The hotel staff move through the grounds with weary determination, their faces drawn with exhaustion as they gather the storm’s debris scattered across the premises. Palm fronds, broken planters, and fragments of patio furniture litter the pathways where tropical winds have left their mark.
The group sits around a makeshift breakfast in the powerless resort’s dim dining room when Squid appears, drawn by the scent of food. “There’s buried treasure down at the beach,” the child announces, fingers already plucking a bit of papya from Alister’s fruit bowl.
“Fingers out of my food, child,” Alister chides sharply.
“What did you see, Squid?” Reyna asks, leaning forward with interest.
“A box, half buried in sand.” Squid’s hands sketch shoebox dimensions in the air, eyes bright with excitement. “Pirate treasure. Loot.”
The group abandons their sparse breakfast and follows the eager child down to the storm-swept shoreline.
Sure enough, half-buried in the churned sand lies a copper-banded strongbox, revealed by the storm’s surging tide. They dig around its edges, and the container rattles with the promising sound of coins or small metal objects. The lock holds firm against their efforts. Elegant letters “S.U.” gleam from an etched design on the lid.
Reyna curses as her thieves’ tools snap in the stubborn lock mechanism. Debbie raises her mace and brings it down hard on the lid, denting the metal but failing to break it open. Cracks spider across the surface, revealing glimpses of darkness within the ruined strongbox.
When Hester shakes the damaged container, eight gold rings spill through the gaps into KFC’s waiting palms. Hester plucks one up, squinting at the intricate wave pattern that runs around the narrow band. “I think these are Rings of Water Breathing,” she announces to the group.
Squid snatches one immediately, sliding the oversized ring onto their slender finger. The ring glows with soft, pale green light and shrinks to fit their child-sized hand. Squid’s eyes widen in wonder as gill slits open along the sides of their neck. Suddenly fishlike, they gulp desperately, hands flying to their throat in panic. Gasping, they tear the ring from their finger, and the gill slits seal themselves with an aquamarine shimmer.
Recovering quickly and with a broad grin, Squid turns to Titania, who has taken control of the body they share with Alister. “Now you can take me swimming, Titania! You haven’t spent any time with me!”
Titania, visibly uncomfortable at the prospect of full water immersion, begins making excuses.
“No, we’re going swimming now,” Squid declares with childish determination. “Who’s coming with us?”
The group each claims a ring and follows the child, who drags the reluctant Titania toward the water’s edge.
Though Hester accompanies them by flying above the wave crests, the rest of the group discovers they can explore the bottom of Fairview Bay with ease. Brilliant corals and schools of tropical fish in impossible colors surround them. Above, Hester flutters nearly forty feet overhead, peering down at their underwater expedition.
The friends find they can speak to each other clearly beneath the waves. Squid points excitedly toward what appears to be the top of a submerged lighthouse rising beyond a coral outcrop. The light chamber has been shattered, but no obvious entrance presents itself at the top of the building. KFC gestures toward the lighthouse’s base, thirty feet below, where a doorframe waits, covered partially by the sandy bottom.
The group settles on the seafloor before the mysterious entrance. The door appears flat and featureless, without any visible handle. An old-fashioned light fixture dangles over the smooth surface, and a doorbell labeled “S.U.” sits mounted to the left of the frame.
Hester joins them beneath the waves, growing impatient with Alister’s careful examination of the darkened bulb and Reyna’s inspection of the doorframe. Without ceremony, she presses the doorbell.
The light flickers to life, and a doorknob materializes on the smooth surface. Hester grabs it immediately and twists. The door swings open.
The group enters a long, descending tunnel. Phosphorescent moss covers the rough walls, providing an eerie glow as they swim deeper. Lights ignite ahead of them as they progress, illuminating their path through the mysterious passage.
They emerge into a vast underwater space resembling some kind of loading dock. Crates scatter the area—some open and obviously empty, others still sealed tight. Two forges burst into life, their molten glow warming the water to their left. A bank of large machines sits in an alcove, faced by a sweeping horseshoe-shaped array of control panels.
Despite intense study, Debbie cannot identify a master power switch among the complex controls. She experimentally pokes a button, and two lights flicker on before the panel. A distant bell echoes from a tunnel leading straight down into darkness, where ladder rungs provide handholds into the black depths. Debbie opens a drawer and extracts a waterproof journal bearing the initials “S.U.” embossed on its spine. She reads on its inner cover: “Property of Dr. Anders Seaworthy, Professor of Magical Harmonics, Quandrix College, Strixhaven University.”
“S.U. must stand for Strixhaven University!” Hester exclaims.
Three months of journal entries date back fifty years, detailing research into magical energy convergences among Strixhaven’s five colleges. Professor Seaworthy describes ambitious work aimed at flooding the area with harmonic resonant energy to bring about worldwide peace. The entries mention his collaboration with a graduate student named Helmenth Murgaxor, brilliant but somewhat unpredictable, according to the professor.
Their enemy—the creature that has repeatedly tried to kill them while collecting strange artifacts for unknown purposes.
After Debbie shares this revelation, Reyna pries open a pair of nearby crates. The first contains three nearly complete canvas diving suits, their globe-like helmets encrusted with barnacles. In the second crate, nested in what appears to be preserved kelp, lie half a dozen rusty air tanks designed for the diving suits.
Reyna draws out one of the tanks, but as she tugs on it, a rotted hose gives way, releasing a stream of bubbles. Startled, she releases her grip, and the airtank spins wildly across the space, missing all the friends but striking the rough wall. It explodes in a thunderous cloud of bubbles and noise, sending silt drifting down from the cavern’s ceiling.
Beckalyee investigates one of the machines, pressing what appears to be a power button. A conveyor belt containing several half-filled vials of lavender fluid begins rotating within the mechanism. Delighted, Beckalyee opens the machine’s lid and reaches for one of the vials. She fails to notice the syringe that stabs the back of her hand, injecting something that burns like fire through her veins.
Beckalyee yanks her hand free, still clutching the tiny bottle, but grows lightheaded and needs to lean heavily on Titania. Titania quickly casts Protection from Poison, and Beckalyee feels marginally better as she pockets the mysterious vial.
Debbie turns sharply, hearing a harsh, hissing whisper echoing from the dark well. She shushes her companions urgently as Reyna draws out the Wand of Wonder, aiming it toward the tunnel mouth.
A reptilian snout expands into a dragonish face as massive hands pull a muscular, scaled body through the opening. In alarm, Reyna flicks the wand at the creature. It flashes brilliant purple, conjuring a gigantic illusory crate that hovers menacingly over the creature as if ready to fall.
The creature panics, believing the massive box threatens to crush them, but it quickly discovers it cannot retreat. Several additional companions push it forward as they approach from behind, forcing the frightened draconic into the room. As each comes forward one by one, they becoming terrified of Reyna’s convincing illusion, but cannot back away.
For behind the four frightened creatures, a larger and more fierce-looking draconic warrior shoves them aside before confronting the companions. It ignores Reyna’s illusion, and in broken Common, the creature demands to know if they have come with Professor Seaworthy, who has been absent far too long. He is both needed and expected by them.
These creatures, Draconians, have faithfully guarded the orrery for the Professor who left about 60 years back, desperate to search for someone to repair the orrery. The warrior explains that this complicated mechanism will provide the crucial date when a comet returns close to the world. It will provide the boost of harmonic energy needed to harness the five streams of magical power, each representing the five colleges of Strixhaven. This date must certainly be approaching. After all, fifty years have passed while the Draconians slept in hybernation until the hexmates’ presence awoke them. Realizing the extreme length of their sleep and hopeful that Dr Seaworthy has returned, the Draconics know that the comet will arrive any month now. Once repaired, the orrery will reveal the exact date. Any who wish to use this date might also destroy the magical world, rending a tear in the harmonic fabric of the world and allowing other planes of existence to mingle in a chaotic soup of anarchy.
Alarmed by the dire warnings, the friends volunteer to try their skills with the orrery repairs. They spend several hours tinkering, trying various approaches and combinations. Between their combined talents and knowledge, they finally determine the proper pattern needed for the mechanism to function. They carefully set the device with their best calculated estimates, and the orrery springs to vibrant life.
Clockwork arms rotate smoothly, swinging in wide ovals to trace the orbits of identified planets. The ticking and clacking of dials gradually settles into a final position, the mechanism stilling as it locks onto a specific date.
The reading shows a day just two months in the future—shortly after the beginning of the school year. They will have precious little time to prevent whatever evil plan Murgaxor has set in motion.
