Nightsea Outlaw

Alex stayed kneeling by Artur, waiting to hear his last words, but they never came. He could finish them on his own, if he wanted. The rhyming scheme was obvious. Hell, he had heard Artur say the stupid rhyme before, not that long ago.

But he couldn't bring himself to move from that spot or say anything. Artur had the right to those words, not Alex. Whoever Artur really was, whatever he was, that was his to control. Alex couldn't finish the rhyme for him.

He could only accept Artur for who he had been.

His muscles burned and ached, and his gate was closed. He didn't have a fight left in him anymore. All he had was Artur propped up in his arms, on an island out in the middle of nowhere.

"It wasn't supposed to go this way." Alex's breath came in quick gasps.

He clenched his teeth and forced his racing heartbeat to stop. If he wasn't careful, he would open his gate again, and he was not in good shape to do that. He needed some time to breathe, but the world wouldn't wait for him.

He still needed to find Bolton.

Click.

He pulled off his jacket, wrapping it tightly around Artur's body and laying him against the grass. Blood had pulled all around the area, and while a little more would stain the inside of the jacket, most was already gone.

With Erin back on Grim Aegis, Alex hadn't thought about how he would handle injuries. His own body would heal. Even his shoulder would have already closed up, but the rest of the people with him didn't have the benefit of being tortured for five years as an experiment.

Alex stood, his gaze sweeping the area. Miss Malone's body hadn't fallen that far away. Dissipating webs covered everything, and her real body lay in a tangle of those. She was hardly recognizable with all the bruises, but he hadn't really given her a chance to fight back. Once he had thrown the first punch, nothing else really mattered.

Further away, Grayson reached a hand down to a prone Drake, who had dropped his dragon form. Alex grimaced. He didn't know how things were about to play out, but he knew that both of the captains wanted him brought in. He closed his fingers into a fist, but they only responded numbly. Artur lay behind him, as he considered if the field would turn into a second battlefield.

It was odd, like the routine of fighting and fleeing was so ingrained in him that it pushed Artur's death to the side, if just for a moment. The pain was still there, aching in his heart and cutting into his mind, but it was behind him.

He had always heard that the best thing to do when you lost someone was to find a routine, to go with habit. He hadn't thought about it when he lost his grandparents, but that was a long time ago when he was still a kid. When he had been back on Earth, his parents were still alive, so he hadn't had to deal with that either.

He pushed the thoughts aside as the two captains approached him. Grayson was still in uniform, with only dirt and frays marking he had been in a fight. Drake, on the other hand, had lost every shred of clothing. He stood as a red-scaled lizardman, his long tail swinging freely behind him.

"Abyss." Grayson had his hands in his pockets as he looked out over Miss Malone's prone body. "You didn't take any prisoners, did—"

He stopped, raising an eyebrow.

"She's still alive."

Surprise. However, that was true of most of the people Alex fought. Unless they posed him an immediate danger, he didn't see much point in just killing a person. It wasn't some high-minded ideal, or anything. He just didn't think he should get to decide who lived and died. That kind of power crept up on a person.

That wasn't the case this time. He had a use for Miss Malone. Otherwise, he might have pushed just a little harder. It didn't feel good, especially with Artur dead behind him, but he needed her alive.

"Yeah," Alex said, but couldn't bring the grin that tried to cross his face. "Here's the problem, as I see it: You both came a long way to chase me down, and now that she's down, you don't have much of a reason not to take me in."

"A fair point." Drake eyed him with one yellow eye, his head turned to face the village in the distance.

"So what could be better than finally nabbing me?" Alex nodded down at Miss Malone. "She successfully took over a key island, had her entire operation up and running right under the Empyrean's noses."

"You think she has information." Grayson pulled a hand out of his pocket and rubbed at his beard. "You'd be right I think."

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"What's stopping us from taking both?" Drake smiled, his forked tongue licking out of his maw. "You're tired from the fight still. We take you in and wrap up Miss Malone for our superiors."

"You know why." Grayson sighed. "Our orders are to work with Ortega. Not even Chief Adhira would contradict a noble without good reason."

Snort.

"Spoiled it." Drake shook his head. "We could have kept him on his toes this entire time."

Grayson looked down at Artur, wrapped in Alex's coat behind him, then met Alex's eyes.

"I think he's gone through enough today. I don't sense Bolton anywhere, so he's probably gone off to hide."

Bolton hadn't pinged in Alex's senses since the fight either, though he had dropped his gate and wasn't looking anymore. He wouldn't put it past Bolton to be able to hide from most forms of aether-based detection, cursed or otherwise. The feeling of the bullet in his shoulder, cold and draining told him all he needed to know.

"So a truce until we can get off this island," Grayson said, kicking Miss Malone's leg. "We'll wrap up this one."

"Please don't make any spider puns for a while." Drake sighed, looking around them. "I could go the rest of my life not seeing another one."

"I'll carry Artur." Alex turned, picking up Artur in his arms.

Once Drake and Grayson figured out how to restrain Miss Malone, they started toward the village in the distance. There wasn't much point in going anywhere else. They were stuck on the island until someone opened a gate back to Grim Aegis.

They walked for a long time, and Artur was heavy. Alex's arms began to go numb, but he didn't stop carrying Artur. The kilometers dropped away as they finally came to the ruined city. A crowd of people had gathered outside of the ruins, probably because there had been a giant monster fight in the direction Alex and the two captains approached from.

The crowd wasn't just a single type of person. They weren't just able-bodied men to do hard labor, though there were plenty of those. Alex saw people wearing bakers' uniforms, poor people in largely rags, and even a few armored guards standing in the crowd. Around the legs of some people huddled children. Miss Malone had taken all she could from Grim Aegis over to her island, it seemed. Alex didn't want to imagine what they had all been made to do.

"You there!"

One person called out from the crowd, stepping forward with an armored guard following behind. He was an older man, and Alex thought at first he was a butler, though his dark clothes were full of holes and dirty. Grayson nodded to Drake and stepped up to talk to the man, though he seemed to be focused on Alex.

"Hello." Grayson raised one hand to wave. "We're with the Military Police. I'd like to say that we are here to rescue you, but it seems we're stuck here for a bit while someone in Grim Aegis figures out this problem and comes and comes to get us."

Hearing it laid out like that would give even the most hopeful person a nudge over the edge, but the man Grayson talked to didn't seem to notice. Instead, he pushed forward, leaving his guard behind to approach Alex. Grayson turned to watch him go, one eyebrow raised.

"That's Artur, is it not?" The butler's mustache twitched as he reached out with both hands.

"It was," Alex said, taking a step back.

The man looked down at Artur, and then up at Alex. His dark eyes, which already looked older than his face appeared, grew a little darker at the words. His fingers drooped, but he did not step away.

"I see," he said. "I am Berken. I was once the head of staff at the castle. When we were sent over here, I thought I would never see Artur again."

"I'm sorry," Alex said, his throat tightening.

"It is alright," Berken said, his own voice cracking. "Come with me. We can find you all a place for a time to figure things out."

He turned, and walked to the guard. Alex took a moment, but eventually he followed after. Grayson shrugged at him, but followed in his own stride. Drake came in the back, holding Miss Malone over his shoulder as they entered the ruins.

Alex was prepared for a lot of things, but the whispers of the people as they approached the crowd cut through his heart. Sobs, coughs, gasps, were one thing, but he could hear them far too clearly in the dead silence.

It was like walking into a wake.

"Is that the prince?"

"He's not moving."

"Artur, that's Artur, right? The hero."

"Dad, why's he asleep?"

"Look away."

Every one of them was like a knife to the back. Alex kept his gaze focused on Berken, following him and his guard as they walked into the ruins. Berken led them through the rundown dirt streets until they finally reached a structure at the center of the ruins, its door covered only by a red cloth.

The buildings were mostly just one floor, but a few of the ones around them had been multi-story. None of them appeared to have roofs, and even the one Berken led them into was open to the sky above. It was hardly a building at all in its current state, just four bare stone walls, a desk and a bed.

"Set Artur down over there." Berken gestured toward a broken bed in the corner. "You can put the other one on the floor."

Alex did as he was bade, and Drake set Miss Malone on the opposite side of the room, pointedly keeping a talon pressing down on her body. When he was done, Berken sat at the desk in the center of the room that seemed to serve as his workstation.

"I am Berken, as I have already said." He steepled his fingers together. "I have taken on the task of organizing the people on the island, to keep us from being killed by Miss Malone."

"Your memories are intact?" Grayson asked, leaning against a nearby wall.

"Yes." Berken nodded. "I have some familiarity with her capabilities. She cannot maintain control if she is not on the same island. She used our isolation here to keep us in line."

"And what did she have you here for?"

Grayson's question fell into silence. Berken looked up at the sky above, shaking his head. Alex grimaced. It wasn't a hard question to answer.

"I wish I knew," Berken said. "We had but one goal: dig into the nearby ruins and report back anything we found. So many of us died by the defenses alone, yet she would demand we dig deeper, explore more."

Alex stayed quiet. It was the same as on Death's Yard. They had dug into similar ruins there as part of a massive operation by Mister Deadman. The island they were currently on seemed more intact, though. On Death's Yard, there had been an entire complex in the ruined temple.

Listen.

Alex blinked at the whisper, turning his head away from everything else. Berken continued talking, explaining more about the people's situation on the island, but Alex wasn't paying attention. He knew that voice. He had heard it every time he had found an island core.

"I'll be back."