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Nights on the Albatross are silent now.
There is no wind in the frigid black sea, no sun or moon to pull the tides, no birds surviving to wheel overhead. There’s just nothing.
It’s eerie, this awful stillness. Gillion had finally gotten used to the rolling waves and the way the floor tilted under his feet every few moments. He’d finally adjusted to the constant, cacophonous crashing of foam against the hull and wind in his ears – sounds that his crewmates never seemed to notice despite the way they assailed Gillion from all sides at every hour of the day.
The scraping of breath, too, was something he’d had to adjust to. It was loud, and constant, and unfamiliar, and clearly also something only he struggled with hearing. Beneath the waves, one cannot hear the water flooding someone’s lungs to be pushed out through their gills; it was a silent affair, marked only by the pulsing of the slits along their throat and ribs. On the surface, he heard it all – every wheezing inhale and hissing sigh, every gasp and every pant.
It had grown familiar to him, eventually. Comforting even. The crashing of waves was rhythmic and constant, something to be relied upon, something he could focus on to drag himself out of the thrumming of battle and back to the soothing safety of his ship and crew. Their breaths, too, eventually grew to be a relief, a promise that he had not failed in his task of protecting them yet, an assurance that they still lived, that they were still safe at his side.
Of course, nothing is sacred in the black sea.
First the waves, the wind, the water – all of it plunged into darkness and corruption. Still and silent beneath them, the only sound the water made were the quiet ripples of their hull cutting through the ichor and the soft splash of their oars. Both sounds seemed at once unsettlingly silent and nerve-rendingly loud in this vacuum, and Gillion’s ears always hurt from the strain of it.
Then, of course, of course, the silence of failure was quick to follow. Chip’s breathing, choked and weak and gurgling, cut off by the wet hacking coughs and splattering blood, and then the squelch and tearing of his chest, lungs, throat as Gillion watch his jaw first and then his teeth bend and crack from the pressure of his heart tearing free before them in a shower of blood and ivory shards. His chest was still, concave from the crushing blows he'd received when Gillion wasn’t fast enough to shield him, and he breathed no more.
Chip’s startlingly choppy snores were gone from the nighttime chorus of snuffles and sighs, and Gillion ached with the silence of his breath. It was a ragged wound cut into his safety, his home, and it refused to close, torn open yet again each time Chip sat beside him in the library, silent as the sea and never sleeping. Still, Gillion could almost soothe his fraying nerves with the chorus of Gryffon’s ship-shaking snores, Queen’s gentle hums, and Jay’s half-mumbled words. It hurt, but it was something in the silence.
Then, of course, the rest of the crew left, too.
So now the Albatross, once full of sound, is silent in the dark. His nights are spent in a room for three with an empty bunk, and only one set of whistling breaths. He often finds himself holding his breath, straining to hear, straining to see if he can catch the edge of another snore in the darkness. He’s always met with silence. It’s always just him.
The emptiness crawls beneath his skin – or, what’s left of it, in any case – and rips at his nerves. He is alone, alone, alone here, with these silent seas and steady ship and unbreathing captain. He is alone in the dark and the quiet once again, and yet, like all things in Gillion’s life, he adjusts to it. He must.
He finds a way to sleep – to close his eyes and pretend there are two sets of lungs breathing in this room, rather than one unsuited for such a long time in the air whilst the other shriveled and rotted from his best friend’s chest days ago. He convinces himself the silence is a good thing. Sound draws attention, draws the Hollowed, draws danger. Sound means he has failed. Silence means they are safe.
So of course, when Gillion is woken by the breaking of this silence, his abused nerves light up like lightning.
Somewhere up above him in the dark, there is a thump and rustling, and a heavy, wet squelching that sets his teeth on edge. It’s a sound Gillion knows far too well now – the splattering ichor spilling off of the Hollowed’s mangled bodies will never leave his mind, not since he smote one and had its thoughts, its memories, its desires drilled into his head and twisted to intermingle with his own until he couldn’t tell where he ended, and it began.
“Chip,” he hisses into the dark.
Why did his co-captain not wake him? The enchantment on his swords ensures they cannot be ambushed. Surely, Gillion would have felt the alarms, and even if he hadn’t, Chip would have woken him. But no, Gillion thinks, taking a shaking breath and staring up at where the ceiling is slowly taking form as his eyes adjust. The alarm would have woken him. He doesn’t sleep deeply these days, not since entering the black sea, and certainly not since he stopped sleeping in his barrel for fear of waking in that choking corrupted void that infects the water here.
There is no answer, and Gillion’s spine chills.
He slowly turns over in his borrowed hammock. Across the room, Chip’s hammock hangs where it always has, strung up on two hooks screwed into the ceiling beams. The fabric is worn, and Gillion knows that if there were much color here, it would be a faded red, well–loved and bleached by the sunlight that used to filter in through the portholes. A mess of blankets spill out of it – Chip’s heavy woolen blanket dangles off the edge, the knitted one from Roofus tumbling over with it. The hand-sewn quilt Queen made him is twisted on the floor beneath it, tangled with the many cheap throws strewn about in what looks to be a panic. Worse than that, the hammock is empty, hanging light and still rather than bulging with the weight of a body within.
Chip is gone.
Above, there is another soft thump and a wet snap. Gillion is certain now – there is something on the ship that shouldn’t be. There is something on the ship that shouldn’t be, and Chip is gone.
Gillion rolls out of his hammock, hearing his bare feet hit the wooden floor with a too-quiet-too-loud thud. Chip’s swords are still propped against the wall behind his hammock, meaning he left – or was taken – unarmed. Perhaps that’s why they weren’t alarmed.
Gillion ignores the fact that he knows that’s not how the magic works.
Instead, he turns to his barrel, crusted with salt where the uncorrupted water has evaporated out over time. Destiny’s Blade leans against it in its simple black sheath. The golden cross-guard does not gleam in the darkness, not as it would in the moonlight, and the grief that he cannot seem to adjust to bites into his throat. He swallows hard around it and grasps the hilt and sheath to pull the blade free.
The weight is familiar in his hand, an extension of his arm – the one cold comfort yet untouched by these blackened waters. He has lost much here – too much – but his sword has proven loyal despite it all, returning to his hand again and again even as the wind and the waves and his crewmates lives have fallen still.
With his blade in hand, he creeps toward the door of their cabin. That wet squelching and shuffling from above has not faded, setting Gillion’s auricular fins flicking as the sound crawls along his spine and aches in his jaw. He cracks the door open, wincing at the loud squeal that they never bothered to fix, and instinctively sniffs the air.
Immediately, he has to press the back of his hand to his mouth to silence the retching that tears free of his throat. He always forgets the way this entire ocean reeks of corruption. The miasma is thick and vile, like inhaling the black ichor below, and it slides over his tongue and down his throat to settle heavy in his stomach and lungs. It’s overwhelming in its power, but worse than that, it’s not evil. It sears the edges of his holiness – burns his nostrils and clogs his gills – but he does not have a name for it.
And, of course, on top of that, the fetor of undeath and decay has recently permeated the ship, sinking into the cracks between the wood and making a home there. It is a constant, choking reminder of his failure – a smell that twist his deeply rooted instincts and pulls, making his hands twitch around the hilt of his blade and forcing his teeth to bare. He cannot escape it. He can only clench his jaw to stop himself from snarling and remind himself it is his own fault that this rot has invaded their home. If he had been faster, stronger, cleverer, his best friend would not be the thing he has become. It is Gillion’s responsibility to fix it, not to make it worse.
When the wave of nausea passes and he is no longer at risk of losing the precious little in his stomach, Gillion stands from where he had slumped against the wall. He pushes off the hand he had used to brace himself, thumb tucked around the pommel so as not to drop his sword. The sounds from above have not ceased, and instead have become an arrhythmic tearing – the thing above deck remains, and Gillion prays Chip has made the smart decision to hide from it while he remains unarmed.
One by one he climbs the stairs to the hatch, wincing with every creak and groan they make beneath his weight. He never did figure out how to move silently the way his friends do, but he’d always figured what he lacked in stealth he compensated for in strength. There’s no need to sneak past an enemy when his blade could cleave through them as easily as gutting a fish, after all. In this unholy sea, however, he has learned the value of remaining unseen, and has been shown just how weak he truly is.
At the top, Gillion pushes open the wooden trapdoor, and can’t quite stop it in time before it hits the deck with a hollow thunk. He winces, freezing for a moment and listening for the creature, but the shuffling and wet noises don’t cease. Dread drips down Gillion’s spine, sinking like a stone within him; something is wrong here. Slowly, hesitantly, Gillion takes the last few steps up onto the deck, holding his sword ready before him.
He wishes he had stayed below.
It’s pitch dark on the black sea at night. The only light shed is from lanterns the crew lights, and they learned quickly after their first night to extinguish them and to navigate by habit and touch if they could not see in the dark like Gillion and Gryffon could.
Gillion wishes he could not see in the dark, now. He wishes he were fumbling around blind, feeling the walls with his fins and tail and hissing Chip’s name in the darkness. Then, at least, he might not have seen his own face staring back at him in a deep, sticky pool of blood.
His clone is sprawled on the deck in front of him, limbs askew and hair tangled. His face lolls to the side, turned to him, and Gillion’s throat hitches.
It has no eyes.
He is looking at himself through dark, empty sockets and he can see straight through to the hollow void within. A cascade of some kind of fluid spills from the gaping holes in his face, mixing with the slick blue blood that pools beneath him. Deep scratches mar the skin around where his eyes should be, tattering the eyelids and crusting with blood – removing eyes without a sharp object is a struggle, and Gillion finds himself wishing he didn’t know that.
Beneath the eyes, his doppelganger’s jaw hangs open. The bones crack and twist at a sickening angle, torn far too wide to be natural, ripping the skin of his cheeks to hang in stringy tatters. His teeth are stained deep blue from the blood pouring over lips and jaw and flaps of flesh, and horrifically, Gillion can see the source is not the ripped skin, but instead it is the stump where his tongue has been torn from its place in his mouth.
Gillion feels sick. The deck sways beneath his feet despite the stillness of the sea and his lungs hitch painfully. Nausea grips his throat again, but he is far too scared to retch, terrified of making too much sound, terrified of drawing the attention of the thing hunched over the body. He cannot move. His fins fold themselves flat against his limbs, and his tail slides firmly around his leg so that it cannot be grabbed. His gills flare painfully in the dry air, aching for oxygen that will not come, but he cannot bring his hands up to cover them.
It's hard to even recognize Chip beneath the blood. His co-captain hunches over the mangled corpse, splashed brutally with deep blue gore. It drips from his face, his jaw, his hands, his chest. It stains his coat, turning the vibrant red sleeves blacker than the trim, obscuring the delicate gold detailing Chip had insisted on having. Not even Queen’s embroidery and loving patches have escaped the mess, the thread and patterned fabric absorbing the blood until Gillion is sure it will never truly wash out.
He doesn’t even have his illusion up – not fully, anyway. Gillion can make out the flash of white bone, a hollow socket, rotting flesh. Chip’s face is gaunt and grey and shriveled where it still clings to his skull, and viscera cakes the stringy remains of his hair. Muscle and sinew slough off his ribs where his open coat reveals his chest. Gillion can see past his ribs to his organs – to the shriveled, torn-open lungs and rotting intestines. He can see the place where his heart once connected to arteries and veins, and the shattered hole it left in his esophagus when it was torn out.
Chip buries his hands in the cavity of the doppelganger’s abdomen. Gillion can see now that it has been torn open, vicious claw marks ripping through the soft belly from just below the ribs all the way to the navel. Gillion’s stomach turns, seeing the ragged edges of the skin, the yellow layers of fat revealed beneath, the severed muscles on either side. These are not the clean, precise gashes of a predator, no. These are the result of brutal determination from something worse – something desperate.
Chip digs around in the blood and gore and viscera within his doppelganger’s gut. There is an awful wet squelching as Chip pushes aside intestines and flesh so that they spill over the edges of the ragged hole and hit the deck with a wet slap. Chip latches onto something else inside and he tugs at it, sending more blood spilling from the open wounds to paint over the darkened pattern of stripes that are so very similar to Gillion’s own. The sharp tang of copper settles on Gillion’s tongue. It nearly overtakes the constant stench of corruption in the black sea, and he gags on it.
Chip braces his other hand, slick with gore, on the corpse’s sternum and pulls, tearing the liver free in a shower of blood and bile. Gillion cannot tear his eyes away, even despite the tears burning them, as Chip raises the organ in shaking hands and opens his mouth. White bone and cracked teeth swing open, and Gillion watches as they sink into the raw meat he holds.
Chip has never eaten neatly, has never been pristine or proper the way Jay is, the way he encouraged Ollie to be. Chip tears into his food viciously, devouring it in bites too large for him to swallow, inhaling it so quickly one might question if he ever had food on his plate at all. Even so, he never left a mess behind, never wasted a crumb, never abandoned even a drop of sauce. Gillion understood, because he ate much the same way, and he knew that despite their differences, he and Chip shared the same reasoning.
There are very few similarities here. Chip still eats viciously, but he is not clean. He tears into the flesh ravenously, as if he has been starving for so long, he cannot bring himself to care about how the food is prepared, nor for how he eats it, so long as he can swallow as much of it as he can fit in his mouth. There is a splatter of blood that freshens the stains on the collar of his coat and drips down his mouth and fingers, rivulets racing down his wrists to soak into the cuffs of his sleeves. He's hardly finished chewing, hasn’t even swallowed, before he’s ripping into another bite. It is desperate and bloody, and Gillion cannot look away.
The body beneath him is missing so much, and Gillion could sob with fear. The cavity in his abdomen was not simply torn open, but that the gap was widened by tearing off chunks of flesh and fat and muscle. Based on Chip’s sudden appetite and the noises he heard before, Gillion understands that it’s safe to assume he ate those too.
There are things missing within. Pools of blood coat the abdominal walls, more blood than Gillion knows should ever escape into the cavity of someone’s chest, and it spills out through the slits of his gills. The organs inside are torn asunder, pulled out of place, some spilling their contents out to mix with the rest of the viscera. Other organs are missing entirely. Gillion cannot see his doppelganger’s kidneys, and much of the muscle of the abdominal wall has been torn away. Based on the violent clawing further up in the chest, he can hazard a guess that the heart is missing as well. In fact, he would bet every piece of gold he’s ever thrown overboard that the heart was the first thing Chip had taken once he’d ripped him open.
Gillion cannot breathe, staring at the display before him. Chip tears another chunk of flesh free from the liver with a sickening sound, dull human teeth and bony fingers digging into the meat of it. Gillion watches it run down his face like a juicy steak, dripping down to splatter on his doppelganger’s cheek.
He is shaking and he cannot breathe. It’s hard to see the fresh blood where it blends with all the rest. Grey skin and faded stripes are painted blue beneath the gore. His own face stares back at him, eyeless, tongueless, heartless, and Gillion cannot breathe.
Chip is eating him, and he cannot fucking breathe.
His sword slips out of his hand with a heart-stopping clatter.
Gillion chokes on a terrified gasp. Chip’s head whips up toward him, dripping deep blue blood from his stained teeth and rotting lips. His fingers clench around the liver, rivulets of blood leaking from the newly punctured wounds to join the spreading pool at his knees. Gillion watches him swallow, watches nauseously as he can track the sickly slide of the meat down his esophagus to land in his stomach. His eye – because it’s only the one, with half of his illusion dropped – pierces into him, sharp despite the death-rot fogging over the iris and pupil.
He’s not seeing Gillion – he knows this like he knows a dagger cuts through flesh. He’s not seeing Gillion, he is only seeing meat.
Chip is undead, unholy, a monster. Gillion knows this – how could he not? Every nerve in his body has been set alight with the instinct to strike him down since he died, to smite him until he is nothing but ashes. Yet Gillion could not bring himself to give up on Chip, could not allow himself to believe his co-captain, his crew, his best friend could possibly be turned evil so suddenly. He doesn’t believe Chip is evil, he can’t be – of that, Gillion’s certain.
But now, the certainty sets in that this devotion has blinded him to the unavoidable core of his new nature.
Chip stares at him, and the fear is so much worse in the silence. Gillion’s blood pounds in his ears in time with his clone’s blood dripping from Chip’s teeth. Chip does not make a sound – he doesn’t huff or snarl or breathe – and Gillion cannot move. Chip is still, so still, and Gill is trapped in the terrified instinct of knowing that a silent predator is much, much more dangerous than one you can hear. They stare at each other in petrified silence for what feels like an eternity, waiting, waiting, and then…
Chip blinks.
Chip does not have eyelids anymore. Gillion remembers Chip’s complaints the day they rotted off, though he never saw the difference through his illusion. Chip does not have eyelids, nor, as Gillion has just learned, does he have eyes, and yet he watches, trembling, as Chip blinks, once, twice more. Another eye flickers to life in the empty socket, and the death-rot clears away from them, revealing bright brown irises just two shades off from what Gillion knows they should be.
He watches Chip’s illusion slide back over him. Skin and muscle stitch itself back together over his face, dotting his nose with freckles that map out the wrong constellations. His scar tears into his cheek ever-so-slightly off kilter, raw and pink in a way it has never been whilst Gillion has known him. His hair fills in and curls around his jaw, lacking the characteristic sun-bleaching that turned it gold in the sun of brighter seas. Flesh fills in the gaps over his ribs and ripples down his arms to cover his fingertips once more. His scars have changed, warped at the edges, and his tattoos writhe not with magic, but with the unsteady hand of memory.
He cannot cover the blood.
Chip blinks again, and sparks of light spring into his eyes despite the pitch-black darkness that walls them in. He wears a mimicry of life, and Gillion doesn’t know how he didn’t see the wrongness in it sooner.
“Gill,” Chip rasps, the wheeze of a dead man. Blood spills from his lips, phthalo blue and ichorous black dripping down together.
Gillion doesn’t move. He hardly breathes. His heart pounds in his ears far too loudly. He is terrified, and for once it is not for Chip’s life, but for his own.
Chip’s eyebrows furrow, and Gillion watches his eyes drop down to settle on the body beneath him. His eyes widen, flickering over the carved open cavity in his belly, the organs pulled out of place and spilling over his abdomen, the blood staining every surface in sight. He seems to remember, then, the half-eaten liver clutched in his hands, still dripping down his wrists, and his fingers clench around it, shaking. He looks up at Gillion and his eyes are wide and desperate, his ruined jaw working open and closed with words he doesn’t say. He looks down again, at the shredded blue skin and stripes, and the mangled, eyeless face that once passed for Gillion himself but now could barely even pass as triton.
Chip looks shocked, an awful, resigned grief mingling with fear. He slowly lowers the hunk of liver he’d been holding until, at last, it tumbles free and lands in the blood with a splash.
“I didn’t– I didn’t mean to–” he says, his voice small and cracking. His eyes snap up to meet Gillions, and he knows that if Chip could still cry, they’d be brimming with tears. “I was so hungry, Gill.”
Gillion doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t think he could say anything, even if he did know. He just stares at Chip, bloody and shaking over a corpse that may as well be his own. His doppelganger looks so small, much smaller than Gillion feels, though he knows they’re the same size, and he is violently aware of just how helpless he had been, just how helpless they made him.
Before they gave him those cards to draw, he could have defended himself, would have defended himself, but instead they left him weak and helpless, trapped on the same ship as a monster, and they didn’t even think to protect him.
“Gill,” Chip pleads, and he pushes himself up, stumbling towards Gillion with a hand outstretched.
Gillion jolts back. With a click, his armor slides out of his gauntlets to shield his body, hard metal plating defending his soft belly from hungry claws.
Chip recoils, betrayal flashing across his face. “Gill, please.”
Gillion flinches. He didn’t mean to do that – didn’t even think about his armor until it appeared. But his limbs still tremble, and his heart still pounds, and Chip is still covered in triton blood. He is afraid, but worse than that, he is afraid of his best friend.
“You ate him.” He manages to squeeze out. His lungs feel like they’re being crushed.
“Gillion–”
“Gods– Chip– you ate him!” His armor rattles from how hard he’s shaking. It’s the only sound in this blackened sea besides the drip, drip, drip from Chip’s jaw to the wooden deck. His own breaths whistle through his throat, and it’s the only breath he can hear.
Chip looks down at his own hands, at the gore and viscera that climbs up his wrists to stain his coat. “I didn’t–” he says again, bringing his hands in to tuck close to his chest. Gillion wonders if he’s touching bone, clinging to ribs. There’s no flesh left to provide him warmth or comfort. There’s no heartbeat there to feel.
At last, he looks up again. His eyes are desperate, begging, flicking back and forth between Gillion’s own with that unnatural shine. “I’m not gonna eat you, Gill.”
“You ate him.” Gillion’s mind feels like it’s tumbling over itself, reeling with what he just saw. He cannot think, he cannot breathe, he cannot move. He can only cling to the only part of this that he understands. “You ate him.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Chip insists. His voice sounds broken, wet, scraping through torn lungs and damaged throat. “I was so hungry, Gill, I’ve been starving, and I just– I– I didn’t mean to do it!”
He starts to pace, footfalls lighter than the average person but no less frantic. His fingers scrabble for purchase in the sleeves of his coat, clutching his arms close over his stomach. Gillion tracks his movements, back and forth, back and forth, flinching each time he crosses too close. Behind Chip’s boots, the empty hollows in his own face still stare at him. Nausea threatens to climb back up his throat.
“You don’t– you don’t get it, Gill. I didn’t mean to– I didn’t want to do this. I tried so, so fucking hard to not do this! I didn’t want to do this! But I’ve been so hungry since I died, and I just– I keep getting hungrier. And I tried– I tried just eating our rations, I thought maybe I was still… I don’t know – alive enough to need to eat? But real food hurts, Gill. Eating, drinking – it all just hurts, and I kept getting hungrier.”
Chip stops and looks at him, pleading, terrified.
“I think I knew, Gill, from the start.” His voice cracks on the words, small and weak around the blood in his mouth. “I just– I didn’t want to admit it to myself. But I tried so fucking hard. And I was doing so well. I was ignoring it so well, Gill, and then I just– I don’t know!”
Gillion sucks in a shuddering breath. His muscles feel like they’re wound tight, like a spring stretched as far as it can go. Still, he forces himself to uncurl his tail and take a cautious step forward, even as his fins remain flat, tucked tight against his limbs. “You’re hungry?” He rasps.
“Yes!” Chip sobs, an awful, dry wail that sends more blood and ichor spilling from his lips. “All the fucking time, Gillion. It never goes away – it only gets worse. But I don’t– I don’t want to eat you! I don’t want to eat anybody! I just want it to stop!”
“And… eating him–” Another step. He swallows down the bile in his throat and tears his eyes away from his own desecrated face. “Did it… did it make it stop, Chip?”
Chip looks disgusted. “Yeah,” he spits. “It did.”
Gillion chances another look at the clone’s body, at his body, and shudders. The rattle of his armor bolsters him to press on. “So, you’re not hungry anymore?” Another step.
Chip’s mouth twitches, his fingers tightening in the fabric of his coat. “For now. It’ll come back. It always fucking comes back.”
Gillion looks at him – through the shaking and the bile and the blood and the fear, Gillion looks at him. A monster stands before him, undead, unholy, but he was not always a monster. He does not want to be a monster. Gillion cannot deny his true nature any longer, but he cannot bring himself to believe Chip would ever want to be a monster.
And though his breaths still catch in his lungs, and his armor clatters as he shakes, he reaches a hand out to Chip, to his best friend who is scared, and alone, and shouldering a burden that Gillion cannot lift from his shoulders.
“Come here,” he whispers, and sees the way Chip looks up at him with guilt and resignation.
Chip stumbles forward the few feet that still separate them. His boots splash in the puddles of blood that have stretched to cover the deck and Gillion pulls his eyes up so he doesn’t have to see it. He cannot get the body out of his periphery without looking away from Chip.
Gillion catches him, ignoring the spikes of alarm that shoot down his spine when his hands meet bone instead of flesh. He pulls Chip in, tucks him close, presses his other hand to the back of Chip’s skull. His gills flex shut and his head dips, instinctively protecting his vulnerable throat from the creature in his arms.
Chip shivers against him, tense despite his lack of muscles. Gillion shouldn’t be able to feel the warm, slick blood smearing his armor, but his mind fills in the gaps, and he clenches his jaw as his stomach lurches violently. He holds Chip as gently as he is able, feeling the monster – his best friend – shake apart in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” Chip whimpers against him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” Gillion murmurs, though he doesn’t. Not really.
“If you’re gonna do it, just do it, Gill. Stop this. Don’t do this.”
“I’m not going to kill you.” If he slides his hand down Chip’s skull just right, he can almost pretend he’s petting his hair the way he used to.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re my friend, Chip.” Gillion cannot get the taste of blood out of his mouth. It’s choking, cloying, coppery – overwhelming with every shallow breath he pulls in, but breathing through his nose is worse. “I’m not going to kill you.”
He pretends not to hear Chip’s answering whisper of, “You should.”
Instead, he presses his cheek to Chip’s head, grateful that the bandana is still dry. He sways them back and forth gently, a poor mimicry of the rocking of their ship in the waves of other seas. “Come on,” he says, smoothing his hand down Chip’s spine. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
It’s too easy to pick Chip up. Human bones are heavy, but they’re nearly nothing without the weight of muscle and fat that should wrap around to protect him. Chip is nearly nothing in his arms. He clenches his jaw as Chip wraps his legs around his waist and throws his arms over Gillion’s shoulders, burying his face in the crook of his elbow. Chip is not going to hurt him. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t possibly through this armor, anyway.
He carries Chip down through the open hatch, pausing only long enough to grab the rope tied around the handle and tug it closed behind him. It’s only a few short steps into their quarters then, back to their hammocks with their blankets thrown aside and spilling out onto the floor like the intestines they’d left up on deck. Gillion swallows down another wave of nausea and prays Gryffon and Drey don’t wake up before they can deal with the corpse.
Blood still drips from Chip’s mouth and hands and chest, so Gillion decides against setting him on any of the hammocks. He doesn’t want to have to figure out how to wash blood out of their bedding in the black sea. He turns, instead, to his barrel.
Tucked away against the far wall, his barrel sits beneath a porthole that usually lets in a wash of moonlight at night. Now, though, it’s just another black hole set into the wall, looking out into the void beyond.
Gill sets Chip down on the closed lid of his barrel, hearing his bones clack and clatter on the wood. Chip seems resigned – his shoulders slump and he picks at the soaking fabric of his sleeve cuff. Gillion’s heart twists.
He turns to the basin they keep in the corner for washing up and drags it over to Chip. There are still a few washcloths hanging over the side of it, though the water within has long since been emptied. The Decanter of Endless Water is quick to fill it, the water spilling out blissfully clear and clean, and Gillion dunks a washcloth in to soak it.
He doesn’t say anything as he works, dragging the washcloth over Chip’s hands and between his fingers to wipe away the blood and bits of gristle. Chip doesn’t say anything either. He just watches Gillion with those too-bright eyes, still reflecting a light that isn’t there. Gillion shudders under it, his fins flickering. He’s kneeling here before Chip in a blasphemous imitation of prayer, and he can’t help but think about how easily Chip could overpower him like this. His captain is fast, and Gillion is clumsy. Chip could have him on the ground with teeth in his throat in seconds.
He dunks the washcloth in the basin again and watches the water turn blue.
He drags the washcloth over Chip’s chest, pressing his hand to his mouth to stop himself from gagging when he slips off of the last of the rotting flesh still clinging to his bones and nearly plunges his fingers between Chip’s ribs. Chip catches his wrist, something pained and apologetic in his eyes, but Gillion shakes him off and instead focuses on tracing those bones gently, following the outline he can just barely see when Chip allows the illusion to flicker. He tries not to dislodge the crushed pieces closest to his sternum.
Another dunk. Azure swirls infect the water. The last time Gillion saw this, he had been stabbed in his sleep.
Now he cleans Chip’s face. He places a tender hand on Chip’s jaw to hold him steady and tries not to think about how his pinky curls around hollow bone. Chip’s eyes meet his for a moment, shining in the darkness. He feels his jaw squeeze shut, teeth clicking together. Gillion’s fins flutter, and he touches the washcloth to Chip’s exposed cheekbone.
The blood here is stubborn, clinging to the porous texture of Chip’s skull and sticking in the cracks. He manages to wipe it off of the skin that remains, but not without the cost of little bits of flesh shredding away at his touch. Chip hardly seems to notice the loss.
Eventually it becomes clear that the washcloth has done all it can, and Gillion instead shifts to shaping the water with his own magic so that it runs up Chip’s arms and chest and neck. Chip shivers and tilts his head up – a latent instinct, most likely, as Gillion knows he can’t feel it. The water rises clear up the bloody expanse of his false flesh and slips away cerulean, carrying with it the weight of Chip’s sins. Gillion tries not to pay attention to how dark the basin has become. The water caresses Chip’s face – his jaws, his lips, his cheeks – and leaves them clean. Gillion lets it run down as Chip’s eyes flutter shut and allows him to pretend they’re tears.
The rest of the water, he guides back into the basin. It splashes into the pool, deep navy blue, nearly as dark as the blood itself. Gillion holds his hands out over the basin, still trembling, and slams them together. The water destroys itself, atoms all turning inward until there is nothing, carrying the blood away with it. The basin is empty, and Gillion allows himself to stare into it, breathing heavily, for just a few moments.
Then he lifts the Decanter and fills it again.
“Your coat.” He says to Chip, the first words to break the silence between them.
Chip blinks again, another illusion. Gillion wonders if it makes him feel better to pretend. “Huh?” He asks.
“Your coat, it’s…” The taste of copper is heavy on his tongue. “It needs to be washed. Give me it.”
“Oh,” Chip says, seeming to finally realize what has soaked his sleeves and turned them black. “Oh, right.”
He fumbles to untie the sash at his waist, finger bones clicking, and then carefully slides his coat off of his shoulders.
His scars are wrong, Gillion thinks numbly as he watches Chip reveal more of his façade. His freckles, too, form the wrong pattern. He doesn’t even seem to remember what his tattoos should look like.
Chip folds the coat loosely over one arm and hands the bundle of fabric to Gillion. Gillion reaches out with shaking hands to take it, trying to only touch the parts that have remained red. It’s impossible, and something wet touches his palm. He swallows down the urge to gag and unfurls the coat into the basin. He pushes it beneath the water, watching it turn blue in response, seeing the little shreds of flesh float to the surface as he swishes the coat around and disturbs them.
He can’t do this right now.
He pulls his hands out and shakes the bloody water off, pushing the basin aside under the guise of letting it soak. When he turns back, Chip is still staring at him, his face painfully blank. His distress is only betrayed by the slightest tug of his lips and the barely-there curl of his fingers around the barrel lid.
Gillion’s fins flare out then fold back again, uncertain if he should make himself bigger to scare off the threat or remain small and unprovoking.
Chip looks away.
It’s like pulling a weight from his lungs, and Gillion hates how much safer he feels when his best friend isn’t looking at him. He moves across the room to pull fresh, clean clothes for Chip out of a crate he has pushed up against the wall near his hammock. There are no shirts, as Chip seems staunchly determined never to wear one again, but at the bottom, Gillion finds a softer pair of pants. He knows Chip won’t be able to feel the difference, but it’s important to him that he at least tries.
“Here.” He returns to Chip’s side and holds out the fresh change of clothes. “You should get out of those. Wear something clean.” Chip takes them from him haltingly and their fingers brush. Gillion tries not to jerk his hand back too quickly.
“I’m gonna go… get rid of it.” Gillion manages. He doesn’t want to look at it, doesn’t want to see what Chip’s done, but he can’t just leave it there for Gryffon and Drey to find. He shudders beneath his armor, throat tight. “I’ll be back.”
Chip just nods, and Gillion turns to leave. At least this time, he knows what he’ll find at the top of the steps.
It’s not any easier the second time around. He sees himself torn open on the deck, and when he blinks, he can still see Chip’s silhouette hunched over it. His doppelganger stares at him with the closest expression to fear he was even still capable of by then. If he ignores the cracks and torn skin of his jaw, it almost looks like a scream. Somehow, the reminder that he couldn’t scream makes it worse.
Gill approaches cautiously, the back of his hand pressed to his nose and mouth in a sorry attempt to blook out the pooling copper smell of his blood. It doesn’t work. Gillion crouches beside the body and tries not to breathe.
It looks like the carcasses Gillion might find sometimes in the undersea, the discarded prey of something the predators had taken all they wanted from. Eyes and tongue gone first – the easiest parts to pull from the body. He can’t help but wonder if his doppelganger was still alive when Chip took them.
The thought is enough to push him over the edge and Gillion barely makes it to the railing before he is retching into the inky blackness of the sea. Gods. Gods. Chip ate him. This poor creature – this thing that looks exactly like him – was left up here alone and helpless and Chip ate him. Sobs wrack his body, tears spilling down and making it harder to breathe between the heavings of his gut. Fuck, Chip ate someone. Chip ate someone.
Chip doesn’t kill – or he didn’t, anyway. He’s been different since Noctis, but even after that he was still the most reluctant of the three of them to resort to killing as a solution to their problems. But now, Chip has torn out someone’s eyes and cracked open his jaws to take his tongue, and he can’t even be sure he offered him the mercy of death before he did it.
Gillion sinks to his knees, clinging to the railing for support as he sobs. It’s his fault Chip is like this. It’s his fault Chip is a monster. He could have stopped this, saved Chip the burden if he had been faster, stronger – gods, if he had even just thought to guard his clone. Instead, he is left with a starving, bloody Chip, and an open carcass that looks just like him.
He has to get rid of it – he knows this. It’s tempting to just throw it overboard and be done with it – wipe the deck clean with his Decanter and some magic and go back below decks and pretend this never happened. But he can’t. Throwing something overboard would be like lighting a beacon, telling every Hollowed exactly where they are. Like spilling blood in the territory of a very hungry shark.
He can’t burn it – that would cause the same problem. It’s the reason they don’t keep lanterns lit. He can’t just leave it here. It’s horrifying enough in the dark, he doesn’t want to see what it looks like in the thin light of day. Not to mention, he doesn’t know for sure that the smell won’t attract the Hollowed either. He would bury it if he could, but they’re on route to the Cumagoon and the nearest island is at least a day’s travel away.
He’s gonna have to stash the body somewhere until they make land. It’s going to have to sit somewhere on his ship for what could be days, just rotting. He hates that idea, hates knowing that it will still be here, but he can’t see another option.
Gillion heaves in a hitching, steadying breath and wipes away his tears with the heels of his hands. He can do this. He can do this. He’s done much worse for most of his life; he can handle a body.
He turns back to the carcass and takes one look at the shredded soft belly and his stomach turns over again. There’s nothing left in it, but still he squeezes his eyes shut until his throat unclenches and he can breathe without gagging. He can do this. He has to do this.
He shuffles around until he can hook his arms under his doppelganger’s. He hoists the torso up, shuddering at the wet squelch of organs tumbling down the cavity in its abdomen, some of them out of place and other falling back into it. The bloody, chewed liver Chip had been eating falls out and onto the deck with a wet plap. Gillion flinches, and kicks it out of sight.
The body is much heavier than he’d expected it to be, and somehow exactly as heavy as a corpse should be. He drags it backwards, the head lolling to the side with its jaw swinging brokenly. Entrails trail along behind them, thinly attached to other things inside the body the keep them from falling out completely, but loose enough that they still spill out when Gillion hefts him more upright.
He can’t take him to the storage hold, as the crew still takes things from there and would surely find him. The kitchen is just entirely out of the question. He thinks hiding him in their own quarters would only make the problem worse. That only leaves the treasury, a room they haven’t had use for since sailing through the portal. Usually, he’s not allowed into there with Gryffon guarding the door, but with any luck, Gryffon’s fast asleep and won’t be there to see this or stop him.
He hauls the doppelganger down the stairs below deck. Gods, they got every detail, didn’t they? The doppelganger’s microscopic scales stick to Gillion’s hands and scrape along the wooden floors as he drags him, and his tail thumps rhythmically on each step. His fins have grown tattered, and Gill can’t tell if that was from before he attacked them or after. He’s not sure it matters, now.
His skin has turned grey from darkness and blood loss, but Gillion’s sure it was once the same shade of teal as his own. The darker blue stripes breaking up his silhouette are nearly the same as Gillion’s, too – close enough, at least, to fool Chip in the darkness of the Navy stronghold. Was he fooled tonight? Did he know it wasn’t Gillion he was eating? Did he even care?
Gillion smacks open the treasury door with his tail and hauls his clone inside before dropping him unceremoniously on a pile of gold. He crumples easily, limbs thrown askew and head tilted at an awkward angle. Eyeless pits stare unseeing into the darkness and his jaw hangs open in a wretched, silent scream. Gillion stares, frozen once again, at his own body here on the floor, at its cool grey skin, shredded to reveal silvery flesh and twisting, mangled organs, and the seeping pools of phthalo blue blood that spread out around him, coating the gold and platinum and gems, oxidizing and turning black. It’s grotesque, but beneath the nausea there is a certain morbid beauty. This thing that was meant to replace him, meant to be better than him, but could never reach the nature of his divinity, now lays twisted and broken amidst a halo of gold.
Gillion turns away and shuts the door.
When he returns to the quarters, he hovers in the doorway, holding himself up with one hand as his legs threaten to give out beneath him. His whole body has not stopped shaking since he first caught sight of Chip on the top deck, and he thinks he may be nearing the end of how far adrenaline can push him. Still, he waits, and he watches in the dark as Chip sits upright in his hammock with his heavy woolen blanket tucked around his shoulders. He’s so still, unnaturally so. Gillion wonders if he chose his heaviest blanket so that he can feel the weight of it, since he cannot feel the softness.
“Did you know it wasn’t me?” He asks.
Chip startles, jerking his head up to find Gillion in the doorway. The movement sets his hammock swinging, and Gill watches the sparks in Chip’s eyes flash in the darkness.
“What?”
Gillion crosses the room to sit next to him in the hammock, though every nerve in his body feels like a live wire. His senses scream and wail, his divinity clawing at his soul to smite this undead thing beside him. He ignores it, and repeats: “Did you know it wasn’t me? When you…” He can’t finish the thought. He doesn’t have to.
“When I…” Chip echoes, chewing on the words, or maybe something else. He swallows, and Gillion can’t help but notice he forgot to add the illusion of his adam’s apple bobbing with the action. He looks up to meet Gillion’s eyes, and Gillion tries to silence the alarms screeching in the back of his head. “Yeah, I did.”
“How?” He needs to know.
Chip searches his face and Gillion does his best to remain calm and neutral, but he doesn’t think he does a good job of it. Every time he blinks, he sees his own hollow-eyed face staring back at him.
Finally, Chip tilts over to drop his head on Gill’s shoulder with a hollow clang that reverberates through the metal of his pauldron. “I dunno, I just– It’s easier, when you’re around.” He mutters.
“Easier?”
“Yeah. Easier. The hunger is– it’s easier to ignore.” He feels Chip’s arms tighten their hold on the blanket more than he sees it, a subtle shifting of his body. “Easier to control.”
“Do you… do you want to eat us often?” He asks. The edge of Chip’s bandana tickles his Cheek. He’s all too aware of how close Chip’s face is to his body, how easily Chip could simply turn his head and bite.
Chip shudders. “I don’t want to eat anybody.”
“You know what I mean, Chip.”
Chip curls in on himself, afraid, ashamed. “It’s– it’s complicated. It’s… I dunno. It’s less that I don’t want to eat you and more like… more like it’s easier to ignore it when it’s you. All of you, I mean. You, Jay, Gryffon, Queen – it’s easier to dismiss it with you guys.”
“What made him different?” The words taste bitter on his tongue. He can still feel his doppelganger’s scales, still smell his own blood.
“It’s like– The hunger, Gill, it just craves flesh. I– I don’t think it cares what kind – not really – but I think– I think it prefers it to be dead.”
Like a scavenger, Gillion thinks, not a predator. Like hagfish and tanner crabs and amphipods all swarming in to feast on the fallen corpse of a whale. Gillion tries to think of himself in the place of the whalefall, but that just leads to the thought of Chip tearing chunks out of him, and he feels sick all over again. He thinks instead of his clone propped up against the railing, alone and helpless, unthinking, unmoving, but still able to feel.
“He wasn’t dead, Chip.” Gillion manages. His throat feels like it’s closing up.
Chip flinches, tugging at a loose thread in the hem of his blanket. “He wasn’t really alive, either, though, was he?”
“He wasn’t dead.”
“He didn’t even scream.” Chip whispers, and his voice sounds very far away. “He just laid there. He didn’t even scream, Gill.”
He sounds so broken, horrified by the memory of his own actions, but Gillion can only press his hand to his wobbling mouth and choke down the sobs threatening to rise. It’s awful. It’s awful and it’s his fault.
“I’m sorry.” Chip’s voice goes high and wobbly. He curls in further on himself, and Gill can feel him shaking. “I’m so sorry, Gill. I didn’t mean to. I swear to you I didn’t!”
“I know.” He forces himself to breathe, sucking in deep, shuddering breaths to still his nerves. He keeps seeing Chip hunched over the body, the meat in his hands, the way he’d looked at Gill. He doesn’t want that to be all he sees in his friend. It’s not Chip’s fault he’s like this.
“I was so hungry, Gill. It was too much – I didn’t even realize– I just needed– I’m so sorry!”
He turns to Chip and reaches out, pulling him in like he did on the deck. Chip throws himself at Gillion, blanket forgotten, shoulders shaking as he cries in the only way he still can. “I know,” he repeats, clutching Chip close. “I know. I know.”
I’m sorry, he doesn’t say, even though he knows it’s his fault. Chip won’t accept that, refuses to admit Gillion’s part in his death. His apologies won’t help here, though the guilt claws at his throat.
He shakes, too, even as he wraps his arms around Chip to keep him steady and secure. His instincts scream at him to get away, to strike him down, to guard his neck and gills and vulnerable soft belly from the creature in his arms. He bites them back, tightening his hold. Chip will not hurt him; he tries his best to remind himself. Chip will not hurt him.
The image of Chips fingers tearing open flesh flickers in his mind. He trembles and takes comfort in the quiet rattle of metal.
Chip clings to him, curling his fingers into the gaps in his armor and pulling him closer. Gillion wishes he could feel his friend’s heart beating, but as it is he cannot even feel his breath ghost over his neck. Chip turns his head to rest his cheek on Gillion’s shoulder, and Gillion shivers with relief as his mouth is pulled away from his gills.
“Take the armor off, Gill.”
Gillion shivers. He squeezes his arms around Chip tighter, praying he can feel it, though he knows his gods cannot hear him here. “I’m not going to do that, Chip.”
“Why not?” He sounds so weak and pathetic, voice wobbling through still-bloody teeth.
“You know why.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I trust you.” Gillion answers, and he feels Chip’s answering squeeze. He cannot lie, and Chip knows it. He hopes that’s comfort enough. “I don’t trust your hunger. I can’t take the armor off.”
Chip whimpers, but nods. Gillion feels the scrape of bone-on-metal, tiny vibrations that travel through the plate to meet his shoulder. It feels awful, this fear, holding Chip in his arms and knowing he wasn’t strong enough to save him, and that he’s still not strong enough to comfort him properly now.
“We’ll fix it.” He swears. He feels Chip cringe against him, but he makes no sound of protest. Gillion slides his hand up and down Chip’s back, an echo of something that used to soothe him. He has no idea if it still works now. “I promise you. We’ll find a way. We’ll fix it.”
“Okay,” Chip says, his voice raspy and shattered. He trembles in Gillion’s arms, and he does not breathe, and he does not cry.
Gillion prays he will not be made a liar.