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Elise is the last person to emerge from the depths. She practically begged
one of the other hunters to come with them, but they refused. They said they
didn’t want this anymore, and would be finding a way back or out. The
implication was that they would kill themselves, but Elise didn’t ask any
more questions. It is not her job to protect strangers. Suicide isn’t
impossible these days, but it’s much harder for most than it used to be. A
version of them will survive out there somewhere unless they don’t want it
to.
So she went into the fountain behind the others. She didn’t have to put any
effort into swimming. It was like the water sucked her down before pushing
her back out at full speed. It was really hot for a minute there too. Now
she’s in the torrent of the open water with no land in sight. She appears to
be completely alone.
She feels a pair of hands on her chest. “Elise! We thought you were lost!”
Elise can’t even tell who it is amidst the chaos of the storm raging above
them. She turns around to find Colley. “Where are we? Where are the others?”
she cries.
“Get on my back!” he shouts back. “We found something!”
After she climbs on and straddles his hips, he breaststrokes away. They end
up traveling pretty far. It’s a wonder, really, how he managed to find her
at all.
At last, she sees the others. They’re huddled together, and
staying together, which must mean they’re holding onto something.
It’s too dark to see it. Only when Colley pulls her right up and helps her
get a handhold does she realize where she is. Or she can guess, anyway. It
appears to be the crow’s nest of some kind of wooden ship. Minotaur and the
Bidan girl are standing in it, on either side of the pole thing. Everyone
else is holding onto the railing thing so they at least don’t have to waste
energy treading.
The irony is that Elise was just about to start learning how to sail
one week after Rage found her in Skilldome. She saw underwater basketweaving
as a cute transition to it. After she mastered a regular basket, she was
intending to weave a model of a ship, and then she would take it with her to
the docks. It was going to be this whole thing. To be fair, she was going to
learn 21st century sailing at first, and only maybe make her way down
the centuries after that, but it doesn’t matter, because now she knows
nothing. It’s a pole thing and a railing thing until someone tells her
exactly what they’re called.
They spend hours there, because there’s nothing else they can do. Before
Elise arrived, Zelda reportedly climbed up to the very tippy-top to get a
look around, but the waves were too big and the moon too obscured by clouds.
There are some waterfronts in Treasure Hunting Dome. There are plenty of
challenges to be completed involving the water. But it doesn’t have anything
like this. Elise knows that because Rage made them memorize as much of the
layout of the dome as is publicly available. You need space to make the kind
of storm and angry sea that they’re dealing with right now, and where they
were before simply doesn’t have it. But two domes have exactly that. One is
called Polar Tropica. It’s a gargantuan resort. The other...is Aquilonian
Deep.
Miracle must not have been lying. Time travel is real, and they just came
out of a portal. They didn’t simply jump into the fountain and sink to
another level of Treasure Hunting Dome, or even the next dome over. They
were sent halfway across the planet in the short amount of time they could
hold their breaths. Now anything’s possible.
The seven of them take turns standing up while everyone else holds onto the
sides. They are able to yell a few things at each other, but it’s too loud
to have full on conversations. Elise explains that she stayed behind to try
to convince the other hunter to come with them. Zelda confirms the time
travel when she explains that she was here alone for a few minutes before
the next person bobbed up. Each time someone new appeared, they reported
that only seconds separated them at the fountain, even though minutes passed
for those already here. They ultimately waited almost an hour before Elise
came. When she asked them how they knew she was there in the first place,
they said lightning would strike the spot where they were just about to come
up. But Elise knows the truth. The lightning wasn’t marking the spot. They
were riding the lightning.
The storm passes, and the sun rises in the sky, no doubt programmed or
controlled by Hrockas or his Custodians. They’re dead tired, but still
alive, and everyone here still wants to fight. This whole time, ever since
the locker room, no one has brought up the fact that only one person can
win. What’s the point? Except for one person now, they’re all friends. And
the Bidan, Laise LeMaire, is quickly becoming part of the team too. Whatever
the prize is, they can surely share it one way or another. It doesn’t help
to become cutthroat now, especially not since it will take all of them to
survive this.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Laise says. “I’ve been trying to
remember the stories I was told from my home planet. I lived in a
particularly advanced region, but many others were intentionally rustic.
Some had boats like whatever we’re on top of right now. They never sank,
because while they looked antiquated, the underlying structure was more
modern. But I used to date one guy who grew up on one of these ships, and he
talked about the real past—I’m giving you way too much background.
I’m saying they had ways to lift sunken boats. It wasn’t easy, but it didn’t
require gizmos or gadgets either. But we do need a lot of barrels, and even
more patience.”
Without even asking for Laise to elaborate, Zelda volunteers to dive down to
see how many barrels the boat has, if any. They don’t know this woman yet,
but they trust that she wants to survive as much as they do, even if she has
stopped caring about winning. Elise volunteers to go down too, because while
she never had the chance to learn to sail, she absolutely knows how to
freedive. It was one of the first things she practiced when she came to this
planet. They search all over, but only find twenty.
“That’s not enough,” Laise says, shaking her head. “You said there were
cannons down there too? That’s not enough. We would need at least twice
that.”
“What if we got rid of the cannons,” Colley suggests. “While we’re at it,
get rid of the chains and the big metal grate thing. Take out everything
unnecessary.”
“I am not good enough at math to know whether that would work,” Laise
admits. “The guy said forty. I guess I don’t really know what kind of boat
he was talking about.”
“What exactly do we do with these barrels?” Rage asks her.
Liaise sighs. “We attach them to the bottom of the boat, and then we pump
the water out. Once they’re all filled with air, they should lift the boat
out of the water.”
They stare at her like they can’t believe their ears. It sounds insane, and
insanely grueling. Elise saw where they are, though. They’re sitting on the
edge of a sea shelf, and there is no other land in sight. Their only hope is
to get this bucket out of the water so they can stand. They’ll figure out
how to move it after that. If this doesn’t work, they could die from
exposure. But not starvation or scurvy. The barrels are evidently filled
with fruit. There’s no drinking water, though, so they take a vote. Either
they go for it, or let themselves die just to escape and give up. It’s
unanimous.
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