The boat swayed.
Arthur drew in laboured breaths, inky clear sky adored by a crimson moon spanned over him, but instead of awing at the scene above, he jumped on his feet and looked over the edge of the cutter.
The rope that had been cut hung loosely near the wooden pole. The boat hadn't moved a single inch. Theodora was kneeling over the sand not far from them, but not everything was still.
'It's disappearing...'
Arthur noticed his footprints, the ones that faced the cove's wall were still there, but the water which should've been closer to those footprints was now inching away from it.
It was as if the water was receding. He turned behind him as sails flapped open but hung limply—there was no wind to properly fill the sails.
Iris sat in one corner of the boat while the other two guys worked on the ropes. Adrien, Theodora's son, was working on the jib while the other blond-haired guy unstrapped something from his waist.
It was a folding fan, its leaf made out of deep purple silk cloth. He leaned over the side, observing the water.
"It's coming." He turned around, looking at Arthur. "Keep an eye on the tiller."
Arthur knew what a tiller was but had never handled one. He immediately held onto the metal rod at the back of the boat and sat down, keeping it straight since there were no instructions on where they wanted to move.
Moving the tiller to the left would turn the boat to the right, and vice versa. He held onto it straight while Adrien adjusted the ropes on the sails.
The blond-haired guy stood closer to the sails and unfolded the fan. He took a step back, outstretched the hand holding the fan, and with one practiced movement whipped it in a semi-circle.
Out of nowhere, the still air broke without warning. Wind rushed into the sails, filling them up.
Arthur lost his balance as the boat kicked into motion. The blond guy fanned again, and the boat sped up faster and faster, cutting through the still water.
Arthur looked over to Theodora. At the entrance of the cave, two men wearing navy uniforms approached the beach—their manner hurried and anxious.
"Bael! Faster!" Adrien yelled at the blond guy as he also noticed what was happening on the beach.
But for Arthur, his eyes were on the water—receding faster than before, revealing wet sand and stone which had been submerged seconds ago.
It filled him with an odd sense of horror that burrowed into his pre-existing fear of oceans.
'But this is a river!'
He tried to assure himself, but it wasn't helping much, so he redirected his attention back to the boat.
Bael, handling the fan, was in visible struggle. With each flap, the boat sped up faster and faster, while he looked more and more laboured by it.
'It's the same as what that old woman used.'
Arthur was reminded of the cloth strip Pearl had used to pull him out of the water, and the string attached to the nail that she propelled the canoe with...
Those items did not disappear after the old lady lost consciousness, so they were not exactly similar to Scars, which vanish the moment the user loses their power to channel soul or life essence into them.
Using the fan was obviously taking a toll on Bael physically, as he struggled to stand upright. The boat kept speeding, while the water followed them closely and faster than before.
"Hey! Turn the tiller to the left!" Adrien's words were laced with urgency.
Arthur moved the tiller and the boat slowly positioned itself to the right, and the reason for the turn became clear to Arthur as they avoided a spiky stone structure peeking slightly out of the water's surface.
If they hadn't changed direction, the boat would've collided into that protrusion. Arthur observed as the stone slowly revealed more of itself—the water level was rapidly dropping lower and lower.
"Move it to the right!" Adrien roared once again, and Arthur immediately sprang into action.
They avoided another protruding obsidian spike. The farther they went from the beach, the faster the water receded, revealing more structures beneath it until Arthur had to maneuver the boat every few seconds.
Everyone, other than Iris—who clung to whatever she could to avoid being thrown out—was working to keep the boat from crashing into something.
The young girl looked lost and on the verge of breaking into tears at any moment. Arthur felt slightly irritated at her incompetence but couldn't say anything. They soon fell into a rhythm.
Bael propelled the vessel, Adrien trimmed the sails, and Arthur controlled the tiller—making it not easy but at least possible to get around what now was not just occasional obstacles.
The fleeing water revealed more and more structures. Arthur was kneeling, drenched in cold water, shivering from the wind at the back when someone crashed into him as they turned right.
Iris yelped as she was pushed away from Arthur. He instinctively grabbed her arm to keep her from being thrown off and pulled her closer to him.
"Hold the edge!" he yelled so she could hear him through the noise. Iris obeyed as Arthur kept his hold on her.
It went on like that for another minute before Arthur began losing it—everything felt groggy, and with the constant splash of cold water he felt like he was about to throw up.
Soon he reached his limit. He threw his head over the edge and emptied whatever he had eaten before. Once done, he stayed there for a moment, staring at the water below—
'Huh?'
Arthur noticed something unusual. The water seemed shallow.
When he first came here, thrown into the water, it had been so dark that even if someone was right under the surface it was hard to tell they were there.
But now, the water was shallow—there, beneath, he could see the bottom...
'Riverbed?'
It was hard to comprehend that the water had receded so fast that they were now closer to its bottom. Whipping his head up, he was met with a labyrinth of twisted protrusions all around—the beach was long out of sight.
Feeling overwhelmed, he observed as the bottom drew closer and closer to them. Amidst the chaos, Adrien's calls became erratic and constant, the boat swaying all over the place, narrowly avoiding its demise.
Arthur thought about jumping off the boat but stopped whenever he saw how both Bael and Adrien were focused on what was in front of them—even though they must've noticed the difference in the water level.
They have, right?
"Dammit! Right!" Adrien yelled at the top of his lungs. Arthur pulled out of his thoughts, put his weight into turning the rod to the right, and the vessel sharply leaned while turning left.
He grabbed onto Iris as she was about to slip out of his arms. Tearing through the water, words became incoherent as Arthur finally understood why both the guys at the front were yelling like crazy.
"Fuck off," Arthur muttered as he saw the boat now about to collapse into a standalone obsidian stone wall raised above the water—more specifically, the half where Arthur was in control of the tiller.
Everything fell into chaos. There was the noise of sails tearing from extreme pressure—the boat was trying to either halt or at least move forward, but it was at an impasse with itself. Controlling it was now impossible.
They closed in on the wall. Arthur pushed himself from the tiller toward the other end where the others were, trying to shake off the girl in his arms, but he couldn't—she clung to him tightly.
He curled up and braced himself halfway through the distance when the boat came in contact with the wall, colliding into the immovable structure as tremors ran everywhere.
Splinters flew in every direction, the boat was thrown forward, drifting over the water due to its momentum.
And then… it was quiet.
Arthur felt something wet touch his ankle. He looked over and noticed that half of the boat, where he had been seconds ago, was now gone due to the impact. The boat was tilting and rapidly sinking into the water.
It was just that—he now couldn't see the bottom of the river.
It was just like before. Endless, dark water stretched in front of him. The boat slowly submerged itself and then sank. Arthur began swimming— Iris let go of him and did the same.
Behind him, Adrien and Bael both looked like they had been trapped inside their worst dream. Maybe they were…
Arthur, on the other hand, was left speechless, because the wall they had collided into kept on rising, revealing more and more of itself while the water level did not recede—not even a little. It hadn't been receding from the very beginning.
He looked up and saw the cliff—the one that had dwarfed the gigantic ship—now tower hundreds of feet over the vessel. And it kept on growing, soon out of Arthur's sight, everything obscured by the obsidian stone.
The water was not receding, but everything else was rising above the river.