. He turned back to look at her. Her pale elven skin was far too white. If she was breathing, she was breathing too lightly for the rise and fall of her chest to be visible at Aikel’s distance. She looked cold and lifeless.

"It’s okay, she’s recovering," said Pegasus, "but if you knew what kind of poison, they could make her better faster…. But I guess you don’t…?"

Aikel reluctantly scanned his memory of what happened on the ship. "No, I don’t…. But I remember her saying something about not being able to move."

"Like she was paralyzed or like she was weak?"

"I don’t know."

Pegasus repeated this information to the girl and mermaid in their own language. The girl only nodded thoughtfully. Pegasus added something else with the slight traces of a grin.

"Why would they poison her?" Aikel asked, feeling like he was talking to himself. "They didn’t poison the rest of us, did they?"

"No, be grateful," Pegasus mumbled, making Aikel shudder.

"Th… that sorceress said something to her about her father…."

"I’d guess Himeki’s father is someone politically important. I have a theory or two on that, but there’s no point in talking about what I’m not sure of…."

Aikel jumped upon a choking sound. He turned back around to see Gelrini as she began to scream and thrash around on her bed. Her legs became tangled and impaired by the blanket, which only made her panic all the more and scream louder.

The mermaid flicked her tail and flew over the beds. She hovered hesitantly over Gelrini and seemed hesitant to approach such a strange and apparently violent creature. She shook Gelrini’s shoulder in hopes of bringing her to her senses. It took quite a fight for the mermaid to shove the little purple rock or whatever it was down the centaur’s throat. The girl had come up beside Pegasus and Aikel in the meantime, and she mumbled something to herself.

"Maybe when Kyri or Yousei wake up, you should give them that medicine instead," Pegasus suggested to Aikel as the mermaid retreated and pressed herself against a wall to distance herself from Gelrini. Aikel noticed painfully that he did not mention Himeki. "It’d save them a lot of panic, it’d save Belcis a lot of grief, and it’ll save us a lot of grief because we won’t have to listen to her complaining about her grief…."

Gelrini’s screams melted into the loud sob-halted wails of a child in distress. Aikel nearly ran over the scaled girl on his way to Gelrini’s bedside. Seeing that she was trying to get into an upright position, he helped her onto the floor. Her legs wobbled beneath her, and she wrapped her arms around his waist.

She cried, "I thought people with two legs like you were scary, but that thing has no legs at all!" but the sentence was muffled by Aikel’s shirt and torso.

Pegasus managed to understand her and said, "I have no legs at all… am I scary?"

Gelrini sniffed. "No… You’re small and soft like a toy…." She released Aikel and plucked Pegasus from the place where he floated to hug him—far too tightly, judging by his face. After a few minutes, her crying settled down to quiet sobs.

Since it wasn’t the first time he’d been forced to get along with Kyri, Aikel managed to give her one of the purple things in a kinder way than the mermaid would have. She didn’t get any more of an explanation of her surroundings than Aikel did before she was asked to give the medicine to Yousei. Everyone noticed Puddles’s presence for the first time when Yousei first started to stir, as the pixie had apparently been hiding in its master’s hair.

Aikel was gradually able to understand Pegasus’s speech in the other language, but the girl and the mermaid were just as incomprehensible as when he’d first heard them. Pegasus spoke with the girl about when Himeki should wake up. Whatever the girl answered with was discouraging. Kyri was inspecting Himeki, but half of her attention was focused on what they were saying, though it didn’t seem like she could understand any of it.

After piecing together what everyone could tell him, Pegasus took up the task of explaining what had happened. Yousei had summoned Puddles just a few seconds before Lhecerbi used her magic to cause an explosion. The explosion knocked most of them out, but Unicorn was apparently only knocked silly, and Puddles seemed to miss it all. The blast was causing the ship to sink, so Puddles dove underwater in hopes of finding help. She found a mermaid hunting party, whose leader was apparently a member of the royal family. They’d been coming to inspect the shipwreck anyway. There was a gap in the information here, but once it picked up again, it had apparently been decided that they would not achieve the same fate as most shipwrecked land dwellers—slavery. Pegasus said they must have recognized their cause and wanted to help, or at least not impede, but Aikel muttered that that seemed pretty farfetched. The orders from whoever was in charge were that they were to stay in the inn, which Gyozoki and Belcis—Pegasus apologized profusely for not introducing the girl and mermaid before—were running while their mother was away.

"If you want to be technical," Pegasus said, "we’re technically in the ‘prisoner’ category."

"Technically," Aikel grumbled, rolling his eyes.

Belcis and Gyozoki had both left during the explanation. After glancing around as if to make sure they weren’t there, Pegasus said, "Gyozoki told me that her mother was a mage of sorts. By ‘of sorts,’ I mean she was very gifted in magic and yet had no training. She decided to carry on the family business at the inn instead of getting a magic-related career, and all the people—women, I should say—that did have magic-related careers thought it was a waste."

"So…?" Aikel asked, wondering if it was relevant.

"She was so gifted that she has a… a… an…. Gah! Unicorn, what’s it called?!"

"Aura sense," Unicorn supplied.

"She had an aura sense!" Seeing Aikel, Kyri, and Yousei look confused, Pegasus explained, "That’s where you can sense external magic sources. It’s not so common among humans, but it is among elves and faeries, along with mermaids to a lesser extent. So since Gyozoki’s mother has an aura sense, she was asked to help the sorceresses investigate on some sudden increase of magical activity that was, um, somewhere. That’s why she’s away right now.

"I asked Gyozoki about it some more, and she told me it that it had to do with some underwater temple that was built in ancient times and had something to do with the last world war…. She couldn’t tell me much more since neither she nor anyone she knows cares much for magic or history…. You know where I’m going with this, don’t you, Unicorn?"

"Yes," said Unicorn, "now turn around and come back." He stuttered in defiance, but she said, "We don’t have the strength for this. Last time it was an emergency, but if any orcs survived the chaos on the ship, they drowned afterwards. We need to get back to Nalya. Don’t we still need to deliver a letter?"

"Oh, they’ve sent somebody else by now!" Pegasus grumbled. "Do want to have to come back down here again after you get back on land?"

"It’s better than not getting back to land in the first place."

They spent several minutes arguing about necessity and time versus danger and prior obligations without bothering to tell anyone what it was they were discussing… but Aikel knew. He’d seen them both glance to western wall many times, and he felt like he was being pulled in that direction. He placed his hand over the Flame Orb, felt its warmth….

Yousei was sitting on the end of her bed cradling Puddles and watching the two bicker as if she understood also. Aikel saw her glance at the door and perk up. He turned around and saw Gyozoki standing in the doorway, leaning against the edge. She watched Pegasus and Unicorn with a thoughtful but troubled expression.

"Uh…" Aikel mumbled. Despite his nearly nonexistent volume, it was enough for Pegasus and Unicorn to glance over at him, follow his gaze, and spot Gyozoki.

The room was silent for several awkward seconds. Gyozoki looked away and bit her lip, but she didn’t seem to mind being noticed. She locked eyes with Pegasus and quietly asked a short to-the-point question in her own language.

"I…I…" Pegasus stuttered. He composed himself and spoke in her words, "I really don’t know. I don’t know what she’s doing."

Unicorn took the time to whisper, "She asked ‘Is my mother in danger?’" for the benefit of those who didn’t understand.

"I shouldn’t think so," Pegasus was saying, "I mean, she wouldn’t be taking anything from the temple, right?"

Unicorn sighed. Gyozoki bit her lip, turned her face away, and was silent.

Aikel not only felt pulled to the west, but pushed as well.

Gyozoki turned and swam out of sight without another word.

Pegasus gave Unicorn a meaningful look before averting his eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, only to close it again. Pegasus asked quietly, "What good is the whole if you’ve forsaken the part?"

After a moment, Unicorn answered in a nearly inaudible voice, "This decision is not ours alone to make…. I will follow without hindering…."

Pegasus looked at Aikel and saw him fingering the empty space in one of his medallions and staring at the western wall as if he were observing something far beyond it.

"Mama…" Kyri mumbled.

Aikel shuddered. "Let’s go…."