Rewrite That Witch
CH1122 · Rewrite
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Chapter 1122: To the Sea

Three days later, the basket reached the surface and Simbady rose out of the sea like a man returning from somewhere else entirely.

“How was it?” Mulley asked before he’d even gotten the helmet off. Her eyes were bright, fully committed to whatever he was about to say. “Is the undersea world beautiful?”

It was not. It was dark and pressurized and full of unsettling animals, and every time the basket descended he had the sensation of being swallowed. But he looked at her face, and thought about how she’d looked watching the Fishbone Clan ships leave from the Port of Clearwater that first time — optimistic on their behalf when none of them had felt optimistic themselves.

“The scenery is not bad,” he said.

Mulley sighed. “I wish I could go down and look.”

Rex surfaced a moment later, climbed out dripping, and clapped his hands.

“Good. Very good.” He was studying Simbady with the focused assessment of a man compiling a rating. “Excellent balance. Good lung capacity. Sense of direction holds under pressure. You stay calm. You have every quality a diver needs.” A pause. “Is that Sand National training or natural? No offense — Miss Mulley told me you’re not the strongest fighter in your clan.”

Mulley met Simbady’s eyes and did not look guilty about this at all.

“There was a pond at the Silver Stream Oasis when we were children,” Simbady said, keeping his voice even. “We had diving competitions. I have some experience.” He paused. “Mulley was right, though. I’m not the best in the clan. If it were Carlone doing this, he’d probably need one day.”

“Carlone?”

“The strongest warrior in the younger generation. He worked at the Festive Harbor once. He’s at the Port of Clearwater now. Too late to find him.”

Rex shrugged. “I don’t think he’d beat you.”

“On what grounds?”

“The most important quality in a diver isn’t physical skill,” Rex said. He pulled at the diving suit’s collar, loosening the seal. “It’s an open mind. The ability to accept the unknown and go toward it anyway. That’s the difference between a pond and the ocean.” He looked out at the Festive Harbor. “This place changes daily. Carlone came once and left. You came once and stayed. That’s already a different kind of person.”

Simbady looked at him flatly. “I stayed because Mulley stayed.”

He had wanted to collect his ten gold royals and go. But Mulley had been fascinated by the suit, had immediately offered to help with the salvage — and Simbady wasn’t going to let her deal with this Fjords person alone until he’d tested whether the equipment was actually safe.

“Hah,” Rex said. He was not laughing at Simbady — more at some private understanding. “But you overcame yourself and took the step. That’s the point, isn’t it? That might be why Mulley prefers you.”

“Wait — what did you say?”

“She talked about you quite a bit when we first met.” Rex kept moving, matter-of-fact. “Said you were timid as a child. Often bullied into crying. But curious about everything. She said you’re more guarded now.”

A muscle near Simbady’s jaw moved. “She told you everything.”

“She’s more comfortable with strangers, maybe.” Rex picked up the suit and started folding it. “I don’t know Sand National customs well. Fighting capacity might weigh heavily in how your people assess each other. But you might also just undersell yourself.”

“You don’t know anything,” Simbady said — but the heat had gone out of it.

He noticed, with mild irritation, that he didn’t mind Rex. Not very much. It had happened gradually over three days: Rex spoke to him like an equal not because he was being diplomatic about it, but because the thought of doing otherwise appeared not to occur to him. That was rare enough among northerners and Fjords people to notice.

He asked Rex about it directly — why he treated a Sand National as an equal without effort.

Rex was quiet for a moment. Then: “No particular reason. We’ve had enough discrimination ourselves.”

A man who could pre-pay thirty gold royals had been discriminated against. Simbady filed that without fully understanding it.

Before he could ask more, one of Rex’s assistants appeared.

“Sir, the tests are done. We’re ready whenever you are.”

Rex turned to Simbady. “Want to try the cave today? You know the suit well enough.”

Simbady suppressed his curiosity. “As long as what you built works.”

“Nearly ten years of research,” Rex said. He sounded almost wounded. “I bet everything on it.” Then, at whatever he heard in his own voice: “Ahem. Never mind. We go in this afternoon.”

The afternoon was chosen because at midday the sun stood directly overhead and its light reached fifty meters straight down, illuminating the cave mouth in the cliff face. In the evening, when the tide receded and the entrance became accessible without diving, they’d lose that visibility and risk disorientation in the dark.

Rex went first. Fifteen minutes later, Eyemask looked at Simbady and nodded.

Simbady breathed in. The helmet went on. Mulley leaned in to check the collar seal and said quietly: “You can do it. I’ll be waiting here.”

He looked at her once. Turned away. Stepped into the basket.

The steam engine engaged with a deep rumble, and the basket descended.

The waves came up around him and kept coming. For one moment, standing at the edge of the churning surface, he felt the ocean as a single continuous mass — not water, something older, something with no interest in whether he survived — about to close over his head.

Then it did.

The world turned blue and transparent. Sun shafts split and fractured through the water, scattering into a thousand moving points of light that drifted over the seafloor like scattered coins.

Twenty meters down, the basket stopped.

Before him: a cave mouth in the cliff face, dark, fathomless, breathing cold.

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