author's note:

Okay, I think I'm going to change my posting schedule from every 2 days to every 3 since… I'm a busy person. That's still an update a week or sometimes 2. I'm getting my writing groove back, it's all working out!

CHAPTER 26

Even under the dark of night Kylo could still see the blood in the water.

The Falcon was a fast ship, one of the fastest on all the seas. They had made it to the wreckage in less than half an hour, but by the time they there got the scene was one of chaos and ruin.

The ship- or whatever was left of it- had been from Winterton. Not a naval ship, but rather a smaller passenger liner. It wouldn't have been heading towards their Island, but whatever destination was now lost to the raging waters.

"No one could have survived this," Gareth mutters.

Flames still burned on the surface, fed by pools of lamp oil and timber. The smell hung acrid in the air, but it wasn't the sharp scent that made Kylo's stomach twist.

There were bodies in the water. Bodies and parts of them. Unattached limbs and pieces of flesh were bobbing about like gruesome lily flowers. They had been cut. Severed. A blade had done this. Someone had murdered these passengers.

Murdered them then burnt their ship into the sea. Gareth was right, no one could have survived this.

"If we'd come here sooner-"

"The fog," Ria cuts him off, already knowing what he was thinking. "We didn't know because of the fog. It had felt unnatural."

"Evil," Taleisin agrees. "This is the work of evil. These deaths aren't on our shoulders, but we will find who did this and avenge them nonetheless."

Kylo grits his teeth as a particularly upsetting body comes into view from the Force-cast lights. It had been a young girl, barely out of her toddler years, and she was missing her head. The body thumps against the side of their ship, throw n up by the churning waters. Kylo turns away with a grimace, his expression being matched with the look of pain and fury in his Knights eyes.

Rey stares at them with a troubled expression. No doubt that Force sensitive as she is she can pick up on their turbulent emotions, and she quickly races from one side of the ship to the other, swinging the lantern in her hands down off the edge of the railing to illuminate the waters. She keeps looking down there into the blackness. Kylo watches her rather than the bloodshed around him. There's no point to what she's doing. All she'll see in the water is death and unanswered questions.

Then she leans forward, tipping so much of her body weight over the edge of the railing that Kylo's heart lurches for a moment. She hisses, her back arching sharply.

"Men," Kylo pushes Taleisin behind him as the younger Knight begins to edge forward himself. "Be on high alert. We may not be alone out here after all."

The air was thick with death and suffering, and that was obscuring the normal clarity of the Force. It clouded Kylo's connection with it just as the fog had hidden the brutal slaughter of this ship from him until it was too late.

"You think whoever did this is still here?"

Balen, the other twin asks it, but Kylo immediately shakes his head. Whoever was responsible for this would have shown themselves by now. They must have cast the fog on purpose to hide from the Knights, and that could likely only mean one thing.

Rey darts again to the other side of the ship, knocking Silas out of her way as she goes. He shakes his head, his expression tense and Kylo can see the reflection of another particularly gruesome death reflecting in his psyche.

"Gods," Kylo mutters, part of him desperately hoping this was all a nightmare he would soon wake from.

"The blood was still flowing," Gareth says, his voice quiet.

Behind him Rey darts again now to the prow of the ship. She's looking for something out there, though what Kylo can't begin to imagine.

"Fresh," Kylo answers. "It must have been very soon. They barely got away from us."

Ria and Taleisin step closer. Kylo exchanges a look of silent determination with his female Knight, but Taleisin keeps his head down and his eyes to the ground. Of all of them he was the most squeamish. The most effected by violence. It must have been tied to his nature as a healer, but when Kylo reaches out to him he takes off his glove and clasps his hand tightly.

Immediately a sense of clarity falls into Kylo's mind. Taleisin holds back the waves of dark energy that had been blanketing the Force, and Kylo pulls deeper on their now shared power to reach out and see.

The ship. Not their or the one now half sunk into dark waters. He can see a ship drawing away from them at full sail. Fast as it can. It's a smaller vessel with a crew of only four dark souls.

Just four people did this. Only four killed all the dozens of departing souls that Taleisin is now painfully trying to hold back. It must be nearly unbearable for him, but Kylo pushes deeper. He needs to see the truth.

They're wearing masks. Dressed in black. These aren't from Winterton nor slavers either. Fog heavy and thick masks them, and when Kylo tries to push it aside one of them looks up right at him. His face is hidden but his eyes show shock. Then rage. Then fear.

The connection abruptly ends, cut off so quickly that Taleisin cries out, gripping his head in his hands while Ria catches him as he falls.

"They were using the Force." Kylo's voice carries thin against the dark night skies. "They have the power just as we do."

A wave of shock ripples though the other Knights as Kylo pushes what he's just seen into their minds. Bafflingly, Rey's head also snaps to look at him. She had been staring and growling at the surface of the water again but clearly she must have picked up his message as well even if he hadn't purposefully sent it to her.

Kylo frowns for a moment. Then pushes that aside. It doesn't matter right now. Now they have to take action. Their prey hasn't fled nearly as far away as he'd first thought.

"Raise the sails!" he calls out, immediately snapping out of his dark reverie. "Set everything to blow us to the North! Damned well paddle if you have to, we're going to catch up with those monsters and cleave them limb from limb!"

His Knights don't need to be told twice. Immediately they leap into action, Ria and the twins working on the master rigging line while Silas and Taleisin run to the main mast.

Rey, however, starts to howl. Kylo and Ria both pause, watching her as slaps at the side railing and points out. But when Kylo looks there's… nothing. Nothing but a few rising bubbles against the quickly calming black surface.

Rey spins then, shoving Gareth hard in the center of his chest and knocking the rigging line he was setting up right out of his hands.

"Hey!" he shouts, reaching for it again only to get backhanded hard across his face.

"Rey," Kylo warns, bounding forward and pulling her away from the now enraged archer. "What in the world has gotten into you? We have to go. Have to hurry."

If only he could make her understand. She had her beloved head cutter tied right at her hip, as soon as they catch up with the other boat Kylo doesn't doubt she'll be about to put it to good use.

Rey has none of his promised thoughts that he projects, however. She wrestles out of his grasp and runs again to the railing, pointing and growling and stomping her feet.

More bubbles. Surely she can't be scared of them, can she? This girl is scared of nothing.

"Rey," she squirms in his arms as eh tries to pull her back and he doesn't have time for this. "It's just air escaping from a piece of the ship that's sunk. There's no one down there we can save."

She pushes hard at him, now slapping at his chest. Her mouth makes shapes, angry incomprehensible noises coming out as she tries to make herself understood.

They don't have time. Not now.

"Ria," he calls over his shoulder, "take Rey downstairs. I don't know why she's acting like this."

Kylo steps back, letting Rey have her way and squirm out of his arms. When he turns Ria gives him a painfully unimpressed look, her hands full and busy with rigging lines. He sighs, turning next to Mayenne who's currently halfway up the main mast and throwing a rope up to Silas on the crows nest.

Then Rey pushes past him, elbowing him hard enough in the shoulder that Kylo pauses for a second too late.

"No!" he cries, reaching out to stop her with a swoop of the Force.

Too late is too late. She leaps over the far railing, disappearing off the edge of the ship into the dark waters below. Water splashes up past the sides as Kylo races to where she had gone.

Kylo gapes, his mind leaping too fast to process.

'Sir?" Ria asks.

He ignores her, focusing a larger ball of Force to the edge of the waters surface. Not a trace of her. Rey was gone.

"I'm going after her."

He barely says it, but immediate his Knights attention turns from where their guest had vanished to their leader. Kylo starts to strip down, pushing out each and every one of their intruding objections.

Unsurprisingly, it's Ria that catches his arm as he starts to tear at the buttons of his shirt.

"Sir, she's a mermaid."

His boots are kicked off next.

"We leave no man behind, Knight. Mermaid or not, I'm not leaving her."

He shrugs out of Ria's grip and frowns as both Taleisin and the twins stop with their work to gather behind her.

"We leave no one behind, Sir, but we're not stupid about it," Taleisin counters.

All Kylo does is grunt. His men make no move to stop him as he leaps onto the railing, takes a readying breath, and dives off into the ocean himself.

Cold.

The cold of these northern night waters nearly takes that breath right away form him. Kylo is better than that, though. He focuses, drawing the Force around him like a shroud. It will protect him from the worst of the water's effects and delay the need to breathe. Up to a point and a short one at that.

Kylo can't bring the Force lights down with him, but he senses his Knights – Taleisin most likely- cast their own and bring it to the surface of the water. They're angry and agitated at him, but he cuts them of from his mind as he starts to dive down deeper into the water. Seeing is almost impossible, with only streams of light illuminating nothing but haze. Still he can feel Rey. She's down there, so close but so far. And she's not alone.

There's a dozen other Force signatures surrounding her. Fighting with her. Rey is frantic. She's hurting. Under attack. Kylo pushes himself harder, swimming deeper than he rationally should. He knows what's attacking her. Her own kind. Mermaids.

Rey can take care of herself, Kylo knows this to a fault, but… there's so many of them. How can she even breathe? How long has she been down there? How much further does he have to dive down into this inky black tomb?

Above him the Force lights cast just a hint of illumination now. It's enough for him to see the movement in the water right in front of him. He'd been so caught up in finding and rescuing his mermaid that he completely ignored the more pressing thread of another mermaid coming right to him.

Kylo growls, his lungs aching at the sound as his Force spell begins to ebb. He draws his sword, ready to plunge it straight into the belly of the beast racing towards him.

Then she slows, two more mermaids faintly seen behind him. This mermaid has dark hair, darker eyes, and the look in them is-

Is one of curiosity, not of murderous rage. This deep water mermaid is watching him, but not attacking. Why? What in all the hells was the creature doing?

The mermaid shifts closer, sensing him with the Force just as he's sensing her. She eyes the sword held ready in his hand, and Kylo can sense the trepidation. Then her own arm reaches out and his grip on the blade tightens. After everything- after Rey- it just doesn't feel right to slaughter this being. Not when she hasn't attacked him first.

The two other creatures circle closer, only to be pushed back by an aggressive sweep of this one's tail. Kylo gapes at her as her hand strokes him. She trails her palm first down the center of his shirtless chest, then up to flick his hair away from… from his shoulder. Bearing Rey's love bite.

The look in her eyes takes on a clear intent and Kylo starts to push away, his lungs now aching with the need to breathe. He'd lost track of Rey under this mermaid's perversion. He can't- he has to-

The mermaid's tail snakes around his legs, pulling him closer even as he starts to struggle back to the surface and its life giving air. Then cold lips lock around his own, oxygen being pushed into his lungs just as two more sets of hands grab him and hold him down.

Enough! He screams it through the Force, physically throwing his aggressors back. That does the trick. The mermaid that had been so unwelcomingly kissing him lunges forward, all claws and teeth bared at his rejection of her attentions.

Then a glint of metal wrapping itself through her neck is all he sees in the dim lights from above. Kylo swings his sword behind him, spearing one of the other two just as Rey finishes off the first. Her movements are clumsy and one-handed. She's- she's holding body behind her, dragging it by the ankles.

All around them the mermaid begins to swarm, the waters now churning with anger and fury. Kylo grabs Rey's hand but she's the one who leads him tot he surface, their exodus nearly in a panic with her morbid cargo still in tow.

When they break the waters Kylo literally cries out in relief, his aching lungs filling themselves once more with precious air. Only a moment later he's dragged under again by countless hands. He swings, Rey dives, and the waters run warm until a very familiar Force signature, or rather twins of them he should say, drag them both out of the water and into the Falcon's longboat.

"Kylo."

Balen gapes at him in disbelief. Kylo has no answers, only mute gratitude. They had been nearly overwhelmed, and that's not to even begin to process the bizarre encounter he had just endured below the surface of the waves.

Rey still has the body she was hauling up locked in her arms. Kylo's heart lurches when he sees her. She's in poor shape, a myriad of bites and cuts etch along every exposed part of her skin. She hadn't been defending herself properly. Why? For a corpse?

Taleisin had come with the twins and he shakes his head, kneeling down low next to a growling Rey as he places his hand on the temple of the the adolescent boy she's carried up from the deep.

"He's alive. He's alive, and the only survivor of this whole massacre."

Author's note:

So… can you tell I know nothing about how ships work? Outside of Pirates of the Caribbean and a vague memory of my dad watching Hornblower? Let's just pretend that all my nonsense about rigging and masts and sails makes sense, 'kay? It's a fantasy world. Any mistakes can be explained away by the Force and Magic. Cool. Mic drop.

As always your comments give me so much life and I love each and every one of them so please keep it up! This story especially, it doesn't get as many views and comments as my average but people still seem to really enjoy it so I'm going to keep on going until we get to the end, I promise!

If you want to chat or anything, feel free to find me on tumblr at lost-inthesunlight and on twitter Ava_Avdal : )