^"Water-Shaping" (11-26-2020)

—

NERO

Saturday, April 7, 2018

"I need more kelp," I rasped. "Jude?"

He handed me another length, his hand shaking — his whole body was shaking, in fact. My nerves were shot too, but I was burying it in my work, trying to keep the anxiety at bay — one more arrow and we'll go. Just one more. These can't stay inside her forever.

In fact, Mag's crossbow arrows were why we'd stopped — late last evening, her eyes had gone black, and abruptly she'd slipped right out of unconsciousness, going limp like a ship dead in the water. It had been hard to see why in the growing gloom, but luckily, my taste buds had made it abundantly clear: she'd been bleeding again, a lot, and if we hadn't stopped, likely she'd have ridden a red tide straight into the grave.

So Jude and I had wrangled her to the seabed, gotten a good five hours of sleep, and as soon as the first hints of daylight warmed the surface waters, we'd awakened and gotten straight to work, pulling these mermanmade thorns out of her sides and filling in the gaps with Akiva's expensive antiseptic sand. It worked, though — the silt's alcoholic content staunched the blood that burst up every time I removed an arrow, and in a couple of hours we'd managed to reduce Magdalene from a raging sieve to a very-injured, thorny Sharpedo. Jude was even managing to lay down some halfway decent stitches, the thread of which had been picked apart from a couple of spare shirts.

It was all slow going though, and was costing us time and the safety that came from distance.

From what?

I felt color drain from my cheeks as I gathered a pile of alcohol-drenched sand onto the kelp, and stuffed it into another hole in Mag's side from which I'd recently liberated a crossbow arrow. I'd prayed that Mag biting that soldier's arm off had driven them away entirely, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The soldiers from Coralora, captained by Festus, were the reason we'd been swimming furiously all last afternoon.

When I'd first spotted them, they had been a couple of miles behind us: a long line of red breastplates sweeping over the plains with a murderous intent I'd seen quite clearly from afar. We'd been at least a couple dozen miles west of Coralora at that point, a distance that spoke of their tenacity: these mermen were clearly determined to find Mag and end her once and for all, no matter how far they had to roam. Part of me couldn't blame them — if one of my friends had lost his arm to a predator like Mag, I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night knowing that the culprit was still out there, hunting for more.

All the same, we now had a tail, one that wouldn't easily be shaken off: we'd managed to put some more distance between us and them, but I had an unsettling feeling that it wouldn't be long before we saw red breastplates again, especially with Magdalene's suffering and Jude's weakness slowing us down. I hadn't seen any signs of the soldiers this morning... But then again, I'd left myself little time to study the terrain, deciding instead to put all my energies into getting the rest of these damned arrows out of Mag.

I gritted my teeth as I finished stuffing Mag's wound with sand and moved on to another arrow, this one piercing her hide just below her fin. Attempting to dress her injuries was not any less painful than simply leaving them in, but I hoped that, in treating them, the pain would slowly begin to ebb, and she would be able to stay conscious long enough for us to put a few more miles between us and our pursuers...

Mag twitched as I freed the arrow from her side on a red wake — quickly, I stopped the gap, and then pawed at my bag, looking for more kelp to band across her wounds. "Jude," I said tightly.

He was situated at her dorsal side, laboring over a long line of lumpy stitches. His arms and fingers were still shaking. "Isn't...any...more," he rasped.

Damn. "Take a break. I think I saw some seaweed on the other side of the hill. Can you get some for me?"

He pushed up from the Sharpedo, looking a little relieved. Playing medicine man had not sat well with him, and I think he appreciated a change to breathe water not salty with blood. But he hadn't even crested the hill when he stopped, flash-frozen in place. "Nero," he said.

Oh no. I shot to his side and saw exactly what I expected: a group of armored mermen half a mile away, approaching us at a steady swim.

I tried to assess the situation with a level head. They're fanning out, I observed; indeed, they were scattered over the sand, and though swift, their pace was measured. They don't know that we're close; they're still searching. Communication won't be as fast. If we're discovered, whoever finds us will likely call for backup, and it'll take a moment to arrive. And so in that time... What? I didn't know. I spun, went back down to Mag.

"Mag," I hissed, "are you awake? Get up."

Her eye was open, but it was shadowy, and rolling languidly, like she couldn't pinpoint where my voice was coming from. Was I echoing, to her? "Right here," I said, tapping her side; I patted her close to a dressed wound, hoping that a spike of pain would yank her into full consciousness. But all she did was twitch. "Mag? Mag?"

"Nero," Jude said again, worriedly. "Three... Coming this...way..."

A traitorous image flashed behind my eyes: the Pokéball, the goddamned Pokéball Darwin had trapped her in for two weeks. A wicked part of me wished that I had it now, that I hadn't thrown it back to Mr. Briney and Lyle before Mag and I had left and gone to sea. How fantastic would it have been if I could have hidden her inside it right now?

Instead, she lay in the sand like an anchor, looking more and more dazed the louder I yelled. I looked at Jude, whose eye was huge and glistening with fear, and panic flashed through my skull like heat lightning. What happens when they get here? Will they shoot on sight? How many more arrows can she take, in this state? I seized one of the remaining projectiles protruding from her hide and pulled.

"Wake up!" I snarled.

There was blood, and I expected her to move, to leap up as though electrified, like time. But she didn't. She didn't move at all, and it took me three thunderstruck seconds to realize that she'd fainted dead away.

"We have...to go." Jude swam over to me, pulled at my shoulder. "Leave her. She'll...be okay... But we—"

A furious glare silence him. Leave Mag? After all I'd done to get her back? But he was right — there wasn't another option. We couldn't get snared by Titus's soldiers. But... I couldn't leave Mag. Couldn't. What do I do?

Nothing. Somewhere beyond the hill, a cry went up: "Blood!" I did more nothing as the voices drew closer and closer, even as Jude drew on my arm, trying to get me moving. My mind was completely scrambled, and not even the sight of a soldier coming over the hill could snap me out of it.

"There it is!" the merman — a Karpon — bellowed. He lifted his loaded crossbow, leveling it at Mag... Until Jude swept himself into his path, throwing out his arms.

"STOP!" he shouted — only it sounded more like a dry wheeze. "Don't! She's...hurt!"

The soldier faltered, highly confused. His eye ranged behind Jude and settled on me, and his crossbow dropped on a look of pure disbelief. "What in...? Boy, move slowly. Behind you, there's—"

"I know," Jude rasped. "She's...with us. Don't...shoot...please."

Two more mermen appeared, both with crossbows at the ready. Like their comrade, they saw Mag first, and us second. "Holy hell," one said. "What's happening here?"

"I don't know," the first soldier snarled, "but where're Cap'n Festus and the others?"

"Coming our way."

Finally, I came out of it — rising up from the sand, I swept up beside Jude and pushed him backward. One soldier twitched and shifted the aim of his weapon at me, I think by accident. "Who're you, boy?" he demanded.

"Who cares?" his friend snapped. "There's the blasted Sharpedo — end it, before it wakes up."

"No!" I snapped, throwing out a hand. "Don't. She's ours."

"Ours?" the first soldier asked. A cold wave rippled down my spine as other bodies appeared behind him — the rest of his squadron, coming up the hill, crossbows ready to fire. Jude and I were now floating before a dozen of them, each of them armed and ready to kill. Except for Captain Festus — he arrived empty-handed, his fists held stiffly at his sides. His eyes swept over me once, twice, before glowing in recognition.

"I know you," he said. "You were speaking to Akiva, back in Coralora."

I said nothing.

He narrowed his eyes. "Did you just say 'she's ours'?" He craned his neck to get a better look at Mag, who was still lying like a corpse in the sand.

I had to swallow several times to keep from being ill. I wanted so dearly to just grab Jude and bolt, and see if was possible to outpace them, but I couldn't, not with Mag unconscious and still wounded. I had to talk my way out of this, I realized, and that filled me with dread — the last time I'd tried to talk my way out of a corner, Officer Stanson had stuck me in a windowless room for eight hours.

And it didn't help that Mag had had a soldier's arm for dinner yesterday afternoon. I swallowed once again before speaking: "She's our friend. She's a companion Pokémon. We've been together for years."

Festus peered over at Mag again, probably trying to imagine it — me, a sixteen-year-old merman befriending this beast of a Sharpedo. But he saw the dressings on her wounds from here, surely — that was proof enough of my claim.

He said, "Your companion Pokémon killed one of my men. Bit his arm clean off — he died from blood loss not ten minutes later."

My jaw tightened. "She doesn't normally do that — she has no appetite for humans."

Enraged sounds came from the soldiers behind him, and Festus's lips thinned. "A Sharpedo has an appetite for any kind of meat, human or Pokémon, dead or alive."

"She doesn't!" I snapped. "She was defending herself." I pointed back to her. "Those arrows — she was in a lot of pain. So when your men attacked her—"

"With good reason," Festus snarled. "My soldier wasn't the only one it killed — it made a meal of a Seadra and a Relicanth as well, both of them guardians of Coralora. Who knows what, or who, would've been next if we hadn't gone after her?"

Damn. Relicanth — I knew for a fact that they were Mag's favorite meal. So if she'd seen one skulking around Coralora, guardian or no... "She didn't know."

"And that doesn't matter. During my stay here, I made a vow to protect Coralora from any outside threats, and this is the biggest that we've encountered since we arrived. The sea will be a bit safer with this beast in the grave." He lifted a hand, and five soldiers came forward, lifting their crossbows again. I swerved in front of them.

"Wait," I said. "Don't waste your ammunition, or your time. Let me get her up, and we'll go — you'll never see us near Coralora again, I promise."

The soldiers hesitated and turned, looking to Festus for guidance. The captain's brow furrowed. "Are you going to turn this into something, boy? Stand aside. I won't ask again."

If I could've broken out into sweat, I would've. But I didn't, and I didn't move, either. Festus stared at me a moment, his expression dark and threatening.

Then his eyes flashed to Jude.

They were fast, and well-trained — they'd seized Jude and muscled him behind their ranks before he could even think to scream. My response was infuriatingly habitual — I lunged for him, even though I was nowhere near close enough to even grab the end of his tail. "Hey!" I roared. "What do you think you're—"

One, two, three soldiers grabbed me — fury surged through my muscles as I tried to twist out of their grip, but in less than a minute they had my tail and both my hands pinned down mercilessly. Still I fought, wriggling wildly and screaming furiously, and then I was down in the sand, eating silt. I squirmed, and a soldier cracked the back of my head with his fist; I lost the ability to control my arms for a second.

"Stop fighting," Festus growled from somewhere above me. "You're already in enough trouble."

Jude! I couldn't see him down here in the weeds. Mag? "Mag," I wheezed, my voice muffled. "Mag! Mag, get up! Get up!"

I could see her — soldiers were advancing towards her prone body carefully, and after a moment, I could see why: she was conscious again, her eye rolling with mounting alertness, her fins twitching. Had she finally roused at my cry? "Mag, run!" I shouted into the dirt.

"Quiet," Festus snapped, and I was popped in the back of the head again. The world went watery, and I felt my body go limp, even as I fought to stay awake. Not yet. Can't sleep surrounded by soldiers. Can't sleep when Jude's not safe!

"Shoot it," Festus said.

Wake up, Nero — WAKE UP. Wake up and save Jude. Save Mag! I blinked rapidly and croaked in several sandy breaths, but I still couldn't see straight.

I could hear fine, though — roars of alarm, and cursing. Festus shouted, "In the eye! Aim for its eye!", and the soldiers holding me down shifted, casting confusing shadows across my face. The one holding down my arm loosened his grip on me just slightly. Not enough for me to pull free, not yet...but enough that my fingers pulled out of the tips of my glove.

Glove.

I didn't see another choice, and I didn't think too hard about it. I just waited, still half-blind and hyperaware that I had no idea of what was happing to Mag, or to Jude. So when Festus let out an angry roar, and my captor shifted once again, his grip on my wrist loosening further, I heaved my hand out of the glove and made a wild grab for Festus's tailfin, like a falling man grabbing for the edge of a cliff.

BURN HIM! I commanded. To who, I didn't know, but the intent was intense, and thus so was the outcome: Festus's tail blackened the moment my fingers curled around his flesh, and the water around us went from cool to searing, white-hot in seconds, milliseconds. A torrent of super-heated bubbles surged up in a sudden underwater eruption, and the gentle tide whipped into a hellish fury, bending in on itself in an instantaneous cyclone.

I heard a scream, several screams, that were cut off by the roar of the ocean, and a heinous pressure. But I held on to that blackened, crinkling tail, held on until the fluke was little more than underwater ash and the pressure was unbearable. Then, I let go, and allowed the cyclone to fling me free.

I went up, then down, and nearly broke my neck on an intense wipe-out. Ironically, it knocked my eyes back into place: I blinked rapidly, nauseous, overcooked, and dizzy, but I could see the cyclone tearing itself apart a ways below me, scattering burnt soldiers this way and that on currents that went out like whips. Festus remained fluttering in the middle, screaming in pain, half of his tailfin burned black. I looked away.

Jude. Mag. I didn't see the Sharpedo, but I spotted Jude a ways away, on the other side of the hill, still in the grips of one of the remaining upright soldiers, who had fled towards the seaweed patch. Shaking, I went down towards them. The soldier spun at my approach, holding Jude before him like a shield in one hand and pointing the crossbow at me with the other.

"Get back!" he roared, and fired. Had his hand been a little less shaky, he would've pierced my face right through the cheek. Instead, it slashed my ear as it went by, with enough force that I was spun down towards the sand. The pain was immense and furious — I howled.

"Nero!" The soldier suddenly screeched — raggedly, I looked up to see that Jude had pulled down his mask and bitten into the man's hand. The soldier pried Jude off...and then hit him in the face with the force of a sledgehammer. Jude crumpled instantly.

Fury and terror twined inside me, and I felt the ocean around me come to boil once again.

"WHY YOU—" I lifted a hand, only to freeze a cry behind me.

"Don't move!" Another soldier, still conscious after the cyclone. He was coming down from above, half of his kilt scorched, the crossbow in his hands shaky.

"Shoot him!" The soldier with Jude yelled.

But before he could, a serrated shadow appeared behind him, rising up and coming down from above. Huge relief: Mag!

I turned before the sudden scream started up, and launched from the sand, sailing towards the remaining horrified soldier like a lance. When I reached him, I grabbed his face... With my naked, blazing-hot palm. Needless to say, he let go — in fact, he went away screaming, clutching at his scorched face, spinning nonsensically through the water. I gathered Jude up in my arms, checked his pulse. Still beating, still breathing.

"Mag!" I cried.

She came over, her eyes alive with the thrill of combat. And the thrill of the kill — blood streamed from her mouth in a torrent, and I tried not to look towards whatever was left of the merman with the burnt kilt. Or anything beyond it — the other cooked soldiers, Festus, anyone else who'd gotten too close to my fiery cyclone.

Instead, I grabbed onto her dorsal fin. "Can you swim?" I asked. When she rose up from the sand in response, I said, "Get us the hell out of here."

***

We stopped only ten minutes later, but ten minutes on Mag had taken us almost half a dozen miles from the soldiers. We were in the basin of a sunny atoll, close to a small chain of islands. Mag was still bleeding, and Jude was still unconscious...and bleeding. Breathing in the red was beginning to make me sick, and kept reminding me of the trench — I'd almost forgotten what it had been like to live in a coppery fog day in and day out.

I checked his vitals, but found no clue as to why he hadn't woken up yet: he was breathing and his heart was beating. Then I found the bleeding welt on his cranium, and feared that he'd been punched so hard that he'd suffered a concussion, which I had no idea how to treat.

"Jude," I said several times, hoping for the best. But he lay there on the sunny sand like the living dead, looking fragile in the bald light, and I was afraid to move him.

Mag, despite her own injuries, was highly mobile while I sat there deliberating: she went out a ways and checked the surrounding seascape for threats, and then came back over and peered down at me, probably wondering why I was so still. Then she left for a little while, and returned later with the carcass of an Octillery. Most of it—she'd eaten the head, and only the legs remained, which were enough of a meal on their own.

I wasn't hungry, but I choked down the flesh, knowing that I needed my strength. While I ate I stared down at Jude, and my mind became like the ocean itself — empty and full of water. Eventually, my body realized that it was worn out and needed rest. So I crawled up next to Jude, told Mag to keep watch, and closed my eyes, hoping for a ten-minute rest.

Instead, I slept for several hours, and in the depths of unconsciousness, I finally found focus... And answers. But they weren't the ones I was looking for: in a very thin dream, a dream that was more like a memory, I was back at the Sea House in Slateport City, sitting at a table on a Pavilion glowing in the waning sunlight. A human game I didn't recognize adorned the table, and at one side sat Kuma. At the other, Simeon.

No. The sentiment was so strong that it woke me up, to a sea blackened by the night, with the surface waters barely a shade brighter. I felt Magdalene's bulk at my side, and the panicked thrum of my heartbeat waned. No. No Delphirius, and no Seawatchers... Hell, no Hoenn. Either meant going back, or dallying, asking questions, searching, looking. And if today had told me anything, it was that we had to keep moving, had to push through this sudden and frightening blockade of Titus's soldiers, before the wrong soldier laid eyes on me, and word of our presence got back to Titus.

But what about Jude?

I reached out for my brother, and found his hand. I couldn't see his face, but I could feel his stillness. I sat up quickly, clutched his wrist, but even when I found his pulse, the panic wouldn't go away. Suddenly, in the middle of this dark, empty ocean, my fear was huge as the sky.

She wanted to be your ally, Nero. She gave you food. Medicine. Clothing. Security during Drought. She cared for Jude. She was going to find a place for you to live. She had sentries — maybe they weren't well trained, but they were better than nothing.

But it wouldn't have lasted. And it wouldn't have mattered. Even if she was wind and Titus was ice, it wouldn't have mattered. Even with her sentries and the Seawatchers, it wouldn't have mattered. To try and fight Titus was to fight a losing battle.

How do you know that?

Answering that question would send me down a dark road of recollection, so I didn't. Instead, I stared out across the black ocean, a void as frightening and terribly lonely as that of the cosmos. I listened to it groan and bellow in the deep canals inside my ears. I held Jude's hand. I tried not to think of the things he'd said to me: words about a wife and daughter that might never come to be, and tried not to feel the terrible ache that put in my chest. I tried not to think about Kuma, and Cora, and the Sea House, and the manor... And how easy those two weeks seemed compared the last hellish twenty-four hours.

Near midnight, Jude woke, coughing raggedly. "Nero?"

"Right here." I squeezed his hand. "Thank Arceus. You took your time. How are you feeling?"

Another cough. "My head... Hurts..."

"How much?"

"Bad... Really bad."

Calm. Keep it in your hands, Nero. "That soldier punched you pretty hard in the face. That takes a while to go away."

His scarred fingers cinched in mine. "Soldiers... Where...?"

"Gone. Some ways behind us." Another thing I didn't want to think about, because I'd begin wondering how much distance they'd closed between us since I'd baked them all. Were they still pursuing us? I'd really done over Festus — surely they'd taken the captain back to Coralora for treatment?

"I'm...sorry," Jude whispered suddenly.

I sat up, waiting for him to explain, and he said, "If I...hadn't...been...captur—"

"There's nothing you or I could've done about that. They were too close, and moved too fast. And I got captured too, remember?"

"But you...fought and...saved us," he rasped. He was crying — I don't know how I could tell, but I could. "I wanted to...I tried to...help but...I...couldn't..."

"Stop," I said. "You can't always save the day. And does it matter? We're both alive, and we got away."

He looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I could actually see the tears glowing in his eyes. "It matters...to me," he said.

He dropped off again, and a few minutes later, I tasted blood once more — he was bleeding again. Or was that Mag? Or was it both? Just then, I wanted to cry too, because it was crawling up my throat, that truth, could and undeniable and absolute: You don't know what you're doing, Nero. Go back to Delphirius, Nero, where Kuma can help you, where Jude matters to someone other than you.

Not yet. I kissed Jude hand and held it to my chest as I laid back down, and said a prayer, maybe to Arceus, maybe to Kyogre: Just a little longer, please, just a little longer, until I figure something out.

***

Once again, Arceus heard my prayers...and laughed.

Close to dawn, I found myself wide awake, and for a beat, I didn't know why. Then I noticed Mag: she'd risen from the seabed, and was staring south, her eyes eerie and unblinking.

Don't tell me.

I went up with her, and it took me a moment to pick out movement on the seascape. But yes, they were there: many of them, many more than had been at the fight yesterday. Those mermen had indeed gone back to Coralora with a half-dead Festus, and had requested reinforcements, more than enough to make quick work of us.

I lashed back down to the sand and grabbed Jude's hand. "Wake up," I said, shaking him violently. "We've got to go."

The eye that opened snatched the breath from my lungs: a pool of blood had bloomed across the whiteness, dipping beneath the cornea, and when he inhaled water, he exhaled sea that was salty and red.

"Soldiers?" he rasped.

"Yes." My voice cracked in the middle, and I turned away before he could see the fear swallow my face, and expand inside my skull in a poisonous, pressurized balloon: You have to do something about this, Nero. I looked up at Mag, at the red still trailing from her body. You have to do something about both of them.

"My head...hurts," Jude said weakly.

"Grin and bear it." We had no other choice! They were here again, and I had no idea of how to treat injuries I couldn't see. Is it really a concussion? Or is he bleeding internally?

Kuma. Kuma would know.

"Mag," I said loudly, trying to shut out everything but this moment, "this way."

But she was already facing north, staring again, not blinking again, and my stomach bottomed out. I didn't want to look, but I did...and I saw the same thing that I'd seen to the south. And saw the same thing to the west. And the east. Holy god, they weren't everywhere but...they were everywhere, one giant, lopsided circle of soldiers, rapidly spiraling inward to a central point. Us. Those walls that I'd felt driving hairs up on my neck back at Delphirius... Suddenly they were here, closing in, driving the oxygen right out of my lungs.

"Nero?" Jude groaned; his head was lolling in a way that made me even more ill.

"Shut up." I had to think. I had to figure a way out of this. Surface. No—if we ascended now, they'd see us, and come after us in one furious, terrifying pack. I'd seen it happen before.

Fight. How? With Festus and his soldiers, we'd gotten lucky—Mag had taken them by surprise, and they hadn't known about my ability to water-shape. Now they likely did, which was probably why there were so many of them — I could only boil so many soldiers at once, and while a dozen were cooking, another dozen would be loading crossbow arrows to riddle me with.

Run. Once again, it was our only choice. But again...how? We were surrounded — if we went up, they'd see us. If we went low, using what little the terrain had to offer for cover, they'd still see us — eventually.

Unless they don't.

I stared out over the lightening seascape. Lightening... But still pretty dark. For now. So dark that it might've been possible to...

What? Sneak around until you run into a soldier?

Yes. Probably two, three at the most — that appeared to be how they were grouping themselves, judging by the knots I saw gliding over the sand, peeking into patches of seaweed and behind rocks. Three soldiers against me and Mag... I liked those odds a lot better than what I was seeing now.

I didn't take a second longer to think about it: instead, I lifted Jude atop Mag and pointed us west, keeping us close to the seabed. Yes, west — they were probably expecting us to the north, and I needed all the edge I could get if I wanted to keep the three of us alive and free.

Also, the terrain was more favorable to the west: more slopes and rocks, and even some reef, which cast long shadows that offered a moment's protection. There was nothing big enough out here to completely hide Mag, but as the first shapes of soldiers came out of the gloom, so did a stand of kelp that did most of the work of masking her enormous bulk, especially when she dug her ventral fin into the sand. The shadows did the rest.

Quickly, I moved a very delirious Jude down to the sand, deeper into the thicket, before taking his place atop Mag, buckling down and holding my breath. There were ten soldiers total in this segment of their ring, moving forward in an obtuse V shape. Five of them were a good distance away, peering down into a ravine that bit into the seabed before moving along. The other half was moving directly toward us, a group of two and a group of three — tragically, the group of two did not come along our route, but instead ascended a steep slope a ways away, heads on a swivel.

I watched them go out of the corner of my eye, and did not recognize any of them. It made me wonder who they were, and when they'd been recruited. Where else had Titus's Army gone after I'd left, picking up recruits to bolster their ranks? How large had the Army grown since then? How many more of them plagued Hoenn's waters? How recently had they gotten here? Not long ago, if they hadn't yet reached Delphirius...

Questions. I had a lot of them, I realized. And for just a second, not having the answers made me feel supremely anxious.

But not as much as this upcoming fight. The last three soldiers in the line were approaching, and coming right for us. Suddenly, our path ahead was simple, yet vastly complicated: kill the soldiers, make a hole, run. Simple. I felt Mag behind me, poised, ready for blood and pain... But I was not. I was only sixteen, but I'd taken a life before, long ago, and the experience still occasionally haunted my dreams; it was not until this very moment that I realized I might not be ready to kill again. Not even close.

But what could I do? I had no more time to think about it; suddenly the soldiers were there, and I shot out of the kelp, with Mag right behind me.

I wanted to be quick and silent — if we could accomplish both, we could slip through without any of the others realizing, not until long later. One soldier died immediately: a chomp from Mag, and his head was gone, with the rest of his body geysering red. I went for the throat of the second, locking his head within my arm before smashing my fist against the cartilage of his throat. He scream turned into a low, painful gag, and he lost his grip on his weapon: a makeshift trident fashioned out of rebar and the rusted head of a pitchfork.

The third soldier froze a second too long — another chomp, and he was gone too.

Mine wheezed and flailed, desperately trying to tug in a full breath. One jab to the jugular with something sharp, and he'd be dead about as quickly as his compatriots. But if was those two bodies that left me frozen in place: Mag had done an efficient job. Too efficient: their gore filled the water in an expanding, soupy fog, and it bathed my tongue, and gills, with the stomach wrenching taste of spilled viscera. I too gagged. Could I do the job as quickly and unflinchingly as she had?

Finally, the merman got in a breath, enough to fuel three words: "D-don't. I surrender."

Mag edged closer, blood leaking from between her teeth. Her face was expectant: Let me do it.

"Please!" the merman begged, a little louder.

Closer, Mag came, and staring at the gore trapped in the gaps between her teeth, I found myself looking for an excuse, any excuse, to not witness a third, brutal beheading. And I had it, because I realized there was something I wanted more than this soldier's death just then: information.

"Go get Jude," I growled. Mag stared at me a moment, and gave a slow blink of surprise. Then she turned, her jaw working, and disappeared into the gloom.

"Scream," I hissed, "and it's your head. Got it?"

The soldier nodded shakily, and quickly, Mag returned, with Jude suspended delicately between her teeth. He'd fallen unconscious — I tried to smother a spike of alarm, and instead reached into my pack, which I'd bound around him. I pulled out a length of seaweed rope and seized one of the merman's hands, binding it quickly to the other. He let me — even if Mag hadn't been looming two feet away from him, he had a bad case of tremors. He was young, younger than I expected — my age or a couple of years older, and by the tremble in his lip, this had to be his first outing. Sympathy rose up inside, and I beheaded it as viciously as Mag had her enemies.

"You're ours now," I said. "We won't hurt you, but if you set a hair out of line, you're Mag's next meal. Keep quiet and move."

—