He suddenly found himself in a dark tunnel, only it did not go from one side to the other, but up and down. The bottom was nowhere to be seen, so Arturo fell and collapsed over a large body of water. Startled, he popped his head above the surface to catch a breath of air and realized he was no longer above the tree. The place around him was dark, but he could see its boundaries; it was a room with a dark dome above, with lots of cold water inside and a platform on one side to stand on. He quickly made his way there. As he stood up, he heard two more splashes; Erica and Liliana, who had followed him.

—What was that all about?— Erica pleaded.

—That sphere in the tree must be a bridge— Arturo guessed.

Then he turned around. On the wall next to the platform was a door, the only one in the room. With no other choice, they crossed it; the next room was much bigger, also with a large body of water flooding a certain portion of the space. Along the length of the room were several hexagonal platforms of solid stone, with beautiful engravings of incomprehensible symbols and three large waterfalls on the walls on the other side. The light was much more prominent there. It allowed them to see with no problem the figures engraved on the walls, where people with fins and tails appeared, making strange symbols with their hands.

—What is this place?— asked Liliana, amazed.

—I don't see any other purpose than to look good— commented Arturo, surprised.

—It looks like a temple— observed Erica.

—A hidden temple— added Arturo— Why would someone build all this to leave it as a secret?

From where they were, there didn't seem to be a way out. However, as they jumped between the platforms, they noticed that behind the waterfalls were three doors; of which only the one on the right was open. Curious, the children tried to force the other two doors; Arturo tried to deform them with magic so that they would open, but to no avail, as if the doors refused to obey him.

—How strange— he said to himself.

Then Erica pushed it open. To her surprise, the door didn't resist. Liliana then broke the other one with Brontes to see if she could, and as if it were any normal door, it broke in half.

—Anti-magic doors!— observed Arturo— but not resistant to blunt hits or slashes... this temple is built to restrict mages.

—So it's wrong for us to be here?— asked Erica.

—No, it means that no one was expecting you two.

Arturo began to meditate. They had three doors, they didn't know where they were going, nor how to deduce it from there, they would have to walk to find out. However, if someone had been capturing or killing people coming into that maze, the trap they fell into must be on the path they suggested. That is, to the right. That last one didn't hold much water, but it was what he would have done.

—Let's go to the right.

Across the track, they came to a corridor that led them through winding paths and gates sealed with strange riddles. They walked for quite a while until, behind a last door, they found themselves in a circular room. There seemed to be no other access there besides through the entrance. However, as they passed through, the door behind them sealed itself. Next, three holes opened from the ceiling, through which three figures fell.

They were humanoid beings, tall with thin, metallic bodies. They wore armor, carried a short sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Then they looked up at them, their eye sockets occupied only by two red bulbs.

—Robots?!— noted Arturo, dumbfounded.

The robots launched themselves at the kids, faster and stronger than a normal person. Erica and Liliana skillfully blocked them, but when Arturo tried to lift the third one in the air with his magic, he didn't succeed. The robot's body ignored his magic like the doors.

The automaton stood in front of the mage. The latter pulled chunks out of the ground, but the robot struck him with the pommel of the sword under the sternum, depriving him of air. Arturo shrank back, unable to breathe or do anything. He could not concentrate or perform magic in that state, he needed to recover.

To his surprise, the guard did not attack him with his weapons, but grabbed him and carried him over his shoulder.

Meanwhile, Liliana and Erica were trying to get rid of the robots that were attacking them, but they were so skillful and fast that they escaped Brontes' blade and so strong that they resisted Erica's blows without breaking completely.

The brika struggled with the robot in front of her. Because of the wound on her shoulder she could only use one arm. She tried to push it away, but the robot pulled her back and sent the tip of its sword into her face. At her side, Liliana dodged the automaton's slashes, while it did the same with Brontes. Whoever landed the first cut would win the fight, but none of them succeeded. Then she noticed that one of the enemies was taking Arturo, and she had to improvise. She deliberately left herself open on one side. The robot attacked her, lowering its guard. Liliana dodged it, rolled to the side and jumped over the one fighting Erica. With one slash she cut it in half.

—Excellent!— shouted the brika.

They immediately turned to the other one and attacked it from both sides, destroying it. Relieved, the girls took a moment to confirm that the robots were no longer moving. Then they turned to the one that had captured Arturo. This robot was standing very close to the wall, as if reading something written on it.

—Arturo!— Liliana called out.

She raised Brontes to cut the robot in half, but the boy raised his hands to stop her.

—No, don't do it!— he demanded.

The girls paused, startled. The mage looked quite relaxed even though he was being kidnapped.

—What?— Liliana asked, surprised.

—Look...

The boy made them turn their attention to the automaton, who looked too focused on the wall in front of him to pay attention to them. Upon closer inspection, the girls realized that he was making strokes on the wall with his metallic fingers, as if he wanted to draw. Suddenly, however, a jet of air shot out from the wall, as if it were depressurizing. It opened like a door, leading to a hidden corridor surrounding the circular room.

—What is that?!— asked Erica, astonished.

—We'll see— muttered Arturo.

The automaton set off down the corridor, followed by the girls. They crossed the hidden hallway and made a couple of turns. They walked for about a minute, until the dark tunnel opened into a large room. There were machines, screens, whiteboards, and wide tables with test tubes and other materials. It was a laboratory, a well-equipped one.

What caught their attention most was a dozen large, upright tubes filled with serum. Inside these tubes, suspended in the serum were several people, one per tube. They were connected to breathing machines, sedated. On their heads were strange helmets with hoses connected to various machines with gauges and luminous buttons.

The automaton crossed a long corridor made up of lines of tubes with people, placed side by side, to an empty one. It tried to put the boy inside the capsule, but at that moment Liliana slashed it with Brontes. Arturo found himself free.

—What is this place?— asked Erica.

—Nothing good— observed the mage.

—How did you know the robot would bring us here?— Liliana asked.

—Not exactly here— admitted Arturo, as he began to look in all directions, searching for something specific— but I already knew that they would bring me to where the other kidnapped people would be, because... well, because someone is kidnapping people, apparently.

The boy started walking around, looking carefully at every corner of the room.

—And how did you know that it wasn't going to kill you instead of bringing you here?— Erica said, half joking.

—Because it was obvious, wasn't it? We arrived at this temple unintentionally and of the three doors we see, only one can be opened with magic. We could have gone through any of the three, but imagine a mage alone, which way would he go?

Arturo walked through the tubes, examining the people.

—The door on the right— answered the girls.

—Exactly, and at the end of that path there is a room with no other exits in which robots appear on which magic cannot be used. This was the only path available and the robots were the trap. When I noticed that I couldn't deform them with magic, I knew that their mission was to take whoever they saw to wherever they were kidnaping people... and now we are in this laboratory.

Erica and Liliana looked around, to see the people inside the tubes. Arturo stopped next to one of them to study her carefully.

—And why do you suppose they are all mages?— asked Erica, interested in the boy's reasoning.

—The missing people, do you remember?

Finally he found something similar to an office; a desk placed against the wall in a corner, full of papers and holographic documents. The boy hurried to the desk and consulted paper by paper, quickly. After a short while he lifted up a single sheet.

—Aha!— he exclaimed— I knew it!

—What? What did you find?

—The culprit of the disappearances, the same one who sent us here.

He passed them the sheet of paper. It had a signature at the end: "Mg. Saponcio".

—I knew he was suspicious, but I never imagined he would have kidnapped his own comrades!

—Even Guerek's son— Liliana reminded them.

—But why?— pleaded the brika— What is he doing in this place?

—I don't know yet— admitted the boy— For now we'd better get these people out of those weird tubes, then we'll focus on finding the exit.

It didn't take the mage long to figure out how to drain the serum and disconnect the people from the machines. They were very weak after days of being there. Most remained unconscious the entire time, the rest didn't seem to have the strength to speak or respond in any way. They looked like living dead.

They also found a young noni, who was simply sedated. He could not answer either. Although the people were super weak, Arturo examined them all and assured them that they were going to be fine, they just needed rest and to get out of there.

Next Arturo searched through the desk drawers until he found a map of the area. This showed them a three-dimensional model of the entire labyrinth, including the secret corridors. Before leaving they examined it for a while. The waterfall room was practically in the middle of the complex; the door they had taken and the one on the other side described long corridors, while the middle one led to a simple circular room.

Ready, they set off. They walked again through several corridors and had to fight a few automatons again. To their surprise, at the end, the corridor described a descent into a flooded tunnel. They had to dive the last few meters until they reached the new room. After sticking their heads above the surface, they noticed that they were back in the waterfall room.

Then they headed for the center door, through it into a short, wide hallway. After the hallway was another door, much larger and sturdier than all the others. They tried to open it, but it was locked. They tried to knock it down with blows, to cut it and to warp it with magic, but the blows did nothing to it, Brones bounced off it and the magic seemed to deflect. There was no way they could get through that door.

Puzzled, but encouraged, they returned to the waterfall room to continue down the last path. The third door led them into a long curved hallway. The corridor turned at various times, with no greater adornment than the lights that poorly illuminated their passage. At a certain point the rock of its sky and walls ended and gave way to a thick glass tube that snaked along the bottom of the sea. The sunlight did not illuminate much at that depth, but they could see a few meters out. There were schools of fish, corals and mollusks walking along the sandy floor. To their surprise, the underwater life in Nudo was not much different from Mother's, or so it seemed to them until they saw a shadow pass over their heads. Turning, they caught a glimpse of a massive tail that snaked back and forth, fast, hidden in the gloom. In a second it was lost in the darkness.

—What was that?— asked Liliana, frightened.

—I didn't get a good look at it— admitted Erica— but I don't think it wants to eat us here. Don't worry.

Arturo wasn't so sure, but he didn't want to scare Liliana unless it was necessary. He thought he had seen some tentacles coming out of that monster, but a creature with tentacles couldn't have a tail, as far as he knew.

They didn't go much further when the glass hallway made them turn and head back toward the temple, only on a side they hadn't visited yet. They entered and continued their journey. After a couple more rooms and fights, they came to a very large, low room, like an oval hall. Strangely, there was no door anywhere. They thought to look for trap doors and secret corridors, when they noticed something strange; the sky was a mirror, and stranger still, it moved as if it were water.

—Floating water?— wondered Arturo.

Then he jumped up to touch it with his fingers. To his surprise, instead of brushing against solid rock, his hand splashed cold drops.

—The sky is water— he muttered, dumbfounded.

The girls looked up, as surprised as the boy. The liquid body was not falling or dripping, it was simply hovering in the air, covering a vast majority of the space in the huge room. The youngsters strained to see what was on the other side, it took them a while, but in the end they spotted it: far away, at the other end of the great hall and at the very top, there was the next door.

—I think we have to swim— Erica guessed.

—But this is impossible— pointed Arturo— How can there be water floating, what's keeping it like this?!

However, there was no one who knew anything about the subject to answer him at that moment.

—Magic?— Liliana blurted out.

—Yes, it must be magic— accepted Arturo.

He was dying to understand, but he had to accept that, for the moment, he could not. Perhaps that book of Saponcio explained the phenomenon.

—I'll throw you in, you swim as fast as you can— proposed Erica— How long can you hold your breath?

The three of them looked at the door on the other side, not quite sure. Even if they had measured it, they couldn't know exactly how far they would have to go, and therefore, they didn't know if they could make it. Nor could they go around the body of water, for it clung to the walls on all sides.

—Wait, let me try something first— Arturo asked them.

The mage concentrated on the mass of water above him and wondered how he could control it. He had already realized that flows were less obedient than solid blocks, where each particle was subject to another, but there had to be a way to control something disobedient like water.

He had thought of some ideas along the way What if instead of thinking of blocks and bodies of water, he thought of flows and currents? Something that moved. He tried a whirlpool, something simple. He began to turn his hand as he tried to make the water spin and for a moment it did what he asked it to do, though somewhat slower than he intended. The water began to spin on a point and form a whirlpool, but before it deformed much, the whirlpool broke apart and the water returned to its natural state.

—Argh!— exclaimed the boy.

—You almost had it!— Liliana encouraged him.

—You've improved— observed Erica— maybe in the end you won't need that book.

But Arturo put a hand to his head, in a gesture of defeat.

—No, I think I need it more than ever— he mused again— although it's true, I'm getting better. It's quite possible that I'm getting closer to the right line of thinking.

—Well, then, we'll have to swim— said Erica.

—What for?— asked Liliana.

—Ready— assured Arturo.

—Very well.

Erica grabbed him by his clothes and threw him into the water. Arturo crossed a good stretch thanks to the momentum, then continued on his own.

—Oh, that— commented Liliana.

—Ready?

Liliana turned to Erica, not very confident of her swimming skills.

—Do we all have to swim?

—Of course, how else are we going to get to the other side?

Then Erica grabbed her as she had done with Arturo and threw her in the same way. Then she jumped into the water herself. She used the few remaining cubic centimeters of timitio to form a propeller over her head and spin it to advance.

All was well in the room with the floating lagoon. The walls were dark and gave the impression that there were no boundaries. The contours of the door glowed to make it stand out. From the speed at which they were going, and also with Erica's help, it looked like they would have no trouble getting there in time.

Suddenly, with less than half the journey left, they heard a hatch opening, above. Alarmed, they saw a huge creature squirming into the room. It had an elongated body like a snake or an eel, its head was similar to that of a fish. It had so many fangs that it looked as if at some point it would have to spit them out to make some room. Perhaps the most grotesque thing was its neck, from which ten tentacles with spines protruded, with which it could grab things and smash boats.

—Is that the same octopus that attacked us?!— recognized Erica.