>>713032587
Hours turned to days, days to weeks, and still no solution enlightened him, but action was overdue. The only way was forward. Leaving behind that one’s revenants, and slowly, with the minutest of steps like ghostly footfalls, that one entered the water, naked but for that one’s wits. A simple spell kept that one from floating to the surface and bringing that one’s presence to the attention of the sharks, for, as yet, not a ripple or a current had betrayed that one’s presence. With the most deliberate of motions, K’tala edged forward. An hour passed before that one moved a step. A day passed before that one had even crossed half the distance required to reach the cave wherein lay the treasure, all the while, one eye was fixed upon the sharks, the other upon the shadows of the cave. Yet even within the split focus of that one’s attention, other details emerged from the murky water, such as the striking desolation of the place. Though no stranger to the clinical silence of a laboratory or the stillness of a tomb, K’tala noted that even the coral in the lake was hard and dead and scratched at that one’s underbelly, and the sharks showed signs of lamentable decay where the preservation magic had failed, festering untended by the fishy parasites who happily live on the rot and mould of our servitors. Their pus-filled yellow eyes stared blankly in front of them as they circled mindlessly.