Broken Lands

Chapter 344 – Nettlefish

“Nettlefish are good eating,” the guide started. “The nettlefins are also good against fevers and other types of heat. You can’t cook nettlefish until they’re removed, but that can be an advantage. Cold-cooked nettlefish spread the nettles’ benefit across the flesh. I’ve caught more than a few myself, and cold-cooked nettlefish are excellent on a hot summer day.”

Sophia asked Xin’lri to make her some small iceballs and started throwing them at the bubbleswarms. Sometimes they didn’t break the bubbles, but most of the time they did. Sophia wasn’t doing as well as Xin’ri, but she was able to break many of the individual bubbles in the bubbleswarms and reduce their number and size. Once in a while she took out an entire bubbleswarm, but that took quite a few ice balls and usually more than one toss. She wasn’t really sure why the bubbleswarms needed actual exterminators; anyone could kill them. Heck, pebbles would probably work. 

Of course, that was probably exactly what people “on the surface” did if there was actually a surface as part of the zone. Sophia kind of doubted it; zones seemed to be pretty limited. If there were a “surface,” surely they should have seen an access point by now; they’d walked more than a mile through the tunnels.

“Of course, that’s not the problem with nettlefish. There are two. First, nettlefish will eat anything. You’d think that would be a benefit, but if you get enough nettlefish, they’ll even eat their own predators. Once you have only nettlefish, they start eating each other. You then have fewer nettlefish, which is a problem in its own right but that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that when nettlefish eat each other, some of them become sparkfish. It’s fine if that happens in a closed pond, but here in the sewer? It’s not fine.” The old man cast the light from the lantern ahead of them, then turned and looked behind them.

Light gleamed off the handful of individual bubbles and clusters of bubbles Sophia and Xin’ri hadn’t broken. There were more ahead of them, but not nearly as many as there had been in the area they’d just passed. “Well, looks like the bubbleswarms are under control for now. We’re near the water-wall. Follow me.”

“What’s the problem with sparkfish?” Sophia could guess that they were a more advanced version of nettlefish, probably a later upgrade. It sounded like they had electrical Abilities, but that was all she could tell from the name. She couldn’t even tell if the sparkfish was second upgrade or third. She was pretty sure the bubbleswarms were first upgrade by how easy they were to kill, but that didn’t mean anything about the fish. 

If the nettlefish were first upgrade and the sparkfish were second upgrade, Sophia expected that they’d end up seeing a lot of sparkfish. So far, the zone was simply too easy. Sure, the bubbleswarms were probably dangerous if you attacked them with the wrong method, but that didn’t mean they were at a higher upgrade.

Unless … maybe things in the Maze were set out as much by their expected threat as by their power? The use of fire was common, both in Sophia’s team and in most teams. That meant the bubbleswarms were a lot more threatening than they should be if you didn’t pay attention to the guide’s statements or just didn’t think about options other than your normal attacks. On top of that, the guide wanted some bubbleswarms left alive; you’d surely fail that if you used fire on them.

Maybe the nettlefish were similar?

“They can control nettlefish, in or out of the water,” the guide answered easily. “They’ll make the nettlefish climb any line you put in the water, no matter what it’s made of, then eat the fisherman. Once you have sparkfish, the whole group’s got to go. Anyway, here’s the water-wall. Good luck.”

“What-” Sophia cut her question off as she turned the corner behind their guide and saw what waited ahead of them. The tunnel dropped and widened, but far more importantly, it was also three-quarters full of water. A literal wall made of water stood about fifteen feet in front of her, like the side wall of an aquarium but without the glass.

At least, she thought it was without glass. She certainly didn’t see an edge and there was no space between the top of the water and anything else visible. It was possible there was glass from the floor to the ceiling, but if there was it somehow managed to exactly fit into the stones with no signs of sealant or anything. That was even less likely than some sort of enchantment that held the water in place, so she was willing to bet that it was literally what the guide said: a wall made of water.

It was also too dark to see anything. 

Sophia sent her magelight out above the water. It was small enough that a large fish could theoretically eat it, but that would have to be an awfully large fish for the water. Even with the tunnel’s floor dipping ahead of them, the water she saw was only four or five feet deep. She was careful not to let it touch the water, just in case.

With light above the pool, Sophia could see inside it. The pool looked sterile except for the fish themselves, which backed up the guide’s story about the nettlefish eating anything. There wasn’t even any of the algae or moss that coated many of the rocks outside the water. 

Most of the fish looked like goldfish with an extra fin and what looked like weeds growing out of their top and bottom fins. Some of the nettlefish also seemed to have some odd lights sparkling at the ends of their plantlike upper fins. They looked completely harmless, even if they were as large as a large koi. They didn’t even seem to have any teeth that Sophia could see. She didn’t really want to think about what it meant that such harmless-looking fish could and would eat people under the influence of a sparkfish.

That thought made Sophia turn her attention to the one fish in the pool that wasn’t like the others. It was longer and shorter than the others, with a pale, almost washed-out appearance, and its fins seemed to have turned into a webwork of individual lines joined by lights instead of the normal membrane. Unlike the nettlefish, however, Sophia could actually see and feel the mana rolling off the sparkfish.

“How well does lightning work on nettlefish?” Xin’ri skipped right past wondering how the heck harmless-appearing fish could eat people to how easy they were to kill.

“Like any other fish, I guess?” The guide shrugged. “You don’t get lightning in the sewers.”

“Let’s find out.” Xin’ri manifested her lightning staff. 

Sophia glanced around for bubbleswarms. She wasn’t certain she’d be fast enough to stop Xin’ri if they were in the area. Her concern was justified by the loud peal of thunder that erupted while she searched for bubbleswarms. Fortunately, there was no secondary explosion. Sophia didn’t see any bubbleswarms, but she did see some of the residue they left when they were killed near the water wall. “Do nettlefish eat bubbleswarms?”

“If they enter the water,” the guide affirmed. “Sparkfish are particularly fond of them. They’re terrible bait, though; you can’t really hook them and if you do manage to hold them with something, the fish will come close but only attack the bubbleswarm, they won’t bite a hook. I’ve heard some use them with nets, but net-fishing nettlefish is a fool’s game.”

Well, that was something. Sophia wasn’t certain how much, but something. It probably explained both the residue she saw and the lack of any nearby bubbleswarms.

Dead nettlefish floated to the top of the water. There weren’t nearly as many as Sophia expected; she’d expected that if they killed any, they’d get all of them. Instead, there were only about a dozen dead nettlefish. It seemed like only the ones closest to Xin’ri’s blast were affected.

“Hmm. Will the nettlefish rise to eat the ones I just killed?” Xin’ri turned towards the guide. 

“Nettlefish will eat anything.” The guide shrugged at that, clearly unable to answer the question beyond what he’d already said.

“Right. Then … Ah, I know. Sophia? You have lightning feathers, don’t you?” Xin’ri turned towards Sophia as she spoke.

“Yes.” Something seemed off to Sophia as she spoke. A shadow moved across the mana. She stepped forward, between Xin’ri and the tank. Mana moved within her Doman and she grabbed for it. It felt like a feather, only not a feather somehow. 

Water splashed over Sophia as she realized exactly what she’d done. She’d actually achieved what she was working on: she’d felt a plume of magic enter her Domain and grabbed control of it. When she forced the mana under her control, the mana plume lost control of the water it carried and dumped it.

All over Sophia, naturally.

She was going to need to do better than that, but this was a very good start. If she could rip spells and Abilities away from monsters, it would give her a level of control on the battlefield that she’d never really had.

Right now, though, they needed to deal with the nettlefish and sparkfish. It seemed like the attack wasn’t being repeated immediately; that was good. “Lightning feathers, right?”

Lightning feathers were one of the rarer types of skyeagle feathers. It wasn’t until Sweetfire put Sophia in contact with one of the eccentric material suppliers that Sophia found out there was a far better option for lightning feathers: sparkfowl. They were normally weak first upgrade birds rather like chickens that ran lightning through their feathers and eggshells to protect themselves against predators. 

In Mazehold, they were routinely raised to the second and sometimes even the third upgrade because they were one of the few reliable sources of lightning-based materials. The most commonly used material was the sparking eggshell, which was easy to make other things with and could even be melted into metals to enhance their durability as well as adding lightning characteristics.

The feathers were common and considered less valuable because they were hard to make things with, so Sophia now had a lot of lightning feathers. Most were second upgrade, but she had enough third upgrade feathers that she wasn’t at all worried about running out.

She pulled a couple of handfuls of second upgrade sparkfowl feathers out of her pack. They reminded her immediately that she was covered in water with a series of slightly numbing shocks to her hand, so she let them go to float in the air. “What do you want me to do with them?”

“I want to see if you can discharge them under water, maybe near some of the fish?” Xin’ri suggested.

Sophia had to grab them for that, so that she could toss them towards the water as best she could. The one thing she still couldn’t easily do was move her feathers around; that clearly was something she needed to work on. She ought to be able to. If she could grab the magic in a plume made by someone else’s Ability, why couldn’t she grab the plumes she’d released into her Domain and move them?

Well, the answer clearly was that she hadn’t tried it since Arryn suggested thinking about her plumes differently. 

She tried it now and it sort of worked. She was able to direct some of the plumes towards the water; more importantly, she was able to make them sink. She wasn’t able to affect them more than that, but it didn’t matter; the feathers’ intrusion into the water drew the sparkfish’s attention and the nettlefish faced to nibble on the feathers.

It didn’t hurt, but it did feel odd. She could feel each nibble.

Sophia waited until she was certain the sparkfish was close enough, then triggered Feathered Evocation on one feather after another. The water ahead of her lit up like she’d set off a flashbang and bubbled like she’d dumped a whole truckload of Alka-Seltzer tablets into the water all at once.

On second thought, that might be almost exactly what she’d done. Lightning could split water molecules, couldn’t it?

When the haze cleared, there were no more living fish.