“The vents?” Barclay asked. “Why?”

“The Sea is getting warmer. It’s causing fish to die, Beasts to migrate where they don’t normally belong—and I can’t prove anything, but I have a hunch it’s creating even more problems that we haven’t figured out yet.” Ansley beamed. “So we’re going to investigate, Apothecary-style!”

Without Mar-Mar to ride, the swim down to the ocean’s bottom was long and exhausting. But the slower pace also made it easier to appreciate the Sea’s beauty. Coarse stone and stringy seaweed covered the floor, with all sorts of animals and Beasts crawling or swimming or floating about. The vents rose up from pillars of craggy rock. Bubbles and dark sand teemed out of them, and glowing blue Firenekkies clustered around their edges.

Ansley drew a bunch of jars from her knapsack and handed several to Barclay and Shazi. “We’re going to collect as many specimens as we can find. Just scoop up whatever seems unusual or out of the ordinary.”

“But we don’t know what looks ordinary down here,” Shazi said.

“Oh, that’s why you have me! Grab what you can, and then I’ll decide if it’s worth bringing up to the shop.”

For the next twenty minutes, they each worked in silence. Barclay swam as close to the vents as he could, but it was hard because they were hot. Boiling hot. So instead, he drifted below them, paying special attention to any Beasts. The brown seaweed clumped here was so thin and ticklish that it reminded him of human hair. Beastly minnows with two heads burrowed deep into the grasses. Broken shells and sand dollars littered the floor like a treasure trove, and Barclay stuck several strange ones into his jars.

Though the work was far from exciting, Barclay liked it. In many ways, it reminded him of mushroom foraging.

He scolded himself. He was never going to be a proper Lore Keeper if he couldn’t stop thinking about Dullshire.

But his thoughts of homesickness vanished when he stumbled across an interesting find—the shed skin of some type of sea snake. Cringing, he pinched it between two fingers and picked it up. The bottom of it was coated in strange black dust.

“That’s weird,” Barclay muttered. He parted the hairy grass to get a better look at the ocean floor, revealing a jagged line of bubbly black rock. He tried to yank a piece of it off, but it wouldn’t budge. So he stuffed the snakeskin into his jar and swam to Ansley.

“Yes?” she asked. She had spent so much time near the vents that her skin was flushed. Her eyes fell on the smooshed snakeskin in his jar. “Ooh! Reptilly scales! Excellent find, Barclay!”

“Are they important?” he asked hopefully.

“No, but they’re delicious on a piece of toast. And what did you find, Shazi?”