Inks
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Ante et Retro
Eloquii jerked awake with the roar of waves and distant pounding of rain in his ears. He thrashed, caught up in the remnants of a dream, and tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs and sheets.
He threw himself upright, managed to free his head from his topquilt, and sucked in breath after gulping breath. His chest heaved. Somehow, he’d expected to see ocean; leagues of water, faint shafts of light filtering down from far away. Not the simple brick walls and craggy hardwood floors of his inn room.
“Wha?” Head swimming, the spurii looked around. Bed. Clothes chest. Simple writing desk with a single, long-dead oil lamp atop it. Right.
Right.
“Right.” El scrubbed his palms over his face, chasing away the last fading memories of his dream. He still half-expected to feel water running from his hair, his clothes to be soaked through. It’d felt so real.
“Awake,” he told himself. “Awake. I’m-“
--
“I’m awake!” Eloquii groused. He burrowed deeper into the warm softness of his fur blanket.
“Yer not awake until yer paws’r on the deck, little shit!” came the captain’s voice from the stairs leading above-deck, his tone half-amused and half-steely command.
Eloquii sighed. It was never like this back at the port. There, he’d been free to sleep from whenever-o-clock till bloody noon if he wanted. There was no one to shove him out of his hammock the moment the sky’d lightened enough to see by, before the sun even’d bothered rising.
But that was ‘cause no one gave two shits about a runty, knob-kneed little mutt back at port. Eloquii sighed again and shoved himself upright. “Okay,” he mumbled. “Okay!” he said, louder. “Be up in a jiff, Cap.”
“Good.” There was laughter in the captain’s voice now. “Svaris was lookin’ for ya. See that ya find him.” And then the captain’s boots retreated topside, leaving Eloquii to groan as he hunted around for his boots.
He hated Svaris.
“Tough luck, kiddo,” grunted a voice to El’s left – Donnan, most likely, sleeping off his midnight shift in the crow’s nest. “Now stop shoutin’. Tryin’ ta sleep.”
“Bugger yerself, Don,” Eloquii said with a grin. He jammed his heels into his boots and headed deck-side before the groggy old laicar could decide to do something about it.
There was no blaring light to blind him as he emerged out into the crisp morning air – dawn was still an hour or so out, leaving the sky a dim, moody grey. “Gods, how early is it…?” Eloquii whined, half-heartedly tucking his shirttails into his belt before the Captain spotted him.
“Half-past Stop Whining.”
So much for that. Eloquii jumped a half-foot into the air and spun around, his stunted tail whipping after him. “GEEeez, Captain, I didn’t think you were, uh, waiting for me.” El combed his hands through the mess of his blue hair and nervously tried to straighten his collar. “I thought Svaris needed me.”
Aureus sighed. “Breakfast,” he said.
Eloquii stopped fiddling with his clothes (a pointless endeavor anyways). “…Um?”
Aureus offered him a crooked smile. “Do ye know how to cook?”
“N-no, but I don’t really--” El hedged. Aside from being a talent at casting Bellator magic, Svaris was the ship’s cook.
“Well yer gonna learn. Svaris said ye owe him a boon. And he wants ye tell help him out in the kitchens today.”
El frowned. He did owe Svaris. Scary scowly bastard. “Okaaaaayyy,” El sighed, drawing out the word. Then he realized who he was speaking to. The captain seemed amused. Moreso when El sputtered and tacked on, “Sir, I mean! Okay, sir. Uh – yes, sir, that is!...Sir.”
Cooking. How hard could it be?
--
As it turned out, cooking was incredibly hard when you had no food. Or money to pay for food. Eloquii stared at the pitiful remains of his traveling funds with something like despair.
Keydis had made it sound so damned easy to find work, like anyone and everyone was looking to hire frumpy, energetic spurii mutts. Who knew, maybe they were. Maybe it was just El who was super-bad at getting hired on.
The spurii stared at himself in the full-length mirror stashed in a corner of his inn room. Grime and rust crept up the mirror’s sides, and a thick crack ran just off-center – but it did the trick. And that trick was, in this case, revealing a too-tall spurii with grey skin, black feathers and scales, vibrant yellow eyes, a mouth full of sharp teeth, eternally-windblown blue hair, and a long whipcord tail at his back. None of that was new, really; well, the hair was getting a bit out-of-hand.
If the Captain saw him now, he’d have a pair of clippers out in an instant.
What was new were the heavy dark circles under El’s eyes – evidence that those strange, surreal dreams were getting to him. Lately, Eloquii couldn’t sleep. When he did, he dreamed. When he did, he always woke up like he had today: gasping and terrified, like he was staring down the maw of some great, hulking monster.
“I’m hungry,” he whined into the mirror. He pressed his claws to his face and scrubbed. “I want food.”
Behind him, curled up in a pile of discarded blankets, Felo churred that he seconded that statement.
Maybe he’d track Keydis down, today. They were guildmates now, right? Surely she would feed him...
“Too naive, mate,” El told his reflection. Or she might at least point him in the direction of places that might hire him on. If nothing else, she could murder him and
--
“Put me outta my misery,” El sighed under his breath. He diced what had to be his fiftieth carrot with a petulant slowness.
“Yer such a brat,” Svaris drawled. “What ya whinin’ about now?”
The heavy-bellied, heavy-muscled cook of the Momentana didn’t turn around as he spoke, busy descaling fish for the night’s stew. Eloquii squinted up at the velen’s back.
“I ain’t whining!” he said fiercely. “I just don’t...” know why you wanted me to help out, he finished in his head. Svaris tolerated Eloquii at best, and seemed to low-key hate him at worst. “...think I...was cut out for choppin’ vegetables.”
Svaris grunted. “That’s ‘cause ya ain’t done it enough yet. Anyone can be cut out fer chopping vegetables. Or cooking. Most’re just too damn lazy to give it a try, is all. Ya think I planned on bakin’ shit breads n’ stirrin’ stews for a living when I was your age?”
Was that a trick question? “I guess probably no?” El said. “So why-”
“I tried it,” Svaris said loudly. He tossed a pile of fish bones into a growing pile on the counter. “Hated it, but the first ship I got on needed a cook, not a useless snot-nosed brat, unfortunately for me. Ya do something long enough, ya get good at it. Ya learn. But ya gotta commit.”
He turned and gave Eloquii a pointed glare. El still didn’t get it. Learning? Committing? Was he saying El was shite at learning or at committing? “I-if this is about the Bellator lessons, I did learn! I even-”
“Yer gonna cause trouble someday, is what I’m sayin’. And not ‘cause of that tail, neither. You got bigger problems, brat.” Svaris turned back to his work, leaving El frustrated and annoyed.
--
“I-I don’t want to cause any trouble,” Eloquii said, hands up. “I just wanted to know-”
“Sir, please,” the spurii girl was cute, but less so with clear anxiety writ across her lightly-feathered face. “I can’t. If I’m the one to ask the head chef to take on another spurii, it looks bad. You understand, right?”
El understood. “Ya don’t gotta mention the spurii thing - just-”
“I’m sorry,” the girl brushed her rose-pink feathers back from her face and turned to go inside - even if she’d only been out on break for a minute. “I can’t. Try one of the other cooks? Or, there’s plenty of work to be had, if you know where to look. I promise.” She offered Eloquii a thin smile before the door to the kitchens shut in his face.
“Yeah,” El said. His own smile felt a bit strained. “Yeah, I keep hearin’ that.”
He let the smile drop from his face. He was hungry. Felo was hungry. Keydis was literally nowhere to be found, and it looked like she’d taken her little redheaded partner in crime along to whatever adventure El wasn’t invited to. What was he going to do?
El wandered down the street, eyes on the money-purses of anyone fool enough to tie them around their waist or hide them tucked into a coat pocket. But the heavy sword on his back burned like a brand of guilt every time he considered it. The captain would call him an idiot, he was sure. Ya did what ya had to do, runt, he’d said once. If ya need to, do it again. I fer one won’t judge ye.
But you’re not here, El thought.
Neither was Keydis, though. And Eloquii probably shouldn’t keep using others’ opinions to guide his morality, anyways. It didn’t seem healthy, in the long run.
This was it. El was going to die.
--
El was going to die. This was it. The end. Lost in the middle of an underwater cave network, the Captain’s voice echoing in his ears: “Don’t go too far in, Eloquii, you’ll never find your bloody way out.”
It was dark, it was cold, and El honestly had no idea which way was which anymore. He hadn’t meant to get lost (obviously), was usually pretty great with directions, but--
“This is your fault!” he cried, the words turning into so many useless bubbles underwater, tickling his nose as they drifted away to pool at the top of the rocky cavern he’d trapped himself in. A tiny magelight flickered at his shoulder, dim and growing dimmer as he tired himself out swimming in what felt like circles in this nightmare cave...labyrinth...thing.
The watercat kit quirked its tiny head at him. He’d been following it for the better part of two hours, always trying to get close enough to touch - to pet - to hold and maybe tame and maybe have it stick its quills up Svaris’s arse next time he tried to make Eloquii help out in the kitchen. The kit had led him on quite the merry chase, always staying close enough for El to follow, but always keeping just out of reach, snorting bubbles and darting away with a sweep of its long tail each time El extended a hopeful hand.
“I’ma die down here!” El bubbled, “and it’s your fault! Take responsibility!”
The tiny black watercat kit blinked and swam away, El trailing after because - honestly, at this point, he was too scared to do anything else. Maybe it would surface for air soon. Didn’t watercats need to breathe? They did, right? He didn’t see any gills on the thing! Then again...his own gills were harder to spot.
The spurii’s thoughts swam in panicked circles, but he kept close to the watercat’s tail; it had to be as lost as he was, but if one of them was going to find their way out, his bets were on the thing with antennae.
“It’s all up to you now...”
--
“...mate. Yer gonna have to get a job, sorry.”
Felo chittered angrily at El’s prone form. His tiny claws dug into El’s chest, pawing at him to get up.
“Well, I tried!” Eloquii whined. The spurii was sprawled out along the shore of Terminus’s velen district, drained, hungry, and beyond sore-footed after a day of meandering the metropolis. “Nobody trusts a good-natured soul with a big tail who’s looking for food upfront in exchange for a day’s work.” He rolled onto his front, crossed his arms under his head and sighed. “Prolly think I was just gonna eat n’ run.”
He might’ve, too. It would’ve been beyond tempting. But that...would sorta be the same as stealing, huh? And that was...bad. It was bad. It wasn’t good. Keydis would be pissed, and might kill him. Might kill him with his own sword, even, which would be a true tragedy.
Although at this rate, there might not be anything left to kill when she got back from...wherever the bloody hell she’d vanished to.
“I can’t do it,” El continued, aloud, to himself. “I don’t know how ta do it! Everyone else’s got something ta give back, yeah? Good references, or a family member ta recommend them, or right proper marketable skills. What’ve I got? A big ol’ sword - really awesome, I mean, it’s the coolest sword for sure - and a tail. Oh and I can set stuff on fire!” El sat up, and Felo fell off his chest with an angry merp. “Should I have mentioned that to that chef lad? Think that migha sold him?”
Felo stared at him.
“Yeah I don’t think so either.”
“...Are you talking to yourself?” came a voice at El’s shoulder. He started, rolling gracelessly in the grass.
“No!” he said loudly, coming up in a crouch and ready to run - on instinct, really. The man before him didn’t...really look like a threat. Like a librarian or bookkeeper, maybe. But you never knew, right? “I was - uh - talking to Felo here. Say hi, Felo.”
Felo curled his tail around his paws, sat back in the grass, and stared blankly at the new arrival - a pure laicar, far as El could tell.
“Ah, gotcha,” the young man said, his smile soft and kindly. “I just...couldn’t help overhearing, and...you’re looking for work?”
“I’m looking for food,” El replied. Hastily, he added, “And work, yes, that too! Especially if it comes with food.”
The man chuckled - it was a disarming sound, which made something in Eloquii more wary - and scratched at the short, dark hair at the nape of his neck. “Well. If you’re interested...I might have something small for y-”
“Yes!” El hopped to his feet, already grinning wildly (usually an off-putting expression, given the bright yellow eyes and sharp teeth). “Oh thank the gods,”
--
“--I thought you were dead you little shite!” The captain’s hand was a vice around Eloquii’s upper arm as he dragged him aboard the Momentana. El stumbled after him, nowhere near tall enough to keep up with the captain’s longer strides.
“Owww,” El whined.
“Dead, do ya hear me? How many times do I tell ye, don’t go swimmin’ off chasin’ fishes in those bloody underwater caves, and what’s the first thing ye do given the chance?”
“My arm,” El huffed, “you’re murdering it,”
“I oughta murder you, Eloquii!” The captain got them to the deck and whipped around to face El - and all the complaints fell out of El’s mouth. There was something angry - livid, even - on the captain’s face...but there was something sharper, too. Fear.
Guilt welled up in El’s breast. “...I...I didn’t...” he stuttered.
“Damn straight ye didn’t,” Aurius snapped. He looked frightening without his usual smarmy grin or cheeky smile. “When ye didn’t come back last night...” He trailed off, and exhaled in a sharp, frustrated explosion of breath. He let go of El’s arm, finally, and El pulled it to his chest. “...I tell ye these things for a bloody reason, Eloquii. If ye were a proper crewmate instead of a snot-nosed runt I’d have ye in the brig for this, do you understand me?”
“Yessir,” El said, voice soft. Chagrined. He knew what the captain was trying to say, and somehow it hurt worse than if the captain had just been pissed he’d disobeyed orders.
“Now.” The captain stared at him, two-toned gaze hard. “You said you had something to show me, when you first decided to show back up like a half-drowned little sea rat.”
“...Y...Yessir.” El tried not to fidget. He’d hoped Aurius would forget until his temper had cooled some. Maybe until they’d set sail, even. He’d just been so excited - he’d forgotten that he’d been stuck in the caves for the better part of an entire day. Forgotten how upset the captain would be.
Now, with the captain frowning down at him, the excitement felt like anxiety, curling in his gut. It tangled with the guilt, and made his throat stick. “I...I uh...”
“Are ye hurt?” asked the captain, suddenly looking him up and down with a discerning eye. “I thought Carter hit ye with a healing spell when we found ye.”
“Yeah, I mean no - I mean, he did. I’m okay,” El spluttered. “I just...uh, I found...”
“You found...?”
“...something...”
“You found...something?” The captain sighed.
Well, technically two somethings - but El didn’t think the captain would mind him bringing a pretty rock aboard. “Ya know the, uh, the watercats that swim the bay?”
Aurius was silent, a dawning realization spreading across his face. He ran a hand through sun-bleached blond hair with a pained sigh. “Eloquii...”
“Well, I found a kit, and that’s why I got lost in the caves, and--”
“No way.”
“But-”
“Absolutely-”
“I already-”
“-not and that is-”
“We’re bonded and his name is Felo and-”
“-final...why have you named it already?!”
Eloquii was fumbling in his tunic, in the hidden pocket where the tiny watercat kit was curled up in a tight ball, fast asleep.
“No, you -- Eloquii, how did you even manage to tame it?”
“He stuck me pretty bad!” El said happily, pulling out the sleeping kit with one hand and gesturing to his arm with the other, “but that got healed when Carter got me, so it’s okay!”
“Aquila preserve me,” Aurius muttered.
“But yeah,” said El, holding up the tiny black kit to show the captain, “his name is Felo, and his quills are already coming in, so I thought, if he’s not too young, and if he’s lost like I am, I could take him in and give him a home! Like you guys gave me.” El looked up at Aurius with what he hoped was his most convincing smile.
--
The man shrugged. “Yea. Fine.”
“Really?” said the bookish laicar - a bookkeeper, as it turned out, by the name of Leo, who happened to be in the know with a few porters running short a couple hands for the next week.
“Really?” blurted Eloquii.
“...Ya want me to say no?” asked the porter - a hulking mass of a velen with deep gold scales, heavily-bronzed skin that spoke of warmer climes, and a nasty scar cutting up the side of his left brow.
“No!” both El and Leo shouted in unison. “No!” Eloquii added. “Thank you, is what I meant! Thanks! When do I get paid?”
Leo turned a bewildered look at him, but the porter just barked out a full-bellied laugh, baring his shark’s teeth. “Hah! I like you, noodle-arms. Hopefully you can lift more than you look like you can, though.” He eyeballed El’s back. “...You can lift that sword?”
“With one arm!” El chimed, grinning.
“Good. I’ll put you to work then - and, before you think I forgot, you get your pay at the end of each day. Since that seems to be a big concern for you.”
“It is,” El said, cheerfully. “Haven’t eaten all day!”
“Hah!” the velen barked again. “You can cry to me when it’s been a few days, or a week. Then you can trade stories with some of the other men here.”
Eloquii’s stomach twisted. It’d been a long time since he’d gone a week without food; it wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.
--
The captain catches hold of a musket barrel at the last moment, turns the shot aside, and in the same movement sinks his rapier deep into the other man’s gut. Eloquii stares, eyes wide.
The entire ship is in chaos - men shouting, guns firing, magic flying through the air. A stray arc of energy zips past El’s cheek, and he can feel the visae fizzling out against his skin. His heart hammers in his chest; he doesn’t know what’s going on. The captain always locks him in one of the holds during raids - “Ye ain’t old enough for real shite yet,” - so that can’t be what this is.
So what...?
“El, ye runt!” snarls Svaris, hauling him around by the collar of his too-large shirt. The velen is bleeding from a nasty cut above his brow, eye squinted shut against the flow of blood. His other hand holds his sword, a small gemstone for channeling spells laid into its pommel. The blade is gory red, so dark it seems thick and black in places. El’s eyes catch and hold on bubbles in the blood as Svaris shakes him. “The fuck are ye doing above-deck? Get somewhere safe ya stupid shit!”
A wave of fire billows past, and Svaris shoved him facedown on the deck, following after. The heat of the fire seems to pull the air out of El’s chest - several deafening gunshots fire.
“What...?” El gasps as they stagger back to their feet. Svaris is crowding him back towards the stairs leading to the crew’s quarters, and El can’t think to argue. “What’s happening?!”
“Raid,” Svaris snaps. “Someone doesn’t like us very much. Now get outta here!” And with that he gives El another hard shove. El tumbles down the stairs in a graceless sprawl of limbs, hair in his face and ears still ringing from the roar of battle.
--
Ears ringing, Eloquii freezes with a huge crate in his arms. His eyes are locked on a pair of unpleasantly familiar faces.
No, he thinks. His nails dig into the wooden box, full of something rattling and fragile. A delivery of alchemy reagents and potions bound for the airship docks. It was just his job to load them onto a wagon without breaking anything. Today was supposed to be turning around. Today was supposed to--
The lockkey necklace burns at his throat.
Canor and Mica, a velen and enlil respectively, were a pair of mercenaries-for-hire. The first and last time Eloquii had met them, they’d been working for a smuggler whose boat Eloquii had (accidentally) incinerated. Eloquii still remembered the weight of Canor’s webbed hand around his throat, gripping. Tightening. Something about your voice rubs me the wrong way, the velen had said back then.
Maybe they didn’t remember him. They had met once. And it’d just been business, back then. Poenus’s bounty on him had been rescinded when Poenus had been caught smuggling, so surely they weren’t still after El’s head--
“I heard there was a spurii with a tail working here today,” Canor sighs, something between amusement and annoyance crossing his face as he steps into El’s path. “But..I still didn’t think it was you. You didn’t strike me as the honest-day’s-labor sort.” The velen is exactly how El remembers him: tall, imposing, calm and calculating. Bit of a sadistic streak. “...See you’ve got a weapon now,” he adds. His gaze narrows, and he drawls, “Hope you know how to use it.”
Eloquii lowers his crate, the glasses and vials jangling as he places it as gently as he can on the ground. “Er, look, mate. Can’t we let bygones be bygones? There’s nothing to gain from bashin’ my face in at the moment...is there?” Honestly El had lost track of his bounty status. He hadn’t heard from that odd inspector sort who’d offered to wipe his slateful of misdemeanours clean, not since returning to Terminus. But he’d also not had anyone coming for his head, so he’d assumed it was all fine.
Well, until now.
“Not really about a bounty,” Canor admits absently, striding forward, closing the gap between them. El doesn’t like it; he’d run, but...his eyes tick down to the box at his feet. His job. His work. For his pay. He was going to do it - he was going to earn his way this time. “I’d gain the satisfaction of breaking your nose,” Canor continues, “Which is really enough for me.”
Eloquii tries for a smile. “Not to bring up bad memories, but do you really want the guard up your arse...er...again? You’re gonna end up on bad terms with them, at this rate!”
“Canor.” The soft, fidgety voice comes from the tiny enlil at Canor’s side - Mica. His talon came out to rest on Canor’s arm. “Come on.” The enlil looked tired, today.
Me too, buddy, El thought.
Canor considers for a moment, staring balefully at El, who is somewhere between calling for the guard and going for his sword. Either one sounds tempting. Finally, the velen sneers. “Fine. But...”
Then he kicks out, hard enough to upset the crate of vials between himself and El.
“No!” El yelps, diving for the box too late to stop more than half the glass vials and bottles from tumbling across the ground, some of them shattering from the sudden jostle. His heart leaps into his throat, and he can’t breathe. The porter had given him one warning - one - don’t break anything, or you don’t get paid.
His necklace is burning, burning, burning. Again.
He goes for his sword.
--
The captain knocks it out of his hand, exasperation written across his wind-weathered face. “Again,” he says, and takes a ready stance.
El shakes the tingling numbness from his fingers. “You’re too fast,” he sighs, fetching his training sword and dragging it over in front of the captain. He takes a stance, feet apart, sword at the ready, free hand out for balance--
And the captain surges forward, arks his sword, and torques just so - and El’s own sword pops out of his hand before he can stop it. It clatters to the deck for what feels like the fifty-thousandth time today.
“Again.”
“Captain...” El whines.
“Again, Eloquii. Stop letting me do whatever I want - take some initiative, or take a defensive stance for the vis’ sake.”
El chews on the inside of his cheek. “That’s not how you fight-”
“I fight in a way that suits me best, runt. Short, quick, in and out before anyone can react. You’re long-limbed, gangly, and nowhere near fast enough to out-draw me. Ye have to find yer own style.” Aurius’s brow pinches. “I told ye to ask Barlow for lessons. His style is-”
“...Dumb...”
“Better-suited for you,” Aurius interrupts, a sharp, amused glitter in his eyes. “Once ye fill out, you’re gonna be a tall sonofabitch. You should take advantage of that - and of that weird, dumb strength of yours - with a fighting style that fits it. Ye keep trying to riposte me,” he gestures for El to pick up his sword, “...and I’m going to keep slapping it out of yer hands. Now. Again.”
--
It’s Mica who stops him. The enlil turns and draws his rapier in a single smooth motion almost too fast for El to follow. Their blades bite against each other, and the metallic sound rings out across the loading bay.
“Don’t,” Mica hisses.
“You wanna duel?” El calls at Canor’s back, teeth bared in a parody of a grin, blue bangs wild over eyes of molten gold. “I win, I just want enough exa to last me the week. You win, you can do whatever you want. Break my nose,” he suggests. “Cut off my tail. Take your pick.”
Mica sighs; it sounds pained. Canor, however, turns back with his own velen smile. “You got yourself a deal, mutt.”
The key at his neck burns; without thinking, El pulls it over his head and jams it in his pocket instead. He doesn’t need the distraction now.
And
then
he
feels
itCanor opens his mouth to speak - to say something witty, something insulting, something threatening, but something has already washed over Eloquii. Something he hasn’t felt since that day on that beach, his knuckles split ragged on the flesh of a smug fisherman’s face. He sees red, tastes metal on the back of his tongue, and lunges.
--
--
--
El didn’t sleep much, lately.
When he did, he dreamed of lying in the ocean depths. He dreamed he was something else.
Something not himself.
When he slept, he hungered.