Page 29 of Monster's Melody

They floated in a cloud around his head, dancing and weaving in the water as they always did on land.

Adorable.

I gave Vorzak a thumbs up and motioned to the tunnel.

He hesitated and I made a shooing motion with my hands.

A resigned look on his face, he used his arms to propel himself up, then slid into the tunnel feet-first and disappeared, the wall sliding back into place behind him.

I quickly swam back to my own entrance, pushed the button and dove into my tunnel headfirst.

The currents that were in the tunnel immediately grabbed hold and yanked me forward.

The force was so great, I wished I’d warned Vorzak not to try and swim, but to just make his body an arrow pointing the way the water wanted it to go.

Then again, no one had warnedme.

It was just something every student learned their first time in the tunnels.

A couple minutes after I entered the tunnel, I was hurtled free and plunging downward over the side of a giant waterfall.

I loved it when the tunnels sent us over the waterfall.It was like the best roller coaster ride in existence.For a split second, as I was in freefall, it felt like flying.

Then, I hit the water, my hands paving the way as I dove deep into the lagoon that would eventually shoot us out toward whatever obstacle course Puddlemoan had set in place for us that day.

The dive I’d just taken was easier for me than for most students, mostly because I was born bimodal and thus, was used to transitioning back and forth rapidly from water-breathing to air-breathing.The other students typically struggled during transition moments, almost as if their lungs would forget how to function after breathing through gills or vice versa.

The shock typically only lasted an instant, but it could be disorienting at first, especially as students had toremembernot to breathe through their mouth or nose when in water andtobreathe when not.

I hadn’t had a chance to warn Vorzak of all the possible complications, so I was relieved to see him swimming effortlessly just ahead of me, though that didn’t last long because the whirlpool at the center of the lagoon caught us both and dragged us down.

Long moments later, we shot out of a second tunnel into the briny waters of the sea.

We were deep in the oceans surrounding the island where Blackthorn Academy stood, in waters that were well-known for being home to every supernatural creature imaginable.

I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky, though.

We could have been thrown into the moat instead.

Checking the gauge on my suit, I saw that we were only twenty-five meters below the surface.As a siren, I could travel hundreds of meters deep, but that wasn’t the same for every supernatural, though we could commonly travel further than a human.

As we were well within the safety margins for both humans and supernaturals, I relaxed.

Seemed Puddlemoan was giving us a soft start to the semester.

Nice.

Our first challenge revealed itself immediately.

A bright light in the shape of a number one appeared in the distance.

As we got closer, it became clear that our first challenge was to find our way through a very spooky-looking underwater maze.

As we swam through the maze, seaweed formed a canopy above our heads and the ocean floor shifted, rising and sinking to create walls that weren’t stable or permanent on either side of us.

We got lost, of course, hitting one dead end after another before eventually reaching the remains of what appeared to be an ancient shipwreck.

I might have considered the ship to be yet another dead end, except there was a huge hole in the side of it.