Joe saw it long before Ariel and Adin did, but that didn't mean he had the time to make a plan, much less get them safely away. It was because of this that Joe came to two decisions simultaneously: 1. Ariel and Adin were too slow to run. He would have to be the one to buy them time, and 2. He would have to strangle Adin later.
"Adin, take Ariel down the middle of the valley. Fast. And don't look back."
Ariel turned away from her efforts at coaxing Adin out of the light pools, confusion and frustration etched all over her twitching fins. Her voice was hardly a whisper as she turned her hissing on him.
"The warning, Joe. The bones!"
It was palpable the moment Ariel realized that he was watching something coming their way. Adin saw it just a second later when all of the light above the pool he was trying to lead Ariel through went out.
The colossal squid descended with such ferocity that Joe hardly had the time to grab Ariel by the fins and throw her at Adin—a decision he was sure to regret later. For its size, Joe had overestimated the distance of the creature, and had he not thrown so hard, it would have had them. The beast was nearly sixty feet long, almost enough to span a third of the valley's width, but with all of its length, it was able to change direction in an instant, and Joe saw the carnal fury in its swiveling eye as it landed on the thing that had deprived it of its lunch.
Joe bolted in the opposite direction, trying to lure the thing away from where Ariel and Adin were still frozen in the flickering light.
"Go!" he yelled, narrowly avoiding the swipe of one of the squid's long arms. "Adin if a little squid gets your fins in a freeze, you'll never be a proper guard. Go! Now!"
If his yelling didn't break through their stupor, the loud snapping of the squid's beak certainly did. Adin at last grabbed Ariel's arm and started the painstaking process of pulling Ariel further up the valley.
"Fine, so you aren't so little," Joe snarled under his breath.
The squid darted after him with a speed that defied its size, and Joe quickly realized that he wouldn't have the advantage of being able to squeeze through tight spaces to lose the beast. Its tentacles were just as flexible as his own, and probably stronger, although he wasn't keen on letting it get close enough to him to find out. With that information in tow, he changed direction downward, scanning the bone piles for some kind of a weapon.
Dodging to the side of the squid's charge, Joe felt the hooked barbs on the end of one arm pass inches from his face just as he felt his hands close on a human femur. It wasn't the best of weapons by any means, but it would be enough to make the more dangerous parts of the squid less fatal.
Faster than a wave crashing, the squid reeled itself around a corner the moment it realized Joe was no longer in front of it, and came hurtling back his direction.
"Closer...come closer," he mumbled, watching the tentacle's spread wide enough to block his view of its seething green bauble of an eye. Its arms parted enough to reveal a great snapping beak, and a throat lined with several rows of too-many teeth. "Just a little more, you spineless primogenial calamari."
The tentacles nearly had him when the beak at last came within reach of his own arm. With a wrench of his shoulder, he shoved the femur into the beak, and darted back before the squid could grasp him completely.
The squid let out a horrible growling, gargling sound as it realized what he'd done; however, Joe hardly had the time for a self-satisfied smirk before he watched the femur bend in its great beak, and the bone snapped in half and fell away with a sickening crunching sound.
Far too close, Ariel screamed.
To his horror, Adin hadn't managed to get Ariel far at all. In fact, the dunderheaded mermaid seemed to be swimming toward the struggle. It had clearly not occurred to her that the purpose of the whole contrived debacle was to help her escape.
"Idiot princess," he cursed. Even if she'd thought it had been him in the squid's beak making that sound, the appropriate response was not to come rushing in to avenge him, it was to swim away. Did she think she would be able to tackle what managed to kill him?
Fortunately, Adin redoubled his efforts to pull her away by the arm, but not in time to keep one of the squid's barbed arms from slashing at her tail. Ariel cried out again when a slither of red leaked from her tail into the water, and for one awful, heart-stopping moment, the squid froze, and Joe had a crystal view of its pupils dilating to slits.
The snarl it let out rumbled the bones on the sandy floor.
The colossal squid flushed red, and rushed Ariel in a blood frenzy. In a move just as idiotic as her own, Joe seized it by the dorsals, and dragged it backward with all the strength he had, focused so much on the effort he didn't notice its other tentacle, lined with razor-sharp hooks, whip through the water like a lethal whip, until it had him around his middle.
He gnashed his teeth in pain as the hooks sank into his side. One of his own tentacles abandoned the effort of dragging the squid away from Ariel and Adin, and caught the squid's foot before it could tear through more of him. He didn't recall giving it permission to do so, but it managed to unhook the squid before it did more damage, only taking a few more cuts along the way.
"Joe, catch!" Adin called across the way.
Catch? Catch? Didn't the little guard realize this wasn't one of his training games? What was he still doing here?
But Joe looked up in time to see Adin's arm pull back, and aim his spear at a spot near his shoulder. With a speed much faster than the little guard's throw, one of Joe's tentacles snatched it out of the water as it jettisoned past, and delivered it into his palm.
Joe couldn't understand why Adin was so attached to the thing. Its balance was cheap at best, and the head could be sharpened a hundred times and not match the squid's barbs, or his own teeth for that matter. Still, it was a weapon, and it might be the only one available in the whole valley. Joe swiped the spearhead down and into the squid's softer body parts, winning himself a momentary distraction as the squid at last let go of him. Joe willed his own body to take on the grays and silvers of the valley, and judging from the squid's swiveling eyes, succeeded in making it difficult to pinpoint his location.
It was only by jabbing the spear at the squid to keep it angrily corralled that he was able to sufficiently distract it from Ariel's blood; however, Joe still found his struggle with it drifting further and further down the valley toward where Adin was (at last) succeeding in shooing Ariel toward the exit.
Even as he managed to keep himself tantalizingly out of reach of the colossal giant, something was nagging at Joe about the squid.
There's nothing to keep it from following us out of the exit, he realized, as the end of the valley barely came into view. The thing was probably trapped in the valley pulled by its own instincts to join the others of its species for the Archeteuthid season, and unable to pass the tentacle until some unwitting imbecile opened the way for it. It was hungry. It was angry, and it was in season.
The squid was bigger than him by what felt like a league, and nearly matched his speed. Though Joe's stinging attacks with Adin's truly pathetic little spear allowed him to dictate the pace, it was becoming more and more clear that this was a fight he wasn't going to win.
He felt the water around his face turn salty with perspiration. He had another while in him, yet, but Ariel and Adin weren't yet three quarters of the way to the valley's end.
"Where's your focus, you salty brute?" he taunted, managing to nick one of its arms with the spear. "One of us is a bigger snack than the other, and it isn't the waify little princess!"
The squid's eyes, previously trained on the trail of blood Ariel was leaving down the valley, rolled over to him. It smacked its beak menacingly, changing direction toward him for the last time.
"Some intelligence in there after all, hey?" he growled, lowering the spear at its mouth. He spread his tentacles wide and made himself as big as possible. If he was going to go down in a depressing place like this, he was certainly going to take a piece of this lug with him.
"Would you care for some assistance?"
The squid lunged.
Joe wasn't able to track the source of the unfamiliar presence, because his moment's distraction let the squid hook one of his tentacles by the fleshy underside. He gasped and growled as some of his own black blood drifted into the water, pulling the monster's focus fully and wholly onto him.
"I would," Joe managed to voice.
Then, the squid had a hold on more than one of his tentacles. It seized another, and then another, until by count, they were evenly matched. The squid hurled him bodily into the rock hard enough to break pebbles and grime loose, sending a small avalanche of silt over his head.
"Some intelligence in you after all, then," the voice said again, wryly.
Through the falling silt, Joe could make out a knobbled gray and black tail, with a trail of glowing black dots that traced its way up his spine. He wore several strings of beads and teeth around his neck and torso, and smiled at him with a mouth full of too-many teeth—which was frankly seeming to be something of a trend down here.
Joe didn't care what he had in his mouth; however, as much as he cared about the spindly green spear he used to skewer the squid's head. The squid let out an enraged series of gut-wrenching snapping and gargling noises, and Joe was certain that if it had vocal chords, it would have been swearing and screaming enough to make a seasoned human sailor blush. The pain almost made the squid let go of him—almost. Although it released a few of his tentacles, it didn't let up from his own arms with its snapping, and the jabs from his spear were still the only thing keeping it from devouring his organs.
The angler-fish merman who had decided to assist yanked his spear out of the head, and began slashing at one of the arms holding Joe down, but even Joe could tell that it wouldn't be enough to get it off him completely.
Thrashing and stabbing fruitlessly at the squid's underside, Joe knew he needed to change angles, and the squid needed a new focus.
Well, he did say he wanted to help… he thought grimly.
Without asking permission, Joe used one of his only free tentacles to grab the angler-mer by the fin, and pulled him onto the rock where he was.
"What in the trenches—" the stranger growled, using his spear to swipe as helplessly at the chomping beak as Joe had.
"Luck to you," said Joe, darting out from beneath the squid.
The stranger made a sign at him indicating utmost contempt and betrayal, just before Joe raised his own spear and rammed it through the squid's eye so cleanly it passed through to the other.
A horrid shudder rippled through the monster's body. The hooks flailed madly, leaving gashes on the rock only a foot or so shy of the stranger's head. Each of its arms wriggled madly in one final attempt to reach him before at last, the murderous lust left the creature, and it fell, limply, rolling down to the bottom of the chasm to join the piles of remains it had left for itself.
A silence settled over the valley like a sigh.
Joe found himself slumping to support himself with his spear on the side of the rock, carefully assessing the damage. He had a gash or two in his middle—nothing he couldn't heal in a few days with the right ingredients—and so many cuts and scrapes on his tentacles that it wouldn't be worth it to count them all.
"Joe! Joe!" Ariel and Adin's voices were unmistakable, rushing down toward him a whole lot faster than they'd swam away. If he weren't so shaken, he might have tried to strangle them both then and there.
"That was amazing, Joe! I didn't know it was possible to kill something like that with a guard-issue spear! I'm getting it gold-filled as soon as I get back, and—"
"Didn't think it could kill the thing, and yet you threw it to me anyway," said Joe, feeling a headache adding itself to his list of injuries as Ariel caught up to Adin's enthusiastic approach. "What are you doing here, you idiot princess?" Joe snapped before he could stop himself. "And you, Adin! Letting her!"
"It's dead, Joe, and you're hurt," Ariel said, glaring at him as if that alone justified them both.
"Has it occurred to either of you two hammerheads that it might not have been alone?" he snarled half-heartedly. His argument sounded hollow, even to him. If it hadn't been alone, he would have known by now.
"It was quite alone," interjected the stranger, materializing from behind the fallen corpse. "Its kind is very territorial, particularly this time of year. Any others would have been chased out…or eaten."
Joe should have felt bad for not noticing the squid's body had knocked his savior back, but considering his own state, he didn't have all the fortitude to examine that particular neglect.
"I should thank you," he said at last. "Erm…"
"Ambassador Djeval," Ariel greeted before the stranger could introduce himself.
"...Indeed," said Djeval. After a suspicious pause, he bowed to the princess. "And Princess Ariel. I would ask what you are doing here, but it might be rude to ask too much of one whom I owe a debt. I was returning along this path to clear it before the season got too rough. A few very young cecaelia from Atlantis will be coming this way with me. It seems I was late…and apparently foolhardy for doing so alone. I wasn't aware how much the valley's protector had grown."
Ariel responded to his greeting with her own ladylike salute. "I didn't recognize you when you passed us from the exit," she said apologetically. "But how did you get here so soon before us?"
"Oh, there are ways to get between the kingdoms more quickly than all of this," Djeval said, showing off a few of his too-many teeth.
That certainly pricked Joe's interest. "I don't suppose you'd let us know what those ways are," said Joe, pushing himself off the wall, more than ready to be rid of this place. "We're sort of in a hurry."
Djeval cocked his head, examining Joe as though he could see something Joe couldn't. "I would, truly, but everyone who comes to the Depths must earn entrance the first time around. That's not one of the rules I make. The city…won't have you otherwise."
"The city won't have us," Joe said blandly, not believing that this middle-aged half-angler could be the judge of what the city would-or-wouldn't have.
"Are you saying…the Depths are sentient?" Adin gasped, almost visibly adding another thing to the list of horrors he attributed to magic.
Djeval, however, ignored him. He cocked his head at Joe, and was giving him a look that Joe couldn't quite name. It was a sort of curiosity…or disbelief.
"Young man, it's uncanny. Has anyone ever told you that you resemble—well, no. I would hate to offend…but that skill you have with a spear. Uncanny. Truly…uncanny," Djeval said with a smile that was at least easily interpretable as admiration.
Joe could feel surprise waltzing its way across his features.
'Young man?' Not 'You, Cecaelian,' or 'Sea-witch's Boy,' or plain (but direct) screams of surprise or fear? He'd known that cecaelia were more common in the depths, but he hadn't expected such blithe familiarity. If he was going to make a home for himself and Krill down here, it would take some getting used to.
"I'm afraid we do have to be going. If we have to go the long way, we need to arrive at the Kingdom before sunrise."
"Indulge me," Djeval interrupted once more, not at all surprised or even fazed by the odd timeline Joe had announced. "Have you ever trained with a spear?"
"Never touched one in my life. Speaking of which—" Joe tossed the weapon back to Adin with a grunted 'thanks.' "—here's that back, Adin. You really should get one with a better reach."
"Interesting," said Djeval, smiling at them normally, at last. "Then I have no doubt you'll make it there in time. Perhaps I'll even see you there, should our tables line up."
Then, with a turn of his tail, Djeval seemed ready to leave, but to Joe's (undeserved) surprise, Ariel put out a hand to stop him.
"Wait, please!" she uttered. "You said you're bringing a group of cecaelia this way?"
Djeval faced her politely with a turn that mimicked that same royal bow from before. "Indeed, princess. Children."
Joe could see the conclusions Ariel was drawing. He could also see that they were all the wrong ones.
"Why?" she asked, and though Joe knew she was genuinely confused, it wasn't the sort of question one just…asked like that. At least, instead of annoying him, her frankness seemed to amuse Djeval.
"Why? Can't waste a trip, of course. It is rare that representatives from the Depths are able to enter Atlantis unsupervised."
"Is that legal? To smuggle children out? Did my father ask you to?"
Joe could have groaned sand. It didn't happen often, but there were occasions that both Adin's and Ariel's naivete rubbed him course. The briefest glances at Djeval told him that he understood as well, but he handled the princess's questions with more patience than Joe might have at that time.
"It is legal under my kingdom's jurisdiction, dear princess. And though your father didn't ask, the children certainly did." His tone was one that brooked no argument. Joe had heard weaker voice-of-command from the kings and ambassador's he'd visited in other kingdoms. Adin in particular twitched when he heard it, probably resisting the urge to snap to attention.
Though his smile was kind—as much as a merman that toothy could be—Both Joe and Ariel sensed that he wouldn't provide any more information on the subject.
"Well," said Djeval with an air of farewell, "you did say you were in a hurry, and unfortunately, so am I. I have the young ones a few tentacles back and need to return before one of them gets it in his head to sprint off into the shadows—worse things than this beastie in those."
Ariel had more poise than to cringe at his warning, but Adin visibly shuddered.
"Do keep practicing with that spear. You might need it someday…and should you need me: I do owe you a debt."
With that, the ambassador wisped back to the valley's entrance.
Joe could feel the heat of Ariel and Adin's stares on his back as he disappeared back into the shadows, tracing the path they had taken with slippery, familiar ease.
"Ah, Joe…You know you're bleeding. A lot."
"It's not a lot for a cecaelia," Joe muttered, holding up a hand when both of them started to argue. "I'll answer any of the complaints or questions I'm sure there are once we're out of the valley. I don't know about you hammerheads, but I'm beyond finished with this place."
Neither of his traveling companions brooked a word until they were out of the valley, and into the open water once more.
The waters beyond the impassable stone wall were a sight more welcome than the compressing narrowness of the trench they'd passed through. The craggy exit opened the way to the sixth tentacle, standing alone in the same sort of shadowy expanse as the others. It stood rising out of the sand and pebbles, the only difference between it and the others was that instead of standing in plain stand, bits of the same rough rock dotted the ocean floor, hinting that more structures weren't far off. To Joe's personal relief, this tentacle had either already been solved by Djeval, or didn't have a riddle to bar them. Its beam of pulsing magic already streamed from the tip, leading to a much clearer-lit current than those before it.
"Now that's a relief. We're closer than I thought." Joe huffed a breath, breaking the silence at last. "No, not yet—" he barred Adin from rushing into the current head-first. "Have a seat, Ariel."
"I'm fine, Joe. You're hurt, too," Ariel protested weakly.
Joe directed her to one of the larger pieces of scattered debris on the sandy bank, far enough from the whirling current overhead that it wouldn't stir up silt into his sensitive eyes. Adin's brow pinched unattractively as he pulled the pufferfish spines and chiton elixir from his pouch.
"Those are poisonous!" Adin cried, scandalized, as Joe poured a generous portion into one hand.
"Everything is, in the wrong amounts," Joe tutted, smearing in the powder until it meshed into a sticky brown paste. "Give me your tail, Ariel."
Ariel was about as apprehensive as Adin, but at least trusted him enough to let him take one of her fins, and apply some of the healing paste to it. She flinched hard when he touched her, but he couldn't tell whether it was a reaction to him, or to the cold paste.
"That stings!" she hissed.
"Joe, what are you doing?" Though Adin had been keeping a more humble distance from him since the valley, his hands still tightened in habit around his spear. Joe rolled his eyes.
"I'm not about to leave a blood trail for anything else that wants to eat us along the way. If you two will calm down, and watch…"
For once, they obeyed, and Ariel let out a small gasp. Everywhere the paste touched, her scales knitted together, and returned to their usual cherry shine. Joe manfully ignored the blush that crept up her neck as he worked, distracting himself by taking a swig of the disgusting slime himself—a faster, but decidedly more unpleasant way to mend the gashes in his chest and sides. The depth of his own scratches would still leave scars, but what was a few more?
"I had no idea something like this was possible," Ariel said at last, awed.
"Neither did I," added Adin, who, when he saw Joe actually drink some of the stuff, had apparently decided he wasn't trying some creative new way to harm Ariel.
"Why isn't this used in the palace?"
Joe made some strangled sound of amusement around the horrid taste in his mouth that he knew from experience wouldn't go away for hours. "Are mer in the palace ever really hurt like this? I think not. At the same time, there are a lot of things you two might not have heard of having grown up there. This cure is about as common as seaweed in your own kingdom."
Adin seemed to accept this with mild curiosity, but the look of sadness on Ariel's face almost made him wish he hadn't said anything—almost. It was time the princess learned to see her own people, and she might never have the chance again come the end of the month. Ariel spent a lot of her time getting to know her subjects, but because of who she was, she never really knew them, and unlike so many of them, she had her comfy sponge bed to wake up in every morning, and a place with no predators to return to every night. It wasn't her fault that she never knew the fear or pull of survival so many of her people did—still, that was no excuse for not knowing it existed in the first place, and she could know, if only she didn't insist on doing so much of what she wanted alone. Joe knew she wouldn't be able to rely on him. One way or another, either he was leaving, or she would be, and she would have to realize that.
"Next time, you won't get hurt if you decide to value what other people are sacrificing for you, Ariel," he said, trying to be gentle, but there was only so much he could temper as the memory of her swimming up to the colossal squid, unarmed, revisited his head. "What were you thinking? If I couldn't manage that monster, do you think you could? In the name of Poseidon's filthy laundry, Ariel! You have plenty of strengths, but rushing into a situation like that, unarmed, untrained, isn't one of them. You're always trying to handle things on your own—like tonight coming to help me when there would be nothing I could do to save you if it decided to throw me into a rock and have done with me. You try to manage your sisters alone. You visit the surface alone every chance you get—don't look at me like that, Adin, she gets past even you, sometimes! You want to change things in your own kingdom, but you hardly know what's going on in it because you never thought to ask others, instead of seeking it out on your own. Even what happened with the prince would never have happened if you'd called young Adin here—or any of the guards—to go with you."
Ariel looked stricken, and her lower lip trembled as though she was going to cry, but Joe suddenly found that he couldn't stop, the frustration of years of concern spewing out of him like he'd been charmed, or gotten a curse of his own. Even Adin didn't try to interject.
"Don't you realize, princess, that this is perhaps what your father is trying to teach you—why he would even arrange this marriage in the first place? He's trying to get it into your fins that you need allies. Every single one of your sisters seems to understand this. Small-scale change is what your subjects can do themselves. They don't need your small-scale; they need what only a member of the royal family has the power, the authority or the breeding to do. You're one of the smartest mermaids I've ever met, and I do believe you can do anything you put your pretty little head to, but if you try to do it single-finned, it will be impossible, and will get you killed," he said disgustedly, hearing the truth hang like a weapon in the water between them.
Ariel opened and closed her mouth several times, and Joe didn't dare look at Adin for fear of losing the focus that Ariel finally seemed to have placed on what he had to say.
It was a heavy minute before she responded in a small voice: "Don't I have you?"
"For now, yes," he said stonily, knowing that it wouldn't last. "But did you ever ask me? Did you ever learn how to?"
Slowly, Ariel shook her head, her mouth thinning in some emotion that he couldn't read.
"No," she said.
He folded his arms wishing that this forced distance he was creating wasn't so horribly necessary, and almost immediately regretted the motion, as the deeper gashes were certainly taking their time knitting together.
"Would you have?" he asked tightly.
Ariel looked like she wanted to argue, but they both already knew the answer.
"No."
To Joe's great surprise, it was Adin who at last broke the silence.
"Should—should we, erm, get going then?" he said timidly, bringing Joe to the realization that he was still glowering down at Ariel, who seemed to be holding herself together on her rocky seat with the kind of trepidation a seamstress might have when the only thread she had left kept snapping.
"We should," said Joe, steeling himself for the current.
"Can we wait…just a little longer?" Ariel said in that same small voice.
Joe could scold. He could fight squid. He could drink disgusting potions, and spend days doing terrible hours for Ursula, and back-managing the sort of clients that would make any other sea-witch in the kingdom's fins curl, but Joe had his limits, and it was that voice.
"Fine,' he said, trying his best to sound softer, and gentler, and like he wasn't warring with the same amount of turmoil he was sure Ariel was trying to sort through.
Unfortunately, it took him until then to sense that they weren't alone.
"Dear Poseidon, what now?" he hissed, following the tingling of his spine around to the upper shadows beyond the gaping cliffside behind them.
"What is it?" Adin whispered, raising his spear. Joe didn't know what to expect, and surmised that it wasn't the worst of reactions considering what they'd just been through.
"I don't know," Joe hushed. "Quiet."
Joe heard his voice before he saw him….it?
"My my, aren't you little ones… impressive."
It wasn't the tone of a creature that was frightened by Joe's strength or speed, or even by the writhing shadows that seemed to wink and writhe just beyond the meager light that they carried with them. It was the tone of one who was amused by a scuffle between lesser beings—both of which, to it, were small, and edible, and probably its idea of a worthy snack. Joe's spine stiffened, and the fresh scars in his chest prickled as one of the shadows just beyond what he could see moved toward them.
Joe's slitted eyes widened as the creature took form. He'd only ever heard of these from Ursula's rivals—and always in hushed, warning tones. Part of him didn't think it was real, but the needles prickling down his tentacles, Adin's uncomfortable twitching at his side, and the sight before him, all purported that the sea-devil approaching them was as real as anything he'd encountered.
The sea-devil was blacker than the waters around them—enough that the shadows silhouetted his outline as his huge shape 's own black tentacles were a the familiar warm blackness of rocks under the sun, or fluid ink, or shadows, but the sea-devil's blackness was an entirely different sort. It's coloring was several shades darker, and reminded Ariel of nasty, oily things, like carrion blood, and nightmares, and bread-pudding. Grinning a grin with far too many teeth—in line with the theme of the creatures down here—it moved lazily, and yet, still far too quickly for comfort as its shadowy shaped blocked out the light being cast by the tentacle, and cast its own eerie glow down on them from two unblinking, glowing eyes.
"Might I have a word?" it asked, the words slipping easily through a gaping jaw when it had gotten too close for comfort. To his credit, Adin moved in front of Joe in a stance of what could be called protection, although, with the size of the sea-devil, even if it decided to snack on Adin, he would at most buy Joe a few seconds to move Ariel before it moved on to them.
"Oh, not with all of you," it said in a voice that could have belonged to a vaudevillian showman. "Just the eight-footed one."
Joe quickly put out a tentacle and dragged Adin back. He tucked him without complaint to sit next to Ariel, whose shock had doubtlessly acquired yet another layer. From what he knew about sea-devils, compliance in everything except what was absolutely necessary was the best idea—the only idea, it he wanted to survive, and Joe was good at nothing if not surviving. He carefully held the devil's gaze, and nodded.
"A word," he agreed, and then he swam with the devil away from the safety of the tentacle-statue's light and into the shadows.