“Just remember, deep in the water, you feel yourself slipping away, slipping away.” Juan awoke with a song he’d never heard playing in his mind, with fear he rarely experienced. He found the rhythm of his breath and calmed himself.

Looking out the window of the tower, the first rays of daylight made Anwyn light up in gold and amber hues. He washed his face and went to the kitchen, where he brewed coffee. Pisces joined him a free minutes later.

“You’ve been to Anwyn Undersea before?” She asked, sipping from the steaming mug.

“Not since I was a kid, with my dad. It unnerved me, I’ll confess.”

“I was born and raised there, so spending all this time above water still feels unnatural for me,” Pisces explained. “Everyone is in the shell of their individual lives, and they see only in front of them. I’m still not fully adjusted.”

Juan remembered vision underwater and felt tired. “I haven’t used my third eye in years.”

Pisces smiled. “It’ll come back to you, you probably use it more than you realize. No light reaches the ocean floor where the city is, so we need to rely on our magnetic senses to move and know where things are. Hearing and speaking take getting used to as well.”

“I remember, yeah. When will we do the phase shift to our deep sea forms?” The spells they would use to adapt themselves to the Undersea realm caused their eyes to lengthen, their ear canals to narrow, and gills to emerge from behind their ears.

“When Cancer arrives, we’ll perform the ceremony and then descend to that part of the Revolving Castle.” Pisces answered, and Cancer appeared in the doorway as if on cue.

“Ready?” He asked, shaking his head when Juan motioned to the coffee. “My stomach doesn’t tolerate it at my age,” he chuckled.

The three descended the stairs to the antechamber of the wet room. Pisces brought the incense from a set of drawers, and the room was perfumed with the scent of saltwater and coolness. They sat crosslegged on the floor and chanted.

The change didn’t hurt Juan as much as when he was younger. He removed his shoes and spread out his webbed toes as they grew. His fingers spread apart likewise and his vision shifted. Details became much clearer. He marveled at the edges of a wooden plane for awhile before he remembered it as a table.

The voice of Cancer reached his ear as chirps, and he understood it as, “let us depart.” Cancer led them through the antechamber to the wet room. Juan walked slowly into the cold, dark water, feeling himself slip away with every step. Once he has gone far enough he was swimming and moving as naturally as a fish.

The gates of Anwyn Undersea opened for them; citizens turned from their gardens and livestock to watch them arrive down the main thoroughfare. Juan scanned the faces for the mark but didn’t see it. Yet he saw fear and uncertainty in their eyes and felt those emotions radiating from them. They were scared, and had good reason to be.