Vee was really starting to feel sick; the landscape around her was so disgusting and horrifying to look at that just looking at it continuously for a few minutes was making her want to vomit. She felt like she was constantly looking at a filthy, dirty and contaminated environment, as if everything around her was filled with a lethal germ, which was seriously challenging her sanity. And to make matters worse, unfortunately, she was technically crawling on her skin, and therefore could feel how muddy and filthy the ground was, just as if she were crawling on entrails. And if we further added to this that her sense of smell was definitely very developed being a basilisk, which allowed her to smell that horrible stench of rotten and putrid meat very well, it was a pure miracle that she hadn't fainted yet.

At least in addition to the smell of rotting meat she could also smell the saltiness, a sign that it must have been very close to the sea and consequently to the port. She had tried to use the mental map she had printed in her head, and in a way she had succeeded, although it hadn't been easy at all given that the landscape had changed completely. Moving on Belos' back was like trying to navigate an ever-changing maze. That was how she finally made it to the coast... or at least, the point where the sea monster's enormous body met the ocean's surface.

"Ugh! Finally!" she exclaimed, throwing herself into the water, but obviously she was immediately dragged back; apparently Amity was right in saying that there was some kind of block that forced them to remain there on the giant monster's back. Vee had expected it, but still she couldn't hold back a sound of disapproval.

In the end she opted for a compromise: she jumped into the water but remained above the area under which she knew the rest of Belos' body was located. This way she technically stayed on him, but at the same time she no longer had to touch that slimy and disgusting skin. From there she could look around better, and she could thus see the gigantic head of the monster shaking as he held one of his enormous hands in front of him, clearly observing something that interested him greatly; it didn't take much effort for Vee to figure out that it had to be Luz.

The basilisk gritted her teeth. She wanted so badly to go down there, to help... but she couldn't. Even swimming at her maximum speed, she would never have reached Belos's head in a reasonable time. Well, at least it looked like Luz and whoever was with her were holding up well... but that didn't stop her from turning her hands into wings once again and trying to take flight only to end up falling back into the water with a splash.

She was still resurfacing, spitting out the salt, when she heard a familiar voice in her ears: "Hey, I saw right then! Now you have wings!"

Vee turned and saw that Willow had appeared on the coast. "Finally I find someone! Are you okay?"

"Yes, more or less" Willow confirmed, and indeed she didn't have any major scratches on her.

"We're both fine" Matt said climbing onto her shoulder and raising his voice to be noticed, clearly not liking being ignored.

Vee swam towards the shore and although with some disgust she crawled back over to reach her friend. "I'm happy to have found you again, I was afraid you had been hurt! I came towards the coast because I hoped to reach the port and find Masha..."

"So are we. We're looking for all our friends" Willow confirmed. "Matt here was able to show me the way to the sea. I thought that it was at least a good starting point"

"I'm still a crab. I know how to interpret the signals necessary to track the presence of the ocean" Matt said with his usual grumpy expression.

"Yeah. He was good" Willow said with a smile, softening him a little. "Anyway… can you fly now?"

Vee blushed a little. "Technically yes... or at least I could when I was controlled by Belos" she replied, trying not to go into too much detail since just the memory of it made her shiver. "But now I don't remember how to do it. No matter how hard I try, I can't get up"

"Uh... I see" Willow said a little disappointed. She had evidently hoped that she would be able to fly up and find someone. "Well, Matt and I are looking for the others anyway, like I told you. By staying close to the coast we'll have a better chance of spotting someone... there are fewer tentacles here and so the guys are likely to come here. We plan to get them all together and find the Collector, so as to continue with the initial plan"

"And Luz?" Vee exclaimed. "What do we do with her?"

"Don't worry, Hunter went to help her" Willow replied. "She will make sure Belos doesn't do anything to her or Camila or Eda"

Vee raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? Do you still trust him?"

Willow nodded. "Vee, I understand that after what happened you feel resentment towards him, and I don't blame you... but believe me, he's not as much of an asshole as he seems. I'm not justifying his behavior, but trust me if I tell you he's on our side now"

Willow had spoken in a very confident tone, and Vee had a few moments of doubt despite the anger she felt towards the boy for making Belos eat her. In the end she just shrugged: "Okay... he has already betrayed Belos anyway, and I don't think that that monster accepts traitors back into his ranks, so he's basically forced to stay with us now. And I can't deny that he is anyway very strong, so... I can trust him enough to hope that he can protect Luz at least for a while"

"That's enough for me" Willow said, though she would have much preferred more understanding from Vee, but even so that little acceptance was enough for her given the situation. They would have a proper chat once they got out of that mess.

So she, Vee, and Matt walked along the coast, looking for signs of any other people, heading towards what Vee remembered as having been the harbor; and when they arrived they discovered that it had totally disappeared, replaced like everything else by enormous tentacles that were continually shaking, and the ship it previously hosted had been pushed out to sea probably by one of the tentacles or by a wave caused by the movement of Belos. "Perfect. This escape route is gone too... not that it was an option before" Matt grumbled. "So, now what…?"

Just then a fusion between an oyster-like creature and human emerged from the water; both Willow and Vee recognized him as one of Salty's pirates. Just like the captain and Vee before they were freed, he had wild blue eyes proving that he was being mind-controlled by Belos. And just like the captain he also had some excess plates and pieces clearly forcefully implanted. "Ah! I know what to do! We have to take them off!" Matt exclaimed as soon as he saw him. "That's what we did with Salty too! Let's take them off him to break the mind control, or at least weaken it..."

"Wait. Something's wrong" Willow murmured as she saw that the pirate wasn't attacking them, but was running in another direction; and there the tentacles moved in a decidedly more violent and ferocious way than the others. "There must be something there...!"

"You are definitely right!" a voice suddenly said, and then Salty jumped out from behind one of the giant tentacles and grabbed the controlled pirate, slamming him violently to the ground; the pirate tried to free himself, but was unable to do so because he was held back by the enormous arms of his captain. "Over there is the Collector!"

"Captain!" both Vee and Willow exclaimed in unison. "You are fine!"

"Of course I'm fine! I've already gathered a good portion of my crew!" Salty exclaimed. "Guys, come on, help me free him!"

And from behind the tentacles four donkeys appeared and ran towards him and grabbed with their muzzles the excess pieces that had been implanted in the pirate; they pulled and pulled with the clear intent of detaching them. Vee, Willow and Matt didn't remain on the sidelines and intervened too, the first turning her limbs into long needles to dig under the artificial plates, the second growing vines from the seeds she kept in her pocket and using them to pull more, the third maneuvering his rock and breaking the slabs. In the end the pirate was completely back to his old self, and at that point two powerful slaps and a few screams from Salty were enough to make him completely come to his senses.

While the pirate recovered, one of the donkeys who had jet-black fur ran towards Vee and buried its face in her chest; the basilisk had no difficulty recognizing those eyes. "Masha!" she exclaimed. "Oh, good thing you're okay! Don't worry, we'll get you back to normal too! Oh, I'm so happy!"

Masha brayed in response and rubbed against her even more. "They can't answer you" Salty warned her. "We need that djinn to turn them back into a human and those Palismen to give their voice back, like everyone else"

"So if she's Masha... you must be... Viney, Jerbo and... Barcus?" Willow murmured as she looked at the other three donkeys and recognized them by the color of their fur and the style of their mane, and they nodded in response. "Don't worry, you'll be back to normal somehow too! Oh, by the way, I'm Willow; yes, I've changed a bit since the last time! I'll explain you later"

The three donkeys looked at her confused, but since their voices were still sealed they couldn't ask any questions; Willow took advantage of that to avoid explaining, since it would take way too much time which they didn't have at the moment. Salty was also of the same opinion, and in fact avoided talking about her and instead described what had happened: "After Belos decided to go wild, the port broke up and the donkeys that were here took refuge nearby. Coming here there I found everyone again. At the moment they are all safe, except obviously for my guys who followed me here"

"I see. Well, at least they're okay" Willow said. "What were you saying about the Collector?"

Salty pointed in a direction where the tentacles were waving ferociously. "He's over there. Belos is trying in every way to break his defense. And all the creatures mentally controlled by this sea monster are emerging from his body to go and support him in this endeavor, including my men"

Willow bit her lip. "So if we go in that direction…"

"... we have a chance of finding any captive slave of Belos" Salty explained to her. "And we can find the Collector again"

"And then how do we save him from Belos' fury?" Matt rightly pointed out.

No one gave an immediate response. "Well... we'll think about it when we find him" Salty finally said.

"Yeah. One problem at a time" Willow added.

"One problem at a time" Vee repeated.

Matt let out a loud exasperated sigh. "One problem at a time" he finally said, giving up, though immediately afterwards he muttered: "What a day..."

The now reunited group continued towards the spot Salty had indicated, which seemed to be growing more chaotic and confusing with each passing second; watching the constantly twitching tangle of legs, tentacles, and misshapen fins was such an aberrant sight that none of them could stare at it for more than a minute without their brains starting to hurt. As they continued they managed to find other mind-controlled sailors turned into monsters by Belos heading in the same direction as them, and they were so focused that some of them didn't even seem to notice they were there. Fortunately, many of them seemed to have undergone a treatment similar to that of Salty, and therefore it was enough to remove some pieces implanted by Belos and talk to him a little to make them come to their senses; they found no one like Vee and Camila, who instead had a direct line to him since his intent was to use them to test Luz. Apparently Belos preferred his mental control over the monsters he created to be almost autonomous, and so rather than controlling them himself he implanted receptacles of dark magic that controlled them for him.

In the end they reached that hideous deformed mass; apparently the innermost tentacles had closed on themselves over and over again to form a cage, which however was trembling as if there was an unstoppable force inside it, and other tentacles continued to join it in order to continue to resist. "The Collector is probably trying to free himself" Matt commented.

"Yeah, and apparently even Belos is having a hard time keeping him captive" Willow said seeing how the tentacles were barely holding together. Well, it wasn't surprising after all: the Collector was still one of the Four Magical Rulers and what's more, at the moment Belos only had half his attention on him, so it was natural that he was resisting.

"Seeing as he's basically relieving himself, maybe we're lucky and just have to wait" Salty tried to propose.

"I doubt it. Those tentacles are very strong and more keep coming" Vee murmured looking at that hideous tangle. "But maybe… if we create an opening somehow, or even just give Belos a second of distraction, the Collector might be able to free himself"

"Excellent plan, except for one detail: how?" Matt asked her rightly. "We can't even scratch that monster!"

"Yeah... but maybe we can annoy him" Willow said. "If I throw one of the seeds Hunter gave me into the cage and then suddenly make it grow, I bet Belos will be very annoyed"

"The question remains how to do it" Vee pointed out. "We need at least an opening. We don't even have..."

"Then ask the Collector to create it" a voice behind them told him.

Everyone turned and saw that Boscha was coming towards them trudging among the large tentacles, followed by Skara, Amelia and Cat. "Girls! You're okay!" Willow exclaimed.

"Yes, we had a bit of trouble, but we found a way to track everyone down" Boscha said winking at Skara, who blushed a little out of embarrassment. "When she told me she had found you, I didn't expect that we would also find the Collector. Who are that big snake and that humanoid crab, by the way?"

"This is Captain Salty, and this is Vee, Luz's little sister. And all the donkeys and dudes here are members of the crew" Willow replied hastily. "Anyway, what did you mean by letting the Collector create an opening?"

"It seems obvious to me: at the moment he is resisting because he is concentrating his power on all sides, but if he were to concentrate it for a moment in just one point, he may be able to pulverize those tentacles" Boscha answered her. "All you have to do is warn him using an illusion"

Willow's eyes lit up: "You're right! We could pretend to attack from the outside, so that Belos loosens his surveillance on the Collector a little, and let him concentrate his power in just one point! Then I'll just have to throw you one of the seeds..."

"... and do your magic. Simple, quick and clean. Just like in a rugby match" Boscha finished with a smile. "Come on, captain, let's get busy. Is the illusionist spider with you?"

"Um... no, I left him with Hunter to help him while he protects Luz" Willow replied.

"Then we need the twins" Boscha said. "Skara?"

Skara took a deep breath and whistled; the sound unraveled around her and bounced off obstacles, returning to her ears bringing her information about her surroundings. She listened carefully, then pointed in a direction: "I'm that way. No more than fifty meters"

"Wow… did you just use echolocation?" Vee asked in surprise.

"Yes, and she became very good in a very short time!" Boscha said very proudly, making Skara blush again. "Come on, let's go get the twins, and then let's get the Collector out of here! I want to get out of this horrible place!"

The oyster-like pirate Salty saves is a member of his crew; in canon he appears in the first episode of the second season, aboard the captain's ship to capture the Selkidomus