Hidden Messages [Klance AU]

26: (Quint)Essential Thoughts

It was a mess of tangled limbs, taken by the current that swept through the ocean. Everything surrounding Lance was dark. There was no light, his friends were gone, and he felt someone in front of him, but couldn't tell who.

The mer's eyes snapped open. Keith. He lit up his markings. Illuminated by the blue light, he could see two bodies in front of him; one was nearby and the other drifted a little ways away. The other one was Keith. He was unconscious.

"Keith!" Lance shouted through the water. He swam towards the boy and took his limp body in his arms.

No, no, no, no. He needed to do something, to get Keith back to the shore. Lance swished his tail to propel himself upwards. He hadn't realized just how far they were from the surface.

We're gonna make it, Lance thought as he was almost there and bubbles began to float up from his eyes, You'll be okay, Keith.

He felt something sharp dig into his tail fin. It grasped his tail tightly and pulled him and Keith down and away from the air. Lance looked down to see the human, the one who had been in the prison with him, dragging him deeper into the ocean. He tried to break free, tried to fight, but the human's robotic arm was much too strong. Lance hit the sandy bottom hard. The crash sent Keith out of his arms.

The human smiled, his grin illuminated only by the purple glow of his eyes, and grabbed Keith, hauling his body over his shoulder. He glared at Lance, as if contemplating something, then made a fist. The next moment Lance felt an immense pain in his head. The world went dark.

~ ♆ ~

Lance's head hurt. A lot. He also felt as though he couldn't move. Something was constraining him, but he couldn't see what. A shiver went down his spine from the cold water around him. Wherever he was, it was pitch black.

Oh, the mer realized, my eyes are closed.

He opened his eyes to see a circular room. The walls appeared to be made of a coral of some sort, and were lined with shelves filled with different mixes that looked like potions or medicines. Or poisons. There were only two things in the room aside from that— a large, cylindrical container that was lit up a bright yellow, and a table in the center of the room. Strapped to the table lay a person.

That's Keith, Lance realized with a shock upon seeing the boy's long black hair and beautiful face that was half-covered by a breathing mask. No, not beautiful, the mer scolded himself. Well... maybe a little. He felt his cheeks flush.

"Ah, you're awake." Lance jumped at the sudden voice. He had been so preoccupied that he hadn't seen a mer enter the room with the one-armed human trailing behind her. Her voice was eerie, but held a suspiciously calming tone. It reminded Lance of a spider crawling up your leg, or the touch of seaweed against his tail, at the moment when he was young and thought it was a sea monster.

The mer wore a long cloak that concealed her entire body except for the tip of a maroon tail and bits of long white hair that escaped her hood. If not for the yellow glow that came off of her pupil-less eyes, Lance wouldn't have been able to see them.

She approached the table where Keith lay. The Champion, as he heard other mers call him, stood by what looked like an entrance to the lab. His face was stoic, like a robot.

"Now let's see," she said as she reached for a long, but thin, tube. She attached the end to an IV in Keith's wrist. A holographic screen lit up from a device on the witch's right arm, that showed charts, data, and writing that Lance couldn't see from where he was constrained to a wall. He did see the mer witch's eyes widen at what she saw, though.

"Hm? Interesting. He appears to have an incredibly high level of quintessence," she hummed, "This could prove to be quite useful."

"To, to what?" Lance began, then coughed. He wanted to sound braver. "What are you going to use him for?" The witch turned to Lance, a grin on her face that sent more shivers through him.

"To harvest quintessence, of course. The king can't live without it. And humans like him," she gestured to Keith, "happen to have quite a lot of it."

"What do you mean by that?" The witch only smiled at Lance, her eyes aglow with a fierceness that sent shivers down Lance's spine.

"Watch." She turned back to the holographic screen and clicked some figures on it with a sharp-nailed finger. Lance saw Keith shiver in his sleep, his brows furrowed and face stressed. The witch pressed a purple button on the screen that said something in Galran, which Lance couldn't read. He only noticed Keith's muscles tense and his pale face grow even paler. The cylinder containing the glowing yellow substance began to fill up more, and only then did Lance realize.

"High levels of quintessence." This mer was taking Keith's quintessence.

"No!" Lance shouted, "You'll kill him!"

"Yes. I thought you knew that already, what with all my talk about harvesting quintessence. I suppose you aren't as smart as you look. Though," she held a sharp needle as she stepped toward Lance, "that won't matter when you're dead."

Lance's pupils turned to slits as he broke through the rope that held him. The needle flew from the witch's hand as she fell back. She gasped, her back slamming against the container of quintessence. It trembled like a vending machine when you shake it.

"I won't let you hurt him! He doesn't deserve it!"

"Constrain him!" The Galran yelled at the human. He snapped back to life and pounced at Lance in a cat-like way. Lance grabbed the closest thing to him, which happened to be a sharp metal scalpel, and threw it. It missed, but the human froze when it hit something behind them.

The witch turned around from where she sat, horror on her face. The scalpel had penetrated the glass of the quintessence container. A small crack trailed along its surface, slowly getting bigger with each second.

Crack.

Lance slowly stepped towards Keith while the other mers were distracted.

Crick. Crack.

The mer pulled out the IV from Keith's hand. A drop of blood formed and faded into the water.

Crack.

Lance pulled Keith's limp body up from the table.

The glass shattered.

A/N:

Hello! I know it's been a long time, and a lot of you have been wondering when the next chapter would be published. Sorry that it's pretty short, I haven't had much will to write in the last month. Hope you understand, and I'll hope to get the next part out quicker!
Thanks for reading!
- Soni <3