Vol4: Chapter 13 – Return to Arana

“Wow, there really is an underwater cavern where you can stand and breathe,” Cassandra said, marveling at the interior of the damp room they were standing in. This was the same room that Cobal and Mana found a year ago when they were first searching for Arana and still uncertain of its existence.
“After all this time, did you still not believe us?” Mana asked.
“Well, it’s one thing to hear about it and another to see it for yourself. I’m a visual learner.”
“I didn’t know you were a learner at all,” Cobal scoffed. He was wringing out his shirt before putting it back on.
Cassandra said something underneath her breath. She then pulled a lantern from her pack. “Let’s see if this thing actually works as intended.” Leading up to this, Cassandra had been working on a lantern that was waterproof, according to her. She kept everything she needed to light it inside of it and brought it down to the bottom of the sea. It didn’t give a lot of light since it couldn’t be made with glass without having a high chance of breaking, but if you opened up one of the side panels, it functioned like a hooded lantern. After drying off the water from the outside of the contraption as best as she could, she carefully opened it up. To her pleasant surprise, it was completely dry on the inside and would light up immediately. After setting everything up, they now had some proper light going into the dark tunnel they went down the last time they visited. It felt a lot less scary with light and knowing what to expect. Still, Cobal couldn’t help but feel tense. For all he knew, the first people they encountered had no idea who they were and would still attack them.
“Now, you said last time you came here, you got beaten over the head?” Cassandra asked, taking Cobal out of his own thoughts.
“And I’m worried today won’t be better, but at least we’re prepared for it this time around.” He had the amulet that Kiiran gave him and held it in his hand, ready to show it at a moment’s notice. They walked for quite a bit, further than they got last time, before a shadow appeared at the end of the tunnel.
Cobal called out. “I’m here to speak with priest Kiiran, my name is Cobal Blueyerd.”
The shadow quickly vanished, but no answer came.
“Should we continue?” He asked the other two.
“Let’s wait here for a little while, perhaps that person is going to check with his superiors.”
So the trio sat down with the lamp next to them, waiting for a couple of minutes.
It quickly seemed that Mana was right as new shadows appeared in the distance. Three hooded figures approached them and when they were closer the person at the front removed their hood.
“It has been a while, your highness,” Vandra said. “Welcome back to Arana.”
“I must say, I much prefer this welcome over how I was treated last time.”
She smiled before her expression returned to neutral. “I assume you are visiting with a purpose?”
Cobal nodded. “Yes, we have something we need to figure out and we were hoping to speak with Kiiran about it, if possible.”
“I will bring you to him. One of my guards should already be informing him of your arrival.”
“Excellent, thank you.” Cobal grabbed Cassandra’s arm and moved her forward. “This is our friend Cassandra, she lives in Ravadier and she came along with us, is that permissible?”
“Hi,” Cassandra said.
“She is already here, so there isn’t much we can change about it. You will have to explain why you brought a stranger here to the head priest, but it is beyond my station.” She motioned them to follow and they did. The path was not quite the same one they took last time, but it looked very similar. After a couple of minutes more of walking through the damp tunnels where the only sounds they heard were their own footsteps and the falling of water droplets, they made their way out of the tunnel to the overlook that was still very impressive the second time around. Cobal saw the look of amazement on Cassandra’s face and couldn’t help but smile.
“To think this place has been right below our noses all this time.
Vandra looked at her. “It has been hidden for good reason, I hope you understand.” She then looked at Cobal as well, who nodded. “I think the people who brought us here already knew about your existence, but that is a topic I want to discuss with Kiiran personally.”
She turned away from him. “Very well.” She started her descent down the stairway and the three of them followed her down to the city itself and towards the impressive temple to Aquana that was the centerpiece of this underwater paradise.
“It has been a while since we last spoke,” Kiiran said. He was wearing a simple robe and had just finished speaking with a couple and their young child, giving them advice about an illness. He was not wearing any shoes and was wearing a beautiful pearl bracelet around his left ankle that almost looked like it was made out of water when he moved. He had now turned his attention to Cobal, Mana and Cassandra. Vandra and her two companions had left the room after bringing them here. Nothing was less impressive the second time around and Cobal was just as impressed by the room as Cassandra was, even though he had already seen it once before. The waterways that magically flowed through the space, allowing fish to come and go as well as the strange way the temple was designed in general. No pews, just a circular staircase that ended in a central floor where Kiiran was. Cobal had to actively look away from the mesmerizing waterways that defied all laws of logic. Compared to the last time he visited Arana, Cobal had now seen a lot more strangeness in the world, but few things he’d encountered compared to the first temple of Aquana. It was proof that true magic was much more intricate and magical than most people above the waves thought it was.
“A lot has happened since we last visited.” Cobal said.
“I hope you’re not here to rescind your promise to me,” Kiiran said, a harsh look on his face. His expression then softened. “No, you’re not here for that reason, I can see it in your demeanor.”
Cobal smiled. “You’re right. I have spoken about Arana with people above the waves, although with the exception of Cassandra here, they were all people who already knew about its existence.”
“Hi, my name is Cassandra, I live a small swim away from here.”
Kiiran smiled. “Nice to meet you, Cassandra.” He turned to Cobal again. “Who have you been meeting with, that so many know about our city?”
“Firstly, both Guthir and Diana Vadier know about you, as well as Dionil of course. Even Eliana and some of her crew members knew about your existence.”
“When you say Eliana, do you mean Eliana Tidesinger?”
Cobal nodded. “She was very much set on not joining us down here, so I figured there’s some history there.”
Kiiran rubbed his chin for a bit before letting out a deep sigh. “Eliana’s history with our city is a complicated one. If she chose not to speak to you about it, I think it would be rude of me to talk about it here. Let’s just say that our relationship isn’t an amicable one.” He sat down on one of the steps leading down. “Sit, please, tell me about what you have come here for.” He looked at Cassandra, “And of course, a warm welcome to you, Cassandra. A friend of Cobal is welcome here, but I would ask you to not tell anyone about our fair city. We enjoy a lot of peace due to not receiving too many outsiders and we would like to keep it that way.”
Cassandra nodded. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
Kiiran looked at Cobal. “See, it’s not that hard of a promise to make, she did it immediately.”
They both laughed. “Please, fill me in a bit on what you’ve done since the last time you were here, before telling me your troubles. I can’t say I’m not curious.
“Well, quite a lot has happened. We continued our journey towards Milinia as intended, after we spoke with the seer of course. There we found Dionil, who we spent some time with as he trained Mana and myself for months. We learned a little bit more about Might’s story from him,” Cobal looked at Kiiran to see if he recognized what Cobal was alluding to, but the priest was hard to read. He continued, “After we spent some time in Milinia, we had to quickly return to Saphestan when news reached us that my brother – Crown prince Sapher Blueyerd – had gone missing. Following his trail led us to Rilodar, but we encountered Eliana and her crew on the way. She joined us as we travelled to the city of Marsolin where we did some research on different topics and found out that my brother had,” he paused, unsure how much he should divulge. He looked at Mana who put a hand on his back and nodded. “We found out that my brother had joined up with a group of cultists known as the Jasmine Order. They are trying to revive an old god of theirs called Shifeth the Undying King. After we encountered them, we traveled back to Saphestan before coming here with a different task.”

Kiiran took everything in and nodded along. After a long pause he replied. “It sounds like a lot has happened in a very short time. I’ve not heard of these Jasmine Order cultists before I’m afraid, but the name Shifeth is familiar to me. It’s not a commonly known name, but many high priests of different orders are well learned when it comes to the lesser deities that often plague our peace.”
“You could say that, a lot has definitely happened.”
“So how can I help you with this?”
“We have two questions, and I think we already got one answered. What do you know about this Shifeth and any followers of theirs.”
Kiiran nodded. “I’ve not heard of that cult before, as I said, but I know about Shifeth. He’s known as the undying king for being the first person to ever come back from the dead. People have found out ways to keep souls or bodies intact over a long amount of time, or even trap some souls here against their will, but calling a soul back from the afterworld is impossible. Shifeth seems to be the only exception to that rule so far in documented history.”
Cobal nodded. “We read about that in Marsolin.”
“I’m afraid I can’t be of any more help then.”
“That’s alright, that wasn’t the main reason we came here. Our second question is much more local and much more urgent.”
Cobal motioned at Cassandra for her to take over.
“A couple of weeks ago, people started disappearing from Ravadier. It started with one person, and over time it turned into around a dozen. Some of the villagers claim that they’ve seen strange lights in the ocean right before someone would walk off into the water and just vanish completely. We have no real information about what is going on with them except an old rumor that has to do with Shark Tooth Island. None of the people have reappeared, be that alive or dead, so we have nothing else to go by. Since your village is on the bottom of the ocean, we were hoping you might have seen them, or perhaps they were here somehow.”
Silence filled the room. Kiiran was lost in thought for a while before he replied. “That’s a lot to process. Let me give you the bad news first. We don’t know where your people are. We haven’t seen anyone walk along the seafloor recently and we haven’t heard anything about villagers appearing. As a matter of fact we’ve only had three visitors in total since the last time Cobal and Mana came here and none of them had anything to do with Ravadier. What we did encounter was a strange phenomenon on the bottom of the ocean. One of our scouts saw what looked like a bubble at the bottom of the ocean. There was a light at the center. When they tried to get closer to the bubble, they couldn’t, as if something was keeping them at bay. We tried to go back to that place to investigate it, but came up empty. There was no more bubble there and whatever light our scouts saw had long faded.” He paused for a while, staring off into the distance before continuing. “As for the ghost pirates you spoke of, we know of their existence. I’m sure you’ve heard the story from Diana Vadier already, but they were a crew who tried to steal the treasures of a mage who lived on Shark Tooth Island a long time ago. The mage – who was known for toying with people – killed the crew, put the artifact that kept them found to his island inside of his tower and then threw the key to unlocking the tower into the ocean.”
“That’s childish,” Cassandra said.
Kiiran agreed. “It is childish. Punishing those who’ve wronged you isn’t that strange, but these pirates have been stuck for well over a hundred years and I personally believe that is too much. We never had many interactions with them though and as far as I’m aware, they never bothered anyone. They were just looking for the key to the tower. If they suddenly started kidnapping people, something might have changed.”
He looked at all three again. “That’s the extent of what I know.” He paused. “No wait, I have one more detail, although this is not something that has been confirmed.” He looked around the room to make sure they were alone. He then lowered his voice and added, “the mage that bound these pirates is rumored to be from another world like Mana is.”