NERO
Saturday, March 17, 2018
"Can you see it?" Cora pointed. "Over by that shadow, a bit beneath."
All I could see was kelp. A sprawling forest of it lay below, and it all but obscured what Cora had described as a meandering range of cliffs and seamounts bedded in white sand. One mountain in particular stretched up towards us, its peak jutting out from a long wall of wave-worn stone bearded with fern and reef. Beyond it, in the shadow that Cora had indicated, I couldn't see a thing; if she hadn't told me, I wouldn't have assumed there was space there to house anything, much less an actual community of merfolk.
A community of merfolk. I still found it hard to believe. It wasn't like they didn't exist, but mer villages and cities were so rare these days they may as well have gone extinct. For good reason, too – bigger groups made for greater visibility and a greater risk of being discovered by humans.
Yet according to Cora, Hoenn had supergroups of merfolk in abundance: Brira and Triteloch to the east, she'd said, in the temperate waters of Hoenn's larger islands; Silin to the north, half a day from a massive dumping ground called Litter's Seamount; Coralora, the smallest of the Hoenn communities, in a sunlit valley along one of the region's biggest islands, the Evergrande Isle; and this place, Delphirius, Cora's home, an hour and a half from the southern Slateport City.
"And maybe more," she'd told me. "Those are the big ones, but there've been smaller hamlets popping up all over lately. Last summer when my brother-in-law took me to Brira, the hierarch talked about sending his son prospecting further north, past the island the humans call Mossdeep, for space for another settlement. Though I don't know who'd dare live up there, except the Dewgongas — it'd be too cold for your kind, Milotica." She'd given my colorful fluke an amused look at that.
And she was right, we Miloticas didn't like the cold, but the thought that there were things like hierarchs, and people prospecting for settlements and social structure and travel between these villages... Cora made it sound like the Hoenn ocean was full to bursting with merfolk, and yet the seascape before me was as empty and blue and barren as I'd ever seen it. That wasn't a bad thing, though: these Hoenn mer had something going for them if there were as many as Cora described and they were deft at hiding it.
"Well?" I turned to see her looking at me expectantly.
"I don't see anything," I said. No merfolk, no homes, no walls...and certainly no Jude.
To her credit, she was unruffled by my terse reply. "Take it in," she told me. "We'll go in a moment, but I want you to have a good lay of the land if you ever need to find your way back here."
A vein pulsed in my temple. Presumptuous. I didn't like staying in one place for too long, and I didn't like staying with people I didn't know, facts that made this overlook pointless. I also didn't like people slow-walking me: "Please just take me to my brother."
Cora twisted her lips, but said nothing as she kicked down, leading the way. I followed at a tail's length — at her pace, and with my longer fluke, I'd quickly overtake her.
We kept above the forest of kelp, and soon reached the rock wall onto which it was moored. The peak of the Delphiri Seamount, as Cora called it, passed beneath us, a sleeping behemoth — it cast a sweeping shadow into the east, leaving its sloping backside illuminated by the sun. It was short, this slope, dipping into a bowl-shaped valley where the kelp grew thickest, and then rising up into a smaller mountain where the green finally began to grade out, yielding to rugged stone striated with veins of yellow algae and clumps of fern and sea flora.
I heard noises. They rumbled in my lateral lines before they reached my ears, and I stiffened, scanning the rocks and seaweed for threats. My eyes picked up movement, and I saw the lithe bodies of groups of merfolk moving across the face of the smaller seamount, back and forth between a small opening in the cliff and a nearby raised plateau. Pokémon accompanied them: a group of Luvdiscs, some Horseas, a Gorebyss or two, and one Starmie. The merfolk were carrying rocks in their arms – they heaped them in piles along the plateau, where another group of merfolk smacked at them with tools: pickaxes, shovels, hammers, forks, spoons. The clash of tool against stone produced the sound I'd heard: bink, bink, bink. Taking a breath, I relaxed.
"Yours?" I asked Cora.
"Aye," she said. "That's the Delphiri Mine, where we hew precious metals from the earth. Father and my brother-in-law spend most their daylight hours there."
Mining, I thought, flabbergasted. I'd never heard of merfolk doing that before — I thought they all subsisted on hunting and gathering, like I did and always had. And even if not, it seemed so...impractical. "What do you all do with it?" I couldn't help myself — it just didn't make sense.
"With what we dig up?" She smiled. "Why, we sell it to the Seawatchers, of course."
The breath left me, as quickly and harshly as if I'd been struck in the throat. Seawatchers?
"For a good price, too," she continued. "Well, not for money, but goods for the community. Better tools, containers, seaworthy foodstuffs, building supplies. Clothes too." Her brows lifted. "Milotica? What's taken you?"
I placed a hand to my belly. The muscles there were brutally stiff, and it took two deep inhales to unfurl them. The second one came out a bitter chuckle as the bad memories subsided. So there are some here too? The world's a small place.
Cora swept in front of me, looking concerned. I looked away from her. "Sorry, I'm fine," I said. "Let's continue." I started off, banishing the weakness from my face.
She hurried after me. "Your color is off," she noted. "Do you need to rest? After dealing with those Sharpedoes, I wouldn't be—"
"I need my brother," I said sharply. "Will you take me to him or not?"
She flinched, startled, and then passed me by with a resentful look. Who cares, as long as I get to Jude. I felt my stomach again as I went after her. A deep pit had opened in my belly, and nausea was creeping through my intestines.
Get a grip.
Beyond the dimple of the mine was another slope where the kelp surged back in, carpeting the ground up to the ragged line of a cliff precipice that seemed to drop off into a shelf. But as we drew closer, I saw that this was not the case: there was land beyond the ledge, but it was deeply shadowed, both by the towering form of the Delphiri Seamount and the darkening water column as the land sloped into the abyssal plain. From here, I could barely make out the gloomy valley sitting at the foot of the small shelf – it was roughly three miles wide, maybe bigger, but its northern quadrant was swallowed up the dark of the deepening waters beyond.
Maybe the shadows were why I didn't notice at first, because I blinked and suddenly this valley sitting on the back of a seamount was swarming with bodies, people and Pokémon alike, swimming up and down the hillside. Well, maybe I exaggerate: there couldn't have been more than a hundred and fifty merfolk, and a couple dozen water-types flitting about, but it was way more underwater life than I was used to seeing in any place outside a reef, and that went double for the amount of merfolk. I drew up short to take it all in, and up ahead, Cora paused, her face filled with pride as she greeted several mermen rising past us; they were bound for the mine, judging by the tools in their hands. It was a little chilling: all I could think about was what would happen if a human diver decided to explore this area of the seabottom, and happened to make it past the mine.
"Cora," a merman said as he passed, nodding.
"Miss Angler, good day to ye," said another; he was toting a pickaxe.
"Back from your scavenging?" said a third. This merman was armored – makeshift, but armor all the same. His breastplate was fashioned from wood and rope, and his tunic was from man-made cloth — most likely cast off and repurposed. It was off-white, with an unsightly stain running down the middle. He led a line of similarly-dressed mermen, their homemade armor held together by rope, bolts of seaweed, or nails. "Find anything for us?" he asked her.
"Nothing of interest," Cora said. "Some odds and ends, some glass for your lances."
He shrugged. "That works. We have a couple that need repairs." He peered at me, and I stiffened. "Who do we have here? Another straggler?"
"I picked him up not far from here, where those Sharpedoes like hunting," Cora explained.
The merman's face darkened. "Those are dangerous waters, Cora. Old Lady Kuma won't be happy to hear that you're wandering around there alone, picking up strangers."
"Speaking of, is she still at the Manor?"
"Aye, and we'd best be going, too. " The armored mermen departed, and I watched them go. Cora noticed.
"That's Aaron," she explained. "He leads the sentries."
"Sentries." Their armor was not red or buffed to a gleaming sheen, so I wasn't anxious... Instead, I gave a queasy, humorless smile.
"What's so funny?" She looked confused.
What's funny was that the world was indeed small. And ironic. "Nothing. Are we going?"
We continued our way down the slope, meandering around great holes in the mountainside, holes that were actually the entrances to hidden dwellings – I peered down into one after a mermaid swam out with her daughter in hand, and saw, beyond a short rocky corridor, containers stacked into a small table surrounded by seaweed mats. A father sat there with his son, showing him how to weave rope from kelp. Judging by how many other merfolk were simply appearing on the mountainside, there must've been dozens of other tunnels winding deep into the heart of the Delphiri Seamount, and many more nooks, crannies, and caverns that the Delphirius merfolk called home. Smart: it would be easy to hide things in a cave at a moment's notice, and make the entire valley look uninhabited.
At the base of the slope was what I could only describe as the village square, mostly because of all the merfolk gathered outside on the sand in groups. A giant Wailmer lay a ways away, dozing, and beneath him gathered a group of young children listening to a counting lesson. Across the way, a handful of mermaids perched atop a jutting cliff, threading needles through old cloth. Beneath them, a merman and his two friends had laid out broken tools that they were going about fixing, and not far from them, several other merfolk were preparing wraps of food and setting them aside in piles.
On the western side of the plain, leaving heavily against the mountain's heel, was a sunken ship. It wasn't big — pleasure craft, probably – but you could hardly tell now: presently it just looked like a giant piece of junk, suffering from a cancerous layer of rust, algae, and barnacles. The dilapidation must've served as another ruse though, a façade to hide beneath if humans came calling, because as we rose to the upper deck, my lateral lines began buzzing again: there were people inside, more than a handful, though I couldn't hear them clearly from out here.
"The Manor," Cora explained as we rose up the side. "Hospital, shelter, guest house...and home of our four hierarchs. My grandmother's one of them – you'll meet her soon." We passed the rusted railings, and she said, "Uncle! Lazy beast, shouldn't you be out patroling with Aaron? Thought you'd sneak off and catch your forty winks, huh?"
A serpentine head rose from the deck, blue and scaled, with rugged horns shaped like wings rising from either temple. I stiffened: Dragonair. An old one, too. And blind, or at least halfway there: his eyes were milky white and moving about aimlessly, packed into his skull by layers of wrinkles. Upon closer inspection I noticed his body looked patchy – he was missing some...many scales. Both of his orbs — one beneath his chin and another at the tip of his tail — were cracked, and one horn looked longer than the other.
Laying up here on the deck, I might've thought that "Uncle" was on watch, keeping an eye out for any suspicious persons trying to enter the boat, but he looked too tired to make a good effort of it — he probed at Cora's face with his nose, and then licked her cheek before settling back down to sleep again. The mermaid scrubbed furiously at her face, flushing pink.
"I told him to stop doing that," she grumbled as she ducked down past the Dragonair. "Come on, Milotica, he won't bite you. You can see he doesn't like working anymore."
I didn't relax until I'd followed Cora through the doorway and well beyond. Uncle warranted my caution just for being a Dragonair — I'd been told more than once how dangerous they could be, striking like Arboks with the same degree of lethality.
The interior of the boat was mostly dark. I followed Cora down a set of rusting stairs and around a corner into a hall, and found it illuminated by the natural light of half a dozen water-types. Mostly Lumineons and Chinchous, dozing on the chipped windowsills, searching for prey in the nooks in the ceiling, or, in the case with a pair of Finneons, chasing each other in a game of tag. I dodged them as they came shooting past, my tailfin brushing the floor: mostly metal, save for a few scraps of old carpeting that had long since been torn up. A layer of brown kelp now covered the floor, mer-ness trying to cover the human-ness.
I couldn't say how well it was working. It still felt like a boat to me, uncomfortably so. Even the water in here tasted metallic.
Cora led me through the fray of glowing Pokémon down another set of stairs, to another floor. A darker floor: there were still bioluminescent Pokémon swimming about, but no windows in the walls to illuminate the pockets the Pokémon couldn't reach. Like the floor above, doors lined the left wall, but here some of them were open. We passed one, and I saw and old merman inside, sitting at a table made from an old tire covered by a square of wood, sorting a set of stones into cups. In another room were two middle-aged mermaids, talking in worried whispers. A third was open just a crack: inside I could see a young mermaid lying on an old mattress, covered beneath a blanket, sound asleep.
"This is one of the hospital floors," Cora said. "Your brother's at the end."
My heartbeat started up as we approached the last room on the hall. It had a crowd floating outside – kids, I was surprised to see, or more "kid" than I was, at least. The biggest of them couldn't have been more than thirteen, and there were five of them crouched around the threshold, peering in.
"What do we have here?" Cora said as we came up, hands falling to her hips. "A pack of minxes! I can't swim a tail-length without running into one these days, can I?"
The kids all straightened up. The one at the forefront — a mermaid with long, straight hair — had the decency to look sheepish. "Hi, Auntie," she stammered. "I was just bringing Grandma the salve she wanted... See?" She held up a jar, one holding a weird green paste. She glanced back at her friends. "And they... They just wanted to come."
"Why do you all have your ears to the keyhole then?" Cora asked, stacking both hands on her hips. "If you're so curious, go inside, say hello. It's rude to sit outside and stare."
"But...it's weird," one of the boys protested. "He's all red and..."
"And one-eyed," said another girl, shivering. "Old Lady Kuma said he's not hurt, but... It's just weird."
"Weird," the others agreed.
I lost the rest of my patience, partly because these brats were holding me up... But more because their insults more than thoroughly pissed me off. You think he likes looking that way? I pushed past Cora and into the room before I could give in to the urge to snap – spit – this aloud.
I found Jude immediately. The room was large, and he lay on his back in the center, wearing an unfamiliar green robe. His scarred tail was stretched out before him, the end wound shakily around the leg of an old desk, one nearly as grimy as the outside of the ship. The other half of his body stretched out in the opposite direction, where sat an old mermaid against the wall, holding his hands and pulling his body taut.
"Is this the best you can do, youngster?" The old woman's voice rattled like canned gravel. "I'm three times your age and twice as limber! Have you no shame?"
Through his mask, I could see Jude grimacing. "T...T-trying..."
The two looked up when the door thudded dully into the wall, and Jude's one eye widened. He scrambled onto his hands and then pushed from the floor, his body shaking. "N-Nero!"
I grabbed his reaching hand and reeled him the rest of the way towards me, and locked my arms around him. Thank Arceus. A knot of strain left me in a gust, making my shoulders slump. Safe... and not dissolving in pieces in some predator's belly. I let myself bask in relief for a moment, then spun him around twice, checking for injuries.
"Are you hurt?" I heard whispering behind me — Cora and those kids — and ignored it.
"Only...by you," Jude grunted. "That...hurts!"
I released my vicegrip on his wrist and held him at an arm's length, searching his face. To my relief, he really did look fine – no cuts, scrapes, or scratches... New ones, anyway. He even looked like he'd eaten recently. He only looked annoyed at my overbearing inspection. And whose fault do you think that is?
I pinched his nose. "You deserve that and more, brat," I growled. "I've five less locks of hair because of you — I pulled them out when I came back and found you missing."
"Ow!" Jude pried my fingers off his nose. "You said...when the sun goes...over twice and...I could...n't just sit...there and—"
"You couldn't have waited an hour longer to see if I was just late?" Just thinking about it made me angry and anxious all over again. "Were you that desperate to go out and get eaten?"
Jude was petulant. "N-no, stupid, I—"
"Shut up. If I wasn't so happy to see you, you'd be getting more than a pinch of the nose."
"My, what a pair we have." I looked over Jude's shoulder to see the old mermaid pushing up from the floor with her fluke. She was a Gyaradon, her tailfin thick and muscled and bristling with dorsal fins, and it pushed her to Jude's side in one stroke, where she gave me a thorough once-over. "Never thought I'd encounter another one that speaks like he owns the place but...I suppose I see now where he gets it from."
If I'd had the luxury to smile, I might have. If only she knew that it was the opposite. And speaking of she... I narrowed my eyes and gave her a once-over of her own. After a moment, the old woman's mouth quirked.
"His brother, I assume," she said, sticking out a hand. "Nero, was it? Kuma. I'm glad you found us. The boy could hardly sleep for fear for you. Hopefully, he won't be such a grouch now that you're here."
Jude blushed, the color reddening his scars, and she patted his shoulder with a chuckle. They appeared to be on friendly terms... Not surprising – this was Jude, after all. I studied her again. Up close, she didn't look as ancient as she had from afar: sixties, at a guess, but something about the way she stacked her hands on her hips made her seem younger... And like Cora, I thought. She tilted her head exactly the way the younger mermaid did, and her hair — though much shorter, not past the chin — was kind of wild too, though not in the same way. This one actually seemed to believe in hair clips, and had her short bob restrained by a crown of them. "I guess I have you to thank for seeing to his needs in my absence," I said, gripping her hand.
"That you do," she said. She suddenly lost her smile. "And for seeing to your neglect."
I stiffened. "My what?"
Jude groaned. "Old...lady."
"Hush, boy, this needs saying. Aye, neglect, Nero, neglect I can see easily from afar." She inclined her chin to Jude. "A stiffer child I've never seen: the boy can scarcely move about, and his muscles are like stone – not a jot of flexibility to be found in him. Can't even fully bend his tail, and he's a Jeager! The most limber to be found among us. If he hadn't come here and started exercises with me, he would've roughened up like a corpse before long. It beggars belief."
Wow. This was along the lines of what I told Jude every time he didn't stretch. I said as much, and icily: "Any trouble my brother has with his mobility is his own fault. I've shown him exercises to do, but you'll have noticed that he has as much focus as he has sense. Don't you?" I glanced at Jude, cranking up an eyebrow. "Go on, tell her."
"Q-quiet," Jude snapped.
"Jude's a whelp," Kuma said, lifting an eyebrow of her own. "You're his brother. Scatterbrained or no, you need to take more responsibility for his health, not run off at the change of every current."
I gave her a withering stare, then turned it on Jude, who busied himself with picking at the edges of his fingerless gloves. How much did he tell her about Mag? I didn't like people in my business, but clearly she didn't know enough if she was this presumptuous.
"Don't comment on things you know nothing about, old woman." Her brow went higher, and I gave Jude a hard poke. "And you. When are you going to take responsibility for this?"
A loud cough rose up behind me before either could respond.
"Granny," Cora said, finally floating into the room. "Dinah brought the salve."
Kuma gave me a disapproving stare, then shrugged. "All right." Her eyes went over my shoulder. "Don't lurk, Dinah. Bring it in. Boy, sit down and undress."
Movement behind me; the young girl with the long straight hair floated in with the jar of paste. Her eyes lingered on Jude, and she couldn't contain a gasp when Jude pulled down the shoulders of his robe at Kuma's command. The old wounds continued up and down his back, twisting and turning and clumping together in tangled clusters. Jude pulled up his robe at the sound.
"Sorry," he mumbled. That shadow came over his face again; it only did when he remembered how grossly disfigured he was to the common merperson. I joined Cora in glaring at Dinah.
"Apologize," Cora hissed.
The girl fled, whipping out of the room with two heavy tail-beats. "Dinah!" Cora cried.
"S'okay," Jude said. He looked supremely embarrassed.
"Never mind," Kuma tutted. "She's a dumb whelp, like you; who gives a care what she gasps about? Now, off with the clothes, boy. The salve's awaitin'."
"Granny," Cora said as Jude pulled his robes down again, "maybe you should let his brother handle it."
"Is there some reason I shouldn't do it?" The old mermaid unscrewed the cap and shot me another glare.
Cora gave her an apologetic look. "Yedadiah. I don't think you should put him off any longer, especially since I think he found out about your plans..."
"What?" Kuma whipped around, a maneuver only achievable by someone with a Gyarados's tail. "How did he find out?"
Cora gestured to the door. "Maybe he'll tell you. He's waiting for you by the stairs."
Kuma groaned, then shoved the jar into my hands. "All down his back. I'll check in later." With a harrumph, she swept out of the room, looking grouchy. Cora followed, winking at me before pulling the door shut behind her.
Jude poked me. "Un...graceful," he said. "Un...grateful."
I pinched his nose again. "Stupid," I hissed as he squirmed. "Impatient. Don't poke me, I'm still mad at you. I wasn't joking about my hair: I've got bald spots now because of you. Where's my damn apology?"
He managed to wriggle free. "Sorry," he pouted. "Didn't think...you'd...worry...so...much..."
"You weren't thinking at all." I screwed open the top of the jar, and the water around the top turned green. It wove into my gills, and it tasted earthy, like crushed greens. "What is this stuff?"
"Dunno," Jude said. "Feels...good, though. Back doesn't...hurt so much."
Really? I'd tried a lot of things to ease Jude's aches and pains after he'd risen from the coma. Few, save for constant massages, had worked. So if this mysterious matte helped stifle some of his aching, then I'd lather him in it. "How many times has she applied it?"
"Three," he said.
"Looks like they're paying you all sorts of attention." I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I patted at the paste, and found it creamy. I dabbed some onto my gloved fingers and then applied it to Jude's back. "Haven't you only been here a day?"
"Must be...my...good...looks."
I thought of Dinah fleeing the room. "Or your disarming character. Or maybe they liked the thought of rescuing and convalescing a damsel in distress." I added more paste, tracing five green lines down Jude's back. "Doesn't seem that much else goes on around here."
"Shut...up. Tell me...about...Mag."
I stiffened – Jude noticed and turned, inspecting my face. "Is she...outside?" he asked.
My hands fell into my lap, and I pulled my tail up beneath me. "No."
"What...happened?"
I felt the bulk of my energy flee my body. Arceus, I didn't want to talk about Mag, not now, when I actually had things to be cheerful about. But I knew that if I didn't tell him now, I'd have to tell him later, and be forced to put up with an endless line of pestering in the meantime.
"Turn back around," I said tiredly. "I'll tell you."
And I did, relating to him my disastrous pursuit of Magdalene on land as I painted his back green. Recollecting it all was so painful — stealing those clothes had been stupid, even for the purposes of blending in, and what time I had wasted, getting caught by the police! Those eight hours in lockup could have been used to get Magdalene out of the Pokémon Center. None of this would've happened if I'd just been a little more patient.
Jude agreed; his head came back around when I finished, and strained lines pulled at his eye more than the scars already were. "St-stupid," he said.
I bit my teeth together, but didn't reply. I deserved it.
His shoulders drooped wearily as I rubbed another swath of salve across his back. "What now?" he asked. "Is she...gone?"
What he meant was Are you going to give up? — it just took too many words to say. "No," I said firmly.
Jude waited.
My shoulders slumped a little. "I don't know," I muttered. "I know she's alive, and I know the boy that took her." Sort of: my age, gray hair, gray eyes. "I know where she was last, when she left. Maybe there's a way to figure out where she went."
Jude looked back at me again, his eyes sad. "Doesn't sound...like...enough...infor—"
"Shut up. It is enough. I just have to...think of a way to make it work." I tried to sound confident, but I wasn't fooling anybody, least of all Jude. He stared ponderously down at his hands, picking at his cuticles.
"Hope that...human...is being...nice to...her," he said, sounding resigned.
Suddenly, I needed to talk about something else — anything else, before this line of dialogue pulled me into complete misery. Something just as depressing came to mind.
"These people," I said quietly. "Do you know that they trade with humans?" I sat up straight — Jude's back was completely covered now. He flexed a little as I placed the top back on the jar and screwed it tight.
"Yeah," he said. "The old...lady told...me." Pause. "Sea...watchers...right?"
"Yeah." I was surprised – he didn't sound nearly as shocked as I'd been. "I thought there weren't any outside of Alto Mare."
"That's 'c...ause you d-don'...listen. They're...all over t...he world. Told...y-you that."
He pulled up his robes, fitting his arms into the unfamiliar green sleeves — absently, I wondered what these Delphirius merfolk had done with his other clothes, the navy blue tunic and red underwear I'd made for him years ago. "They sound about the same," I mused. "That mermaid — Cora — she said they trade minerals from their mine."
"Yeah," he said again. There was a belt around the middle of the robe, and he busied himself with tying it tight. For a while, it was all I could hear, him twisting that belt around his waist. He didn't look at me, and I didn't look at him, but we didn't need to see each other's faces to know what the other was thinking: Alto Mare. Perhaps it had been wrong to bring it up. There were still bad memories there, pain, and resentment on Jude's part — I could feel it coming from him, as easily as I could feel the water, and my tail twitched uncomfortably. Here was a breach I had not crossed for two years, and I wasn't sure that now was the time to do it, what with Magdalene gone and the two of us in a strange place. But I couldn't help but wonder what he thought about it, having it thrust in his face so suddenly.
Jude spoke first: "Do you...still think...about...Alto—"
"Yes," I said. "Every day." I cast him a sidelong glance. "What about you?"
"No," he said. The belt was tied, but he was still fiddling with it. I blinked.
"No?"
"No," he said. "T...Try not to. But...did today when I...thought might...not see you...again." He hunched. "Like...them."
"Stop," I growled. "Don't put them in the grave just because they aren't in front of you. They could still be alive. "
"T...T-T-Titus—"
"You don't know that."
Jude was silent for a moment. Then: "I think...they're...dead."
My jaw tightened, and I rubbed at a knotted brow. Damn you, you're supposed to be the optimist. But I knew why he said it – the merman had cut throats coming after us, so what was the chance that he'd spared the others, who'd also helped us run? In a way, it was easier to believe that they were all dead – the possibility that they could still be alive and suffering in our stead was something that haunted the darkest corners of my dreams.
You were stupid to bring this up. Talk about something else. "Where'd they put your clothes, and the bag?" I asked, glowering at the grimy wall across the room. "We need to head back before noon."
"Where?"
"The tide pool. I've got to figure out how to find—"
"Don't...wanna."
I spun around. "Excuse me?"
He didn't look at me. "I don't...wanna...leave. Tired of...running."
I shook my head. "Don't be childish. You think he's stopped looking? He won't stop just because we've crossed into Hoenn. You know what's at stake."
"Don't...care!" he hissed. "Look...!" He extended his arms out toward me, until they left his long sleeves — white as the seafloor and covered in brutal red lines. "I'm d-d...different now... Even if he sees...me he won't... And even if...he does I...don't care. Don't...care. Dead, they're...dead and I... Don't want to...run for the...rest of my—"
I seized one of his hands so tightly that I nearly crushed the bones in his fingers. "Shut up, you stupid brat," I said. "This isn't about you — this is about Titus and what he wants, and what he'll do to get it. And you've seen how far he'll go, or have you forgotten how red her blood looked on the pavement?"
A moment before he'd cowered back, but now his eye was ablaze with fury, and he fisted the collar of my dive suit, his weak fingers digging into my flesh. And it...hurt. A lot. "You...shut up," he rasped. "Before...I...hit you..."
My lips thinned. "Titus is dangerous enough in his own right, but if he catches up to us, it's not just our lives that are going to be in peril. Have you forgotten that?"
He looked down, his anger cooling. "No," he admitted.
Slowly, I released his hand, and he released me. Jude settled, began picking at the stitching on his robes.
"How...long?" he said. "C-can't...run...forev...er."
"I'm done talking about this." There was a bed in the corner of the room, or rather, an old mattress lined with seaweed and made with a repurposed blanket. I pointed to it. "Get to bed," I commanded. "I'll find our stuff."
There were no more words, angry or otherwise, after that. He glared mutinously at me, but he went over and I put him under. He fell asleep fairly quickly — perhaps he was as tired as I was, or maybe it came easier because, like Kuma had said, I was here, and now sleep came more readily.
Or maybe he trusts the people in this place. Part of me was still reeling. He didn't want to leave? All this time, I'd assumed that Jude and I were on the same page regarding Titus and his unyielding search for us – there was no way of knowing if the merman or his followers were sniffing around Hoenn, but regardless, we could not stay here, or anywhere, for too long. Jude understood that clearly, but... Did his short stay in Delphirius account for this sudden rebellion? Had these strangers really made such an impression on him?
Of course. They saved him, fed him, sheltered him, and did more for his disability than you have. Plus there were kids here his own age, a commodity and community Jude had been denied for... Well, since Alto Mare. Years. For a thirteen-year-old, that was a pretty devastating loss. And because of me.
I sat down on the floor and leaned against the mattress, closing my eyes. Think about something else.
Magdalene. So much time had passed since I'd last seen her... It felt like she was across the world. I despaired to think of how I would find her, because who did I ask? Where did I go? And suddenly, this issue butted against Jude's – we could not linger, because of Titus, but if I wanted to find Magdalene, that's exactly what I had to do. And the longer that took...
Pain washed into my skull. It seemed easier to just give up, and give in to fate.
Fool. Titus's voice abruptly invaded my ears. There is a way to find her, and you already know what it is. But you have allowed your fear and cowardice to hold you back.
I wished that I could pretend I didn't know what he was talking about... But Titus's cold hand reached out of the darkness of my psyche and seized my moral compass, which was spinning like a weather vane, until the way forward, no matter how unethical, became clear: I would go back to land, to that Pokémon Center, and I would use high Pitch on that nurse, and force her to tell me the name of the boy who'd kidnapped her. And then, I would use high Pitch again, and again, taking whatever I needed, when I needed it, until I found the boy. And then I would take Magdalene from him by force.
And if they bleed, Titus whispered, they bleed.
(Ver. 3.0)
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Featured Artwork: The Delphirius Seascape
Made in Procreate. Not used to the software yet, so that's why this looks a little janky.
In version 3 of this chapter, I reimagined the terrain around Delphirius a little. They're on a plain just above a stair step that leads down to the abyssal plain.
Featured Artwork: Jude Original Design + Bonus Image
Jude's an interesting character to draw. Face, hair, eyes — eye — no problem. What makes him a bit tricky are his scars. More specifically, duplicating them consistently. Also, giving them dimension is a challenge — I'm not sure yet of how to shadow them so that they look raised. More art research is needed here.
Here's what Dinah saw when she delivered the salve. Background was tricky on this one.