Long Tail really... was so long!
Thor had Maria hold one end of the tail while he fished up the other end like a strand of noodles.
The end Maria was holding was the tip, the part that could spew Black Tide. Thor had seen that tip several times already.
But he had never seen the other end of the tail, and had no idea what it looked like.
He kept fishing for nearly three minutes before finally pulling the entire tail out from the seabed.
Somewhat unexpectedly, yet also exactly as he might have guessed, the other end was a severed cross-section.
It looked like half a snake's tail had been chopped off. A gray bone ran through the center of the swollen, rotting white flesh. The bone protruded slightly, while the rest of the flesh was bunched up around it. Several deep folds lay across the surface, and there was a slit beneath the bone.
This made the cross-section look like a twisted face, its features all squashed together.
And when the face emerged above the sea, it actually opened its mouth and spoke.
"Let me go. I'll leave the Wall of Sighs."
Maria, who had still been somewhat wary of Thor, immediately cried out at the familiar voice, "Impossible! Robin, you really are Robin! How did you end up looking like this?"
Robin's head rose into the air like a snake's, bringing his face level with Maria's. "Why can't I survive in this form? Doesn't this prove that my Wizard Body Modification was headed in the right direction? It's just not perfect yet. I'm working on that. Once I've figured it out, I can even return to human form!"
Thor couldn't see any vocal organs on Robin, but the voice had indeed come from the slit beneath