Sol's Shine and the Kingdom of Water

Chapter 12 Remember Me

Brook made his way toward the southside of Atlaqua to meet up with Sol and Aria. When he got there, he could see a large crowd of atheras surrounding them and the guards struggling to get through that crowd to properly escort them. Brook figured that the best way to get them to stop huddling around them would be to use his actions instead of words. Brook wasn't so used to the trident yet but he decided to raise it into the air and soon enough, water blasted from each of the three prongs.

Rain was pouring down on everyone in that crowd and all eyes followed to its source which is where Brook stood. This gave an opening for Sol and Aria to leave the area with Brook so they could all talk in a more private space. As it turned out, Sol really did have a disembodied head with him but other than that, it was actually a face Brook recognized. Brook took them to the lodge they were all staying at and closed themselves in one of the rooms while locking the door.

"How the heck did you find her!?" Brook asked Sol. "You mean Aria?" "No! I mean the head you have! This is the one who has been guiding me to this kingdom!" He said to Sol as he couldn't believe he would have gotten to meet her face to face. "I guess you can see that my encounter with Inti didn't go so well." The siren said to him. "You don't say? How are you still alive?" Brook said back to her.

"Apparently sirens can only be killed if you eviscerate their head." Aria told Brook as her eyes looked toward his trident. "Why did Khenari have to choose you? I wanted to help this kingdom. Does she not even trust me?" Aria asked. "The simple answer is yes, she doesn't trust you. She doesn't trust anyone living here. That's why he was chosen." Sol pointed to Brook. "I suppose that makes sense. I wouldn't either but it still stings." Aria said.

"That's actually one thing I wanted to talk to you about. You need to smack some sense into your mom." Brook told Aria. "What?" "I'm saying that your mom's first priority is to have me marry you just so the trident can stay within your royal family! Not only do I think that's absurd, but not a single mention on how we were going to stop Inti or help this kingdom was made!" "Huh!? I don't even know who you are! That's insane!" Aria was flabbergasted. "His name is Brook." Sol made his input.

"I'm glad you agree. Maybe you should try to convince your mom about the same thing because we clearly can't." Brook told her. "I wouldn't be able to convince my mom to do anything, that's why I left Atlaqua." Sol stepped between them to remind both atheras of the real issue. "Look, it's clear that we aren't going to get much help from Atlaqua. Let's just focus on helping this kingdom out ourselves." Sol said. "Taking care of Inti would be helping this kingdom." Aria said. "So how are we going to do that when we don't know where he is? We can't just wait for him to make another move." Brook said.

Noise can be heard from the other room next to them as if someone had accidently knocked over a few things. Sol unlocked and opened their door to make sure there weren't any strangers eavesdropping. It turned out to be Yvonne who was rummaging through her own things, looking for something. "Who are you?" Sol asked her. She quickly turned around to meet him staring at her from the doorway. "You didn't see me." Yvonne told the prince and continued to look for a certain object until she found it. She pulled out a couple of lockpicks from her pile of knick knacks.

Brook and Aria came out of the room with Sol to see what she was up to. "Yvonne what are you doing?" Brook asked her. When Yvonne finally got what she came here for, her full attention finally confronted Sol. That was also when she noticed the siren's head in his hands. She could see it blink, being an indication to her that it was still alive in some way. Although to Sol, Brook, and Aria, her next reaction after seeing it would, at first glance, seem unusual.

"Cinder?" Yvonne's eyes started to water and she ran over to Sol, taking away the head that he held. "Cinder, is that really you?" "I see that you are speaking to me but I do not know who this Cinder is. Perhaps you are mistaken." What the siren told her made Yvonne's heart break. "Oh gods, what did they do to you?" It wasn't hard for Brook to understand what was going on since he had heard Yvonne's story. If anything else, this became a new revelation on where each siren comes from and might shed a little bit of hope for Lilac and Ella's mom.