Darkos’s jaw dropped even further as he followed Hari into the mega cavern. The last thing he’d expected to stumble upon in the void was a thriving metropolis, yet here they somehow were. All around him zoomed those strange lights, and it took him several attempts before he could actually make one out in any detail.

They resembled the jellyfish he’d seen while deep sea diving off The Scilatia. Lacey and frilly and colorful, their glowing tendrils and tentacles shrouded their delicate beings, obscuring them too much for Darkos to make them out just yet. That was okay by Darkos, though, cause he had plenty else to take in besides the strange, ethereal beings.

Such as the massive glittery towers that led up to the giant, glowing rectangles. Or the little jellyfish beings seemingly hard at work on the rectangles. Or the massive, humming paintings etched on the platforms, each portraying a different message.

Captain Hari Bella sends the noble Eastvale Island’s ships to a watery grave!

Got priests? Call the Europas. Fastest, deadliest fleet in the southern seas. They won’t know what hit ‘em!

Noirela reaches one step closer to physicality! Can it be stopped?

Follow Captain Hari Bella’s daring capture of rogue void spawn Darkos! More tonight at 9.

Many of them were emblazoned with Hari’s face or a picture of his boats or other such nightmarish graphics. Lots of POWS and BLAMS decorated large boards that shared word of a defeat of Hari’s enemies.

“Daily post for you, sir.” The voice, entirely unexpected, came from just behind Darkos, near his elbow. It was a slithery lilt, and when Darkos turned to look, he saw one of the jellyfish monsters hovering beside him, holding out a piece of parchment.

Up close, Darkos could now make out the small figure within the tentacles. The drum of the jellyfish, this one a blood red, seemed almost like a hat. A delicate being made of silver and grey strands hung beneath it. It had two arms, one of which held out the paper to Darkos. Both looked to be made of spun silver with sharp protrusions at each joint. The rest of the creature looked surprisingly humanoid, if rather small and shimmery, until its waist, where it had, instead of legs, dozens of thin tentacles. These were different from the humming frills that emerged from the edges of its hat-like drum. Those Darkos was afraid to touch, especially as a small shock of dark energy would occasionally run through them.

“Post for you sir,” it repeated, its voice as cold and smooth as before.

“Oh, uh, thank you.” Darkos took the paper, and immediately the creature pulled its arm back into the foliage of tendrils, which closed, blocking the monster again from view.

“Don’t dawdle,” Hari said, gripping Darkos’s arm and pulling him along. “They’ll stop you at any chance they’ve got. It’s sweet, if annoying.”

“It was just giving me the daily post,” Darkos said, as he tried to keep his eyes on the monsters, the towers, the message boards, his newspaper, Hari, and his feet all at once. It was a bad idea, and he was quickly getting dizzy.

“Which one?” Hari snatched the paper from Darkos without breaking stride. “Mmm, the Darkness Herald. That ones alright I suppose.” The paper was thrust back in Darkos’s hand, a gesture sharp enough to finally take him to the ground. “Darkos, please. We can’t waste any more time. I have reservations!”

Darkos blinked several times, staring up at the world around him. Apparently gravity wasn’t particularly important here, as the towers sprouted from every surface, regardless of which was a floor, wall, or ceiling. It was kinda cool but disorienting.

“Darkos!” Hari wasn’t playing around, and the next thing Darkos knew, he’d been pulled upright with very little effort and was now slowly floating to his feet.

“Sorry. There’s a lot going on around here.” Darkos rubbed his eyes before letting them drift to his newspaper. “Hari, you’ve gotta tell me what’s going on here. I’m just gonna keep falling over trying to look at everything.”

Hari’s nose wrinkled as his eyes flicked across Darkos’s face. “I believe you. Walking and looking is a complicated technique. Just… keep your vision tunneled until we reach lunch. Can you do that for me? Just focus on walking for now, and I shall give you a reasonably in depth explanation of my realm when we arrive at our destination. Does that seem simple enough?” His voice had dropped to such a sugary level of condescending that Darkos’s shoulders prickled with goosebumps, and his face flushed with embarrassment. If this place was, in fact, designed by or created for Hari, that it was meant to dazzle and distract. There wouldn’t be damn message boards, two-hundred feet across, boasting of Hari’s victories across the years if Hari didn’t want visitors’ eyes pinned to it. Kinda made Darkos wonder how often this place got visitors.

The next hour or so passed in a blur of light and color. Darkos was reminded of the time his old cohort of priests had once found a stash of strange and special fungi in the woods and smoked them. Not that he actually partook of any of the fungi himself, but this was more or less what he figured the priests had experienced, at least from their reports. Darkos had just watched them to make sure they didn’t hurt themselves. Still, it was the most rebellious thing he’d had done regarding the church until he returned two decades later to dissolve it.

If Darkos had shared that anecdote out loud, Geela would have both chided him and laughed at him, and he’d have grumbled for a few minutes before laughing along. He missed Geela. Maybe if he could drag his heels a bit through lunch, he could buy her time. Surely Hari couldn’t have been right in his assertion that Terha had defeated Geela, right?

“Ah, here we are!” Hari came to a stop in front of one of the large towers. Around the base of the tower were several small chairs and tables, many occupied by jellyfish, sipping from glasses and buzzing amongst themselves.

At the front of the little cafe, a jellyfish hovered at a podium. It jumped when it saw Hari.

“Ah, Captain! You’re just on time for your reservation.” Its voice didn’t change in pitch from that same, silvery tone, even if its face did show a flicker of surprise and excitement. “We’ve set aside a table just for you. For you and your… captive.” It gave Darkos an extra cold look before waving them forward to a grand table up a flight of stairs on a raised patio. It deposited a single menu into Hari’s hands before whooshing off.

“Okay,” Darkos said, letting himself take a deep breath and allowing his fingers to uncurl the poor, rumpled newspaper he’d gripped so hard during the walk. “Okay, so, the Void Realm is full of jellyfish? Jellyfish who live in…” he waved a hand at the world around them. “A big city?”

Hari, who’d looked rather annoyed this whole trip, finally smiled, shoulders relaxing. “You’re certainly not right, but I can see how you made your various absurd leaps in logic. This is simply one of multiple regions within the Void Realm. The best region, no doubt, and the only one that any real conscious effort went into, but just one.” Hari paused then, as another jellyfish arrived at their table.

“May I have the extreme honor of serving you a drink, Captain?” it asked, bowing low.

Hari sighed. “Just a lassi, and be quick with it. We’re low on time.”

The jellyfish looked at Darkos, who had yet to actually get a glimpse of the menu.

“Uhh, water?” he asked, assuming they must have that.

He assumed correctly, and the jellyfish made a note on its clipboard before floating off.

“So if you made this place,” Darkos asked, “then were the others made by our siblings? Do I have one?”

Hari gave Darkos a cold glare. “Yes and certainly not. Imagine, the renegade spawn creating an entire region. Don’t you think we’d have been able to find you were you able to do such a thing?”

Darkos shrugged. “Depends on why I didn’t turn evil.”

Hari snorted. “It actually doesn’t depend on that. The regions are where we store the power we steal from the Mortal Realm and transfer it to Noirela. Unless you’ve been secretly leaching power from Geela this whole time…” He trailed off, looking hopeful.

Darkos crossed his arms, eyebrows furrowing. “Don’t even joke like that.”

“Well, I could hope. Anyway, unless you’ve had some form of evil scheme to funnel power to the Void Realm, then no, you don’t have a region.” Hari reached out a hand as the waiter returned with his lassi. Darkos’s water was suspiciously missing.

“Are you prepared to place an order with us, Captain?” it asked, voice still an odd mix of cold and fawning.

“Mmm, what are you specials today?” Hari asked, looking over the top of his menu.

“I’m honored you asked. Today’s soup is a light palm bisque. Savory with vegial overtones. Then for our entree we have a shellfish curry, simmered over the past week, lots of flavor and very strong. Finally our dessert is a banana mousse served over rice.” The jellyfish recited the specials as cleanly as any waitstaff back at home, and Darkos was rather impressed at how professional it was. For a jellyfish.

“Bring me one order of the bisque and a dish of prawns.” Hari snapped twice. Then he hesitated, eyes darting side to side real quick, as if expecting someone to overhear. “And a mousse to go.”

The jellyfish nodded conspiratorially. “Noted, Captain.” It turned to Darkos. “And… you?”

Darkos, who still hadn’t had the chance to see the menu, defaulted to some old favorites, knowing full well he probably wouldn’t get any. “Uh, I’ll have some breaded chicken filets with some ground mustard? Or some nut paste sandwiches? Otherwise, I’ll just have some curly pasta with cheese sauce.”

It was worth it to see the looks of rage on their faces. The jellyfish looked ready to pass out. Hari’s glare could freeze the water Darkos hadn’t been given.

“C-captain.” The jellyfish’s voice finally lost its composure. “How dare he—”

But Hari just waved a hand, eyes still chilly. “Ignore him. He exists to be a thorn in my side, and embarrassing me in public is simply one further method of that. He is not to be served, here or anywhere else.”

The jellyfish nodded deeply. “Understood. Your bisque will be out soon.” It turned around with a rather pretty, if still offended, swish of tendrils and vanished.

Darkos let the grin stay on his face as Hari regarded him.

“You know I don’t have to tell you anything, right?” Hari asked. “You’re burning through my goodwill.”

Darkos shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me anything. But I might just keep falling down looking around then. Your call.”

“Why are you so exceedingly obnoxious?” Hari asked. He took a rumpled slurp from his lassi, still pouting. “How did Geela decide after months of traveling with you ‘oh yes, I’ll spare this mortal! This one in particular. This one to whom respect is a foreign concept. This one who can’t ever stop asking questions.’ How did she not just evaporate you upon reaching your destination? You could have reincarnated into a new little voidling. You’d be a few years old now and we could raise you communally, like family should.”

The lassi had vanished in gulps down Hari’s throat during this rant, and the glass now looked in danger of shattering.

“Well. Geela likes when I ask questions.” ‘Usually,’ but he didn’t add that. Even Geela sometimes got annoyed with his questions, but only because she was so often in the middle of answering the last one.

“I almost wonder if she knew you were a spawn all along and had some nefarious plan.” Hari’s fingers drummed on the table. “I just don’t understand it otherwise.”

Darkos wasn’t going to try to explain to Hari human companionship. Geela, as dastardly and often apathetic to human suffering as she was, did still occasionally appreciate other people. Hari was just too inherently wicked to understand that.

Technically so was Darkos, but that was thought for another time.

“So,” Darkos said, gracelessly changing the subject, “your whole bit back on the Mortal Realm was to send power to Noire…la by spreading its name and invoking fear, deriving strength from that whole bit.”

“More or less, yes. Fear is a type of worship. A powerful one. Different from direct praise but still very effective.” Hari toyed with one of the feathers on his hat. “Many of the others have different ways of transitioning that power to Noirela in their own regions, but those are often boring and unlivable.”

“They don’t spend a lot of time here I take it?” Darkos asked. “Like, I imagine if the region is uninhabitable, it’s cause the spawns are usually in the Mortal Realm.”

“Well, no, not really.” Hari crossed his arms, eyes darting around the room looking for his meal. “None of us spend time here. Otherwise we wouldn’t be generating power to Noirela. But I think it’s very telling that the others’ are so boring and utilitarian.”

“What are they like?” Darkos asked, leaning forward. This might provide some clues for how to defeat them or something. “Their regions?”

Hari looked around the massive towers that surrounded him. “That’s it? Two questions about my realm regions and that’s it? You’re ready to ask about the others’ drab worlds?”

Darkos blinked. “You want me to ask more questions about your world?”

“Do you know how often I get people in here?” Hari held out his glass as the waiter bustled back with the soup and prawns. It took his cup, replacing it with another, and shot Darkos an ugly look before swooping off. “I never get people in here,” he said, through a mouthful of soup. “For once, just, ask a damn question.”

Darkos looked at the soup, his stomach grumbling at the smell, and then down at his newspaper. “Okay,” he said, “so this newspaper, the boards, the constant chattering from the jellyfish, that’s all basically generating power to Noirela?” He cringed at the name but right now Hari was all but begging to give away information, and Darkos wasn’t about to hold back now.

“More or less.” Hair gestured at the paper. “That’s one of six hundred and twenty three different reports, papers, gossip rags, tabloids, updates, and gazettes generated here on the daily. Anything to keep Noirela’s name buzzing through the air. And the void medusas—not jellyfish, by the way—love hearing about Noirela, love hearing about me. Terha too. Some of the times. They love it.”

“Did you make them? They're very pretty.” Darkos watched the streets below, flowing with a multitude of shimmering medusas.

“Aren’t they?” Hari sighed, watching one with particularly long, green tentacles streaming behind it. “I did, more or less. This whole place is my ideal region, based off the things around me back in the Mortal Realm. The things I love. Perhaps when Noirela reaches its full strength and converts the entire Mortal Realm into a realm of nightmares, I’ll be able to bring it to true material form.” He placed another prawn in his mouth. “You can join us, too, you know. I’ll help you create an actually interesting region. Something that really sums you up. It could be… you know.” He shrugged a disaffected shoulder. “It could be fun.”

It could be fun. The idea of building a world in the Void Realm that was based subconsciously off his own values, that was kinda neat. Not with Hari, though. Darkos wondered if Geela could help though. After they killed Noire, something had to take over, right? Maybe he and Geela could purge out all the gross, current void spawn regions and make cool, neat ones.

Then Darkos’s brain did a quick backtrack rewind. “Wait, go back to the whole ‘true material form’ thing?” he asked, as Hari finished his meal. “That void of nightmares thing?”

“Realm of nightmares,” Hari said, putting his napkin down. “And… no, I don’t think I will. You’ll learn all of Noirela’s plans when we reach it and fully corrupt you.” A obscenely satisfied smirk spread across his lips, either at Darkos’s concerned face, at his own scheming, or at the little wooden box of banana mousse that had been deposited in front of him. “Come along, Darkos, we’re leaving.”

“No no no,” Darkos said, scrambling to his feet after Hari. “I need to know. Come on, Hari. What good is it to me either way?”

His question was rewarded by the box being shoved in his hands.

“Hold this. And don’t eat it.” Hari beckoned and the two began twining through the streets again. “I see no reason why I should spill out to you Noirela’s schemes. You can ask it when we reach it.”

“Hari! Don’t make me use my question on this.” Darkos had a suspicion that Hari wouldn’t let Darkos use his owed question on something as important as Noire’s big scheme, but he had to at least try.

“Ugh, as if. No, Darkos, I won’t answer you that, not even if you beg.” Hari was having a great time with this, lording it over Darkos. “But worry not, little brother, you’ll see soon enough.”

“Yeah, just another century?” Darkos asked, looking around the shimmering world as they took another side street. “How long did it take Noirela to bring us all to the Mortal Realm? By the time it actually manages anything, I bet the sun blows up the world or something.”

“Oh don’t be so pessimistic.” Hari pulled them down another street, even more brightly lit than the last. “Noirela is moving far quicker than you think. It’s getting stronger every day at a rate appreciable even to mortals.” He looked over his shoulder, that wicked smile ever present. “It’ll reach its power cap soon, perhaps even by the time we reach it. Then you’ll truly see the power that a void fiend can enact.”