Rose-Tinted Compass (Common, Charge 20)

  +4 Awareness

  This compass points in the general direction of living foes.

  Sharkskin Diving Suit (Rare, Charge 20)

  +4 Body, +2 Awareness

  This armored diving suit provides resistance to the Hemorrhage debuff, as well as increased resistance to piercing and slashing damage.

  I’d hoped for more.

  So had Tori, clearly. She could barely contain her annoyance, especially when Bobby took the Diving Suit and put it on right away; it shimmered with thousands of tiny scales under his white sport coat. I couldn’t begrudge him the pick, though. He’d earned it—and then some.

  “Tori, do you want that?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Alright.” I scooped up the compass and tossed it into my Warrior’s Sheath slot, filling out my items. The thing hung from my waist on a rusted chain, thumping against my thigh. It wasn’t going to be a convenient item to use—the chain was a little too short, and the nearly blood-red face made it hard to read. But it could be powerful, and right now, I needed to know what was going on more than I needed more firepower.

  I did feel my Awareness grow, though; the +4 wasn’t anything to sneeze at. It didn’t put me in competition with Bobby’s no-doubt ridiculous Awareness score, but it was a nice boost.

  “I want to know more about the team that went in here before us,” Bobby said. “They were prepared enough to get this far, and at least one of them probably survived this fight. That either means there were five or more of them, or whoever lived died later.”

  “I agree.” There wasn’t anything more to do here anyway. The Stalk of the Chthonic Abysslord’s flesh had disappeared when it died, but we hadn’t gotten loot from it, and the stump had revealed an empty alcove behind it. I was also eager to work my way through the coral maze and find the part of this place that was more aquarium and less underwater.

  We returned to the narrow ledge and the pool we’d first pulled ourselves out of. Bobby practically cut through the water with his new suit, while I found myself falling behind as we returned to hopscotching across the air pockets. This time, I noticed all the gigantic red-orange corals hanging from the bleached-white structure overhead. Every one of thom could be a Stalk of the Chthonic Abysslord.

  I made sure to swim far away from them, just in case.

  We hadn’t gone far when the first silvery flash caught my eye. I looked ahead; there had to be dozens of the knife-bladed Bar Cutters, all between Level Thirty-Four and Thirty-Eight. I tried to signal to Tori, but before I could, Bobby barreled right into the school. They exploded in every direction, scattering and revealing a single air pocket—and something floating in it. Something red and white—and shaped like a half-butchered pig. A body.

  I tried to say something. Bubbles erupted from my mouth, and I clamped my lips shut and focused on catching up to the fight.

  Bar Cutters zipped back and forth, slicing toward Bobby, who deflected them and followed up with punches to the fishes’ gills and fins. Individually, none of them did much damage, but the silver-blue school soon glowed a familiar orange. Tori was much more effective. Once she got to the air pocket, she was able to start casting her spells, Gravity Well clumping the monstrous fish up before Crush broke bones and shattered their knife-sharp beaks.

  It wasn’t over by the time I got there, but Bobby and Tori were cleaning up. I wished I’d focused more in swimming class, or that my parents had felt like lessons were important when I was younger. Then I grabbed a hold of the air pocket’s edge and readied the Trip-Hammer.

  The moment the first Bar Cutter got in range, I swung and fired; the blow was short, and the tip of the bleed dagger barely caught it. It swam away, trailing blood. I swung again, this time pulverizing a fish. By the time I was ready for a third blow, every Bar Cutter was dead.

  We collected the experience orbs quickly, splitting them roughly evenly. Tori leveled up again, and so, to my surprise, did I. I dumped both points into Charge again and swam to the surface to investigate the body.

  She’d been young—probably around my age, and certainly not as old as Jessica. She floated face-up in the water, and she wore a life jacket-looking thing. That was the only reason I could identify she was a woman at all. Every piece of skin, muscle, and fat below the waterline had been eaten.

  The parts that the Bar Cutters hadn’t devoured were heavily tattooed, but I didn’t recognize any of them as particularly gangsterish symbols. If anything, she looked more like a punk rocker and less like a criminal. That might’ve been me trying to see something positive in who she’d bee, though, and I couldn’t be sure either way. What I could be sure of was that most of her magical gear was gone. Whether it had been looted or sank to the bottom of the abyss, I couldn’t tell.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  We stood on the edge of the air pocket; it was big enough for the three of us, though there wasn’t anywhere to go. It was a safe-ish place to rest, if we discounted the stench of rot, which we were all trying our best to do.

  I wanted to know who she’d been. I wanted some sort of confirmation that this woman’s life had mattered to someone, because she’d probably died alone and in agony. But finding a wallet or something similar was likely impossible, and—

  “What’s that?” Tori asked. Her face was green, and she’d already vomited in the corner once—which hadn’t done anything for the stench in the air pocket. I followed her pointing finger, ignoring the shaking, and saw the leather pouch resting on her waist. It had obviously once been on a belt, but the belt had been chewed through.

  The one thing I absolutely didn’t want to do was touch her. It had been one thing burying Brian, but this woman’s body was in absolute tatters. Still…if there was any hint of who she’d been, something that would let us close out her life, I needed to know. I reached out with the Trip-Hammer, gently hooking the pouch with one of the dagger tips, and pulled it over to me.

  Satchel of Preserving Mists (Common, Charge 10)

  +1 Body, +4 Awareness

  This satchel increases the effectiveness of consumable items stored within it, and prevents them from spoiling due to environmental effects. Effects last for up to one hour after consumables are removed from the satchel, or one hour after the satchel is unequipped.

  You cannot equip this item.

  My first instinct was to drain it; depowering it to feed my empty Charge reserves was all the item itself was good for, and it was odd to use something like this when the inventory existed. Unless…

  “Tori, how does alchemy work in your games?” I asked as I fished inside the satchel, pulling out a vial of faintly-pink liquid, then another that was more greenish.

  “Oh, you think she might’ve been an alchemist?” Tori went off on a rant about professions and crafting. It took me a few seconds to realize that most of what she was saying wouldn’t be helpful; her knowledge was spread around at least four different games, and she kept bouncing between them almost like she needed to keep talking out of nerves. I let her rant while I dug through the woman’s purse.

  The satchel was stuffed with potions, a few bandages that looked like they’d been soaked in something, and a handful of what looked like herbs of some type. But two items stood out. The first were a pair of green, seaweed-colored blobs about the size and shape of a baby carrot. They both stank, and unlike everything else, these two had System text. She must have allowed them to be read before she died.

  Chthonic Pill (Consumable, Unstable)

  When consumed, this seaweed mixture allows the imbiber to resist great pressure, granting temporary access to the Watery Grave’s second floor.

  First created by Leana Collins of Earth.

  And just like that, I had a name for the woman: Leana Collins. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I also had confirmation that she’d been some kind of chemist or alchemist, though I still didn’t know if any of the items she’d made were safe to consume.

  Equally important, I had a hint about where we’d be heading for the Watery Grave’s second floor—and I didn’t like it, especially because we only had two of these Chthonic Pills. We’d need a third if all three of us wanted to face the Floor Two boss, and I couldn’t imagine either Bobby or Tori would want to sit it out.

  The second item showed up just as I was about to call the Satchel of Preserving Mists empty. My fingers touched the cold metal down at the very bottom, and a few links of the gold chain slipped through my fingers as I gently pulled it free.

  She’d had a heart-shaped locket; I could actually see where it had rested between her collarbones until recently from the slightly-less-tanned shape on her skin. I flicked it open, and a pair of piercing eyes, so brown they were almost black, stared at me. The man was about the same age Leana had been, Hispanic, and maybe a touch overweight—or maybe just a strong guy. I knew the type well. Not everyone who was strong looked like a bodybuilder. Some were farmer strong.

  What I didn’t have was a name. In fact, I didn’t even know if this guy was alive. It was possible, probable, even, that he’d entered the dungeon with her and he was already dead. But I couldn’t be sure.

  I pulled the Chthonic Pills and locket into my inventory. “Unless someone wants to try those potions and see what they do, I think we’ve gotten everything we can from Leana. I’ve got one more thing to do, then we should keep moving.”

  It took me a few minutes to gently pull Leana’s body out of the water and rest it on the air pocket’s shelf, and Bobby had to get back in the water as I set her on the stone. I shut her eyes, put the potions back inside the satchel, and placed it on what was left of her stomach. Leana had already given us tools to help fight the Floor Two boss, and while I couldn’t give her a burial here, I could treat her body with respect.

  But before we could do that, we had to find the second on Floor One.

  Tori hated water dungeons.

  She hadn’t beaten Ocarina of Time because of the Water Temple, and she refused to even explore the water zones in her MMOs unless the whole guild was there. The only reason she’d been excited about the Watery Grave was that it was her first Tier Two Dungeon, and she’d been seeing it as an opportunity to show Jessica that she was serious business.

  The one-hundred-percent clear that always happened when she and Hal delved together was nice, too, but it wasn’t a selling point. Proving herself to her step-mom? That would be.

  The novelty had worn off pretty quickly. Her clothes were soaked, and every step squeezed water out of her Doc Martens’ soles and into her socks. And that woman’s body…she still couldn’t get the stench out of her nose.

  So, yeah, she hated water dungeons.

  At least they were moving up—and as they climbed, the coral ledges had shifted into stairs. She felt less and less like they were in a water dungeon and more like they’d finally entered the Shedd Aquarium. Her mental map of the place was all sorts of messed up, though.

  The direction Hal was walking should have been toward the Abbott Oceanarium. Instead, the lights kept getting dimmer, and the walls, while still wide, were closing in. In a way, it reminded her of the—

  Something flashed out of a crevice high in the rough stone walls, grabbing Hal. As it ripped him off his feet, she caught a glimpse of its stat block.

  Howling Moray: Level Forty-Two Boss

  Current Difficulty: Challenging

  Then it was gone. A dozen different voices screamed as Hal was dragged into the caverns, and Tori couldn’t be sure which were the eel’s, which was Hal's, and which was hers.

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