I'm a Stingray?

"What happened here?" Timothy mumbled after they got close enough to the reef.

"I don't know, but it looks bad." Gerlach followed along, pointing out the obvious.

The naked eye could notice that the area had been coated with wide-spread darkness, along with occasional long and thick lines of green.

In some aspects it was pretty, but the thought of not understanding how all of this happened, proved truly terrifying.

The hints of green helped the team make a swift theory of just what could have happened here. It was a theory that managed to make sense, but had poor effort put into it.

Subconsciously, they have all guessed that the holy-tar sect had something to do with all of this.

How the sect gained enough power to achieve such coloration changes, was beyond them; they still haven't understood how the tar-pools were made, let alone comprehend such drastic shifts of a massive piece of underwater land.

The best idea that the team managed to think of, was to head closer to the reef, and find any friend in order to reap information out of them.

There seemed to be other fish in this area, but most of them simply swam away at the sight of the team, they were too scared to cooperate.

Cornering random strangers seemed like a bad idea at this point, so they had to settle with something else, like locating the hidden-tribe that carried various small sea-animals.

Most of the group had quite some memories with those good souls, and managed to form bits of connections with them as well; if not for anything else, those small fish there were a pleasure to be around.

Locating this hidden-den however, proved really tricky. Sure the team had brief photographic memories that aided them to find the spot ~ but that proved useless here.

Simply because as it was mentioned earlier, the whole place was covered in a wide colour of darkness.

The reef was painted with it, so it was difficult to make any details out of any area, even if they swam skin-close to the reef's portions.

So the team put in quite a bit of effort to orientate themselves through this madness. And eventually, they managed to get close enough to one of those long, green lines.

Their size was a bit underestimated, seemingly. Because now that they got close to one, it was easy to see that the line was over ten meters wide!

Apart from that, it stretched at least a few hundred meters long! Just what could have been so capable, to simply spill such a large chunk of green-coloration, both across plain sand and above the coral-reef?

The entire team were still clueless of the whole situation, and weren't able to comprehend even a fraction of what was going on.

Gerlach was indefinitely the most informed, when it came to information that surrounded the holy-tar sect; but in this case, he was as clueless as a newborn baby.

So inevitably, the entire group was wholeheartedly hoping that they could find the hidden-den ~ as there simply was no other way to make sense out of this madness.

About an hour later of excruciatingly irritating work later, they managed to find a small hint of the location they were looking for.

In the process, the whole team put in effort to avoid these odd colorations, simply because they had no trust towards them; what if it was coated with some type of radiation?

Such a risk was something that they truly wanted to avoid taking. Especially after witnessing the very thing that gave them a hint of where the hidden-den was.

In more descriptive words, they have spotted what was solely described as a dungeness crab.

Its bulky-plate-like features were difficult to ignore, not to mention its half-meter size.

Necessarily, they got a hint that the den was close, because this species of crab behaved like guards in that very location.

But the sight of this dungeness crab carcass scared them. Apart from the scary thought that something was capable enough, to kill these underwater tanks ~ there was another detail that scared the team deep into their soul.

This crab was coated with nothing but a black colour as well. A crab like that doesn't seem so odd, because nature is truly diverse.

But the team knew a dungeness crab body when they saw one, their features were truly unique.

And in this situation where everything was covered in the same colour, it gave a hint that everything was related to the mystery.

However. With a bit of effort, they managed to find the entrance of the hidden den. And their hearts tingled with nervousness, because they truly didn't know what to expect.

Timmy and Dana had the most trouble to pass through its tunnel. The mental impact of this area wasn't the thing that forced them to be hesitant; but these couple of friends had just grown too big.

Even though they were individually different, these couple of stingrays have truly met with some growth-sprouts.

Dana especially. She was nearly half larger in comparison to her friend, simply because eagle-rays were typically bigger in comparison, to the bodily limitations that blue-spotted ribbon tail rays faced.

But regardless, they eventually managed to slip through the tunnel with enough rough-handling; and finally, they attained a glimpse of what this place carried.

And it was fair to say that the sight was anything but easy to the eye.

It was true that this tribe has gone through a couple of massacres before, but their number still stood in the tens.

And at the moment, the team were trying to ponder the horrid realisation, that this entire tribe had been coated black!

There were fish bodies laying across the area. Most of them were intact and some of them were ripped in half, but overall the scene seemed simply terrifying!

A few hints helped them realise that a minor battle had broken out here.

Fear struck the entire team's heart, as they understood that all of these fish were carcasses; all of them were simply gone, dead, and never to return.

It was difficult to comprehend the concept of death, when it was inflicted against so many allies ~ the team didn't know how to feel.

But eventually, Timmy noticed a fish that heavily stood out in comparison to the others.

This fish was small like most of these carcasses, but was covered with a layer of green skin.

Such a colour heavily stood out in a spot, where nothing but darkness covered most of the place!