"Who's there?" a voice rang out. "I'll warn you, even if you take me out, this entire lab is full of hazardous materials. Without me, you're just going to accidentally poison yourself!"

  "I'm not here to steal anything," Nathan said. He pulled off his jacket hood, revealing his face. "I was hoping to talk to you."

  Vee's mushroom face lit up instantly.

  "Nathan!” she said. “It's so good to see you. Come in, come in."

  Nathan shut the door behind him and stepped into the lab. Vee had been expanding, along with the rest of the town. Dozens of new shelves were filled with materials, and instruments Nathan had never seen before occupied every corner. A few vials even hung from the ceiling.

  "Have you ever considered cleaning this place up?" Nathan asked.

  "What are you talking about? I just cleaned."

  For goodness’s sake…

  Vee grabbed a table and a chair from the side and set them in the middle of the room. The two sat down, facing each other.

  "So, what brings you to my humble domain?" Vee asked.

  "I need some answers. I think you're the woman to give them to me."

  Vee's lips quirked. "I can't guarantee anything—but I will note that I've been devouring that desert boy's library. I've learned a number of interesting things. Perhaps I might be of some help."

  Nathan considered not telling her about Thalassa… before he realized that anything Vee said would probably be dismissed as the wild ramblings of a mad scientist.

  "What do you know about gods and goddesses?" Nathan said.

  Vee's face crinkled up. "Divinity? You should be talking to Papim.”

  "I don't think I'm talking about religion, per se.” Nathan rubbed the back of his neck. "What would you say if I told you I met a woman who claimed to be the goddess of the sea?"

  Vee leaned in. "Explain," she said.

  Nathan found himself recounting everything Thalassa had said during their conversations. He also briefly mentioned some of the strange events that had occurred before meeting her—the way his system would change, the way he seemed to intuitively understand water cultivation. To keep up, Vee pulled a piece of paper and pencil from her lab coat and began writing everything down.

  "This isn't a case of religion," Vee said. “And we're not dealing with divinity. Not true divinity, anyway."

  "So what is she?"

  "That's hard to pin down. I don't think she's lying. I will confess that I find it somewhat hard to believe a bunch of water molecules suddenly decided to develop consciousness, but stranger things have happened."

  "Do you think I should accept her offer?"

  Vee leaned back in her chair. "You really should be talking to Gius about this, not me."

  "I probably will. Still, I want to hear your opinion."

  Vee pulled a vial of liquid from her pocket and played with it, looking down at it as she spoke.

  "The interesting thing about this woman is that this isn't the first time something like this has happened."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The desert people recorded a patron of the first king—Zayen's great-great-grandfather or whatever. He claimed to receive a vision from the sun. He was blessed with power beyond any normal man… but it still wasn't enough to get them past the sixth circle."

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "Always with the sixth circle," Nathan muttered. "Even with the power of the sun, the desert people couldn't make it past there."

  "There were other things, too."

  Nathan perked up. "What do you mean?"

  "At first, the first king seemed relatively unchanged,” Vee said. “But the more he tapped into the power of the sun, the worse things became. He started to see things, get lost—it was like his brain was melting. Not just that, but his body was changing too. His skin would flare up with light, his eyes would burn and flicker. Eventually… and this was hard to find, the king's archivists hid this information as well as they could—they had to kill the king. They claimed it was because he begged them. In a rare moment of lucidity, he said he would turn into something abhorrent if he remained alive."

  "Abhorrent?" The word sent a shiver down Nathan's spine. "Did they mention what that meant?"

  "No. They either deemed it unimportant, disrespectful to record, or they didn't know.”

  "So… you're saying I shouldn't accept her offer?" Nathan asked.

  Vee let out a long sigh, her lips drawing into a thin line. “I’m not sure,” she said. "There's strong evidence to suggest the desert kingdom would've perished in the fourth circle, or even earlier, without the help of this sun 'god.' I certainly hesitate to ask you to throw yourself into something dangerous for our sake, but at the same time, she may be right. Perhaps this challenge is impossible without her."

  "The desert kingdom didn't get out, even with the sun god's help," Nathan pointed out.

  "But maybe they could have. Maybe it gave them a fighting chance."

  Before Nathan could respond, Vee held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm not saying you should accept her offer. There's a lot we don't understand. Your best shot is probably gathering more information. I'm just saying things might not be black and white. It could be that her aid is genuine. It could also be that the cost is beyond what you're willing to pay."

  The two sat in silence, the room eerily still. The pale white walls felt dry and sterile, as they often did in Vee's lab.

  Vee snapped her fingers, breaking the quiet. "Enough about that topic. You said you had other questions for me."

  Nathan thought back to the events of the past month or two. "Actually, I do. There's this strange thing that's been happening. I ran into a pool a while ago—but it wasn't really a pool."

  "That makes no sense," Vee said.

  "I know, but I don't know how else to explain it. It was all misty, not like normal water. When I got there, I tried to fish normally, but the fish refused to latch on."

  "Was it a problem with the bait?" Vee asked.

  Nathan glanced at one of the syringes on the table. It contained a milky white, translucent fluid, reminiscent of what he'd seen back in the ‘spirit pool’, as he’d taken to calling it.. "No, I tried using my best bait. Nothing worked. What ended up happening was I pumped magic—energy, ki, whatever you want to call it—into my fishing pole. Once I did that, it was like they were drawn to it like a flame. Normal physical attacks didn't work on the fish, and neither did water magic. The only thing that worked were attacks enhanced with my energy. Not only that, but the fish didn't have a level associated with them."

  At this point, Vee was leaning so far forward she was almost falling out of her chair. "Please tell me you got a few samples."

  "I mean, I have a fish…"

  "But what about the water? The translucent water?"

  Nathan grinned sheepishly. "I forgot to grab samples of the water."

  "You can go back, though, right?"

  "Actually… that was back in the second circle. And we're in the third now, so…"

  Vee's hands trembled as she reached out toward Nathan's neck. He winced at the look of exasperation on her face.

  "How long ago did this happen? How many times have you run into me and forgotten to tell me about this?"

  Nathan shrank back in his chair. "…A few times."

  Vee collapsed forward onto the table. "You could've made life so much easier for both of us, you know that? Now you need to hunt down these things in the third circle, and there's no guarantee you'll be lucky enough to run into them again."

  "Is it that important?" Nathan asked.

  "Nathan, I've never heard of behavior like what you're describing. It could be an odd anomaly, or it could be the key to breaking out of the circles early. I don't know. Do you realize that? For the first time in the longest time, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

  Her tone grew increasingly manic as she spoke. Nathan awkwardly reached into his inventory and pulled out the dead spearfish. "I'll just… leave you with this…"

  Vee's mouth practically watered as she looked at the translucent fish. "Thanks…”

  Nathan backed toward the door, his eyes fixed on Vee. He cracked it open, then slipped out, shutting it firmly behind him.

  Nathan opened his portal and stepped through. He stretched his arms up and let out a little groan. That conversation had worn him out.

  "Hey, Chad, we need to talk about—"

  “Uh, Nathan?”

  Nathan glanced at Chad. “Yeah?”

  “I, uh, I tried to kick her out, but she insisted on sticking around—“

  "Nathaniel."

  Nathan froze. His eyes darted to the left, where a new voice had come from.

  "A portal, huh?" Bree said, her tone laced with curiosity. "How interesting."