I'm a Stingray?

After the few friends exchanged their kind gestures, the couple of fish who could not withstand water pressure made their way upwards for the sake of survival.

Timothy continued to dwell deeper into this tunnel, with the couple other allies that remained by his side, and he felt a bit uncomfortable through the process.

Sure he had complete faith in his brother and Dana too, but the thought of being less in number was a bit intimidating.

He hoped that this journey wouldn’t unravel any more threats, and gave benefits instead such as valuable information.

But regarding how this day would play out, what remained of the team could only make their best guess; and of course it would be worse if they cancelled the exploration expedition, so they had to keep going.

At the moment they were nearly four-hundred meters under the sea ground!

Typically such depths would crush the life out of most shallow-water fish, but there were a couple of aspects that worked to the team’s advantage.

Simply said, they aren’t average fish whatsoever. Each team member had gone through some voluntary or involuntary changes in the past, and these changes made them powerful and enduring.

Gerlach and Osira had been mutated as well, that was rather clear at this point - but their depth endurance simply seemed weaker, that was everything that made them turn back.

Apart from individual endurance, the way that this tunnel was structured aided the rest of the team to be more enduring.

The large tunnel for example, curled tens of times so far, which aided to derive sea-pressure quite swimmingly.

That aside, the team endured the pressure that came out of the thirty-meter tunnel, not the whole sea.

So necessarily each of them could sink deeper than usual, as there was less pressure that could take their lives.

As for how much they could endure before they are forced to turn back, neither of them were sure.

Their best option was to continue their exploration attempts, and of course they did exactly so.

What they did not expect however, was that the overall scene of this tunnel would drastically change after just two-hundred more meters of swimming.

The whole team was quite used to witnessing a whole amount of tar through this tunnel, so it almost felt unnatural when they noticed that the deeper portions weren’t filled with tar!

They didn’t quite understand how the tar stretched this deep underneath the surface, so obviously they wouldn’t understand how that same substance lacked in quantity down here.

Their eyes could only capture a bunch of crystals now, and it was fair to say that they were dumbfounded!

The whole portion of this tunnel was covered with crystals and gems, and each of them simply shone with illumination!

Such grand details raised the conclusion that the entire tunnel was covered in gems, rather than just a portion of it; but were covered in tar for some reason?

The conclusion would make sense, as after all it would be easier for the taller crystals to stick out of the tar, and for the short ones to be coated by that same substance.

This theory raised another conclusion, and Timothy was the first to point it out.

He cleared his throat and expressed, “I think that big worm told the truth… this place really was his home.”

“Nah he was just filled with a load of bullshit,” Snoopy was the first to disagree.

Dana sought reasons to agree with the hero, but she barely had any idea what the other meant. So she saw it as the most logical to be quiet.

“Come on man, would the holy-tar sect can’t fill this entire shit with gems in three days.” The sea-pancake weighed in with reasoning.

But of course his sibling was naturally sceptical too, so he had to question. “What do they have to do with any of this?”

“I don’t know, but they’re probably not behind this at all…” Timothy tried to explain.

His sibling swiftly caught up this time and cooperated, “Which means that something else has blasted this hole open… either that or this place was down here all along?”

“Exactly!” Timothy shouted, and felt happy that his thought was fully comprehended by a second teammate.

“And we made fun of that snake’s mother…” Dana pointed out the sadder side behind their previous actions.

Snoopy was the prime reason behind that same snake’s demise, and he didn’t feel quite happy about it once they made these slight realisations.

So he wanted to push those thoughts aside, which was why he pitched an idea. “That so-called mother is what we should be looking for, maybe she can help us figure things out.”

“Maybe we can find her down here,” Timothy expressed but was mostly wishful.

“Unlikely,” Snoopy firmly disagreed.

And then reigned logic across the conversation, “That worm wanted to head for another tunnel to look for his mother, so I don’t think we can find anything important down here.”

“We went this far, so we will go deeper.” The sea-pancake insisted.

Of course the team could only follow that idea now, so they sank another hundred meters deeper below.

They couldn’t help admiring the whole scene that enveloped this deeper portion of the tunnel.

Since tar was entirely lacking in this portion, they could only see a massive variety of gems and crystals.

Since the grand illumination in this portion did not hurt their eyes at all, the team was given the opportunity to admire another aspect of this scenery.

There were tens of colours in this portion of the tunnel. A good half of them were different shades of red, but there were many crystals of other colours.

So in a way, the team felt like they were heading towards a beautiful death.

In this situation it was no surprise that beauty could come hand to hand with the stunning unknown. What had not been discovered yet could prove dangerous.

The view here was beautiful enough to be considered a once in a lifetime scene, but the team sure as hell hoped that such a term wouldn’t prove itself literal.

In addition to such an aspect, the team met with a scene that proved itself both intriguing and possibly dangerous.

At first it was even difficult to acknowledge the possible danger, but once they did, their hearts almost went through their stingray tails!

It simply wasn’t easy on the conscious to have crystal blink at them…

That was why the team had it difficult to comprehend, that there was some bizarre version of crystal-fish locking eyes with them!