Chapter 181 — The Standing Lake

Chapter 181: Chapter 181 — The Standing Lake

They reached the waystation on the morning of what Arlen judged to be their sixth day into Region Three, the flooded passage finally opening into a chamber wide enough that its far wall vanished entirely into the gloom.

"Floor Twelve," Ilyana said, treading water easily as the party paused at the chamber’s threshold. "Standing lake, mostly still water rather than current. Waystation’s built along the northern shore — you’ll see it properly once we’re closer."

They swam on, and the shape gradually resolved out of the dim, ambient light — a cluster of structures built directly into the lake’s rocky shoreline, half submerged and half raised on sturdy pilings, lantern-light glowing warm and steady from windows that had no business existing this deep beneath the world.

"People live here too?" Arlen asked, genuinely astonished.

"Not permanently, mostly," Osric said. "Way station, same as the name suggests. Traders, researchers, the occasional expedition resupplying before pushing further. Smaller than Floor Ten, obviously, but its own kind of miracle regardless."

They hauled themselves onto a weathered dock, and Arlen found the transition from water to air considerably stranger this time than it had been on Floor Ten — the potion’s gill function fading gradually rather than all at once, his breathing shifting back to ordinary lungs over the better part of several minutes.

A halfling man greeted them at the dock’s edge, his weathered face carrying the particular, unbothered competence of someone who’d long since stopped being surprised by anything the Depths produced.

"Frostweave’s crew," he said, recognizing Ilyana immediately. "Been a while. New face with you this trip."

"Arlen. First proper look at Region Three for him." Ilyana gestured toward the modest inn rising behind him. "Room for five, one night?"

"Always room, this deep. Nobody’s exactly fighting over the accommodations." He led them inside, and Arlen found the interior considerably more comfortable than he’d expected — dry, warm, furnished with the same practical, unglamorous care he remembered from the Foxglove’s early days.

They settled in properly for the evening, and Arlen spent a fair portion of it simply wandering the waystation’s modest common areas, curious about the small, strange community that had built itself this deep beneath everything he’d once known as ordinary life.

He found a cartographer’s table tucked into one corner, its surface covered with partial maps of the lake and its surrounding passages, considerably more detailed than anything the Floor Ten outpost had offered.

"You chart this region specifically?" he asked the woman working over it, an elderly human with ink-stained fingers and sharp, curious eyes.

"Try to. Slow work, this deep — every sounding takes proper time, and the lake alone’s larger than most surface villages." She glanced up at him with genuine interest. "You’re new. Diving with Frostweave’s crew?"

"For now. My own work, mostly, once this trip’s finished."

"Solo, down here?" Her eyebrows rose slightly. "Ambitious. Most people wait considerably longer before trying Region Three alone."

"I’ve had good teachers this week," Arlen said, and found the woman’s answering smile genuine and approving.

He returned to the others eventually, and found Kess deep in conversation with a trader at the inn’s modest counter, haggling cheerfully over what looked like a case of harvested scale samples.

"Selling already?" Arlen asked, settling nearby.

"No sense hauling everything back to the surface when there’s a perfectly good buyer right here," Kess said, pocketing her earnings with evident satisfaction. "You should think about doing the same, eventually, once you’ve got enough accumulated weight to make the trip back properly annoying."

Arlen considered that, genuinely useful advice layered into the casual observation, and found himself turning over his own modest collection of Region Three materials with fresh, practical interest.

They set out again the following morning, properly rested, and Ilyana led them along the lake’s southern edge rather than back into the passages they’d already traveled.

"Different route this time," she explained. "Worth showing you more than one path through the same stretch, given how much you’ll eventually be navigating alone."

They swam for the better part of the day, the lake’s calm water giving way gradually to a series of smaller, interconnected chambers, and it was in the third of these that Arlen encountered his next genuine test.

A cluster of Ironclaw Lobsters, considerably larger than anything he’d expect from the name alone, scuttled along the chamber floor in a loose, defensive formation, their shells catching the dim light in dull, metallic gleams.

"Territorial, mostly," Osric said, studying them from a careful distance. "Rank Three individually, though they’ll coordinate if properly provoked. Good group practice, if everyone wants in."

The party engaged together, and Arlen found himself, fighting alongside five people whose rhythm he’d finally settled into properly, contributing exactly where the formation actually needed him rather than trying to carry more of the fight than his place called for — Riverblade sitting unused and patient in the back of his awareness the whole while, a private, unspent resource he had no intention of revealing here.

The lobsters fell quickly, coordinated pressure overwhelming their defensive formation before it could properly organize, and Arlen harvested a portion of claw material afterward, genuinely curious whether it might interest Bellwyn or the waystation’s own trader more.

They pressed deeper still as the day wore on, the chambers growing narrower and more demanding, until finally, in a stretch of tunnel considerably tighter than anything the open lake had offered, Arlen found himself facing something entirely alone for the first time since the trip began.

A Deepwater Hydra, small for its kind but still considerably larger than anything he’d solo-hunted before, blocked the narrow passage ahead — three serpentine heads weaving in slow, independent patterns, each one testing the water for whatever had disturbed its rest.

"Yours, if you want the practice," Ilyana said, holding the rest of the party back. "We’re here if it goes badly. Try it properly first."

Arlen studied the creature carefully, three heads demanding considerably more attention than any single-threat opponent he’d faced, and understood, weighing the fight honestly, that this called for patience rather than aggression.

He engaged the nearest head first, using the same slow, deliberate underwater technique Ilyana had taught him days earlier, and found the fight considerably more demanding than anything solo work had thrown at him recently — tracking three independent threats, managing his own limited air and stamina, adjusting constantly to strikes that came from angles his instincts weren’t yet properly trained to anticipate.

He finished it eventually, breathing hard even through the potion’s steady support, two heads severed and the third finally, decisively still.

"Good work," Ilyana said, genuine approval in her voice as the party regrouped around him. "That’s not an easy fight, even with backup standing ready. You held your own properly."

Arlen harvested carefully, the hydra’s regenerative organs proving considerably more valuable than anything he’d taken so far this trip, and made camp with the others not long after, exhausted in the particular, satisfied way that followed a challenge properly met rather than merely survived.

He ate slowly that evening, and found the warmth arriving partway through his meal, low and familiar, the same patient certainty as always.

A name surfaced, whole and certain.

Tidal Lance

He sat with it a moment, and understood immediately — water gathered and thrown, a proper ranged strike rather than the close, cutting precision Riverblade offered.

Two of them now. Both patient, both waiting.

He filed it away alongside everything else, satisfied simply to know its shape, and settled in for the night’s rest with the quiet, accumulating certainty that this trip, whatever else it eventually taught him, was building toward something he genuinely looked forward to finally testing properly, once he was home and the water around him belonged only to himself.