Chapter Text
Ryusui kneels. Not by choice. He tugs at the chain that connects his neck to the ring secured in the parade ground. Just in case that this time it will give and let him stand. He'd long ago made his peace with dying young, but he'd always expected to meet death standing. Or drowning. Or with a rope around his neck and a short drop. Or, since that day three years ago that he'd accepted Senku's invitation to step through the portal to another hemisphere, bleeding out on a ship's deck. Not kneeling. For some reason he'd never expected himself to die while kneeling.
Of course, he'd never expected to be there when Ibara had completed the ritual and the ancient Greek god Phorcys had come back to this world in his dreadful might. Nor had he expected Ibara's ritual to fail in that Phorcys, rather than being bound to Ibara's will, had instead taken over immediately, possessing one of his, well, ‘handmaidens’ was the term Ibara used. Amaryllis, if Ryusui had identified the right woman in the midst of the storm of magic.
Ryusui suspected Amaryllis of having sabotaged the ritual in some way. Which in general, he approved of, Ibara was scum, but in the Caribbean, gods were seldom good news. Phorcys, ancient sea-god of the hidden dangers of the deep, was terrible and dangerous even by those standards, at least by the few mentions Ruri had found in her mother's library and reported to the Persus when they'd realised Ibara's goal.
Phorcys’ power had whipped round the former handmaiden's body, then risen in a tornado above her, tendrils of dark magic whipping out to the temple's ancient boundaries. All Ryusui had had time to do was to throw Suika behind him and tell her to run and hide, before darkness engulfed him. He'd floated in a void for some unknown time, unable to move or speak, unable to tell if he was breathing or even if his heart was beating. All he could do was hope Suika had managed to escape and find Senku.
At some point, he'd been woken out of the void and back in his body, only to find himself tied to a chair in a warehouse. He thought one in Port Royal based on the brick work. A neatly-clad clerk had used a truth spell to interrogate him for a time, which had been simple enough, as Ryusui could honestly answer that he had no idea where Senku was or what he might be planning. Ditto on Gen and Kohaku. They'd not asked about Suika at all. Then he'd felt a presence behind him and had suddenly been thrown back into that bodiless state – only now with the hope that Senku and his friends were still out there causing chaos.
And now he was awake, again, but this time he had woken to find himself chained and kneeling, under the hot Caribbean sun, his crew nearby in the same position. Ryusui instantly recognised the parade ground at Port Royal.
Ryusui's body, as far as he could tell, was unaffected by the passage of however long he'd been away, he felt dirty, but it was the dirt of a warehouse, not of unwashed sweat. How long had it been? Ryusui can't properly feel the wind from down here, but his sailor's instincts tell him there's been a change in the air, that it's now the wet season, which would make it three months at least.
There were soldiers nearby, though Ryusui did not recognise their uniforms. When he'd tried to ask what was happening, no sound had come from his throat, but at his gestures, one soldier had laughed and made a throat-slitting gesture. Then another, presumably their commanding officer, had ordered his soldiers to silence. Execution then. If they were lucky.
Ryusui's remaining comfort was he could see no sign of Suika, nor Senku, Kohaku, Gen or anyone else who wasn't there at the ritual. Unlike Chrome and Kinrou and Ginrou and all too many others. Ginrou was crying openly, though silently.
Ryusui pulls at his chain again. He'd really like to die standing.
Suddenly he's aware of that presence again. Phorcys must have entered. The way the soldiers all snap to attention merely confirms it. Ryusui refuses to crane his neck round to look, but from the way the soldiers’ eyes move, Phorcys is moving to the front and soon he comes within Ryusui’s field of vision.
Phorcys is still possessing a woman's body. Was the god confined to the original body he had possessed? Or was this a choice of his? From the stories Ruri had told of the Greek gods, they'd happily change species, let alone sexes.
The woman’s body had changed though, since Ryusui had last seen her at the ritual, changed into something unearthly. Her features were the same as Amaryllis's but her skin was now white, whiter than a geisha's, and yet there was darkness below it, as if the white was white paint smeared over black paper. Strands of gold run through her skin, like kintsugi pottery, but the individual strands were perpetually moving. Her hair is still black but now it floats around her head in liquid tendrils, as if they are drifting underwater. She is wearing a soft flowing sea-green dress in a style that reminded Ryusui of the Greek statues he had seen in Ruri's house in Havana. The dress was made from silk, by the way it moved around her. Beautiful, but human-looking. Does that mean Phorcys, however he can change his vessel's body, can't actually create unearthly substances?
Phorcys has an entourage around her, of people who looked simply human, and Ryusui wonders briefly what brought them here. Had she promised them riches, or glory or had she offered them a choice between serving her and the death of their loved ones? Or had they straightforwardly fallen for her dark power?
He thinks he recognises some of them from receptions at the governor’s home. There's no sign of the former governor or his family though. Ryusui hoped they had managed to flee. And flee to their home country. His uncle had spoken many times of the Europeans as “barbarian scum” but Ryusui figures that however unrefined, uneducated and ignorant of propriety these Europeans may be, their ability to conquer these foreign lands indicated they must have access to deep magics, maybe not as powerful as those of Japan's, but surely sufficient to deal with a Phorcys.
But even if the Europeans did, they were hardly likely to show up in time and force to change the outcome today. So execution. How are they going to die? His mind goes to Ibara, screaming as he was wrapped in Phorcys' black power and reduced to a lifeless husk. Ryusui had no love for the man, but that death – no, he's not thinking about that now. Maybe if he wrenches his chain to the left there might be a bit of slack and he can stand before he dies. He doesn't want to die while kneeling.
The chain though is implacable as ever. Ryusui still kneels.
Phorcys turns to face her prisoners and her dark power flows over them, nothing visible happens but still it is power like the sea, pressure against his skin as relentless as a tide. Ryusui sees Ginrou's head bow, then Chrome’s, then even Kinrou’s, under her onslaught. Ryusui silently snarls in defiance, forcing himself to hold his head high, well as high as he can. Nanami Ryusui, who had been pulled by some strange magic from his native waters to the foreign seas of the Caribbean with their strange peoples, strange magics, strange ships and yet stranger sailing techniques, and who had mastered all of this and conquered these new ways and new seas and made himself a captain again, and acquired a bounty on his head from the Spanish king, one which even Minami had to admit was fairly substantial, no, Captain Nanami Ryusui would never bow his head to some ancient Greek god known merely for fathering monsters.
Phorcys’s power flow suddenly stops and she turns to one of her entourage and says something and then a moment later two of the guards are walking over to Ryusui and grab his arms then force them behind his back, Ryusui struggles but physical fighting has never been his forte so they quickly manage to cuff his hands behind his back, then release that bloody neck chain and march him up to the front before Phorcys. He feels a pressure on his throat release. So, his neck is free, he's standing, no longer facing death while kneeling, things are looking up?
Phorcys walks around him, slowly, assessingly. Ryusui's skin crawls, each hair on his body stands on end, he feels lik,e a thunderstorm is about to burst around him. There is something inhuman about how she moves, as if each of her joints can rotate a little further than merely human ones could.
She finishes her slow rotation, and then, when back in front of Ryusui, grabs his chin firmly and locks his eyes with hers. Up this close, he notices her irises are a dark and turbulent grey, as dark as the sea in a howling storm, and the gold threads flicker across her eyes, not just the irises, but also the whites and even the pupils, as eerily as they do across her skin.
Around her neck is a choker necklace, made from aquamarine stones held by black metal twisted into tentacles. Ryusui thinks he remembers it from the ritual but the necklace he'd seen then had the tentacles turned inwards, where they would prick at the wearer's skin, now they were turned outwards, as if to prick at anyone who came by.
Phorcys speaks. It is disconcerting, the words that enter Ryusui's ears are in some foreign tongue he doesn’t recognise, but they arrive at his brain in perfect Japanese, what's more in his home district’s accent and dialect. It feels like she's speaking with two voices, one delayed a fraction of a second. Powerful magic. He expects every listener hears her words in their own mother tongue.
“You were at the temple, when I came into my own,” Phorcys says.
It's not a question and Ryusui doesn't try to reply. He could run, his feet are free, if he was alone he'd risk it, but he could never abandon his crew to execution.
“What is your name?” she asks.
Ryusui doesn't try to answer that question either, there are entities in the Caribbean whom it's dangerous to have know your name. And then she hisses at him, touches the centre of her necklace and her power flows through him, through his skull, through his mind, and the world disappears for a moment, Ryusui thinks he may be screaming. When he comes back to himself he's sweating, and it's cold sweat despite the Caribbean sun beating down on them.
“Nanami Ryusui,” she says phonetically, drawing the syllables out. Then she translates, “Seven-Seas. Water Dragon. How … appropriate.”
He feels her power around his body again, this time like a still sea, supporting him. But it has the feeling of a sea with monsters swimming in the dark depths that may drag him down. And he feels her there, in his mind, still.
“You interest me, Dragon of the Seven Seas,” she says. “What would it take, to make you mine?” Some of the power she has wrapped around him focuses on his groin, making it vividly clear what she means by ‘mine’.
Ryusui seizes the unexpected opportunity. He has no idea why Phorcys is asking, not just taking, given the way she just rifled through his mind, but he's not exactly in a position to discuss the exact ins and outs of her magic.
“You let them go, safely,” he says aloud, glad his voice is working again. “Grant them safe passage, to their chosen port outside of your lands and seas. All the prisoners here, and everyone in your prisons who has ever served under my command.” There, that wording should suffice.
“That is a bold request, Nanami Ryusui. Your friends’ sacrifices, your sacrifice, would grant me … power.”
Ryusui can't let himself get angry. And he knows that tone, from numerous negotiations. It's not a ‘no’, it's a ‘convince me’. There's two reasons why someone might do something, the public and the private. Better cover both.
“You will have Captain Nanami by your side,” he promises aloud. “I already have a reputation here in the Caribbean. This will grant you political legitimacy.”
And at the same time he brings to mind his memories of that unforgettable first month he'd spent in the pleasure districts of Edo, where some of the leading ladies, and a certain young man, with eyes as soft as honey and hands as smooth as silk, had introduced him to the arts of pleasure, of how he might take apart another's body and soul and reduce them to desperate desire.
Phorcys’ pupils widen and her breath quickens.
“Your offer is of interest, Nanami Ryusui. If they swear an oath to me, to never oppose me any more. And, if you swear to me to … to stay by my side. To never seek to escape to the realm of Hades.”
Ryusui notices what that commits him to. And what it doesn't. The latter maybe scares him more. But what choice does he have? “I will so swear,” he replies.
Phorcys laughs, lightly, prettily as a maiden picnicking under cherry blossoms, darkly as the waves slapping against a ship wrecked on a reef.
“So command your people, Nanami Ryusui, Water Dragon of the Seven Seas.”
Ryusui turns to them, the people he has led, he has failed, he has, maybe, betrayed.
“Please swear,” he says to them in Spanish. “To the Lady Phorcys, of the hidden dangers of the sea. Swear to go from here in peace and to oppose her no more.” Ryusui has no idea if ‘lady’ is the proper way of addressing a Greek god possessing a once-human woman, ruler of an unknown amount of land. Phorcys at least does not object.
He repeats his request in Japanese, for Taiju and Yo's benefit. Despite their years in these new waters, their language skills are still limited.
Francois is there in the front row, forever loyal to him and they are the first to bow their head and swear. “As you request.”
Ryusui's gut clenches and he wishes he knew if he was making the right choice.
Kinrou is second, not Ginrou, to Ryusui's surprise. “And I will swear too.”
And then there's an outbreak of offers of oaths. Ryusui bows his head, knowing the irony of his refusal to do so earlier.
“To you, my lady, I swear to stay by your side. To never seek escape, not even to the lands of the dead.”
Phorcys laughs again, and the pressure of her magic around him vanishes.
“Prepare him and take him to my rooms,” she instructs.
The two guards grab him and haul him away and the last Ryusui sees is Francois bowing their head between Phorcys’ hands.
Ryusui had never thought to have to lose his people before now.
To the extent that Ryusui had ever imagined being bathed at the beginning of life as a sex slave, it had involved steaming waters, exotic scents, and nubile maidens. Not being marched to a tub in the fortress's laundry, stripped, the remains of his shirt cut from him, then unceremoniously plonked in a hip bath and rigorously scrubbed clean of at least three months worth of grime by a middle-aged Dutch woman with biceps like a blacksmith and a manner which reminds him strongly of his head nanny from when he was a child. It took seven changes of water until she was satisfied, and Ryusui would swear even the smallest hairs of his eyebrows had been scrubbed. He appreciates being clean again but the experience was about as sensual as stripping barnacles off a boat. Also he now smells astringently of laundry soap. But at least the water was steaming hot. One out of three.
When eventually the scary cleanliness freak releases Ryusui, his guards from earlier have found him some fresh trousers to step into and then they buckle them up for him. His hands are still shackled behind him and he's still barefoot but he appreciates not being marched through the hallways stark naked. They then march him up some stairs and through more hallways. Ryusui is only familiar with the formal rooms of the governor's mansion, but he thinks they're getting closer to the actual administrative rooms. One of his guards opens a door and he's thrust into a room, clearly that of an upper servant. In there is a desk, with a grey-haired, African-looking woman sitting at it, dressed in the European style. She's busy with an accounts book, though she looks up at the intrusion.
“Captain Nanami,” she addresses him in English, clearly unsurprised. Ryusui is annoyed he can't name her in return.
“Ma'am, Lady Phorcys’ latest paramour,” one of his guards says. Ryusui doesn't recognise the word ‘paramour’ but he can guess the meaning from the context – concubine.
The grey-haired woman looks at him assessingly. “You're thinner than Her Ladyship’s normal,” she comments. The emphasis she puts on Phorcys’s title reminds Ryusui of how these Europeans tend to speak of their god.
And what has been happening that Phorcys has acquired a ‘normal’ in concubines in only three months? If it was only three months of course.
“He resisted Her Ladyship’s command to bow,” the guard states.
The woman's eyes widen slightly. “And She's made you Her paramour? I wish She'd thought to make you Her secretary, anyone who can think around Her is a rarity.”
Definitely an upper servant. Either head clark or housekeeper.
“Do you plan any harm to Our Lady?” she asks directly.
“The thought has never crossed my mind,” Ryusui replies truthfully. Whatever he had thought before he swore to stand by Phorcys’ side was a different matter, if he properly understood the meaning of the English term ‘our’.
The woman nods, clearly absorbing his wording.
“Release him,” she orders his guards. One of them unshackles Ryusui's hands. The woman opens a drawer from a cabinet in the room and takes out a small stone. “Show me the back of your neck,” she orders Ryusui. Ryusui nods, turns his back to her and lifts up his hair, she reaches up and presses the stone to the nape, then says an incantation. Ryusui feels the momentary heat of magic as the stone enters into his skin.
“If you seek to leave the grounds, that will cause you unbearable pain.”
Ryusui believes her. Yet the restriction is less binding than he had expected. He'd expected being restricted to a few rooms, maybe the fortress as a whole if he was lucky. The fortress and the grounds? He can go outside, feel the sun, or see the moon. Rain on his skin again. He stops his mind from speculating further. That's enough. For now.
“You may leave now,” she tells the guards. “Tell the kitchen to send food, and tell Mr Alliard to come measure Captain Nanami. And bring with him a fresh set of clothes. Sir, will you have a seat?”
Ryusui sits across the desk from her.
“Ma'am, may I have the honour of your name?” he asks. He's been reacting long enough, time to start doing something, even if it's only finding out a name.
“Mrs Smith,” she replies, firmly. Ryusui's not exactly an expert on African languages and naming practices but from her tone he suspects it's not her original name.
“Were you here before her ladyship arrived?” Ryusui asks. “Do you know what happened to the Governor and his family?” What Ryusui truly wants to know is whether one of the European kings might be being notified, by someone with the authority to drive an intervention.
“We do not speak of The Before,” she states, the emphasis as audible as when she'd spoken of Phorcys. “You understand what Lady Phorcys expects of you? That She will use your body any way She chooses, that She likes to inflict pain, that She may decide you are not to be healed?”
“My crew were to be executed.”
Her gaze softens slightly. She turns to another drawer and takes out a different stone. “This one prevents a man from fathering a child. I recommend you use it.”
“Can Phorcys even get with child, in her current body?” Ryusui asks curiously.
“How would you like to find out?” Mrs Smith asks in return.
Ryusui goes to touch his captain's hat in acknowledgement, but his fingers touch only air, so he sighs instead and simply takes the stone and slaps it against his upper arm, muttering the incantation himself. The stone sinks rapidly into his muscle. He takes the moment to glance at the papers on Mrs Smith’s desk, and immediately spots the date on the accounts she was writing.
May 1777! Two years and three months! What had Phorcys accomplished in all that time? Where were Senku and the others? Ryusui's brain races, whatever his friends had done that had prompted his earlier interrogation, they clearly hadn't managed to stop Phorcys or rescue Ryusui from his imprisonment. So better count them out. And Ryusui had sent the rest of the Kingdom of Science away, if Phorcys kept his promise. Regardless, they weren't relevant. He's facing an evil god, one that can read his mind, and he's alone. Hah, hah, win or lose, this game will be his, and Ryusui fully intends to win!
The first thing he desires is information.
“How many … pa-ra-mours,” Ryusui sounds out the new word carefully, “has Phorcys had? I desire to know everything!”
Mrs Smith blinks a little at this change in topic. And tone.
“Six. All men. One of whom is still alive.” She looks at him challengingly. “Two died at Her Hand directly, one died of a fever, and two … killed themselves.”
That explained the focus of the promise Phorcys had drawn from Ryusui. Okay, so Ryusui wasn't going to kill himself. As for the fever death – if Ryusui's protective spells failed, then they failed. So that left the two who Phorcys had killed as situations he could do something about.
“So what can you tell me, about what happened with the two she killed?”
“Her Ladyship lost interest in them, over time, so decided to sacrifice their lives to fuel Her magic,” Mrs Smith says bluntly.
“So I had best ensure she doesn't lose interest? I think we have a common interest here, an occupied Phorcys makes life easier for you, am I right?”
Ryusui cocks his head at Mrs Smith, who looks a bit surprised. Presumably she was expecting him to be unnerved by the tally of his predecessors.
“And what about the sixth?” Ryusui continues. “The one who still lives?”
There is a knock at the door before Mrs Smith can answer, and then a man enters, bowing his head respectfully to Mrs Smith. He is followed by a teenage boy carrying an armful of clothing and tailoring supplies.
“Hah, hah, you must be Mr Alliard, the tailor. I desire your skills!” Ryusui declares happily.
There is some kerfuffle but Ryusui wins his point, eventually convincing the tailor to make him some outfits in the Japanese style, indeed, manages to persuade Mr Alliard that it will be a grand chance to show off his skills. The brocades the tailor has available are considered by the two of them, and while they are not in the Japanese styles he's used to, Ryusui reckons they will look and feel lavish, falling around his body. Or Phorcys’s body, as it may play out.
As the discussion is drawing to a close, food arrives, in the form of bread, cheese and cold meat sent up from the kitchen, and while Mr Alliard and his assistant takes Ryusui's measurements, Ryusui makes himself eat, well aware he'll need his energy.
For his immediate clothing needs, Ryusui and Mr Alliard agree on a European-style outfit but minus the coat and cravat. The tailor insists instead on carefully arranging the open neck of Ryusui's shirt with an attention to detail that reminds Ryusui of Francois.
Then an errand boy escorts him to a room Ryusui has seen before - the main guest bedroom in the governor's mansion. It is much as he remembers, grand, decorated in green and gold, windows out to the east, a four poster bed against the northern wall, a sitting area on the southern side, including a table, a small bar with bottles of various drinks and a couple of the upholstered raised seating that the Europeans called ‘sofas’.
The western side of the room however contains a novelty. A very large, and very well-muscled man, on his knees, naked but for a short braies covering his groin, gagged, and wrapped in iron chains.
“Tsukasa!” Ryusui exclaims in delight, barely noticing the boy closing the door behind him. Just the man he desires!