The Triton

Chapter 12: Specter

There were times when he wished he could feel. Emotions are simple, easy, controlling and simplistic for a merfolk or human. There was only one he'd ever felt.

Hate.

It was the hate that kept him alive, those nearly two decades. He clung onto it far after hope had faded. Hope is no emotion, it is a power, a strength, the wings that grow behind a falling man. But it is a fickle thing––all can hold onto hope and endeavor it alive in the infinite brightness that is life, that is suffering, until the moment it is gone. And then you fall to your death.

Humanity, the merfolk, they so easily assign value or their 'feelings' to the darkness of the world. In their "darkest" moments, no cloud of perfect black surrounds, no, it is the blinding white blizzard of despair, like staring into the sun. It is an encompassment beyond compare.

Specter was glad he was neither human nor merfolk.

It was all he could do just to survive, to escape Eleanora's ambush. In his escape, he had been separated from Sasha––though they would find each other, in time. They always did.

But he had been separated from her. The human girl. But she would live, Eleanora would ensure that.

He still did not know who she truly was. She was no ordinary human, that he knew as completely as he knew the shadows. And there were probably only a few people in this world who did, and only one of whom he knew he could speak with. He had to know, and so, he went.

There was only one connection to the Void that Merfolk knew of in this world. There were many, many more that he alone knew their location, the nearest near minutes away. Time passed in a blur like the saltwater he swam through, delving into a cave that split into tunnels and wove away from the surface. The minute he entered the first tunnel he felt the connection to his homeland guide him through the weave of rock and water.

At its floor sat a familiar sight. A blackstone pool sat, a perfect circle of speckled black and silver, like the human's night sky. It was liquid, but viscous and thick, alive in its own movement. Specter knelt before it, inhaling and exhaling its scent, its power.

It had been far too long.

He placed his face mere inches above it. No reflection looked back. He exhaled and released his head into it.

The moment before the inhale, it was painful. The silence between his breaths was enough to fill him with the infinity of the Void in all its connections, its memories, and currents, its strength and its weakness, its order and its chaos. It stole from him his heartbeat and filled him with his heart's strength and purpose.

Home. The place that never really leaves you.

He would not enter, not fully––he would not allow himself the pleasure. He might forget the world behind me.

He opened his mind, Looking into the cosmos. Their bond reaffirmed, and a tendril of his conscious split and sprinted to his side. The bond between siblings never truly breaks.

"Eiylo," he said, his consciousness appearing before his powerful lithe form. It was rigid, each snow-scaled inch of his muscle. He was where he always was. This was the Pool of Dreams.

"Dane." His voice was...changed. A hint of strain, and he spoke the Hunter's true name.

He had not heard that name in decades. It startled him how unfamiliar he was with himself.

"Keeper," Specter spoke.

"Hunter," his reply came. The hint of strain beneath his words once more.

The strain...it troubled Specter's mind. "What is changed?"