Jason was taking in the view when he noticed the noise of the water seemed to be dimming. At first, he thought it was his imagination, but then he saw Hiram looking at the water stream with a confused expression. They watched the avalanche of water rapidly diminish, as if someone was turning off a giant tap. The flow dropped down to nothing, leaving an empty tunnel carved out by the water as smooth as a machine-made pipe.

“Is that meant to happen?” Jason asked, in the sudden silence.

“No, it isn’t,” Hiram said, concern plain on his face.

“Has it ever done this before?”

“No, it hasn’t.”

“Should we tell someone?”

“It’s a waterfall, son. I’m pretty sure everyone noticed.”

Hiram returned to the interior room, ignoring the blast of warm air to rush inside, still wet. He came back out with a large key, unlocked the gate and dropped down into the curved floor of the water tunnel. Jason hesitated a moment before following. Hiram glanced at Jason, but didn’t comment.

Jason immediately spotted the aperture, some twenty metres down the pipe. It was a huge circle with a surface that shimmered with the same blue light the water had produced. Through the circle he could make out what looked like a rainforest, but the distortion of the circle made it blurry and indistinct.

“Is that sky?” Jason asked. “Is there a whole world through there?”

“Never actually been through to see,” Hiram said.

A large shape crawled into view through the aperture. It lumbered through the aperture and into the tunnel, like passing through a sheet of water. It had the body and head of a shark, but instead of skin it had a plated shell in hues of dark purple and red. Emerging from its sides were eight crab legs and a huge pair of pincers. The creature was three metres long and the pincers were bigger than Jason’s head.

“Do you see a lot of those?” Jason asked.

“No,” Hiram said. “That’s new.”

New Quest: [Waterfall Monster]

A monster has unexpectedly emerged from the local astral space. It has already entered the blind aggression stage and will attack anyone it encounters. Defeat it before it causes any harm.

Objective: Defeat the [Shab] 0/1.

Reward: Quintessence.

“I don’t suppose you know what that thing is?” Hiram asked, drawing the knife on his belt.

“I think it’s called a shab.”

Jason drew the snake-tooth dagger at his own waist.

“You any good with that?” Hiram asked.

“No,” Jason said. “No, I’m not.”

27. Water, Fall

27

Water, Fall

“It’s pretty slow,” Jason said. “If we get back behind the fence, is it strong enough to hold it?”

“Not sure,” Hiram said. “It’s mostly to keep out people. The magic is just to stop the water from ruining it, not make it any stronger.”

“I guess we fight, then,” Jason said reluctantly.