literature

The Casebook of Skasis Fane: Wishful Thinking pt3

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  Maybe the most unpleasant consequence of being trapped in this ‘frog skin’ was not feeling kinda wet all the time. In fact, Skasis wasn’t feeling submerged into water – weird cold was enveloping him instead. The worst feeling was being unable to touch his own face because of the glass helmet on it. And I haven’t been to proper space yet, the kid thought to himself.
  Felix and Ulg were silently swimming by his sides, their eyes shooting from there to here. Finally Skasis lost his patience and approached to the latter one:
  “Ulg, why didn’t Ina go with us? I saw that she wanted to.”
  “The guards can sense her,” Ulg replied, twitching his tail. “She lost blood.”
  “She was to offer her help,” Felix interfered. “They are breath-bonded.”
  “How’s that?”
  “The merpeople have a special ceremony. They swear to be loyal to each other and eat a piece of special herb which forms a life-long bond. Breath-bond, they call it. This herb makes them unable to hurt each other. Like an unbreakable promise. They just… they just don’t have a wish to do it anymore. But it is to be a consequence of a genuine feeling, otherwise the results could be disastrous. Seamus told me about this.”
  “Heart-shaped herb,” Skasis murmured, having recalled an Earth superhero movie he had watched during one of the movie nights at the Agency. His rational part has already built a connection including hormones, special ingredients and body reactions, but he decided not to voice it.
  The farther they swam, the darker the surrounding water became. But Skasis’s quick eyes caught the sight of large fish-like figures roaming around the tall rock in the distance.
  “You found us there, Kasifayn,” Ulg informed, pointing at the top of the rock which was reaching the faraway surface. Skasis nodded. “Entrance close to the bottom. Silence.”
  Indeed, the place where the rock base joined the ground, there was a narrow hole disguised with weeds. Having warily glanced at the predators above, Ulg was the first to squeeze inside, followed by Felix and only then by Skasis, who was expecting an ambush. But no. The corridor that began there was dark and eerie, although no one was waiting for them there; it wasn’t possible even to spot each other there. Skasis was following only the hardly heard swooshes of webbed hands and fins (because even his advanced night sight couldn’t be reliable here), until a dim grey space opened over him, and his helmet broke the water surface.
  “I thought that linked tanks always had the same water level in them,” Felix muttered, his head popping out of the water next to Skasis.
  “Sometimes the laws of physics are on vacation,” Skasis replied, having recalled the machines which could create an air field around them. The ‘pond’, at the surface of which they were floating now, was at the beginning of a cave tunnel, the walls of which were penetrated with tubes – some empty, some with odd liquids flowing inside. It was dim here, but not too dark, although no sources of light were seen around.
  “And it seems from outside that rocks are small,” Ulg hummed.
  “Great. Seems like I’ll have to go alone from here,” Skasis summed up, climbed onto the floor and pressed the buttons hidden on his underwater suit: one on the collar, two on the wrists and two on the ankles. The suit reacted with hiding the swimming elements (all four sleeves simply rolled up and were flattened, while the helmet folded at his back like an odd hood), so now he was free to run. And he knew it well how important it was to run, even when being bare-footed like now.
  “Nonsense, Fane, I’m going with you.” Felix tugged on the lace around his neck. “My gut tells me that you’re not gonna cope alone, and it’s no matter that you’re a damn Hank Skywalker.”
  “Awesome,” Skasis muttered. “And what are we gonna do with you, Ulg? I can’t see a single water source here.”
  “Guard.” Ulg pointed at the bottom of the ‘pond’. “I signal. Eliman knows.”
  A loud cracking sound made Skasis jump with alert, but he calmed down soon: that sound was produced by Felix’s wings, the tips of which separated from the ankles. Now he returned to his usual groove. Very satisfied, Felix bounced two or three times and attempted to fly up, but did not succeed.
  “Blast, I’ll have to go on foot… fine. Not much of a flyer anyway… I think that’s the only sensible idea to leave Ulg here. I don’t think he’s going to cover all that distance.”
  “I the quickest swimmer around,” Ulg put in, messing up with grammar even more than usually. Felix patted him on the shoulder reassuringly, and the merman vanished under the water.
  Having felt a small prick of conscience, Skasis made himself face the front and set off, turning his head anywhere but back. The surroundings were not changing for about five minutes, until the pipes began prevailing over rock, and finally they led to a dome-shaped chamber with a huge glass column in its middle. Just like a TARDIS, Skasis thought. Moreover, this column was not a single one here: six more were surrounding it closer to the walls, all filled with multi-colored liquids. However, the middle one was filled with the strangest liquid ever: it was of six colors (matching those of the contents of the surrounding columns) which were not mixing, as if six streams were separated from each other. Skasis raised his head and saw that it was continuing inside the ceiling, and possibly over it.
  “Benny!”
  Felix’s horrified yell made Skasis come back to earth and see that the Wingie was banging his fists against the column filled with acid green liquid. In its middle there was also a shape – a shape of a miniature round-faced girl with black hair and deadly pale skin. Both Skasis’s hearts fell. This girl was Bene. Bene the Wingie, another Triwayan and Felix’s friend – if a friend at all, Skasis still had doubts about this. Telling himself to calm down, Skasis hushed at Felix (the latest one had already understood that freaking out was one of the worst options here) and approached to the next column, filled with scarlet liquid. No one was there. The next one was ‘inhabited’, and the worst thing was that Skasis recalled this person. It was Ahita soaring in the turquoise slime-like substance. One more Triwayan, this time a Mage. Skasis had met her in the same affair with Bene and Felix. The following column was full of purple liquid and with no one inside, although the next one, full of see-through contents, had somebody in – a young man in shabby clothes, unfamiliar to Skasis. The final ‘tube’ contained orange ‘slime’.
  “Ahita?.. Wim! Are you kidding me?!” Felix exclaimed. Unlike Skasis, he recognized all three people trapped in the glass containers. Coincidence? Hardly. Attempting not to give out the unpleasant twisting sensation inside, Skasis squinted at the tube closest to him, the one with the male ‘inhabitant’.
  “Felix, I think they’re alive,” the kid whispered, having spotted thin lines of tiny bubbles floating out of the closest ‘sleeper’s’ mouth. “Come on, let’s not dilly-dally, it can’t get worse.”
  “I don’t believe you anymore,” Felix snarled, but let out a long exhale and turned his head up. “Look, this central tube is going into the ceiling. Do you think there’s another place?”
  “I’m sure,” Skasis approved. Felix unfurled his wings once more and flapped them – again to no avail. “Geez, I thought you learned how to fly after…”
  “I did!” Felix interrupted. “Gosh, I feel so heavy… Heck, I’m still more of a walker.”
  Skasis began pacing around the central tube, rubbing his chin:
  “P’haps we just have to follow the tubes. Hmmm… Look, Felix, there’s a hole next to that purple stream.” He pointed upwards, indicating the place, for it was seen only from a certain angle.
  “So what? I cannot squeeze in there. I cannot even fly up.”
  “I can get in there and get you… if you don’t mind…” Skasis hesitated. The ceiling was not as high as in the previous place here, but he still was not sure.
  “Do I get it right? You climb on top of me, get in and then somehow get me up cuz my freaking wings don’t work for now?” Felix’s voice was soaked with sarcasm, but Skasis decided to pay no attention to it.
  “Basically, yes.”
  Felix glared daggers at Skasis (the kid suspected that he was angry at himself for losing his main distinguishing ability), but crouched and cupped his hands, allowing the young Time Detective to step on them. Skasis obeyed and immediately grabbed the central column from both sides in order not to fall – what to say, he was not an acrobat.
  “I thought it would be easier, though you’re not so heavy, Skasis,” Felix panted, slowly standing up. And I thought that you were not THIS tall, Skasis thought to himself. Of course, with arms raised… Skasis almost bumped into the ceiling with his head and grabbed onto the hole’s edge. The layer of rock separating the place from the ‘upper floor’ was not so thick, and the kid, losing no time, began squeezing through it. Thank goodness there was enough space to get the head through – the rest came along almost smoothly, despite receiving some scratches as a result. However, the swimsuit did not rip, thank you very much.
  Skasis clumsily stood up. Now he was in a corridor quite similar to the one below, although with a lower ceiling. Right. First task: getting Felix here… This did not remain a riddle for too long. Skasis spotted a switch between two pipes, tugged it without the second thought and was right: some of the pipes formed a ladder which was then lowered into the newly-opened space in the floor.
  “How did you know there was a way up here?” Felix asked, having climbed up. The ladder and the way were gone in a second.
  “I did not know,” Skasis confessed.
  “Any more luck like this for us?”
  “Said the man who’s pure luck by his nature,” Skasis murmured.
  There was nowhere else to turn from here, so the duo went on making their way through the tunnel. Soon they reached the space which reminded Skasis of the TARDIS console room even more, although at the same time it was nothing like it. It was a room of cylindrical shape with rounded walls and flat ceiling supported by twelve Greek-styled columns, this time made of rock. Apart from that and again endless cables webbing the walls there was nothing more there than a huge glass container opposite to the entrance, filled with blurry substance.
  The place was so large that Skasis did not spot that every column had an addition to it – every single one had an unconscious merperson tied to it with wires.
  “So that’s where they were gone…” Felix mouthed in shock and almost ran to the column closest to him. Unlike the rest, it had a cracked base and was covered in numerous dents, and no wonder: the grey-tailed merman tied to it was really muscular. Like a mythical knight from a storybook, Skasis thought. But now his head covered in short light brown hair was dropped onto his shoulder, and the places where the wires holding him in place met his skin were covered in bruise remainings. “Holy clouds, if they even managed to capture Kiuni, then I’m not surprised.”
  “You know them? All of them?” Skasis asked.
  “Yes. Remember Oz? One of those kids, the mergirl, little blondie? Kiuni is her older brother. Don’t you stare at me like that, it’s okay to have such age difference among those folks.”
  No. No no no no no no. No emotions, Skasis Fane, no emotions... To distract himself from the wish to scream and shout Skasis thought that it would be nice to have a middle name. It would be really fitting in situations like these. Kyon Turlough, one of those who had witnessed Skasis’s ‘birth’ (not really a birth, to be honest, thanks to the progenation machine), was very proud of his middle name and always used it to express his dissatisfaction. It made him feel more… valuable, maybe. ‘I am Kyon Vislor Turlough, let me go now!’ Really massive… Having occupied his emotional part with this idea, Skasis did his best to switch to his rational part. If these merpeople are here, this means that there’s a reason for gathering (Skasis almost thought ‘harvesting’ and bit his tongue) them. Something in common, something in common… nothing in common apart from having bottom halves of fishes.
  “They’re still alive,” Felix wheezed: he was checking every single merperson while Skasis was fighting with himself. “Well, that’s reassuring.”
  Making himself not to look at the columns, Skasis approached to the glass capsule in the farther end of the place. And did not reach it: when he was about ten steps from it, the freezing sensation enveloped him, and all muscles stopped obeying. Skasis almost literally turned into a statue: only his eyes kept the ability to move. Judging by dead silence behind, the same happened to Felix.
  “Well, well, well. I didn’t have this headache for nothing.”
  The emotional part threatened to take over the rational, for Skasis knew this voice better than any else. The slow steps to the left of him came closer, and no one else than the Master – blond hair tousled, hoodie in white stripes (perhaps because of salt), eternal grin present – walked into Skasis’s field of vision.
  “Ah, are you not happy? Your old friend Master has worked out a new chance.” He seemed really delighted about himself, and Skasis half-knew that it was because he and Felix could not move. “What? Do you want me to let you go? Oh… It means that the resistance goes on excellently, and I do not want to waste my work.”
  You’d better told everything like all normal supervillains do, Skasis thought, and a horrible guess struck him. The Master must’ve been Lancelot Zalzar all along. How else could those manipulations with the equipment be explained?.. The Master made a face of fake sympathy:
  “Maybe I’ll tell you everything. And, believe me or not, I was not the one who brought you here. Lancelot Zalzar is just a snob who loves proving that he’s the best.”
  Did he hear me? Skasis glared at the Master, whose grin grew larger.
  “You’re still so fresh, kid. You should learn how to block my part of yours. Of course, the three parts of those itchy kids take over, but still… what’s the comparison?”
  Those itchy kids are my siblings, idiot! – Skasis thought. The Master pouted:
  “Awwwww, what a nerve! So, you’re curious to see what is going on? I improved the plan about you. Don’t worry, I am no longer interested in breaking the paradigm after which you were called. The new idea is much more interesting. Wishing. Wishing, what a power! I decided to make a new body for myself, one that would be me in a distance, for the psychograft makes me really sick. And then I could transfer myself into it when getting used. So, I decided to give it its own special feature, the anti-wishing one. For example, your biggest wish now is to be able to move, right? But you cannot. You both cannot. The stronger the wish, the stronger the response. And, most brilliantly, every wish has its own response.”
  Nutcase, Skasis replied in his mind and glanced at the closest unconscious merperson.
  “These fish-tails were needed to train my new body to respond to various factors. Physical strength, flexibility, quick-mindedness, bravery, despair – each of them has a bright expression of his or her own feeling.”
  Fine, I got it now, Skasis resumed. Now he felt as if he was going to explode from the inside: the tension between his ribs and spine reached critical level. But what about those three? Ahita, and Bene, and… and Wim? Wim. Skasis had never met anyone with such name.
  “Me neither,” the Master shrugged, strolling around the kid. “Those were required to perform trainings related to a very special feeling. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
  Bene. Bene and Felix. Benelix. It had been clear from the beginning that they are not indifferent towards each other. Quite possible that they could’ve become a couple during the period that Skasis hadn’t seen them.
  “Definitely. This is what humans and such-like species call love. Bond. Soulmate. Whatever you wanna call it. And I got even luckier, because I got three more types of resistance! Flight…” here the Master walked behind Skasis’s back, and a snapping sound followed – he must’ve mocked Felix in some way (this is why he wasn’t able to fly, Skasis realized), “…energy-spreading nicknamed magic and devotion! Ohhhh, this Earth fluffy guy is really devoted, like a friend from a bitter tale… Ah, well. Although, not only wishing powers are the advantages of my new body. It is practically fleshless by nature, and therefore has the lowest level of vulnerability. So, just enjoy yourselves, boys, and I’ll go check the list over.”
Skasis (belongs to :iconatlantihero-kyoxei: ) gets out of the deep waters, but gets himself into a deeper trouble. Much deeper...
References:
1) Skasis recalls the 'heart-shaped herb' from the Black Panther movie.
2) 'Hank Skywalker' is a reference to Anakin Skywalker.
3) The name 'Kiuni' refers to Around the World in Eighty Days (this name, although spelled a bit differently - 'Kiouni' - is the name of the elephant which the characters hire in India).
4) The mentioned Kyon Turlough is the son of Vislor Turlough, the Classic Doctor Who character with a BIT of a temper.
5) The Master calls Wim 'a devoted friend, like from a bitter tale', referring to Oscar Wilde's tale The Devoted Friend (which does not end happily).


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