He felt the shock of cold as he hit the water, even though he didn’t need to. He had the Achievements to ignore anything less extreme than magical ice and molten lava, but not noticing temperature differences was just another weakness, and weakness wasn’t something Hogg could abide in himself. He let himself feel the cold and everything else.

Some might say that it's a bad idea to jump fully clothed into a body of water, and for most people it would be. But if he had that particular weakness, he would’ve died twenty years ago. His black leather clothing was enchanted to aid his movement in every environment, even underwater.

He oriented his body and started a gentle flutter kick. His enchanted leathers took that gentle movement and magnified it, and soon he was zipping through the dark tunnel like a blink eel.

The tunnel was empty for now, and dark. The undead wouldn’t need light to make their way, so no light was provided. He swam into the deep, letting the quiet darkness overtake him.

One would think that after a lifetime of this sort of thing, he would get used to it, but he never did. That same old cocktail of leaden anxiety and burning excitement thrummed through his body. His heart pounded in his ears, louder somehow for being under water. No matter how many times you jumped into a zombie-infested underground river with no light, to face who-knew-what under the nose of a cataclysmically powerful [Witch], it always felt like the first time.

His darksight was more than up to the task--small mercy. He could see better down here than most people could see in daylight.

Losing his illusionary light hadn’t blinded him, although that’s what it felt like. How strange, to only be able to see what he could see with his regular eyes, even boosted with Achievements like his were. The invisible eye that he always kept watching his back was the one he missed the most, but he also missed the top-down eye in the sky that provided him a real-time map of the area. He had to admit that that one had made him a little lazy; he hardly knew how to navigate based on memory any more.

The power, though, was more than compensation. He was like a quadriplegic who’d spent his whole life inching around on the ground like a worm, only to make a deal with a fairy and trade his eyesight for arms and legs.

Speaking of power, there was something he’d been meaning to try. He formed the image in his mind: a sort of circular oar, rather more like a drill. He’d first seen it on the ship of the dread pirate Tiger-Eye. Interesting fellow, Tiger-Eye. Hogg had been sad to see him hang. The man had outpaced seasoned [Captains] and [Windbringers] by outfitting his ship with a magic and mechanical engine that could move without needing wind or sails. Hogg still remembered it well. Or, his second brain still remembered it. It was a miracle that the old thing had survived his Class change.

Speaking of his second brain, he’d almost forgotten something. Lightmind, set a thirty minute timer. No, make that twenty-nine minutes.

Timer set. 0:28:59.98