ACT 4: The Void Stares Back
"I'll go out for a while, then."
John quietly closed the screen door behind him. The corridor was deserted, and a pale beam of moonlight illuminated a corner of the polished wooden floor. A slight breeze floated in through an open window, the faint sounds of chatter from the port town drifting in along with it.
Lord Akenar had arranged for a night's accommodation at a local inn, though the three of them had to share a single room. (they had the impression that he really couldn't care less where they ended up- although they were very grateful that he had been willing to help them, truly they were!) The Lord did not stay long in Verdigris and left a few hours before sunset, having tend to his wounded and arranged funerals for the deceased. Just thinking about the demon sent shivers up John's spine. How did he get out of the Medium? The White Queen personally said that it was almost impossible to physically travel between the two realms. And how did he track them down? Why was he so intent on killing him?
The prospect of having one very enraged and close to omnipotent demon chasing after him was not a good one. And R-
No. Don't think about Rose!
He heard his breath hitch, letting out a gasp that was heard even over the indistinct chatter from outside. John swallowed thickly and shook his head, setting off with hesitant steps down the hallway. She was alive, the black mist would help her- it helped her shoot lightning, surely it could do anything! She'd be able to find her way back, it couldn't be that difficult and it was Rose, Lord Akenar was probably being too pessimistic and affected by the attack...she wasn't dead...she just couldn't be dead...
The idea of Rose being permanently gone was inconceivable.
The inn wasn't anything particularly fancy or modern (like he said, their previous guardians were far more hospitable), but it was homely and bustling, something to keep his minds off the disturbing events of late. But the bustle was getting to his head. He wandered without thinking, vaguely remembering mumbling something to the landlady when he exited the inn.
The night air was crisp, tinged with salty sea spray from the beach some distance away. Verdigris seemed much more different at night - a different breed of sailor emerged in the cover of darkness, in contrast to the friendly traders who long retreated to the comfort of their ships. There were few skyships, unlike the skyship port in the heart of the woods- and unlike the port John had seen burn down before his eyes, this one seemed almost bipolar in the characters that populated the docks by day and night.
John stumbled past drunken brawls, ignoring the occasional splashes as someone picked a fight too close to the edge of the water.
Well, the rows of wooden moorings were just like those he remembered in the City of Light, only - the sea was much wider here. Vast, endless stretches of great blue - it never failed to amaze him. How wide it was, and endless, and unforgiving and crushing down on him with his vastness, making him feel small and insignificant. Even the ships, some of them massive in his view as they bobbed gently on a rising tide, looked small against the backdrop of the endless ocean.
Most of the ships had their gangplanks drawn, resting quietly. The sound of boisterous laughter echoed from the pubs lining the streets. Further down the traders' brightly painted vessels gave way to more subtly decorated passenger ships - these were more simplistic, lacking the flamboyant sails and other strange appendages that John assumed were speed-boosting devices.
Barely hearing the wolf-whistles, drunken laughter and snide comments, John perched himself at the edge of the water, staring uncomprehendingly at how the moonlight gleamed off the surface of the rippling tide.
Don't think about Rose, don't think about Rose, don't think-
"- that's just robbery! We can't let that happen - not on our lives! "
Several seafarers were clustered around the doorway of a lone building at the quayside. A wizened old man wearing some kind of stiffly starched uniform was hunched over a desk inside, busy fending off the others' questions. The feeble glow from a single lantern nearby cast angular shadows across their grim faces.
A tall woman violently slammed her fist onto the officer's table, rattling the stationery scattered over it. "We're telling you, this is just absurd-"
The officer mumbled something about increased purification rates, but the woman wasn't pacified.
"Excuses!" She roared, the cry being picked up by the others. "Excuses to fund some Atlantean white elephant! Siphoning off our money like some sort of leech! We've put up with your ridiculous fees for enough, you - how can us sailors be expected to make a living with that tax of yours?"
The woman stopped abruptly, catching her breath.
The officer nervously rearranged his stationery back to their proper places, disregarding the other ship owners' stares. At last he attempted to draw himself up to his full height - not much, considering that he was sitting down - and sighed.
"... well?" Another sailor said sharply.
"T-tell you what, I'll keep the customs tax as it is - f-for now - until I've received further instructions."
The woman snorted in disgust, but did not comment. The crowd muttered mutinously, beginning to disperse. John watched them, noting how the light of the lantern glinted off a ring woven into the woman's hair, how another sailor's lapels glittered importantly, how the dim glow split against the glass sides of a beer bottle-
"Kid! 'ey, you over there, I'm talking to you!"
John turned to see someone gesturing to him some distance away. With a last glance at the group of offended ship owners he walked over, wondering about the situation here. Atlantean white elephant? What were the officials searching for, then? Did Lord Akenar know? Was he with the government here, or somewhere else?
He waved in a friendly manner to the man who had called, trying not to chuckle at his beer-belly.
"Lad, you'd best stay out of their business." The sailor indicated the customs building with a wave of his hand. "Terrible bunch, them Atlantean officers - fickle as the sea." He chuckled at his own joke
"What's wrong?" John tilted his head, engrossing himself with this new problem to rid his mind of the old one. "Is it something about taxes?"
"Taxes it is - you've been eavesdropping, haven't you?" The sailor didn't wait for him to answer, wagging his finger at him in a chastising way. "Naughty boy - but them blasted taxes it is - the Atlanteans have been charging import taxes on our goods since forever, but they've raised it a lot over the past few years - what we actually earn from each run's been going down." He sighed. "Captain's switched to ferrying passengers for now, but I don't know what's for the long term solution - they've started charging people as well. To fund for some water purification things, or so they say. We can't verify for now, "state secrets" and all that..."
"Wait, you did say you ferried passengers?"
"Yeah, what's up with that?"
They could go back to where they last saw Rose and search for her. Lord Akenar wouldn't have any of it, but this sailor seemed nicer... "Are you leaving soon? What's the fare? Can we get a place? How long will it take? Will there be some sort of strange inspection thing -"
"Whoa there! Easy on the questions!" The sailor raised both hands. "ol' cap's gonna take on new passengers - we're sailing day after tomorrow. Fifty crowns per head. The Atlanteans only charge the entry fee, though apart from a security check there should be no problem - why're you asking, anyway? Your parents want to take you on holiday or something? Or did your family get stranded? Heard there was some nasty incident upstream in the Terra lands."
"Our- our, uh, family? We, uh..."
What was their cover story again? One bad memory led to another and John found himself unable to think over the searing flames dancing before his eyes. They were starting to water, he could hardly make out the concerned sailor over his hallucinations -
"Kid, you alright?"
"Y-yeah, I'm fine!" John blinked rapidly and shook his head. "We, uh, my thr -" -he caught himself, almost choked on air again. "- two friends, we've been separated from our family in the, eeerr, the fire upstream, yeah! So we were wanting to get back to Atlantis to our...to uh, to our aunt! So we can contact our families...yeah!"
"You poor boy!" Suddenly John found himself enveloped in a crushing hug, trying not to gag from the sweat and sharp smell of the sea that perfumed the sailor's clothes. "I'd cut the price for you kids. Wish I could do more, but I'm not the Cap'n, so!"
He carefully disentangled himself, taking deep lungfuls of air. The salty sea-smell didn't go away, not this close to the ocean. "Well, is there any way we could take on some temporary jobs or anything? Because my friends and I can't pay that much..."
The sailor stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Work? Gosh, getting kids to work can't be right! Cap'n might have some easy work you could help out with in exchange, but he's currently out. I don't really know! You could drop by tomorrow and ask, hopefully we'll figure something out!."
...oh, Dualscar. Don't pretend that you aren't thrilled by our dance~
His eyes scanned the letter, traced the lazy scrawl in cursive; the flourishing curves of her ys and gs, the fierce blots above her is that seeped through the parchment and turned up on the other side like some Morse code.
...I know you're infuri8ted 8y my latest handiwork. Even as I write this, I can just imagine your face as you read it now- treat it as a little nudge in the right direction, then. Your cop friends seem to need it 8adly, the poor saps. ...
The shorthand '8's, butchering words like a teenage girl would; (seriously, what did 'ROFL' even mean? kids these days...) the messy 'B's that resembled the very same number. Every letter, every word, it was so characteristically her that he could just hear her drawling tone at the back of his mind -
- he was, indeed, infuriated.
...Honestly, I was soooooooo 8ored. You can't fault me for not 8eing a8le to help this sort of thing. It's no fun when you're off 8eing a good 8oy and patrolling some dum8 sea somewhere. There's no one else willing to play with me, and frankly, I don't think there's anyone who can match up to your a8solutely hilarious chivalry thing.
Step up your game, won't you? I've already gone and made a nice 8loody trail for you to follow, and even the incompetent authorities are going mad with the 8lood-scent. This is an invitation to sound the hunting horn, Dualscar. There aren't many a8ove me in this food chain, and I miss the thrill of 8eing prey already- what are you w8ting for? Hunt me. You have moooooooore than enough to track me down...
How many times had he reread this letter? All her letters, looking for that one clue to close the net around her once and for all? The words stared back at him, radiating the challenge of the one who penned them down; 'Hunt me'.
He had no trouble instantly going on the aggressive in the past; oh, he's trapped her like a hunter and ripped through her defenses like a shark until she was begging for mercy and pleading to be handed over to the Prospitian authorities- so she could kill some unfortunate officers and give their corpses the slip. Vanish into thin air when he wasn't there to stop her.
And so the dance continued. The strangest of dances.
Far from a secret, traitorous romance between the upstanding naval officer and the wild pirate- everyone was sure to think that if they found out, and everyone couldn't be further from the truth. It was more of a hate-filled routine, this dance of theirs; rivalry urging them to best the other, one to catch and the other to elude capture. Even when they met, on nights filled with so much passion and violence- it was a struggle for dominance, not any form of attraction.
It was unheard of, but it had worked so well.
Yet, now, he seemed to be hitting an impenetrable wall. On the simple task of tracking down another woman, no less... the search had only started, but already he was unsatisfied with the result. It wasn't fast enough. Not for him, not for the law, not for them.
It's unsettling how he has to swallow thickly every time he referred to the two of them as a collective- not for them- and quickly push the thought away. Her coy words, every single sentence a carefully crafted pretense to fool him into think she was actually interested (interested interested) when this was obviously all just a game to her...how they seemed to finally be working.
Ugh. Pull it together, Akenar, if you want a lady you'd just have to say the word- certainly specimens much prettier than her would throw themselves at you-
But it wasn't that. Maybe he wasn't finding anything to latch onto because his subconscious actually didn't want him on the aggressive prosecution this time.
He'd better not be.
...meanwhile, I'll 8e amusing myself with my new toys- don't worry, I don't think I'll be finishing these ones too fast- and if you ever want more clues, a chat, tea, may8e something else... you know how to reach me~
-there! He squinted at the parchment, feeling the sense of being on to something churning his insides. There was something not quite right here... he took deep, steadying breaths, inhaling the familiar scent of her stationery-
-there!
'New toys'. There were plenty of missing person reports, yes, but were they for prisoners (cough, new toys) or the dead? A hunch gnawed away at him, flitting through his conscious but not quite letting him grasp and comprehend it- what was to be gained from this? Was this Astrae Maryam with her now? One of her 'new toys'? Dead? Unrelated to her at this point in time?
Remem8er what we agreed on? If anyone's going to catch me, it had 8etter 8e you. Nothing 8ut the 8est, my daaaaaaaarling Dualscar. I'll be w8ting~
His insides lurched again, causing him to flinch and hiss. She was getting to him, she was getting to him too well- his mind kept wandering from the case, contemplating the possibility of just asking her out (-a-as in, asking her to come out of hiding and meet, not asking her out asking her out- oh cod, why was he even thinking this?) and getting an answer and maybe arresting her there and then.
He'd done it before, extorting crucial information during one of their ceasefire rendezvous without her knowing- it was cheating, but as long as he played her game of wits and didn't just meet her to beat her up into submission, anything was really just fair game. Temptation whined like a child, insistent on getting its way.
His hand almost inched towards his own writing paper -
- oh no. He wasn't going to let himself go down that path.
He was going to do this the hard way, the proper (non-scandalous) way, so he could hate her all the more for it and the victory would be so much sweeter. He didn't need to ask her to find out what she did with Astrae Maryam, if she did anything in the first place.
He didn't need to talk to her at all. No, they were simply enemies engaging in a dance of strategics, enemies that hated everything the other stood for and would sooner see the other dead by their hand. Well, obviously. Everyone was too aware of his hatred towards pirates in general.
Her, on the other hand. No one knew she secretly made contact with one of her pursuers, no one knew she considered him her most efficient pursuer, even above the rising-star neophyte responsible for landing so many of her partners in jail. No one was privy to their secret meetings, hushed under the concealing night, and no one read the letters; her words, so playfully flirtatious when she wanted a reaction from him, and his angry tirades in response.
It was better that no one did see, really. It was just a big game they played, pretending to want anything to do with each other just to see who cracked first. A whole orchestration of a relationship built on hate, and respect, and hatred of that respect.
Right? Right.
He reached the end of the letter, body reacting involuntarily as his eyes skimmed over the sign-off. It seemed almost...normal, although the implications were far from.
Love,
Mindfang
Not for the first time, he imagined the impossible; actual sincerity colouring her lilting drawl. Not for the first time, he crumpled the letter and flung it at the wall.
