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Something cold wraps around Caspian’s ankle.
He’d hung back from the flickering lantern illuminating his Captain’s face, the curiosity about the inscribed markings that litter certain walls and doors finally getting the better of him; jarringly bright eyes with a shine like the sun itself that he couldn’t help but falter under, slowing to a stop. Light dances off of them, shining across the embellishment that hangs heavy over the door’s frame— a trick, he thinks, as the darkness in this place has done well to stifle all traces of outdoor light. Similarly to how it appeared the eyes had been following the three of them; paranoia from this sea’s darkness made paramount by the utter lack of light. The consistent low rumbling sounds of the shadows followed them everywhere they went, but, perhaps purely due to the weak, dancing light of Lizzie’s lantern, hadn’t yet found the courage to strike out at their rag-tag group.
He, foolishly, thought it would have been fine. A quick look, committing the strange symbols to memory for future use, when his curiosity got the better of him.
It pulls his legs out from under him. His head hits the cold stone before he can even get a word out.
/
The subsequent thud that rings out makes Lizzie flinch, and she whips around at John angrily.
“Keep it down! Are you stupid?” She growls. The lantern comes with her, and more of the light illuminates the empty space between the two.
His face is equally shaken, shoulders drawn up tight to his face.
“Not— Not me, Captain.” He pleads, eyes wide and lit by the dancing fire. The light bounces off of his decorated gauntlets, too, now balled into fists. They hover near his face, as ready as he always is to throw a punch at anything that threatens to get too close.
“Caspian—” Lizzie starts, just as accusatory, though it falls quiet immediately as the absence of her first mate becomes very obvious. A cold weight drops in her chest.
This place was meant to be abandoned. An easy way in, somewhere Lizzie could get her hands on concrete answers or information on what happened to Ava. Not shrouded in a stifling darkness, sitting in wait to pull them under and spit them out at the first chance it got.
And it had— Caspian. He was just here, steps calm and collected as ever, even in a place as disgusting as this. Dark and endless corridors, rife with unseen predators lurking in the all encompassing shadow, threatening to pounce the second any of them let their guards down. The entire place stinks, too, the smell of rot and lost lives sticking to every inch of the supposedly-abandoned RAFT bastion.
Gods damn it, Caspian. She had not wanted to be here any longer than they needed to.
“Caspian?” She tries again, calling out into the shadows. They swallow up her desperate cries as soon as they leave her. The only response is a deafening howl, shadows lashing out to swipe across the dim floor.
“Captain— This is only going to draw more attention to us.” He winces as he says it. Lizzie meets his eyes, apologetic as he speaks.
She blinks, incredulously. He, to his credit, doesn’t shy away from how her eyes bore into him. Excuse me?
“If.. If Caspian is still… here, then… He’s smart. He’d find a way back to us, I’m sure.” He continues, gauntlets whining as he fidgets with his hands.
“Wh— Are you proposing we leave him?” She demands, stepping closer to John and reveling in the way he backs up to keep space between the two. Her hand shakes around the lantern and it drops to her side as she holds John’s gaze. He doesn’t shy away from it. She only glares harder.
“I’m not fucking leaving Caspian, you idiot. I dragged us all in here, and I will drag us all back out. I don’t care if whatever these monsters are know we’re here. I’m not leaving anyone in a place like this.” She bites out, shoving her lantern into his hands angrily and continuing on her way.
“No, No! Just…” He tries again, though trails off when Lizzie’s back to him is as much of a response he’d be getting.
John rushes behind her again, taking up the job of holding the flickering flame out to light their way. The narrow hallway dances with the firelight, and he shivers as he follows behind Lizzie.
The two of them end up in another office space, cubicles that seem to go on forever— some lined with glyph-traps, Lizzie learns the hard way— that have hardly any useful information. They’re stuck in here, though, the shadows pouring under the door and the low, rumbling growls far closer than either of them would like.
John is just as silent, a thick blanket that settles over the two of them, and she busies herself with the drawers in each cubicle in the hopes any of them will have useful information, while trying to come up with an idea on how to get Caspian back.
She has no idea where he went. She hopes he just wandered off, though Lizzie is smart enough to know it's a misplaced hope. Fighting the formless shadows hadn’t really been something she was looking forward to, but goddesses be damned. She’s not leaving anyone in here, to be at the whims of whatever RAFT sees fit. Of whatever it is they’re doing in here, though a part of her hardly wants to know.
It was meant to be simple— Find anything about Ava, or perhaps the massacre as a whole, and get out. This place was meant to be abandoned. Goddesses— and now she’s led her crew into this place crawling with the manner of things Lizzie can’t even comprehend.
“Heads up!” She doesn’t get a chance to react, or voice any confusion, before a model-skull is hitting her square in the head.
It’s silent.
When she turns around, after just a second of debating just how she’d kill John after this is all over, she finds him looking terribly apologetic, standing in front of the remaining model skeleton.
“Oops. Um, Captain…” He starts. “This place is almost pristine— I don’t think we’re gonna find anything in here. It looks like people expect visitors and… whatever else… to be here.”
The entire room, now that she gets a better look at it, looks almost cartoonishly set up. Most of the cubicles are empty save for random props or falsified papers that look just convincing enough to appear incriminating.
He’s right. RAFT expected people to be here, despite how bizarre this entire thing is.
“Right. Okay, yeah. Let's keep going, then, there’s hopefully some better stuff on the higher floors.” She admits, gesturing for him to lead with the lantern’s gentle light.
The light does well enough to keep them from harm’s way, though John seems to have a special talent for stepping into the laid traps— more than a few fireballs later, Lizzie snatches her lantern back and demands to lead once more.
Low growls bounce from wall to wall, and their footsteps echo uncomfortably loud against the cold, dark floors that seem to stretch on endlessly. John’s heavy steps are a comforting weight behind her, trudging up the spiral stairs to the next floor. She figures something better will be up there, even if it isn’t exactly what she’s looking for.
Ava’s death has never been something she’s understood, despite countless nights spent wracking her own memory. She’d been in countless RAFT bases, too, and not a single one of them had offered anything helpful on that front. The only light that she’d been able to shine on her own grief was that Ava was supposed to be some sort of martyr--- a death that RAFT can confidently pin on pirates, on Lizzie herself, to warrant their hatred and, recently, borderline extermination efforts.
The way into the Black Sea was controlled by RAFT— something built up to be purposefully eye-catching to rookie pirates, staged to look back-end in all the right ways to lead entire groups of them to their assured demise. Lizzie had been outraged to learn this, nearly taking Keg— the guide, who continued to be helpful amidst her burning rage, out alongside some of the old, decaying stairs. Caspian had, at least, minimized the damage she did; a fact she was grateful to learn hours after their one-way trip.
Fuck. Caspian.
She tries to reason with herself, telling herself constantly that the deep pit in her stomach is purely from their surroundings. Which, in her defense, is not an entire lie. The darkness dances out as far as it can, kept only at bay by the low lantern light they ferry along, and Lizzie can almost feel it’s want to sweep them off their feet and swallow them whole. The entire Black Sea has a way of corrupting its inhabitants, shown so clearly in the way both Drey and Finn seem utterly changed, minds lost to the inky darkness that aches only to take and take, wanting only for its own continued existence— parts of itself wedged in the minds of anyone it can sway.
She sees the way her and her crew have been changed, though slight in comparison to what she knows it could do in their stay here; how it draws nearer, pressing harder against their minds every morning they wake— though the sky here hardly changes— with only their pre-established routines and fleeting sense of time to keep them going. Find Arlin. Learn about Ava. Get Out.
That’s all she wanted to do. Find the people she’d lost.
Caspian is lost— she has no clue where he could be in this shrouded labyrinth, and she curses herself. It should’ve been expected. She, captain of an entire crew, captain of the Grandberry Pirates, was a fool to believe she’d make it out of this better than she arrived.
The Black Sea, despite how it crawls with mangled corpses and creatures unlike anyone has ever seen, is still a controlled environment. All manners of pirate crews sail these waters and never return, because that is what RAFT wills. They were never going to be any different. Caspian is already gone, and even if she and John make it out of here, it’s only a matter of time. Lizzie cannot do this on her own. It’s a fight everyday to be allowed to wake back up again, and with the loss of one of her crew, she doubts that either her or John will make it much farther in this journey.
She had nearly torn herself apart in the days they spent on the sea, traveling to Allport. Caspian and John had reassured her countless times, promising their loyalty even to a cause as selfish, as dangerous, as this. And still they remained just as eager to stay by her side, to follow her down somewhere they weren’t allowed to return from. A part of her wanted to demand they stay, so she could at least be sure there was something, someone, to return to.
“Er— Captain?” John breaks the silence, and Lizzie jumps at the sudden sound that breaks her from her spiraling.
She’s about to ask what it is, when—
Illuminated purely by the weak, flickering fire light of her lantern is a massive skeleton. It must span the entire length of the room they’re in, though she can’t see the walls that trap them, and the skull itself could, in life, swallow her up without a second thought. It’s pristine, similarly to the office room they had been in earlier, and she pales at what powers RAFT must have under their boot to bring down one of the Undersea’s leviathans. And then put it on display, too, in such good quality.
It scares her, she realizes, to stare up into the hollow eyes of this thing— something up there with the Oversea’s own Goddesses. She knows very little of them, only the small stories she would get from Caspian. And, even then, he was never very devoted to them outside of their existence as Undersea titans. He was never very religious, she knows, having left the Undersea at a young age. Something hardly any Undersea citizens do, let alone as early as Caspian did in his life.
Something as large as this seems almost undeniable in its power. Despite belief, it’s spectacular.
And RAFT had killed it.
“Keep moving. We aren’t here to gawk, John.” She snaps, sneaking a glance back at the titan’s form before she’s steeling herself to lead again.
There is very little knowledge on the titans or leviathans, at least in Overseas libraries or otherwise. Most of her information, again, comes from Caspian. Or Edyn, on occasion, though their conversations are few and far between. She’s not actually sure of the difference between the Leviathans as they’re regaled like Gods versus titans and the Goddesses the Oversea— though she isn’t sure if both Lunadeus and Aster are exclusive, since Gillion refers to both of them as his Goddesses, too.
Does he worship the Leviathans the same as the Goddesses? Does Caspian, too, see them as interchangeable forces of Mana?
She’s interrupted from that train of thought when she slams right into a heavy, steel door.
Backing up and, preemptively, running a hand over her bruised face, she gets a better look at it. Admiral Faye Ferin is inscribed on a bright gold plaque in fancy, neat cursive. It looks wholly out of place, in the shadowy corridors and vast labyrinth-like rooms, all stiflingly dark.
Inside, it looks as expected. An office like any other, as if it isn't at the heart of such a cruel place, a sea of all-encompassing darkness born of only selfish desire. It’s a little bizarre, and for a second Lizzie just stands still, taking in the jarringly pristine office that lays before the two of them.
Brushing it off, she wastes no time throwing the desk drawers open, and only narrowly dodging the small spits of fire that shoot out at her due to her carelessness, to rifle through them in hopes of anything concrete. Anything to make this trip worth it.
Lizzie is digging through the Admiral’s desk when echoing footsteps yell up the stairs.
At a simple shared glance, John is already bearing his body against the door. The lantern sits at the foot of the door, in a futile attempt to keep the shadows at a decent distance away so they cannot ambush them from the entrance. Her hands scramble to pocket what she’d found so far. She, deliberately, leaves the so-called proof of a spy on their own crew. She knows it’s bullshit, and a crackling sense of pride roars its head at the sight. They’re falling for it.
She leaves the two stone tablets for John to carry out, once she's exhausted her options here. It is deathly silent— only the low, rumbling growls of the shadows fill the space between them for agonizing seconds that seem to drag on for hours.
“Captain—” The relief is almost palpable, rolling through her like crashing waves. Caspian’s voice, unmistakably, crying out through the door. His hands, too, come crashing down on the steel that separates them, scraping down desperately in their path.
“Move!” She commands, pulling the door open before John has hardly any time to get out of the way. Caspian all but collapses into the room, and she drags him inside— and, less than favorably, holds up his weight as she does— before John is backed up against the door again, lantern at his feet to stave off the darkness.
Caspian’s hands come to grasp at her shoulders, and she shivers at how frigid they are.
It reminds her of those few days, a trip to Allport rudely interrupted by the Vice Admiral, when Caspian had been up for nearly four days straight to keep their ship— if it was even that, the back half of it sunken somewhere off the coast of Allport— afloat with only his own magic to help.
His hands were frigid, patterns of frost and ice that stubbornly lined his hands and the tattoos across his arms for most of that trip. She remembers, distantly, the way he’d shake against her unfairly steady hand throughout it all. How calm he was, too, after it all. A casual promise of his devotion to this crew, this cause, to her, that he’d made without even knowing she was there to hear it.
He did that for four days. The memory settles uncomfortably in her stomach.
“We have to leave. Gods— forgive me, Captain— nothing we learn here will be worth our lives.” He pleads, eyes wide and almost crazy as he stares at her with a familiar intensity.
She bristles, shying away from his eyes. “Okay— Ok, fine, we’ve been here long enough. If they can… kill a leviathan, then I don’t wanna fuckin’ know what else they could do.”
Lizzie rolls her shoulders to push Caspian’s hands off her, and straightens up from the desk she was hunched over.
She hadn’t really gotten much that was useful, or what she had come in here looking for, but it had been long enough. She’s not going to push it— it’s already lucky enough that Caspian was able to find them again, and she isn’t stupid enough to wait around for another one of them to fall victim to this place.
“Help me carry this shit out, then. The lantern kept them at bay enough… The only issue should be getting out of the dock.” She muses, employing John’s help with a simple look as he scoops most of the heavy tablets and the many file folders she figured worth looking through.
Caspian is deathly still, when she turns back to the door.
“A… Leviathan?” He croaks, undoubtedly defeated.
It feels like it’s been ages, lifetimes, since she’s heard him like this. A time long since past, when the two had been forced to flee from a battlefield together. Caspian, grasping her shaking hands in his own as he led them both into one of the last remaining row boats. He’d threatened to freeze her to the boat— something she still doesn’t know whether it was a joke or not— after her continued insistence that she’d needed to go back. To help, despite knowing she’d only get herself killed in the process.
It was one of the first times she’d heard him raise his voice. And, in turn, sound as utterly destroyed as she’d felt.
“Yes, so—” Lizzie snaps.
“Captain…” He whispers into the space between them. “I… can’t just leave here. The Leviathans are still Gods of the Undersea, even if I may not be… especially devoted.” He, at least, has the tact to look apologetic.
“Caspian.” Lizzie drawls, voice devoid of tone. “Are you telling me you want us to go back through this place, for some… thing you’ve hardly ever cared about before now?”
The man had nearly died. Lizzie wasn’t even sure she’d see him again, and it takes everything Lizzie has to not drag them both out of here without a second thought. And now, in all of Caspian’s infinite wisdom, he wants to drag all three of them back into the heart of this place.
“The Leviathans are my Gods, Captain!” He raises his voice, and she bristles. He rarely does that, and it feels like she’s back in that dingy little rowboat, begging him to let her get herself killed.
Caspian’s eyes are blown wide, hands twitching around nothing where they hover awkwardly at his side. “Go on without me, if you are so ready to leave, but this is something I owe to my home.”
She opens her mouth to respond, something ugly bubbling up and raring to go as it simmers in her gut, when a hand is clasped over her shoulder. The cold metal of John’s gloves sends goosebumps forming across her skin, giving her pause.
“Fine. I don’t get it, but whatever. You aren’t going alone, though, you fucking idiot.” She relents.
Caspian visibly relaxes, hands dropping to rest comfortably at his sides, and he wastes no time in pulling the door back open. The slight glow from the flowing water of his weapon casts a soft, blue light that catches each and every corner, every slight hiccup in the otherwise smooth walls and floor. It reflects like water— She misses the open seas.
Lizzie hovers by the door. "John, stay here. I don't want to lose what we've found, if those… things come to collect."
The tablets intrigue her; an unfamiliar language carved in heavy stone,
Caspian is leading her into the dark hallway without another word, only John’s uncharacteristically silent voice echoing out into the growing space between them. “Yes, Cap’n.”
It’s an eerie trek back, and not one Lizzie is at all excited to be taking. Caspian is typically so well put-together, nothing like the tousled hair and frantic movements that had defined his continued existence just moments ago. They are moments, typically few and far between, similarly punctuated by his shaky hands and wide, fearful eyes and, in desperate situations, pleading words that remain a heavy weight forever boring down on her shoulders. They're typically accompanied by memories that Lizzie wants to forget.
“I want to thank you, Captain.” Caspian’s gentle voice breaks the brittle silence, as they journey back.
He smiles sheepishly, that familiar smirk pulling at his lips like it has a million times before. Lizzie knows him too well— knows the way that his lip tugs upward and his hands fidget idly at his side mean there’s some heavy truth he’s holding onto. “This is, er..”
"Important. Perhaps more so than even I know." He continues, and the words crash like a wave, threatening to sweep them both up in its tow. Caspian is already stepping forward to pull the heavy doors open, and, again, Lizzie is staring upwards at the same jarringly pristine bones. They’re now tinged a dim, gentle blue from Caspian’s water. It's awfully fitting, the colossal creature decorated in the soft light of its old home.
When she looks over, perhaps to find steady ground in his company, or maybe just as reassurance that he is seeing the same as her, he is similarly awed. He's looking so intently, eyes wild as they flick across the towering sight, like he's searching for something.
It isn't as comforting as she'd hoped, and the way he stares feels like a rock settling uncomfortably in her stomach.
It feels so terribly wrong.
Wrong, like the darkened sea around them, hardly alive with only the remnants of long-dead souls, the whispered proof of life and community rotting, splintering slowly as they continued to foolishly sail further, desperately clawing its way aboard their ship and trying to infect them, take them over for what might be a second chance.
Wrong, because Caspian doesn't look like this— he doesn't smile like the person in front of her is now smiling; this look on his face is new and different, lightning crackling in his eyes that have always been, despite it all, gentle.
"I have enough memory to know—" He starts, the waterwhip that hangs from his clawed hand starting to light up further. It crashes, like waves in a storm, and the bright lights that dance through the sporadic water paints his face so gently, enveloping him just as a gentle tide would, that it nearly distracts from the way his grin splits her first mate's face in all the wrong ways.
She's scared. In the same way she was of the Leviathan's towering size, the way it was preserved seemingly impossible for something of this size. He looms in front of her— and when had he even moved away from her side?
"The only thing I was ever devoted to?" Caspian continues, his shadow cast starkly onto the leviathan that lurks behind him, eyes alight with the bioluminescence that dances along the stormy waters.
Lizzie shudders. She'd backing up, turned to try and find the door through the darkness— to no avail, of course, when she'd stupidly left herself as the only one without a light– when the cold, hard steel of the doors sent shocks against her back as she met it. The light spills against the floor as he closes the distance between them.
Caspian's eyes are manic, dark as the ocean around them, and they bore into her as he creeps closer. And his smile is perfect, the same one he always sports— like he'd realized his own slip up. It makes something stir within her, and she thinks, distantly, she might be sick.
"It was you— Goddesses be damned, Captain, you were the only one I was ever going to follow." His pledge is punctuated with a sweeping wave. It gathers behind Lizzie, sweeping her off her feet and towards him into the middle of the large, dark room. The light illuminates them both, gentle blue light that dances just as the water's surface across both of their figures.
"Caspian—" She struggles, his hands clasped around one of hers, her free hand scrambling for purchase around one of the links of her chain. Her fear betrays her, and her shaky hand goes shooting against the sharp edges of the link as she cries out.
Frigid water wraps around her free hand. This is him, for all intents and purposes, but— different. Changed, just slightly, like a belonging somewhere you're sure you hadn't put it, warped around the edges. He looks genuinely concerned that she'd been hurt, despite actively trying to restrain her. It rattles around in her brain, against the way her fear roars out against whoever this is, that this is who Caspian is, now, misplaced just slightly by the Black Sea.
Twisted, as Drey had put it. But they're still people. Like the old, whispered visage of the bartender still continuing to serve drinks to a long-dead tavern.
/
A loud crashing sound reverberates through Caspian’s entire body, forcing him into stifling consciousness. His ears ring from the way it echoes. He peels open his eyes— he can hardly see where he is through hazy, blurry eyes, and the way the darkness creeping into his peripheral threatens to pull him back under.
It is considerably lighter here, if the blaring red light that sweeps back and forth through this room can be counted. They still have to blink through his eyes adjusting to the unfamiliar, harsh light. Instinctively, he tries to rub his hands over his bleary eyes— shooting pains shock his arms still, lightning dancing from his palms down his arms. A small gasp tumbles from him before he can muffle it.
Pain ignites behind his eyes, and he heaves out into the dark.
He wavers, slightly, feeling like he’s spinning— when he tries to steady his steps they fall out from under him, shoes catching on open air. The effort has him reeling, and something sharp digs itself deeper into his aching palms. It’s utterly disorienting, and his head spins.
He tries to close his hands to see what binds them, and icy tears prick behind his eyes— now squeezed shut— when his fingers catch on the hooks carved through him.
Ice begins crawling up his arms, dancing along his tattoos and up through his fingers where they curl inwards to wrap around the jagged, cold metal.
It frosts over just the same, coating them in his magic. He feels the way the ice continues to claw its way up and over the metal links before stopping a safe distance from his own hands.
Pain bubbles up and threatens to shatter behind his eyes, aching through his palms, exploding in the back of his skull. Ice creeps over itself, as Caspian’s grasp on his own magic wavers with his consciousness. It blankets both hooks, essentially fixing them to his own hands as more jagged spikes rise up the chain links.
They skewer through the empty space, and he shivers as his own magic grows stronger and cascades out in waves. Ice gathers more and more where the links connect.
His eyebrows furrow as he desperately holds onto the growing cold beneath his skin, forcing it up through his arms and out through his fingertips.
It's an aching routine, the constant mantra of up, down, up, down; a routine so familiar, almost comfortable.
Caspian’s feet ghost over nothing, but he can just barely feel the stone beneath them.
Water drips idly from the soles of his shoes, a steady drip, drip, drip as it splashes against a floor blanketed in darkness.
The ice bursts, spikes forcing the links apart as they shatter, shards falling haphazardly as cold air billows out from his hands. It’s gone the moment his feet touch the ground, admittedly a touch louder than he’d hoped, icy fingers unable to hold onto the fleeting magic before it leaves nothing but frost in its wake.
Cold and brittle links of chain dangle from the back of his hands, the hooks still embedded in his palms now iced over. That should be fine.
For now.
The room before him is a blaring red. The distant, idle sway of countless other hooks reflect the light and catch his eye, some decorated with dim, indistinguishable figures that fill the room with echoing cries and wails.
He’d hardly be of any help, even if he had the time. He shoulders past, searching the walls through bleary eyes for a door or exit of any kind. His head pounds, but he rounds the corner to find an opened door; red light spills out of it, illuminating some of the room beyond before even its own light is swallowed up and smothered by the shadows.
There’s another crash, the same as the one that shook him awake, followed by the familiar, boisterous laugh from John.
It’s muffled, still, the distance between him and John— him and his crew, his Captain— tugging at the back of his mind, doing its best to drag him down into panic.
He steels himself, pushing himself forward as he leaves that room behind. His whip is nowhere to be seen, leaving him without a light to guide his way, which results in him picking a direction on a whim with only the distant yells of John’s voice to guide him through the labyrinth.
He shivers, the shards of ice embedding themselves further into his hands.
Caspian hopes the two aren’t in too much danger. It, of course, is foolish to have believed that any of them would’ve been able to get information out of this place without giving something up in return.
Foolishly hopeful, to think their lives weren’t on the line— to think none of them would be lost in exchange for the information, for this supposed ‘upper hand’ in their journey to come Lizzie is so desperate to get her hands on. Lizzie has lost too much— he’d be a fool to end up another name on that list.
A low rumble shakes its way through his body, like a low current dancing through the ground beneath him.
Something uncomfortable crawls up his back, and he turns with a start.
Nothing but the night is there to greet him.
He passes the same doors from earlier, when he had been forcibly separated from his crew. He hopes they haven’t gone too far, perhaps showing him some mercy in waiting for his return. It’s entirely quiet, even the shouting from John having been snuffed out. There goes his one directional cue.
He hopes that doesn’t mean he’s too late.
The same eyes still taunt him, still following him down the hall, burning into his back, and he steels himself to shoulder past and keep going. He isn’t sure what it is that got him the first time, and he isn’t exactly eager to find out if it’s come back.
Everything is the same dull color. The walls and floors blend together in a smear of gray, only broken up by intermittent doors with adorned symbols. He fights to see through the dark that threatens to swallow him whole, snuff him out before he can get back to Lizzie. To his crew, to the people waiting for him outside this scorned ocean.
Loud ringing screams out into boundless rooms– something so wholly new that it sends him reeling, and Caspian barely has time to stifle a startled shout before a metallic cacophony of clicking, buzzing sounds lead into the loud finality of a locking chamber.
Dark, jagged teeth snap furiously around the barrel of the gun, and Caspian manages to sweep his arm out in front of him and breathe a sigh of relief as a crystalline wall shoots up between him and the creature formed of shadows. His way out of his prison was too easy– obviously something had followed him out.
A nauseous feeling sinks in his gut at the idea that these things have sentience; that they’re smart enough to wait to strike, how they’d nearly gotten the jump on Caspian again.
It whines out– silence stretches out as he waits for something to happen. Shadows dance under the wall he’d made, the only semblance of color or light in this entire place. He twists his hand slightly, and feels a pressure roll from his shoulders as ice creeps up and wraps around the foot of the thing chasing him.
Shadows lurch out from the base of the wall, breaking against the floor before pulling back like ocean waves. A sharp pain explodes in his side, inky darkness snaking up his shirt like dye as the shadow materializes with harsh, serrated teeth already torn through his stomach.
A chunk of his stomach goes with it when it pulls back.
His knees buckle and he falls backward, scrambling helplessly away from this thing with only his hands. More pain shoots through them as the hooks, forgotten about in his panic, press against the floor.
Caspian wails out, pain coursing through his body as he heaves out. Heavy pressure forms on both of his wrists– nonexistent one moment, ever-present the next, as it pins him to the floor. It binds him, wrapping around his forearms in a way grossly familiar to the first time it had snuck up on him.
The dog-like creature stands atop him, maw agape as inky liquid— blood, perhaps, though it feels similar to the lightless water of this ocean— drips from the teeth it had just torn from his side. Some of it splashes against his cheek.
He winces, struggling fruitlessly. Shiny metal holds his gaze, the barrel of the gun lodged unnaturally in this thing’s mouth coated all the same in its saliva as that same whirring sound builds slowly into a deafening click.
Ice erupts from the floor, his fingers clawing into the floor. It spikes upward towards the dog, Caspian desperately hanging on to the few traces of magic he can muster up within himself. Loud, animalistic growling roars out into the silence as soon as it gets skewered, but the claws digging themselves into his wrists and forearms refused to let up.
Blood spills from his arms. He grits his teeth so as to not scream out again. He’s dizzy– he can’t tell if the thing on top of him is actually wobbling or if his vision is going.
It snaps once, twice, as if to taunt him with his assured demise.
/
John’s hands are warm on his forearms, shaking him forcibly awake, and the giant smile that stretches across his face might as well be bright enough to drive the darkness out.
“Caspian!” He bellows, and a shock of pain shoots through the smaller man as John hauls him upward.
“What happened to your hands?” John says, lowering his voice when Caspian glares, and his hand holds both of Caspian’s wrists to get a better look at them.
“No need to worry my friend. They’re…” He winces at the pressure, blinking the familiar exhaustion away to get a better idea of his surroundings.
“Patched up, for now. There are far more important things to worry about, no?”
John lets his arms drop, and the two of them wordlessly leave the festering shadows-turned-monsters before more of them decide now is the time to strike again. John passes a worried glance over the other man, corralling him into an office space that looks like it’s been torn into.
“Where is the Captain?” Caspian wheezes out as he clutching his side, trying to get a better look at their surroundings now that they’re illuminated. He leans his weight on hands clasped desperately into the destroyed— something John tells him was done by their Captain– desk to steady himself.
It’s quiet for a nauseating second– John’s silence raises countless alarm bells in his head. She’s not fucking dead– He knows, he swears, because his Lady doesn’t just go off to die. He feels sick, looking at the confused face across from him.
John is illuminated by the low, gentle light— his face is still hard to make out, but he can clearly see the way his face scrunches up in confusion. Confusion towards him, like Caspian should know more than he’s letting on.
“John?” He prompts, keeping his voice level. The wood creaks under his clawed grip.
“Well– er, Caspian, I thought the Captain was with you?” He speaks, words slow as they break the tense silence.
“You and her went back to see that Leviathan, Cas.” John says, so matter-of-factly that Caspian feels something in his brain stutter and stop, dumbfounded.
John seems to realize something, because his eyebrows furrow. “But– She would’ve been with you, if…”
“She– John, I haven’t seen either of you for… hours?” Caspian explains, trying and failing to keep his voice quiet. He has no idea about what Leviathan he’s talking about, nor why Lizzie would’ve left without taking John with her.
And, supposedly, inexplicably, Caspian was with her when she did.
“Er– Okay, Cas, if you… say so.” John says, busying himself with hauling something into the satchel he typically carries. They look like stone plates, inscribed text of a language he can’t read.
“Who or— whatever went with her wasn’t me, John! Goddess– John, where was this… Leviathan? I’m going to—” He bites out. He’s interrupted by the way his legs wobble, and he feels the desk give out from under him as his hand breaks through the weak desk. His forearms hit the surface harshly, and he smothers another groan behind gritted teeth.
John is over in an instant, his steady hand against his back as he easily heaves Caspian up into his arms.
“Well, c’mon then.” He laughs, boisterously, and Caspian catches only a glimpse of the door creaking open before his eyes are slipping shut.
/
When Caspian opens his eyes, he nearly tumbles from John’s arms at the sight of an unconscious Lizzie. She’s simply sitting there, bits of ice frosted over her hands, draped unceremoniously across another form draped in shadow.
The dots connect in his brain— this is the thing that John, and Lizzie, too, believed to have been Caspian.
He feels something angry bubble him inside him. They left her— Caspian was too blind by his curiosity, and now his lady sits unconscious in a mockery of his own arms belonging to some RAFT creation. Then, more, and it burns as it thrums under his skin he feels a little like screaming, John left her. John could’ve prevented this, why was John not with her, why did she go off by herself— why did they come here at all when this was awaiting them?
John is silent, only the steady thump-thump of his rapidly beating heart pressed against his shaking form.
“John—” He dares, hooks through his palms protesting as he forms weak fists to push against John’s steady form.
“No— No, No—” It wails out when Caspian’s voice breaks the silent spell, agony spilling from his own mouth. A constant mantra, one Caspian knows harrowingly well, as it wraps clawed hands around his Captain. Ice surrounds the two of them in something he can only see as defensive, shielding his Lady from the two that now threaten to take her away.
“Captain—” Caspian whispers into the shadows, desperately, pleading with her to wake up. He knows she wont– he’s too quiet, too weak, and she’s cradled in the arms of this gnarled visage of himself.
That repeated cry of “No, no, no.” continues to ring out through the room, the soft blue light of his own whip illuminating the pristine, starkly white bones of the monster that looms over them all.
It’s eerie, hearing his own voice so destroyed, breaking around the words leaving its mouth.
“John—” Caspian tries, again, fighting the ache in his throat as he desperately tries to stand. John lets him down, the same hand steady against his back as Caspian’s legs threaten to give out from under him.
He feels like fainting, his wounds still burning as they trickle blood down, painting his forearms a deeper blue. Shudders wrack his body as he pushes forward, ignoring the way his body screams out at him with every slight movement.
It wails, the sounds that echo out into the space jarringly familiar to the growling of the dog-like creatures, screaming as Caspian tries to step closer.
The look in its eyes stops him in his tracks. He can recognize it– desperation, eyes swimming with fear. Whatever this thing is, it believes that it’s Caspian, that the two are one in the same. And, of course, is just as centered around Lizzie; her presence, her command, so heavily defining his existence, its existence.
It’s his voice that echoes through the entire room, after all— try as he might to separate himself from the animalistic wailing born from a jealousy, a cloying fear, that Caspian knows just as well as it knows him. Something that he’s fought against, fought to keep at bay, that has swallowed this version whole.
It’s so undoubtedly him– recognizes the way his shoulders are slumped, the way his hair is tousled and slightly frayed, the way his hands shake around the unconscious form of their lady– recognizes it all, the position he’s become so acquainted to, become so familiar with holding her together when the world seems so eager to tear each of them apart
Then, because jealousy is just as interwoven into Caspian as the magic that runs through him, it rears its ugly head— It should be him. That thing has no right to his Captain, not like he does— the horrific wailing ringing out only proving to anger him more.
“You don’t deserve her— My captain, My Lady— she needs to be with me, she… she needs—” It begs like a cornered animal, kicking against the floor in a desperate attempt to create more distance between it and him, between him and his Lady, the Captain he’s devoted his life to, no matter how much this wretched mimicry wants to scream and cry otherwise.
The notion is one that sends a cruel laugh tumbling out of Caspian’s mouth. The idea of one person, someone something as simple as Caspian, knowing anything about his captain, Captain Lizzie Lafayette, of the Grandberry Pirates, someone with the world atop her shoulders, let alone believing it knows what she needs, what she wants, is laughable.
Caspian has ached, yearned for their many years together to be able to understand Captain Lizzie.
It shoves its arm upwards, and icy pillars shoot upward between it and him. He retaliates, putting a wall behind the two before it can shuffle backwards any longer.
John is already smashing through the pillars, before Caspian can even suggest. Lizzie wakes with a start, pushing away from the false image of Caspian. He thinks, for a fleeting, hopeful, second that she’s seen right through it.
He knows better.
Knows how the split second of surprise that flashed across her face wasn’t because of the unfamiliar location, nor her frozen wrists or the bloody state that Caspian is in, standing in front of her as if he’s not about to collapse. Caspian has always known that Lizzie hardly appreciated how easy he was to act on physical comfort, how casual touches were simply that— casual, between two members of this crew. The wrong word, perhaps, because Caspian does not deal in “casual” feelings for anyone, let alone his Lady, though an offered hand or comforting touch had always gone ignored— or worse— from his Captain.
He sees it immediately, before Lizzie can even stand, the way it had been hunched around her was so jarringly outside of Lizzie’s comfort, something they both know Caspian would never do, never be allowed to do, despite his sometimes unbearable urge to be by her.
“My— My Lady, where are you—” It clambers to stand in her shadow, cold hands shooting out without thought to clasp around her wrist.
“No, no—” It starts to wail again, and she pulls herself away.
“It’s not safe, you have to stay, I can—” It twists a fist in his own outfit, with another buried in his tousled hair as it begs.
“Captain.” Caspian interrupts itself— this thing is him, no matter how much he despises that fact. The words are a cold finality, a clear plea towards his Lady, and she sports a manic grin as John grabs her by the hand and pulls her back towards them.