The Veiled Descendants

by Sophia Menesini

  Phoebus shakes his head. “I couldn’t—”

  But Dari reaches out and takes it weakly.

  “Thank you,” she tells him before looking up at Phoebus. “Just as you don’t want me to be alone, I do not wish you to suffer, my love. We’ll take it together.”

  Phoebus leans down and kisses his wife soundly on the lips.

  “Thank you,” Phoebus sighs, catching Triton’s eyes.

  “You shouldn’t thank me. I should be thanking you for caring for my sister. I’m sorry.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” Phoebus scoffs.

  “It might as well be. I tried to kill Perses before, and if I succeeded this wouldn’t be happening.”

  “So, try again.”

  Triton looks at Dari with surprise.

  “I failed,” Triton explains. “Who’s to say I’d succeed this time?”

  “Who’s to say you won’t,” Dari demands. “Shea told me about meeting you. She believes in you, that you’re better than you were. Now I’ve always had faith in the gods, but my daughter not so much. Do you want to be better?”

  “I’ve caused so much pain,” Triton states, but Dari scowls.

  “I didn’t ask you if you felt guilty. I asked you if you wanted to be better.”

  Triton is quiet.

  Shea tells Aster to go ahead.

  Caen is conducting groups of four out of the dome to head for the docks.

  Beck and Jo are staring at her from the door.

  She knows it’s time to go, but she has to hear this through.

  “Yes,” he finally admits.

  “Then stop him. Save Nereid. Help your sister. You’re a part of this world whether you want to be or not. Stop hiding and do better. You can start with protecting my daughter and making sure we don’t die here for nothing.”

  ​“You heard her,” Shea interrupts.

  ​Triton turns toward her, not realizing she was so close.

  ​Shea holds out her hand for Triton to take.

  ​“You with us?”

  ​Triton is staring at her curiously. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head in exasperation.

  ​“I can see where she gets her stubbornness from,” Triton murmurs to Dari.

  ​Dari reaches her right hand out and Triton kisses the back.

  ​Shea still has her hand out as he leaves them on the floor and faces her.

  He takes it.

  ​“I’m with you. It’s time I fix my mistakes.”

  ​Shea takes one last look at Phoebus and Dari, at the dome where she partially grew up, and she places a hand over her heart as a sign of respect. Turning her back on them is as hard as when she watched Paetre die. Her steps fumble, but Triton keeps hold of her hand and helps her to the door.

  James and Aster have gone on ahead, leaving Caen, Jo, and Beck, as well as an unexpected face.

  ​“Semele.”

  ​Semele gives her a ghost of a smile.

  ​“You’re welcome to come with us,” Shea offers, but Semele is already shaking her head.

  ​“I’m not willing to enter another war, Shea. I’ve seen enough violence in my life, you know that.”

  ​Shea does.

  ​“Where will you go?”

  ​“I hear Helios is nice this time of year, and from there, perhaps even farther south. All I know is I can’t go back. I never thanked you.”

  ​“You’d require a thankful bone in your body,” Caen drawls, glaring at Semele.

  ​The lady smirks.

  ​There’s a loud crash from down one of the streets, screams can be heard in the distance, and inhumanly growls echo off the wind.

  They’re coming.

  ​“I never expected you would,” Shea chuckles.

  ​Beck is peering farther down the cobbled stone streets and he waves for them to hurry.

  ​“Hate to interrupt,” Jo remarks, “but we need to go.”

  ​“Goodbye, Shea,” Semele imparts.

  ​“I don’t think it’s safe for a woman to walk these streets alone right now,” Jo argues, but Shea holds her back from reaching out to Semele.

  ​Caen sends Shea a knowing glance as Semele laughs.

  ​“I won’t be a woman then,” Semele responds.

  ​Her body ripples and molds, her frame changing shape, sharp edges protruding from her once slim frame until one of the disgusting Merrows stands in front of them.

  ​Semele waves with her clawed fingers, and stealthily scurries away.

  ​“But she’s—” Jo stutters. “She was human. No human has magic.”

  ​“No human Nereidan,” Caen tells her, drawing his hammer. “But she wasn’t Nereidan.”

  ​“Time to go,” Shea announces.

  ​Beck sighs in relief as they finally begin to follow behind him.

  They keep to the shadows and away from the firelight.

  Caen knows the alleys of Orena like the back of his hand. And they make it to the docks in an hour or so.

  ​The remaining crew on the Duchess would have known to sail the ship to the old docks, past the newer built and busy marketplace, along the shallows where the old town docks sit rotting without lanterns.

  The shadows would hopefully have obscured them, but the city is ablaze. Everything is on fire and the shadows have receded in sight of the flame.

  The new port is burning, falling and being swallowed up by the sea.

  They make their way to the crumbling old port with few encounters.

  A particularly nasty duel ends with Caen earning a head wound and Beck on the ground, but when Shea runs to him, he’s up just as quickly.

  She tries to see where he’s been hurt but he assures her he was merely knocked down.

  Between Shea and Triton, they’re able to support Caen and make it the rest of the way.

  ​They watch their step along the rotting wooden planks, and in the distance, Shea can make out her familiar bloodred sails.

  They’re met halfway by Aster and Billius, a Duchess gunner.

  They aid a stumbling Caen, and soon after they’re all on the main deck of the Duchess.

  ​The ship is silent. No evening lamps burn, as the island gives off enough light for everyone to see each other’s faces.

  ​The screaming is dying out, and the fire blazes like Hades’s fire.

  Orena is gone.

  Dari and Phoebus are gone.

  Shea looks around at her crew; at least half her men are dead. This was more than a loss; this was a vision of things to come. What just a few Merrow could do and how Perses could orchestrate it from miles away.

  ​“What are your orders, Captain?” James asks.

  ​She chuckles painfully to herself, because with Caen injured and being taken down below, James is next in line.

  All the people she’s lost, and gods, she could still lose more.

  ​She’s losing her mind, and a strong hand steadies her. She looks back to see Triton with a solemn expression. She has to be strong. She’s the captain.

  ​“Weigh anchor, set sail, and get us the bloody Underdeep out of here,” Shea orders.

  ​James nods, squaring his shoulders under his new responsibility as quartermaster and bos’n. He takes a deep breath.

  ​“You heard the captain,” he growls, his blue eyes piercing every member of the crew on deck.

  ​The surviving men straighten at James’s voice—it seems to snap them all out of their stupor and they start moving.

  ​“Get those sails up. I want that anchor out of the water now! Aster!”

  ​James finds Aster, who freezes at his boyfriend’s hard voice.

  Shea can see James’s eyes soften, but he remains strong and firm.

  ​“To the helm.”

  ​Aster takes the helm stairs two at a time, and before long, Shea can feel the wind on her face.

  She wanders over to the rail, placing both hands on the wood, and watches the burning city’s reflection on the midnight water. The stars shine dimme
r in comparison. She’s always hated the orange of fire.

  ​There’s a presence at her side and she finds her wife’s hand gripping her left. Another person appears to her right, and Beck’s shaking hand covers the other.

  They watch the fall of Orena together and Shea can’t help but wonder if the fire has reached Dari and Phoebus yet.

  Chapter 36: Last Night

  Phoebus

  “They’re gone?” Dari whispers.

  ​“Yes,” Phoebus confirms, still staring at the caved-in storefront where their surrogate daughter disappeared.

  ​“I can’t feel my legs,” Dari chuckles.

  ​Phoebus’s eyes close, the pain of those words seeping through his mind. He sniffs, stopping the tears from coming. It won’t be long then. He opens his eyes and huffs as he sees Dari’s smiling face.

  She won’t need the plant; she’s got minutes left.

  ​“Do you remember when you brought home Lena?” Dari croaks.

  She grunts as Phoebus readjusts her in his arms, but the wrinkle of discomfort disappears from her forehead as he supports her neck better.

  ​“You mean when you almost killed me?” he jokes.

  ​Dari laughs, but it turns into a bloody cough, a trickle of red escaping her mouth.

  ​“Well what was I going to do with an animal that large, I was terrified she’d crush Shea. Our little elf was so small for a sixteen-year-old.”

  ​“But brave. Fiery. Strong like you.” Phoebus smiles wistfully, remembering the wee elf they once cared for.

  ​“I hate leaving her,” Dari sobs.

  ​Phoebus holds her close now, rocking her injured body against his.

  ​“Shh…my love, she’ll be okay. I know it.”

  ​He keeps rocking his wife until her sobs begin to dissipate.

  ​“We’ll all be together someday. You were the best mother she could have had. Gods, you were the best wife a man could have. I love you; I may have saved you from Arethusa so long ago, but Dari, you were the one who truly saved me,” Phoebus says, expecting an argument from his wife, the way they always banter.

  ​But no response comes.

  ​“Eh? Dari?”

  ​Phoebus pulls her away from his chest and his eyes meet her wide unseeing ones.

  ​“Ohhh…”

  ​Phoebus cries, and the tears fall freely. He kisses her dead lips and pushes her hair back.

  ​“Oh, my darling.”

  ​An explosion rocks the remaining structure of the dome and there’s visible fire surrounding the splintered wood of the doorway. Loud growls and battle cries can be heard from outside.

  ​Phoebus opens Dari’s lax right hand and plucks the Azulshade from her palm.

  ​He looks around their home, their memories of fifteen plus years, and he kisses his wife one last time.

  ​“I’m coming, love. It’s going to be okay. You’re okay now.”

  ​Phoebus eats the Azulshade. He chews it quickly and swallows the best he can. He’s tempted to count the seconds but instead he pulls his wife closer, kissing her forehead.

  ​A dull pain starts in his left arm, it’s growing sharper, and he chokes. He can’t take in any air. He suppresses the panic that threatens to overtake him.

  ​ A loud bang echoes throughout the dome, and Phoebus looks up in time to see a group of ugly Merrow storming their home.

  ​His lips twist into a harsh semblance of a smile and he uses his last breath, “Too late.”

  ​Hades takes him.

  ​The last living thought that graces his mind is of his wife and how he can’t wait to see her again in the underworld.

  Chapter 37: Last Rites

  Shea

  The ship is quiet even hours after Orena has faded from the horizon. Dawn rises but most can’t decide whether the orange light is sun or fire.

  By the time Nol has patched up Caen’s head and he’s walking around, James has the list of the dead.

  All but five Arethusian naval officers have been killed, something Jo has a hard time processing.

  When the Duchess’s crew arrived in Arethusa, they had fifty men. After the Megathirio, it had dropped to forty-three. Now Shea has twenty-six of her original crew left. They’re down sailors, but the voyage isn’t impossible to make. As long as they don’t encounter any major monsters like the water dragon on the way home, they should be able to sail the Duchess without struggle.

  By midmorning, the once bright sunny sky has faded into a gray and murky one.

  Shea can feel a storm brewing as she studies the charts on the navigation table up on the afterdeck. Caen returns to his duties as quartermaster with Nol’s permission, leaving James to go back to his responsibilities as bos’n.

  There’s no time to mourn.

  Jo refuses to retire after hearing the number of soldiers she’s lost and runs to Nol to help with any injured.

  They’ll need every hand available.

  The winds stay strong, leaving little for the crew to do besides maintenance and smaller tasks. It allows time for the losses to be felt, and by afternoon, the ship is more like a funeral hall than a sturdy crew.

  ​Shea needs to cut down the time of the voyage somehow, she needs to get them all to Arethusa faster. Because if what happened to Orena was merely what a platoon of Merrow could do, what would happen when they had a whole army at their backs?

  ​“Damnit!” Shea growls, slamming her fist onto the map and causing both Caen and Aster to jump.

  ​“We’re making good time,” Caen begins, but Shea holds up her hand for him to stop.

  ​“There’s got to be some way. Some way we can make the Duchess move faster,” Shea murmurs, pacing back and forth.

  ​“We don’t have the manpower. We barely have enough to sail the ship as it is,” Caen reminds her.

  ​“Hades! If we don’t get there in time, then it’s all pointless anyway,” Shea snarls.

  ​Her temper gets the better of her, and before she knows it, she’s pulled a lasso of water up over the edge of the ship and she slashes it down on the opposite rail, cutting the wood deeply.

  ​“Careful!” Caen remarks. “Don’t take it out on the Duchess.”

  ​Shea runs her hands through her hair, trying to come up with a solution.

  ​“What about Beck?”

  ​“What?” Shea turns sharply to look at Aster behind the wheel.

  ​“Well, remember how he met Perses? Before all this? He said one minute he was out in the ocean and the next they were all on the shore of Arethusa.”

  ​“Aster,” Shea breathes.

  ​She runs over to him, cups his face between both her palms, and kisses his forehead. “You’re a genius!”

  ​Shea runs to the rail and shouts for Beck, who races to the bottom of the stairs.

  ​“What do you need?” he asks.

  ​“Find Poseidon and Triton, tell them it’s urgent and to meet me on the afterdeck.”

  ​Beck nods and takes off.

  A few minutes later, he returns with Triton and Poseidon following behind him.

  ​It’s then that she truly sees the differences between the two. When she’d met her father, his shoulder-length hair had been gray and his copper beard graying, but his face had looked as young as a thirty-year-old man. His whole presence exuded a sort of youthful aura and his stature was strong and powerful.

  Not so anymore.

  His hair and beard are completely white, and he looks to be about the same age as Caen. His power isn’t as tangible as it was before.

  She can still feel it within her mind’s room of magical doors. She touches his open doorway and a wave of power washes over her, but as a sort of strength seems to rejuvenate herself, when she looks back at her father, he looks tired.

  ​Triton on the other hand is practically generating energy where he stands. She can feel the ocean’s power radiating off of him, and he looks the same age as she is.

  ​“What’s happening to you?”
Shea demands, confronting Poseidon, who’s leaning up against the helm’s rail and facing the main deck.

  ​“I’m fine,” Poseidon states.

  ​“Bullshit, and why do you feel so…” Shea stares at Triton, trying to find the right word.

  ​“Powerful?” Triton supplies.

  ​“Yes.”

  ​“Easy. For one, he’s here.” Triton points to Poseidon, who rolls his eyes. “And two, my shell is here. It’s not locked in Atlantis. I draw my power from both, mostly from our father, but my shell gives me an incredible boost. As long as it’s in the mortal world, my abilities will only grow.”

  ​“Are you dying?” Shea inquires, semi-worriedly, at Poseidon.

  ​“No!”

  ​“No.”

  ​Triton and Poseidon answer at the same time, although Poseidon is much more forceful.

  ​Shea raises her eyebrow.

  ​“I’m not,” Poseidon answers. “The original gods, my siblings who were born of the titans, we were given dominion over pieces of Earth and humanity. Along with those dominions, we were given objects that grounded and connected us to our power. Should those objects ever be removed, it would leave us with our base abilities. My brother Zeus was given a lightning bolt to rule the skies, I was given a trident to master the seas, and Hades was given a bident to control the dead. Each of these objects made us more than our immortal selves. They made us invulnerable. Take them away and we’d still have our immortality from our parents, the titans, but we would be vulnerable to mortal death.”

  ​“So, you’re becoming vulnerable?” Caen inquires.

  ​Poseidon sighs. “Yes. I told you that the gods faded or left their posts, and some of them did, yes, but they faded either because they lost their objects or because their godly parents were destroyed.”

  ​“I don’t understand,” Aster chimes in, as he’s been listening to the whole thing.

  ​“To make sure another Titan War didn’t happen, the original gods tied their children, the minor gods, to themselves instead of objects. Destroy a parent and the child would lose their invulnerability. It definitely inspired loyalty,” Triton muses.

  ​“So, if our father dies?” Shea asks.