Zack clutched his mangled feet and continued to try not to cry out "Argh, when are those medics getting here!?"

  Akma floated right next to him on the surface of the water, his spikey black hair seemingly unaffected "They have a lot to do since there was a battle recently, and you are in a very inaccessible location. They are not coming."

  Zack bellowed, unleashing the agony that he had felt over eight hours "Then WHAT should I do with these!?" he jabbed a finger towards his feet as he gritted his teeth.

  Akma simply said "Cut them off, you'll get them back once you use a skill given to you by Eidolan Symbiosis: Okwarg"

  Zack said aloofly "Interesting name." he smirked "Okwarg"

  "Do you know how hard translating is for languages that have nothing in common? The Okwarg don't even use sound, they vibrate different areas of the water using Hydrokinesis in order to form language."

  Zack activated Eidolan Symbiosis: Hroyd to gain razor sharp claws and with an anguished cry he cut off his mangled feet.

  A few minutes later a relieved sigh passed through Zack's lips "Finally. It seems that one of our new squid friends managed to become an Eidolan."

  Akma commented "The eldest I believe, that's not surprising. He even made good time. Oh, you should know that he's blind from spending so much time in the dark depths."

  "Terrific."

  "Listen Zack. You know how the Eidolan Symbiosis skill works right?"

  "Yeah I do. The skill allows me to bring my body's form closer to that of the Eidolan I've contracted. So that once I'm done transforming I'm somewhere in between mine and theirs."

  Akma nodded "Good. Now what you need to know is that both the Poirauds and Hroyd have animalistic features, like being warm blooded. On the other hand, using Eidolan Symbiosis: Okwarg is going to be so much worse for numerous reasons. The first being that these squid people don't have a skeletal structure. Their blood has several different hemoglobins and several anti-freezes. Instead of lungs they have three hearts."

  "Wait. What? So what's going to happen when I use Eidolan Symbiosis: Okwarg? How am I supposed to breathe wth no lungs?"

  "Your lungs will turn into hearts during the transformation. As for your oxygen intake, you will absorb it into your skin from the water."

  "This is really going to suck isn't it."

  Akma nodded.

  "Then lets get to it."

  "You can always wait until after the mission is over to do this. We don't want you to run out willpower during the transformation."

  Zack shook his head "No. I need Hydrokinesis for taking the sphere overhead but more importantly I need to get in tune with the Okwarg's memories."

  "That sounds like an excuse. What's the real reason?"

  Zack smirked "It's not like I have any goals or anything, it's just that I believe in gathering strength as a matter of prudence."

  "There will alway's be things that you cannot contend with no matter how much strength you gather. Even Akmadouric knows this."

  Zack shot Akma a look and took a deep breath in preparation for the transformation, then formed the connection to the Okwarg leader and flooded his body with the Spiritual Ether that had been inside the newly made Eidolan. His skin turned thick and rubbery. At first the pain wasn't so bad but when his skeleton started melting into the rest of his body he screamed. His piercing cry was cut off almost immediately as the airway in his throat closed up. His vision began to turn black as his eyes became blind. A twisting pain in his chest shot through him as his lungs turned into hearts.

  Just as he finished the transformation he succumbed to unconsciousness.

  Zack woke up in darkness. His eyes were open yet he saw nothing 'Oh that's right. I'm blind in this form.'

  He began to test out his new body, starting by moving what had become his arms. They had split open into many octopus like tentacles. He clenched to turn them into melon sized fists as hard as rock even though there were no bones in it. Moving on, he wriggle the tentacles that had replaced his mouth. It felt wholy disturbing alien and wrong, but Zack knew that gaining new appendages was a part of being an Eidolan contractor. His feet had also split apart to form more octopus tentacles, although they all seemed to be missing their ends.

  Then he felt that he was underwater but it was more than that, the water was a part of him, telling him what it came into contact with. Zack expanded his sphere of influence and the water he controlled, where it met the water under the influence of the Okwargs around him.

  One of them spoke "He's become a tide caller and so quickly too."

  "Yes, but he is as weak as a spawnling."

  Zack tried to talk but found that he no longer had a mouth. Just a face full of tentacles. He tried to send a message to them through the Eidolan network but it didn't seem like they had yet to connect via consciousness, the only new addition was the fifty foot tall Okwarg leader.

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  Zack asked him "What's your name?"

  Akma took a moment to translate The leader replied "This one calls himself Meryuik"

  "How's the Spiritual Ether?"

  "It's...warm. But I cannot see anything, there is no water here."

  Hroyd said "If you feel a bit too hot you should run in the opposite direction or enter the physical realm. There are a few dangers within it."

  Zack's attention piqued "You never told me about any danger within the Spiritual Ether."

  Hroyd said "You're not an Eidolan, so you didn't need to know. Even if you do have a presence within the Ether."

  "And I'm just finding out about this now?"

  "Relax, you're just a beacon to those you have contracted."

  Zack said across the link "What I need to know is everything there is to the Spiritual Ether. But at this moment I need to know how to use Hydrokinesis."

  After a moment, Meryuik said "For me it was like a muscle that got stronger as I exercised. For you I have no idea how it will work. You can figure that out for yourself, just as we all have."

  Zack extended his control over the water to it's maximum, which seemed to be twenty feet. What he could feel was about a hundred in every direction. After a few minutes of moving the water around himself and flying through the water. Suddenly, he lost influence and felt himself getting thrown about the currents. Then the water ceased moving and Zack had to reorient himself. A few of the other Okwargs swam past.

  'I guess they're just playing with me.'

  The tentacles that had replaced his mouth moved as he tried to say "Hey Akma. How do I communicate with them?"

  "Don't worry, my Translation skill allows me to understand the meaning of any language. Although it's Akma swam next to him and said "What do you wish to say?"

  "Chase me."

  Akma then showed him a pattern in the water to vibrate in order to convey his message.

  His new water feeling sense saw them swim about in a flurry of movement.

  Zack commented "They seem like they got the message." then formed a torpedo shape of water around himself and flew through the sea with the speed of a marlin.

  He kept his lead for about ten seconds, and then four of the Okwarg passed him on all sides, each using their one unique style of Hydrokinesis swimming. One used a spiral technique to twist through the water like a screw. The Okwarg below opened up a series of unpressured spaces ahead of him so that the deepwater pressure naturally pushed him forward. The one closest to the surface created an air tunnel and slid along the bottom.

  He tried doing all three of the techniques that the Okwarg showed him. The twist seemed to be the easiest, although it was disorienting after a short time. He wasn't capable of doing the air tunnel slide because the skin on his body in Eidolan Symbiosis: Okwarg form seemed to have more friction to it than the Okwargs themselves. The pressure technique quickly became his preferred method of travel in deep water. It reminded Zack of Earth's modern day torpedos, which were basically missiles that blew air bubbles from their tips.

  Zack dove down to see how far he could go, how much pressure he could take. Two hundred feet. Three hundred. He found the bottom at four hundred. It's smoothness told him that it was the same type of metal floor as he had seen throughout the mechanical planet.

  As he progressed with his exploration he began to see upraised ridges along the sea floor. Out of curiosity at the oddity, he stopped to observe it for awhile.

  The Okwargs noticed him stopping and turned back to talk to him "What are you doing little one?"

  "Based on what I know about the thinking of Cybernetic intelligences, everything in this place must have some kind of purpose. I want to know what the purpose of this random ridge in the middle of the sea floor is."

  "It rises and lowers. We know nothing more."

  A thought struck Zack and he spoke to his newly aquired Eidolan across his network "Meryuik, can you give me a map of the sea floor? It needs to be as detailed as possible."

  The fifty foot tall Okwarg asked "How?"

  "Think about it and then tap into the network."

  As his mind became flooded with the knowledge of thousands upon thousands of miles of seafloor, Zack realized he had made a mistake "STOP! Slow down the flow of information."

  The stream of information stopped for a moment, then started up again, this time it came in manageable bursts. Zack realized that was simply the speed of the great Okwarg's thoughts.

  After taking a few minutes to make sense of it all, Zack said "Akma, call up that specialist."

  Akma replied "For what reason? He is busy figuring out the complexities of this mechanical planet. He has requested that he not be disturbed unnecessarily."

  "I think I may have just found another puzzle piece."

  A screen appeared before him that showed a telephone and rang, Akma said "The specialist Mukop should be on in a minute or two."

  Zack decided to spend the time accelerating Regrow, but after a few seconds his willpower pool drained to almost half and the feeling was just indescribably wierd. So he stopped.

  Before long, one of the specialists whose job was to solve the complex mechanical puzzle that spanned the whole planet "Zackery Taylor? Wow, you've certainly changed a lot in such a short span of time. Oh, I see that you're an Eidolan contractor. Well, I've seen more extreme shifts during my time in Akmadouric's army."

  "There are pressure plates all along the sea floor."

  Mukop's purple lips curled upward and he laughed "Sorry, it's just that the voice Akma chose for you while you're in that form sounds funny to my ears."

  Zack's enlarged eye twitched in annoyance at the little blue prankster "Anyway, I'm thinking that these pressure plates inadvertently trigger whenever the Okwarg use Hydrokinesis. Which then cause this mechanical planet to reconfigure in some way."

  "I've just had an epiphany, the moons in orbit. I was wondering what they were for this whole time. They shift the tides so they incrementally press down the plates in cycles. Just sit tight for now, we are going to have to map out each plate so we can know what each of them do. I will send instructions to you soon."