Adam had once heard that it was impossible to swim in bubbling water. He didn't know where he had heard that rumor, but always assumed it had something to do with the air disrupting the water equivalent of air resistance. Birds fly by pushing down on the air which lifts them up, and dolphins swim in much the same way, but dolphins aren't birds so can't push against air thus making it impossible to swim in bubbling water.
It turns out that wasn't true, all the water was still present, for the most part, aside from the stuff that was being emitted as steam, so there was plenty of water to push off of, not that it mattered as his suit was so heavy he sank to the bottom anyway.
Adam was no scientist, a fact that he would always regret if he was being honest.
He had always loved science. When he was a kid he had subscribed to all of those space magazines, bought books on astronomy and anything else that caught his interest. When he was a kid he had wanted to become an astronomer or maybe an astrophysicist, but at the end of the day that's just not what he had been cut out for. He remembered crying once as a child when he struggled in math class knowing that physics was probably not in his future.
It wasn't that he couldn't do science. He did have what equated to a masters degree in orbital physics, but that had taken way more work than it probably should have.
At the end of the day he was no scientist. He was a grunt, a trigger puller, but he consoled himself by noting that scientists never got to do anything half as cool as he did. And that included hiding at the bottom of a boiling hot springs to avoid detection by a conclave of alien zealots as he tried to infiltrate their base to threaten their "prophet".
He pushed one step through the water, and then another.
The water around him wasn't exactly boiling, more like simmering, and enough light made it through the surface for his infrared vision to still be working.
He found himself in a strange underwater world.
It wasn't bare rock down here or mineral deposits but a lively ecosystem teaming with strange fish, a couple of those large crabs, and thousands of different kinds of plants. Of course, he wanted to be careful, somewhere around here was the source of the pool's heat, probably a natural vent into the planet's magma interior, and that was not something he was sure his suit could withstand. In fact it seemed unlikely.
Best to stay where he knew it was safe.
Boiling water probably didn't sound all that safe, but as far as Adam understood boiling water was always at the same temperature, assuming gravity and some other stuff was the same. Water has a boiling point at 100 C and 212 F, the boiling point of anything is the point at which a liquid transforms from its solid state into its gaseous state, and thus it cannot get hotter because if it did it would simply turn into vapor. Now if you put water into a pressurized container that changes things, or at least he sort of remembered hearing that, but he wasn't thinking about special cases.
All he knew is that he was safe3 as long as he stayed in the boiling water because the water was unlikely to get any hotter.
One of the large crabs walked past his feet and he watched it go with some interest. To say it was a crab would be a bit generous as it really didn't look anything like your average earth crab. It had several legs and a hard chitinous shell, but the general shape is where all the similarity seemed to end.
Another school of fish swam by to his left
Adam could feel their consciousness, it was sort of a strange experience, kind of just a general humming in telepathic space that conveyed basic wants and desires like hunger. Some species were smarter than others. For instance the crabs had a sort of general understanding of tool usage, but nothing that would be considered sentient. The fish had thoughts that were sort of hive mind-like, and the coral stuff, or whatever it was, at the bottom of the lake was so devoid of brain power that he couldn't even really make out the intention.
Just a sort of constant background noise.
He took another step through the simmering darkness, his movement impeded by the water pushing against his body. He felt like one of those old timey divers with the huge metal suits that looked like space suits.
Celex swam next to him, having taken on the fore of some unknown kind of fish, probably from his own planet, and together they made there way through the partial mud and darkness. Overhead he could just sense the thoughts of the zealots as they moved off.. He followed them keeping close to the sheer wall of the natural bridge. Coral cracked and shattered under his feet, which he felt bad about, but there was really nothing he could do now.
At some point a large snail-like creature floated off the nearby wall and came to a rest on one of his shoulders where it suctioned tight like a barnacle. However, it wasn't hostile and it didn't really get in his way, so he decided to let it stay.
Up ahead the water grew dimmer, though he could still see. Overhead something was impeding light from getting down and through the water. At first he had no idea what it was, and then he realized.
That was the temple.
They had made it to the center of the lake.
Okay, so the temple didn't sit on an island in the middle, but it floated.
He wasn't entirely sure how that worked with the bubbles and currents from the boiling water, but he wasn't about to question it.
Remember.
Not a scientist.
At his side the snail let go and vanished back into the water. Adam was almost sad to see it go, but something.
Bothered him.
HAd it gone quiet all of a sudden.
That same thought process was going through Celex's head too
Adam tried to make contact with the snail again or maybe a school of fish. Preferably he would have liked a crab, but there were none nearby. Things in the deep had gone rather silent, and strange.
And the few thoughts that he did manage to catch were full of.
Something.
But what.
It took him almost a full thirty seconds to comprehend.
And then it came to him.
Fear.
Fear followed by a too intelligent sense of malice.
Celex came to the same conclusion he did at around the same time, just in time for both of them to see the massive black shape darting through the water towards them black maw open to reveal a thousand teeth growing in a sharp ring pointed inwards. Adam shouted inside his suit and Celex darted to the side as the worm-shark lunged at Adam.
The thing was massive, with a mouth as wide as Adam was tall, and a body that snaked away into darkness.
The inside of his suit screeched in protest as teeth came in contact with metal, and he found himself staring down the things's churning gullet, which was much wider than he thought it should have been. Inside the suit he was safe, but somehow he could still sense the massive pressure that its jaws were putting him under.
It had clamped down on him and shook its head.
Adam went momentarily dizzy as his body was flung from one side to the other
Warning lights began to blink inside his helmet.
Oh shit oh shit.
If he had a suit breech here.
Well it would be disaster.
He tried not to imagine what it would be like to be stuck inside this confined space as boiling water poured in to cook him from the outside in.
Adam had always assumed that the worst way to die would be being burned to death.
He now knew that it was being boiled alive in a confined space.
And with that realization came strength.
The long knife on the side of his right forearm opened with a snap and he turned stabbing the side of the creature's mouth and raking his hand to the side. Multiple teeth went flying, and lack blood spilled into the water.
Inside his head he sensed agony and ange.
The creature writhed, tossing him back and forth but Adam kept stabbing. He kicked and squirmed forcing himself inward, into the creature's throat. Ironically that was actually the safest place for him right now. Outside it could bite him, or constrict him or throw him around, but there was jack all it could do to him if it was in its belly, but there was everything Adam could do to it. At some point the creature seemed to understand that distinction and tried to spit him back out, but Adam had other ideas using the blade of his knife like an ice pick to drag himself forward through the creature's flesh.
It began to roll violently, and Adam felt like he was inside a washing machine.
The blinking in his helmet stopped and then started again.
He was holding on for dear life.
He had slid further down the creature's throat now, past the teet, and it would have seemed like a perfect place to keep going, but it continued to roll, so hard and so fast Adam was having trouble keeping up with it. Anyone else would have probably vomited inside their helmet by now, which would have been almost as bad as getting boiled alive.
He wished the dam thing would stop moving.
Luckily he wasn't alone, and outside Celex came to intervene. The rolling stopped though Adam could feel himself being whipped violently back and forth as the creature chased something through the water. He got the murky image of another large technicolor shark worm battling it out for supremacy.
Not one of Celex's most attractive forms, but how could he complain? His distraction gave Adam more than enough time to get to work, stabbing slicing and tearing into the creature's throat intent on digging his way out. Before long the creature was actively trying to regurgitate him despite Celex ripping chunks out of tis flesh, but Adam held on.
This bastard had eaten him and now it was going to face the consequences.
He stabbed again, hard and this time he felt himself break through. He worked with that and began to saw.
This must have been a horrible way to die but hey, play stupid games win stupid prizes.
And one of those prizes was internal active decapitation .
Soon enough the creature's body slowed and then went limp. Adam had made a hole just wide enough for him to claw his way out covered in the things blood which was mostly washed off by the boiling water by the time its carcass dropped to the ground. He almost panicked upon seeing another shark-worm hovering nearby until he recognized the rainbow pattern on its body.
"ugh , digusting."
"Really, I thought I looked rather dashing."
He was about to say something supremely clever, when a distance rush filled his head. He sensed the malice and knew.
They were coming.
His suit blinked continually inside his head. Some of the outer panels were close to being compromised.
Another bite like that and he was done for, but they were coming fast.
He had only one option.
Just as several more of the worm like shapes appeared from the darkness, Adam slammed a hand into his jetpack controls. Fueled entirely by maker energy, the jetpack didn't care so much about the water, shooting Adam straight up and towards the closest source of light.
He burst in a geyser of boiling water and into a brightly lit chamber that momentarily overloaded his infrared. He hit something hard, skidded and rolled. Behind him two of the creatures burst from the water champing at thin air.
His infrared switched itself off, finally giving him a good view of the room.
Pure white crystal with nothing but the churning hole at the center and a crystal throne at the far end of the room.
On the floor at the base of that throne a creature lay crumpled.
Once upon a time it had worn a black robe, but now pulsing bone was all that was left issuing red fog in all directions as it groaned and pulled its way across the floor inexplicably still alive. Adam raised his head slowly from the floor to the creature that sat on the throne.
Golden eyes burned at him from the darkness.
And General Kazna smiled grimly rested her shadow spear gently across her knees