Joe thrashed mightily against the limbs restraining him. All he knew was that in the ruckus of guards, yelling, and bubbles in his ears, he could no longer see Ariel in the observatory. He managed to throw off three of the guards pinning his tentacles, but a searing pain in his side from the wound that hadn't quite healed threw him for a breath, and that was all the time they needed to be back on him.
"You filthy—" but his swears were cut off before he could get the words out by a harsh, binding leather gag.
Prince Ellian was speaking—saying something arrogant and self-aggrandizing by the tone of it. Princess Ariel was yelling. No, she was screaming.
Against his better sensibilities, he turned to the place where Adin had been. He didn't need a lot of help. Just a distraction. Just a few seconds. However, the place Adin had been occupying by the door was empty.
The cur.
The coward!
The struggle was over in seconds. Ellian's entourage wrestled him into a steel-plated box the size of a coffin. It had no internal hinges for him to manipulate. No in-facing mechanism. From the inside, there were no holds or chinks for him to manipulate. The smallest grating in one side allowed him fresh water to breath, but only barely. The slits were hardly big enough to see through. His side stung from the old wound, and his ears buzzed from the horrible grating sound the metal box made as it slammed shut over his tentacles. A sharp pain in one of his feet preceded the smell of his own blood.
Before Joe realized what was happening, he felt, more than he saw, his new prison being shoved back through the tunnel and toward the street. Ellian swam far ahead, dragging the princess, and whispering what were probably threats to keep her silent moving through the streets—not that it was at all necessary.
The din that erupted when the guards emerged from the observatory was hair-splitting. The brutes crashed through the quaint stalls and homes that Ariel had so admired the day before, scattering jars, barrels, and children. Several magical lamps broke, sending glowing fluids flowing into each other. Joe winced when a jar of underwater flames connected with a phosphorescent lamp. The ensuing explosion shook the street.
Then the screaming started. Cecaelia, angler, and mermen alike scattered before the guards, who Joe was sickened to see seemed to find this sort of thing fun. Doubtless they'd been told since infancy that the Depths housed nothing but criminals and bottom-feeders. Some of the merchants he'd seen having a peaceful evening just hours before were now yelling for their apprentices and family members. Some of the barnacles and more immobile creatures on the street corners were yelling cautionary pleas, and calling out for that hero he'd seen the street urchins outside Ursula's cavern foretelling. But no hero came, and noone had enough warning to fight the high king's guards that in any other kingdom would have been there to protect them.
Swimming through the chaos as though he belonged there, Prince Ellian led Ariel ahead of him, not even sparing a glance back as he escorted her down the winding streets, until, so far ahead of him, they disappeared. Several more mer were boxed up in cages similar to his, and then dragged to another set of tubes along with him located near the city gate.
That was the last time he saw Ariel.
Joe didn't know how Ellian knew about the exits, but it seemed he'd found the faster way to the surface that Ambassador Djeval had mentioned. One by one, the boxes were pushed through the city wall, and the magical current that took him upwards made time slip away.
Joe awoke to the familiar smell of Ursula's magic, but it was different somehow. Darker. More bitter. Perhaps she'd left her cauldron on again, and had managed to burn whatever spell she'd been working on that morning…only, it struck Joe as odd. Ursula was never up so early, and something was telling him that he hadn't seen sunlight in days.
The first sensation that reached Joe's tentacles was an aching stiffness that bordered on pain. His side ached, and his mouth was saltier than usual. His tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth.
Next, he heard the chanting.
"Summon the kings!"
"We need answers!"
"Our reefs are dying!"
Opening his salt-worn eyes, the awful sight of the grate greeted him, and the water coming in through it now positively reeked of Ursula. He suppressed a groan as his hearts sank as much as they could in the confined space. He didn't know what, but he knew that Ursula had done something in his absence, and if it was enough to cause riots…
Krill was dead.
The realization hit him like a piano to the head. He hadn't saved Krill. Ariel's cure destroyed. In his absence, he hadn't mitigated Ursula's attacks, whatever they were.
He was almost sure that if he closed his eyes, and opened them again, he would find that he'd simply gotten tangled in his sheets and had a very constricting dream, but after a few hard blinks, though the chanting faded in the distance behind him, his scenery didn't change, and the constriction in his limbs only hurt worse. The taste of dark magic only got stronger, and the cries of help from the people more bitter.
After what felt like hours, his box was finally dropped on the pebble-ridden sand with an uncomfortable "clank!"
As the locks on the outside of his box were undone, Joe found himself sinking into the blissful nothingness of apathy. He barely took in the sight of the famous Atlantis prison as no less than ten guards dragged him from the transport and through the outer doors. It was unnecessary, he didn't fight them.
King Triton's guards wasted no time chaining his wrists once he was through the looming entrance of the Atlantis dungeon.
Former King Triton, he reminded himself dully. After all, he was gone, too.
The stone-wrought gates at the entrance of each dim hallway swallowed him like some bestial series of throats. Rusted iron chains and wiry cages hung from the ceiling in greater quantities as he was led into the heart of the dungeon. Unfortunately, it seemed to be the carefully-monitored sort of rust intended to cause pain, but not allowed to proceed to the point of weakness in the metal. There were cells and cages of every size, designed to hold the largest bullshark, or the tiniest minnow, ensconced in the walls, although Joe failed to see what a singular minnow could do that would be severe enough to land it in this place.
Eventually the cages petered off and cells began appearing in neat rows, arranged by the severity of the crimes. One row of cells was neatly labeled: Theft. Another: Tax Evasion. All the way down to Fraud, Treason, Knitting Without a Permit, and Arson—which Joe distantly thought should deserve an award along with the imprisonment if someone managed it underwater.
The fullest of any row was a category labeled only as: Misc. And it was by far the most chatty to Joe's escort as they passed by.
"I only swindled him once! And he deserved it, the ruggy daughter-thieving sod!"
"Carnivorous kelp-breeding isn't against the law! There isn't even a law mentioning it!"
"How was I supposed to know the contract was written down? I plead illiteracy!"
"As if anyone illiterate would know that word," the guard on Joe's left mumbled. "Should have thrown them in the stocks, and flogged them instead of having honest workers wait on them in a place like this."
Joe's cell was far away from any of the noise. The mermen flanking him shoved him and his chains into a solitary room in the heart of the maze of cells. Unlike the others that he'd seen, the walls, floors, and ceilings were bare but for piles of sand that gave the place an unswept feeling. The only indicators that it was a cell at all were the hooks in the floor to which the guards immediately chained him into. The shortness of the chained shackles that bit into each of his wrists forced him to kneel.
They left him alone. It was torture enough to be left with his thoughts and the memories of what he'd seen. Falling to the floor, Joe didn't know if it had been hours or days that had passed when he at last felt, more than heard someone else approach his cell.
"Unlock it," he heard a deep, slithering voice purr outside the door.
When the deadbolt slid back, a sight hated by nearly all cecaelia greeted him.
King Ezra, and a contingent of five cecaelian bodyguards drifted into the room, bringing with them a set of bright lamps that burned his dark-adjusted eyes. Wordlessly, the thugs—there was simply no other word for them—surrounded Joe, keeping their dark expressions trained on him. Ezra loomed over him, the pendants and jewels chained across his chest catching the light and shooting sharp beams into his eyes. It took all of his control not to flinch.
"Joe, was it?" the king smirked, though there was something restless in his gaze that unnerved Joe.
He shuddered. How did his alleged king know his name, personally?
"No need to strain yourself answering me…" King Ezra goaded. "Your silence is enough for now. Believe it or not, Joe, these last few weeks were all planned very well. If not for the efforts of that moronic prince, and the hurricane that seems to come from Ursula's cavern in the form of you, these past few days would have gone off greatly without a hitch."
Several events slid into sense for Joe—not that it mattered anymore. Of course that prince couldn't have found Ursula on his own—nor could he have found the depths without the direct aid of a cecaelia. He really should have known.
If Ezra cared whether or not he'd known this, he didn't show it. The king reached down with the butt of the trident he carried, and forcibly raised Joe's chin to look at him. Joe could feel the current of magic humming in the metal against his skin like it was begging to be released.
"Now, for one thing I really do need an answer. I'm told by the people that Ursula has managed to separate her magic from the influence of the eclipse. How did she do it? How do I undo it?"
If Joe had been in any state to be amused, he would have afforded Ezra a derisive snort.
"Not so well-planned after all." Joe couldn't resist the jibe. "If I knew that, then I wouldn't have gone to the depths for a cure for Princess Ariel, would I? I could have simply waited for the eclipse."
"But you can tell me how she cast it in the first place…" Ezra snarled softly.
"I could, if you would guarantee the princess a curfew where I could not," said Joe without much real hope.
"Oh," Ezra actually sounded amused. "You are in no place to negotiate, I think."
"Then no," Joe answered flatly.
Instead of anger, King Ezra let out a patronizing tsk. "You care for her so much? Such a pity. You know, some of the dregs are cheering for you now, but after today it won't matter. Princess Ariel will be married come daybreak and the monarchy will fall to me, and once it's mine, even that witch mother of yours couldn't pry it from my fingers.
"Even more tragic… you can't be the hero from the prophecy if you die here and now." Ezra glanced down at him, his expression serene and almost pitying. "The best you could do now is to tell me how to protect the kingdom from her influences. One last service to your people."
A spark of defiance lit in Joe's chest, misplaced, but timely.
"You won't keep the kingdom through so much magical unrest," Joe pointed out through grit teeth. "Not while there are unbound heirs to the crown. You'll face too much blame, and even magic can't control numbers…but you know that already, don't you, my king?"
He put as much loathing for Ezra's traitorous past, his abandonment of his people, and his involvement with Ariel and her wretched fate into that title. Joe couldn't think of anyone less deserving to wear the cecaelian crown—and he had known his fair share of bottom-feeders.
"But I already have the trident," Ezra purred down at him, although now, his tone was dangerous. "Once the wedding vows are spoken, the question of ownership of the throne is a sealed deal. I had to get the princesses not tied to a kingdom out so that the eldest can take it, and she's his. "One last offer, boy. Tell me what Ursula did. I'll make your death quick."
"She'll never go through with it," said Joe, even knowing the futility of trying to stall for more time.
A silken smile graced the king's mouth, though it didn't touch his eyes. "Oh, but she will. The eclipse is mere hours away. Don't you want to tell me how to undo the magic's weakness to it now? I promise I'll release the princess from her little curse if you do—after the wedding. There might even still be time, if you hurry."
Had Joe known how to do what he requested, he might have complied then. However; there was no knowledgeable way—at least for Ariel's case, not without ingredients that no longer existed.
"Then you do know." Joe snarled in frustration. "It was you who told that wretched sea-snake to come to Ursula for his poisons!"
Though Joe had had his part in this, he should have known prince Ellian was not the mastermind of his own machinations—or anything beyond how to hold a silver spoon.
Then, to his great surprise, the anger had faded in Ezra's voice when he responded.
"What happened to Ariel was…not ideal. Nor was it my idea." The king actually sounded regretful. "But when you work with morons, they improvise moronic plans. A shame really. I did really like her."
Ezra's trailing gaze focused on something behind Joe's head, and his instincts didn't miss how carefully the cecaelian guards were watching him. All of them were toting glaves, not the least as threatening as the trident in Ezra's hand, but just as deadly. A cold feeling prickled up his spine as the thug directly behind him moved the still water of the cell when he twitched imperceptibly closer.
"I suppose if you refuse to be useful, time is of the essence. Forgive me, but considering the reputation you've managed to accidentally swirl about you I'd rather you not stick about to muddle any more plans….wrong places at all the wrong times, boy. Such a shame."
Joe spat at the so-called king. "Your own people hate you, and this kingdom will be no different."
Ezra continued as though he hadn't heard him. "Well, I've got a wedding to attend. The princess will be beautiful on her special day. Shame you're going to miss it."
He turned, and exited alone through the cell door.
"Kill him." He tossed the order over his shoulder, leaving the door hanging unlocked on its hinges behind him.
Joe's infuriated growl, and screams of "Coward!" were cowed the moment the guard behind him seized a handful of his hair and yanked his head back.
"Giving our kind an even worse name. It's specimens like you that are the reason our people are where they are," the guard hissed nastily in his ear. "I would give you a speech, but why waste words on the dead?"
Joe's eye only just caught the flash of the guard's glave as he raised it above his neck, about to swing down. He gave a last jerk of the chains, knowing it was futile, when the guard's hand suddenly went slack, and slipped away from his head.
He gave a start, turning jerkily to see his murderer's face. It was quickly losing its healthy purple tinge, as all blood flowed away from his features. The tip of a familiar blue-tipped spear had sprouted from his chest.
The dull thud of King Ezra's cecaelian guard on the ground reached Joe's ears as his body went slack, and then all the lamps the guards had brought into the room flared, and went out, leaving him completely blind.
On instinct, Joe hit the ground.
"Something's in here," a guard to Joe's right hissed, and Joe heard the swipe of something sharp and leathery swooping over him where his head had been only a heartbeat before.
"I just felt something!" another reported, part efficiency, part fear. "It's behind me!"
"Light the lamps."
A small sound of pain came from the places where he knew the guards who had been toting lamps had been positioned. "They've been stripped! I can't—"
A terrible scream pierced the darkness. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it was cut off. Joe blinked rapidly, willing his eyes to adjust faster. An indistinguishable shape was falling to the ground. Another of Ezra's guards. Frantically, he scrambled at the hooks fastening him to the ground. Perhaps if he couldn't break the chains, then their fastenings—
"It's over here—!"
"Here!" two of the guards cried out simultaneously at opposite ends of the room.
"Get to the middle of the room! It can't—"
He never finished.
Another scream.
The hooks wouldn't give. Joe scrambled to untangle the chains from them, but they were locked in with a bolt thicker than the hooks or chains, themselves. It was as though the cell had been designed specifically for him in mind. The locks were reinforced, and the chains coral-infused steel.
"Who's there?"
Joe heard the terrified voice of the last guard standing.
"Show yourself and fight if you—"
His voice cut off in a sickening gurgle. An eerie quiet flooded the cell when the last body drifted to the ground.
Then, against everything his senses were telling him would come, a sharp chink struck the floor near his wrists, and the sting of his shackles falling away relieved his skin.
"Who are you?" he asked, as soon as he had breath.
A rough pair of hands dragged him upright. "Get up."
"You're not cecaelian," Joe grunted, not ungratefully. He twitched away from the unseen hands pulling at him on instinct.
"You can't see me," his savior said, with a cold apathy that sunk to the tips of Joe's tentacles.
"I couldn't when you entered," said Joe, leaving his hero to guess at how. "And you're not exactly clear in this dark."
Joe's eyes had at last adjusted with the force of the adrenaline. His savior had the stature of a merman, and held himself like one of the Triton's guard, but there was nothing familiar about him.
"Follow me," the merman said. "We don't have much time. The wedding is in only a few hours, and we'll have to get through the riots to make it in. I suspect the announcement wasn't taken by the people as Ezra intended."
Just Ezra, was it? A hundred questions filled Joe's head.
"How can you see me? Or Ezra's men?"
"The ink hadn't worn off yet, and I can't, really." His answer was brief, and frigid.
"Then how—"
"But he can."
Joe had hardly noticed being pushed out of the cell, still trying to take in everything about the being before him, but when the gloomy light of the hallway, he got a good look at the two beings before him for the first time.
"Adin," Joe breathed, taking in his familiar face…although, the Adin before him was much changed from the one he had seen only the night before.
He seemed to have lost his naivete. Where his eyes had once been cautious and empathetic, they seemed to have been swallowed up by a cold, stony apathy that made the boy's young face look decades older than it was. Joe remembered the screams from his cell and the efficient way Adin must have disposed of them.
"Adin, what did you lose?" said Joe, for it was obvious that the Adin before him had shifted in some vital way. Adin didn't answer his question with words, remaining silent in the gloom.
Joe's figure shook as a pair of much smaller arms than Adin's and his own wrapped around his neck, and a bright boyish face appeared too close to his, his eyes phosphorescing in the dark hallway.
"I thought Adin had lost his barnacles when he told me they were going to kill you," said Krill, his same eager, forward self.
As though from outside himself, Joe heard his breath coming in gasps in shudders as he seized the idiot cecaelian boy's face in his hands, and then returned the embrace with violent fervor.
"Krill!" Joe's eyes raked Krill's form. There wasn't so much as a scar left from the wounds of his attack, and judging from the deep purple flush staining his cheeks, his pulse was obviously racing in a way that only three hearts could manage. Krill should have lost one of his hearts at the very least. His tentacles were undamaged. His lost feet had regrown. He had far too much energy, as was the blessing of youth. "When I came in and smelled Ursula's rage, I thought you hadn't made it. I thought you were dead!"
"Not dead!" Krill chirruped cheerfully.
"Just that…that's all?" Joe was suddenly seized with a visceral urge to wring the boy's neck. He settled instead for grasping the boy's shoulders and shaking him.
"Do you know—do you have any inkling of how worried I was these past few days? I thought you'd died. Or that you'd never be the same again. You left for squid territory alone, you absolute clam head! They could have—should have killed you! And there was nothing I could do!"
"I'm fi—fine, Joe. Stop with that, my vision's going all shaky!"
The questions in his mind were heating up as though he'd swum through a volcanic vent. "How did you find me? What's happened? Where are they keeping Ariel?"
"Now he focuses," said Adin, with no hint of emotion or warmth. "I was beginning to wonder if it was worth rescuing you.
Krill gave a light laugh, but Joe could tell that Adin meant what he'd said. What might have been a joke in the Adin the Previous, this merman was entirely serious, and with Ezra's guards' screams still ringing in his ears, he couldn't fathom what could have happened to him.
"I don't have time for this, Joe. I bartered for something that would free Ariel from this situation. If that isn't you, then get out of my way," Adin snapped.
"You bartered…?" It was unspeakable what Adin was implying.
Joe's gaze drifted to Adin's hands. In one, he clenched the same spear he always carried him with an easy grace he hadn't formerly possessed. In the other, he held a twisting, jagged lance tipped in pure prismatic topaz. Standing at an impressive height the lance's shaft was forged from a rare amalgamation of mithril and magmatic gems, giving it a shifting, otherworldly presence that cut through the gloom of the dark hallway.
"The Inkthral Lance, from Fate himself," Adin announced, as though he had just informed them that the currents would be turning warmer that season, or inquired when the day's laundry would be finished.
"That can't be real," Joe said blankly, blinking at the legendary weapon. It hadn't been seen in at least a century, although there was no doubt what it was. . "How…how did I not notice that before?"
"It camoflauges when its holder doesn't want it to be seen—a lot like the kingdom it comes from," informed Adin impatiently. "The wedding is hours away, and we are a ways from the palace. I can't wield this…this thing as well as you, but if you're going to dawdle, then you can stay, and I will. Did I not say that time is of the essence?"
Joe nodded his agreement, but hesitated to take the lance, wondering if accepting it would cost him the very thing he needed to save Ariel, although, as soon as the thought passed his mind, he knew that didn't make sense.
"You said you bartered for something that could save Ariel from her situation, but how is this weapon going to do it?"
Adin regarded Joe as though he were the stupidest creature to cross his path since the first breeding of sea snails.
"It isn't," said Adin. "You are, with it."
"I can't," said Joe.
Adin had no empathy. "Then you are useless to me."
"Just take it, Joe." said Krill, for once, more level-headed than Joe, but perhaps only because he didn't understand what Adin's claim implied. "Even if you don't have enough power to brew an answer, this thing is strong enough to give you something."
He had to admit those were wise words, and Adin had been right as well. There was no way a merman would be able to wield Inkthral.
Joe reached out, and though Adin threatened to leave them both there out of sheer impatience, he offered Joe the weapon all the same. As soon as his fingertips touched the handle, a jolt of buzzing energy spread along his arm, pulling his hand around the mythril shaft as though magnetized to it. It fit as though it were made for his hand. A burst of magical blue lines spread from the place where his skin touched the weapon, likely invisible to Adin, but Krill's eyes widened, impressed. Clarity spread through Joe's mind, and he felt as though he were returning to himself, the adrenaline at last fading completely from his system, and replacing him with a warm calm.
On instinct, he flared the magic within him, for so long contained just to brewing. It flowed from him, to the lance, and back again with an easy pulse, and on instinct he caught its current in his tentacles.
Joe was old enough that his own camouflaging abilities were limited, but it was though the lance in his hand promised him a specificity of control that he'd never previously possessed. Testing the possibilities, he changed, first through a series of patterns, but then to the exact color and texture of the walls behind him. The bars. The sconces. The cloudy gloom. He found that he could even imitate the image of Krill's younger tentacles, and Adin's scaly, striped tail.
Adin nodded at the display, clearly satisfied with Joe's evident mastery, while Krill gaped.
He smiled.
"Adin, do you know where Ariel is being kept?"
Adin nodded. A brief, efficient gesture. "I do."
"Then I'll tell you along the way. After all, time is of the essence, no?"
Adin waited for no reaction, turning swiftly to lead them out of the prison.
"How are we going to rescue her?" asked Krill. Joe was certain Adin had done the bulk of the violence in the cell, whilst Krill had merely lent him his dark-vision, as Krill was already short of breath following them through the winding tunnels of the prison.
They were fortunate that Adin had been a king's guard long enough to know the way, Joe thought. It would have taken them an age to find the way out, if not.
Hooking a tentacle around his wrist to help Krill keep up with his and Adin's newfound speed, Joe assisted him around corners, speeding past the cries, begging, and scattered cheers of 'prison break!' from the prisoners in other cells as they passed.
"I have a plan."