Darkos took turns sneaking peeks at his newspaper and sneaking peeks at Hari as they continued walking through the jellyfish region. He had a lot to think about, the whole Noire being super close to its big goal, something about creating a physical form? Something about a nightmare realm?

Not good stuff, that was for sure, and it made Darkos nervous.

“Paper for you, sir.” The monotonous, cool voice was accompanied by another paper thrusted at Darkos. He’d learned to ignore them like Hari did. There were more words printed here a day than he could read in his whole life.

“No thanks,” he said.

“Sir, I insist.” The paper was back in Darkos’s face. “You will find no greater covering of Captain Hari Bella’s victory over the errant void fiend, Darkos.”

“I was literally there,” Darkos said, pushing back the article without touching any of the shimmery frills. “I promise. You don’t have a better story.”

“Sir.” The jellyfish crossed its arms. “I have an inside source.” Its voice still didn’t change in pitch or tone, even as its face grew somewhat cross.

“Same,” Darkos said. “Traveling with one, am the other. Thanks but no thanks.” With this, he deftly sidestepped the monster and slid in place besides Hari. “Why are they so unemotional?” he asked, glancing back at the jellyfish. “Like, I’d have thought they’d be shouting your name from the high heavens.”

Hari winced. “Really? High heavens? In my void?”

Darkos rolled his eyes. “Okay, from the low hells. Happy? I’m just saying, seems kinda like a design flaw.”

Hari snorted. “You’re not going to get more free answers from me while also insulting my region.”

Darkos shrugged. “All right, fine. Chain me then, I’ll use it as my question.” It seemed like a silly question to waste his ask on, but he also could really benefit from learning more about the regions.

Hari cocked an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as the verity chain snaked back around the two, linking them. “So what was your question again?”

Darkos wriggled his tongue in his mouth, feeling weighed down by the link between the two. “Just, ya know, tell me more about the medusas. Why did you design such monotonous heralds?”

“Oh. Right. That.” Hari sighed. “I didn’t design them.” Hari swatted two out of his face. “You have good instincts. I certainly would have fine tuned them quite a bit more had the design been conscious.”

“Right, subconscious and all…” Darkos looked up in time to see a massive message board shift from ‘Hari Bella defeats the Northern Islands fleets!’ to ‘Reruns of Hari Bella’s first sea battle, tonight at six.’ What else could he ask here? “You couldn’t go back and redesign them or anything? And why was the initial design so dispassionate? From Adora’s story, you were still a flamboyant little—”

Darkos found himself on the floor before he registered Hari’s hit. It would take another second or two for him to register the pain across his whole face. His ears rang as he gingerly prodded at one with a finger. He didn’t really need to understand Hari’s muffled words to understand the meaning: he could insult the twins, insult Noire, poke at the relationship between Hari and Tehra all he wanted. But he was not to mention Adora ever.

“Right,” he said, eyes watering. How had a simple hit hurt so much? Clearly the void didn’t play by Mortal Realm rules. “Sorry.” Darkos planted his hands on the mucky floor and pulled himself to his knees. The callback to Hari’s older mortal sister hadn’t even been an intentional jibe, yet it had easily been the worst blow.

“As I said. The design was subconscious, based on the things I cared about.” Hari’s voice was hard and cold. “Now get up. There’s something happening by the entrance and I want to get out of here before whatever it is disrupts us.”

Darkos, finally on his feet, was torn between asking more questions and just shutting up. On one hand, he’d love to ask if Terha had based the design of her monsters around Hari, just because he loved the idea of an entirely different region full of excitable jellyfish meant to mimic her hyperactive little brother. On the other hand, Hari was in a mood and Darkos shuddered at the idea of getting another hit.

“Alright, I’m right behind you,” Darkos said. The general chatter in the hall had gotten somewhat… quieter, and as the two resumed their path forward, Darkos couldn’t help but look behind him.

The jellyfish had started moving in a single direction. Or, rather, they’d all started flowing towards a specific point in the cavern. It was impossible to tell what they were going towards, but they moved faster and faster as more jellies streamed from all angles and sides. Darkos and Hari were both buffeted and smacked about as the jellyfish poured towards that single point. Their frills hummed ominously, and Darkos got the distinct impression that, though they wouldn’t cause harm to Hari, those tendrils might just pack a punch if Darkos hit them.

“What are they doing?” Darkos asked.

Hari gave a miserable sigh as two jellyfish soared above him, tentacles narrowly avoiding his head. “Intruder alert, I suppose. This doesn’t happen terribly often. I’m sorry you had to see it.”

Darkos wasn’t sorry at all. In fact, Darkos was a little giddy. He had to bite down a smile as Hari turned his nose back ahead and resumed their march.

Intruder alert.

Someone was in here. Someone the void medusas didn’t like. Darkos might be a little oblivious at times, but even he wasn’t that bad. No, today it was Hari’s time to be clueless, because there was no way that Geela was not the cause of the alarm. The implications of this were so wonderful, Darkos had to stop himself from skipping. One, it meant she was alive, so that meant Terha wasn’t. Two, she was so much closer than he could have hoped. Three, she was about to get attacked by a million jellyfish!

Dammit. She was about to get attacked by a million jellyfish.

Darkos’s head snapped back around behind him as the jellyfish continued their charge. Not good. He had faith in Geela, of course, but his faith wasn’t blind and stupid and without logic. He’d given up that life years ago.

The two ducked out of the way again as three very large jellyfish bolted by. By this point, the chattering was replaced by the hissing of electricity in the air. Water. Atmosphere. Hari looked almost as annoyed by this as Darkos did, and suddenly a light clicked on over Darkos’s head, much like the glowing, potentially-death-inducing tendril that swam by his ear.

The jellyfish clearly didn’t want to touch Hari, so they swarmed to avoid him. Yet, they still occasionally bopped and booped their big drum hats against both men. So were the avoidances really just a courtesy? If so, why try so much harder to avoid the tentacles than the drums? What was so different between the tendrils and the hats? There was only one answer to his questions and there was only one solution to his situation.

With all the strength he had in him, he rammed full speed into Hari. If the medusas were avoiding hitting Hari and Darkos with their tentacles, it meant the tentacles could harm the two. And if they could, then all Darkos had to do was shove Hari into them.

If they’d been in a world that obeyed general physics laws, the plan might have even worked. Instead, sadly, Darkos boinged off Hari as if he were made of rubber.

“Darkos!” Hari’s voice was more confused than angry. “What in the void was that for?”

“Dammit,” Darkos muttered, rubbing his nose. “I was trying to push you into the void medusa’s so they’d electrocute you.”

Hari’s eyes narrowed. “That attack would certainly be rather debilitating against a void spawn, but definitely not lethal. And really, why would you choose right now, with a mass of my own minions surrounding you, to escape?” His voice had reached angry pretty quickly.

Darkos wished he could disappear, now more than ever. “Because I’m ninety percent certain that Geela is the cause of this whole disturbance, and I both want to help her and am holding out hope she can help me.” Why was he saying this? Why couldn’t he shut up? His mouth felt heavy and his whole face seemed to move with each of Hari’s movements.

“I hadn’t considered that,” Hari said, his voice past angry and now well into enraged. “I hadn’t and now I’m additionally concerned because that could indicate that Terha was killed. That worry makes me very mad, and I’m now considering not bringing you to Noirela in one piece after all.”

Hari was also being unexpectedly forthcoming, and it took Darkos another heart-pounding moment to remember the verity chain. The chain that linked the two. It wasn’t the only thing linking the two either. Hari’s shackles remained tightly around Darkos, binding the two together. If Darkos could get himself zapped, then that would totally carry through to Hari, assuming the monsters used some form of energy attack, which they almost definitely did.

Well, there was absolutely nothing left to lose.

“Appreciate the honesty,” Darkos said, reaching a hand out behind him. “And I really do mean that.” As he said this, he glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a very shimmery frill from a very dazzling jellyfish drift right toward his hand.

And with not a single additional thought, he grabbed it.

—

Darkos had grown up in a remote, northern mountainous region, so he hadn’t experienced an abundance of strong sunlight on his rather fair skin as a child. It hadn’t been until his fourth pilgrimage that he’d even realized the sun could burn you, and he’d learned in a very unfortunate way. Since then, he’d been rather careful to avoid sunburns, or burns in general, as they really were among his least favorite sensations.

This was definitely something he should have considered before grabbing a jellyfish tentacle.

If you could somehow have a sunburn on every part of your skin on the outside and also somehow every part of the inside, that would be how he felt. If his very muscles could be sunburned, his hair, his teeth, his eyeballs, that would be how he felt.

He felt terrible and wanted nothing more than to just sleep here until he felt better. But that wasn’t going to save him or Geela, and if he was waking up now, Hari would also likely be waking too.

It was time to move.

So he snapped open his scorched eyes and took in a burning world around him. Cool. He blinked a few more times before trying to sit up. His whole body gave him a very firm ‘no,’ so Darkos relaxed his muscles and instead reached out to his powers. An ironic, sassy part of him wanted to pretend to pray to Alerion in order to trigger his healing, but giving Noire some extra power wasn’t worth the joke. So instead he summoned up some soothing magic and patched up as many of the burns as he could manage on short notice.

This time when he tried to sit up, his body only gave him a weak ‘five more minutes?’ and he gave it a very firm ‘no.’ Then he was on his feet and giving the ruin around him another glimpse.

Boy he’d done a number to this place. It wasn’t entirely clear how grabbing a tentacle could have caused this level of destruction, but he wasn’t going to look a gift jellyfish in the mouth. Besides, jellyfish didn’t really have mouths and he definitely didn’t have the time. He had to find Geela and get out. Looking around, he found a number of shuddering, blasted jellyfish scattered around, and in the middle of a particularly large pile, was Hari.

The man looked very rumpled as he stirred, still very groggy. Darkos had two options here. Kill Hari or run. Killing Hari was the tactical call but it was also dangerous, and Darkos was armed with a shoddy tunic, a newspaper, and some banana mousse. Not the best arsenal.

So he threw that out of his mind fast and began to run.

It surprised him at first, the fact that he was even able to. Hari’s shackles had always lasted while the two of them slept. Why could he run now? Had the shackles been destroyed by the lightning attack? Lightning and void weren’t diametrically opposed, or Geela wouldn't be able to use both, but they were opposed enough that maybe a lightning attack to the void shackles was enough to kill it.

Maybe. That would be a Geela question.

It wasn’t hard to find her, which was just an amazing thing to think. The jellyfish had swarmed to her position, so all he had to do was follow the biggest path of carnage before he was finally able to shift aside a pile of roasted jellies and there she was.

“Dammit. Dammit Geela.” Darkos’s eyebrows furrowed deeply at the sight before them. He’d been so excited to find her and this was not the reunion he’d wanted. “Geela, Geela, come on.”

Her skin was covered with lightning scars and blistered welts. Her whole face was so swollen that it physically hurt him to see. Both because he knew how much the attack must have hurt and because any time Geela was looking badly, it was an indicator that things had gone really badly. It was an indicator that she’d lost.

And she had lost really badly here. A quick attempt to find a pulse confirmed this.

“Dammit Geela,” he said again, before reaching deep down to find some more healing powers. He was in the void itself, his powers were stronger here than they’d ever been. It would mean drawing on the realm around him, though, and he didn’t like that at all.

But Geela was also dead, and he liked that even less. There was no time for hangups right now. No time for anything but resurrection.

“Who are you?”

Darkos jumped, halfway through his spell, at the unexpected voice. He looked up, magic still channeling through his hands, to see a young man standing a few feet away, eyes bugged out.

“Uh,” Darkos said.

“Very tragic what happened to the maiden,” the man said, ignoring the start of Darkos’s answer. “She just wasn’t prepared for the void.” He clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “If I’d only been a little closer, I could have saved her, but she was so insistent that we go our own ways.”

“Who the hell are you?” Darkos asked, flipping the script on the man. “And why were you traveling with Geela!” His eyes fell upon the young man’s chiseled face, his swoopy blond hair, bright blue eyes. Underneath the man’s cloak, Darkos could make out well built arms and a broad chest that would rival some of Darkos’s old pirate buddies.

“I’m VoidCrusherXX, a simple adventurer burdened with glorious purpose.” VoidCrusherXX shook his hair back, the golden waves catching the light from the wilted jellyfish. “I tried to warn her she was in over her head—”

“No, that’s not a good enough answer.” Darkos tore his eyes away from the man, fixing them on Geela and flooding her with the last bit of his spell. “I want to know how—why Geela got another henchman in such a short period of time.” Her face was mostly freed from scars now, and her chest rose and fell again. “I mean, I’m not surprised she was able to do it.” His voice was starting to get thick with what he really hoped weren’t going to be tears. “But I don’t know why she’d want to.”

Damn. They were tears.

“Sir, I promise you, stealing the heart of your fair maiden was not my goal.” VoidCrusherXX patted Darkos’s shoulder. “It is simply yet another curse of mine I am often burdened with.” He gave a heavy sigh. “That and supernatural luck. For how else can you explain the voidic blast that leapt from medusa to medusa, fritzing them just as they’d finished with her and turned to me?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “A shame it could not have happened sooner. Shame indeed!”

This last shout was enough to make Darkos stand up abruptly in fury, which immediately caused him to stagger, dizzy.

The shout was also enough to echo around the cavern.

“Darkos?”

Darkos’s heart sank. That wasn’t a feeble, ‘did you save me?’ call from Geela. That was a ‘where the crow did my prisoner go?’ call from Hari.

“Dammit.” Darkos had sworn more in the past few minutes than he had in months, but the situation called for it.

“Darkos?” VoidCrusherXX asked, voice still booming. “I do hope that’s not your real name. It’s dangerous to go by your true name in the void.”

“Shut up shut up shut up.” Maybe this was why Geela had come to hate adventurers so much.

“I hear you, Darkos.” Hari’s voice was louder now, and in the distance, Darkos could see a figure moving through the floating sea of withered medusas.

“Dammit.” Though Darkos hissed the word, he knew the jig would be up. “Come on, Geela, wake up.” He gave her a gentle shake, and though her eyelids fluttered, she didn’t wake. “Come on!”

“I think she’s dead. Shame. I knew just the spell that would have spared—”

“Would you shut up!” Darkos couldn’t stop his voice from jumping, and he cringed as he heard Hari’s footsteps speed up. Healing Geela had drained Darkos something fierce, and he just didn’t have the strength to sling her over his shoulder and run from Hari.

“She’s not looking half bad for a dead woman though.” VoidCrusherXX rubbed his chin. “Perhaps… the kiss of life?”

“I would literally kill you,” Darkos growled. There wasn’t any win here. He’d escaped Hari but if Hari got over here, he’d find Geela, weakened and vulnerable. Darkos could run too, but at this point, he’d hidden in this one spot long enough that Hari might still check it out. The only way to keep Geela safe was to find another plausible reason for him to be hiding here.

VoidCrusherXX would have to do.

Before doing anything, though, Darkos pulled out his newspaper and scrawled a quick note in it using some void ink he scratched out of a dead medusa. Then he rolled it up and shoved it in the folds of Geela’s cloak. She shifted again, though this time Darkos was convinced he felt something else shift under the folds of fabric. He swallowed, eyes combing over her, but he was out of time to investigate. Quickly, he dragged a bunch of limp medusas over her until she was barely visible, and then turned to VoidCrusherXX.

“Come with me,” Darkos said.

“Sorry. But I travel alon— urk!”

Darkos grabbed the man by the scruff of his cape and jerked him forward, away from Geela.

“I must insist,” he sputtered, gagging as Darkos pulled his collar tighter. “Sir you are making this most uncomfortable.”

“Darkos, what is this?”

Darkos jumped. Even though he’d already expected Hari to find him, he hadn’t expected the void spawn to be so close.

“Uh.” He hadn’t quite thought of what his cover story was going to be. “I, uh—”

“What is… what are…” Hari squinted at the adventurer in Darkos’s grasp. “Rather, who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

VoidCrusherXX just spluttered some more, face turning purple.

"Adventurer?" Darkos swallowed, not really having a good reason as to why he was strangling the adventurer instead of teaming up with him.

“I see that.” Hari waved a hand. “Release him.”

Darkos was now extra confused. Hari was supposed to be the one killing the hero, not Darkos. And Darkos was supposed to be the one vying for his freedom, not Hari.

“Uh, okay—”

With a short, high scream and a poof of black smoke, VoidCrusherXX vanished into a pile of ash.

“Oh.” Darkos blinked twice, staring at where the hero had stood moments before. Then he felt a yank in his stomach, and realized Hari had shackled the two together again. “Dammit.”

“That was so very very stupid of you, Darkos.” Hari’s nose curled. “Yes, ordinarily the shock of a void medusa would not be lethal to a void spawn, but zapping back and forth between us like that? That was a death sentence, you absolute imbecile. Look at what I had to do to stop it!” Hari waved a hand around the cavern. “This will take ages to repopulate and bring up to snuff again. Ages Darkos.”

Darkos stumbled as Hari gave the shackle a sharp tug. “Ow.”

“Don’t ‘ow’ me. I don’t even know how you’re walking about without pain.” Hari’s eyes watered slightly at this, and Darkos realized the man bore many of the lightning scars Geela once had. “I’ve had it with you. There is no reason I need an apparition with so many limbs, and I’m through with being generous. I am in far more pain than I have been my entire life and—”

“I can help with that.” Darkos spoke quickly, eager to give Hari a bargaining chip to avoid losing his limbs. “Healing and stuff, remember? I’m good at it. That’s how I got better so much faster.”

Hari stared Darkos down, shaking just slightly with what might have been hatred but what Darkos hoped was pain.

“You just, ya know, have to not cut my arms and legs off.” Darkos bobbed on the aforementioned legs, trying to look non-threatening.

Hari didn’t respond for several long seconds. He took a half step forward, a dark glint in his eyes, but in a second it was replaced by a flash of pain.

“Dammit,” Hari said, under his breath. “Fine. Fine. Heal me and I’ll leave your limbs intact. But then we’re leaving. We’re a week out, and I’m absolutely fed up with you. I cannot believe how hard you’re making this.” Hari’s voice was filled with malice, and Darkos doubted for a moment if Hari would actually hold through with his promise.

Darkos kept a meek smile on his face as he healed some of Hari’s injuries. Then he mimed wiping a bead of sweat off his brow. “Phew, that’s a lot harder than I thought. I’ll have to finish in a bit, as my strength comes back.” He let out a sigh. “We can walk while I regenerate energy but it will take some time to get you back to normal.”

Darkos could tell from Hari’s eyes that he was still angry and still very much wanted to hurt Darkos, but he could also see the relief that came from the healing. Hari’s hands were as tied here as Darkos’s were.

“Fine.” Without another word, Hari twirled on his heel and began towing Darkos down the path.

Darkos didn’t risk sending a glance over his shoulder to check on Geela, as much as he wanted to. He just had to hope she’d pull through and find him again.