Our heroes continued on their journey. They noticed the next night that Mitsui did not keep camp with the rest of the group and was nowhere to be found, although she rejoined the party the next day. On the road they encountered Crux, an automaton that was wandering the lands and joined with our heroes. Upon arriving at the great willow tree, Sparky conducted the ritual to open up the tree and brought the nine in.
Each of the members were very interested in the boulder, although Zanizyre was getting a bit of a cough, she claimed to be feeling ok. After a bit of time they decided to leave, and Sparky asked if there would be a way to investigate the tunnel in the waterway. They learned that Darwar could cast the spell Water Breathing and so the nine, along with our heroes and their new companion Crux started heading swimming down, Mitsui let them know she would catch up with them shortly as she still had some stuff to do.
While they could now breathe underwater, none of our heroes could swim very well, so they had the seaweed leshy drag them along, but Mitsui still managed to keep up with the group easily enough. Upon reaching the bottom of the tunnel they saw an underwater kingdom. Upon entering it they were greeted by merfolk, who gladly welcomed the new Willowblade to the underwater kingdom of Agua, saying it had been centuries since a Willowblade had last been here, having seemingly shirked their duties, but they were glad to see them back here. The merfolk were protectors of the waterway making sure the great willow tree would get its necessary nutrition directly from the ocean itself.
The nine, except for Mitsui, opted to leave. Our heroes did find a merfolk who was willing to cast water breathing on them the next day. While exploring they learned that there was a temple to Gozreh here as well. Going in they learned there was a dedicated circle of teleportation linked with the temple in Metades, and that Sparky Willowblade could use it at any time. Sparky and Fang then returned to their room at the inn, however Crux continued exploring and chatting. He met with the king, Mefik, who requested aid from our heroes. They learned that an ugly humanoid amphibious creature had been attempting to poison the waterways. While the guards would pursue it, it retreated to some underwater caverns that were dry land and the merfolk were unable to follow it. Crux accepted the task.
The next day our heroes, along with some of the guards who helped them swim, brought them to the caves where the creature would hide. Our heroes explored the caves and managed to find an underground lake with an island in the middle, which they believed to be where the creature was. They took their folding boat out to start crossing, but were then ambushed by a sea hag and its pets, a coral capuchin and a swarm of amoeba.
The swarm latched on to Crux but were unable to injure him, as the capuchin and hag swam around staying out of sight in the dark, where only Fang could see. After some hit and run tactics, Sparky mentioned a deal, gathering the sea hag’s attention. Convincing it that he couldn’t understand what it was saying while it was underwater, it came out, only for Fang to throw a fireball its way, killing both it and the capuchin that had been hiding just beneath the edge at the top of the water.
Our heroes took the head of the hag and the capuchin, and returning to Mefik received their reward. Our heroes rested the next day before starting the journey back to Magia.