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Ant stared at the Scepter. He was sitting on the floor of his dad’s study, with the drawer that the Scepter had been put in opened in front of him. With his arms propped against the edge of the drawer, Ant dutifully ignored the clock on the desk behind him that read three am, instead turning all his attention on the Scepter. It lay in the drawer, innocent looking enough. The crystals in its top and placed in the carvings weren’t glowing. There were no Monumentials nearby to provoke that strange hum Ant felt in his bones more than heard with his ears. And it wasn’t in his hands, meaning he couldn’t feel that odd Velcro feeling that really shouldn’t be possible with a solid metal shaft. Nothing had happened earlier that day that required the Scepter’s use.
But Ant couldn’t sleep, and so he was staring at the Scepter, trying to figure out yet another weird side effect of being the Chosen One.
Ant readjusted his head, staring down at the Scepter. It looked, on the outside, like any ordinary, wielded by royalty as a symbol of power and hierarchy, scepter. A gleaming golden shaft with a ridiculously over-the-top headpiece. It had intricate carvings running down the shaft, inlaid with small jewels, and a larger crystal in the center of the aforementioned over-the-top headpiece. Just looking at it gave someone a sense of yes, this artifact belongs to royalty.
Except there was more to it than that. Ant’s family told him that the Scepter was remarkably heavy, even for the kind of metal it was made from, though he himself had no issues carrying it. The crystals imbedded in the staff, and at some points even the metal itself, glowed when it was being used, because the Scepter itself was imbued with actual real-life magic. The Scepter gave its wielder the ability to control the most dangerous creatures on the planet, and Nereus said it belonged to him.
Ant didn’t know how to feel about that.
Ant didn’t feel like royalty. He was an aquanaut, had been his whole life. He was a proudly acknowledged nerd, interested in old sci-fi films that no one had ever heard of and comic books and fantasy stories, with a special niche interest in all things obscure and Marine Biology. He was, not so proudly acknowledged, small for his age, due to apparently being so impatient as a person that he apparently couldn’t wait an extra month to be born. Ant wasn’t good at actually talking to ‘normal’ people, only halfway okay at talking to people used to life on the ocean, really good at annoying all the above, and was much better suited at talking to a wide assortment of marine wildlife. Ant was a Nekton, proudly.
But the Nektons were royalty, apparently, and Ant was the Chosen One, which apparently came with ownership of one magic scepter. A magic scepter that seemingly had a mind of its own, came with multiple unlisted terms and conditions, and didn’t like being told what to do anymore than Ant did.
Ant huffed out a short breath. He was sure Fontaine would make some sort of joke about how that meant he and the Scepter were practically made for each other, which was why he chose not to mention anything. Or part of the reason anyways. Ever since he’d first used the Scepter, Fontaine had given him weird looks. So had a lot of people really, and if Ant weren’t so busy dealing with everything the Scepter brought with it he’d try and figure out why. But as it was, there was a prophecy about Ant that was six thousand years old, dictating that he was the owner of the last Queen of Lemuria’s beloved Scepter, and that he’d use it to put the Monumentials to sleep. And Ant was now trying to figure out what exactly that all entailed, especially since the Guardians were, annoyingly but absolutely on brand, not keen on sharing the exact details about the supposed prophecy Ant was the subject of.
“Yeah right.” He muttered out loud to no one in particular, especially since there was no one else in the room. “More like ‘The Last Will and Testament of Queen Doreus of Lemuria’. Seeing as I got stuck with you because of it.” The Scepter didn’t respond, either through a sudden ability to speak English, or even a minor glow, but Ant was sure it was smug. He sighed again, this time out of frustration, with both himself and his six thousand years back grandmother for leaving him with her Scepter.
“And I’m talking to a glorified stick.” He muttered, out loud to no one in particular yet again. The Scepter did not rise to the insult like it sometimes did, leaving Ant all the more annoyed. Sinking against the drawer, Ant stared at the Scepter, trying to figure out what was going on now, as he masterfully tried to ignore the reoccurring thoughts about everything that came with the Scepter. Because in his six-thousand great grandmother’s will, either she or the Executors of her will known as the entirety of the Guardians left out the fact that the Scepter came with a large number of conditions and rules. Side-effects if you will.
For starters there was the non-existent weight that only seemed to apply to him. Everyone else he knew that had held the Scepter said that it was a lot heavier than it looked. Even his dad, gold-medalist Olympic athlete and man with giant muscles, commented on the weight. Whereas Ant had been surprised, and a little weirded out, by how light it felt. There was the strange velcro feeling that seemed to travel across his palms every time he tried to drop it or let it go, that only went away when he convinced himself even momentarily that the Scepter is yours, the Scepter itself refusing to part with Ant unless it was on its own terms. And then there was the bonus of every Guardian who saw Ant holding the Scepter staring in awe, like he was some kind of celebrity. The Nektons were relatively known to the public, but they weren’t like royalty or anything.
At least, not royalty to any kingdom still around, apparently.
Nereus had said that the Nektons were royalty. Descended from the royal family of Lemuria itself. He’d said that Ant didn’t need to be royal though. He actually went out of his way to remind Ant of that every time Ant expressed any discomfort about it. Ant appreciated Nereus’s effort, even though it didn’t always stick. But Nereus must not have relayed that message to the other Guardians, because nearly every single one Ant ran into stared at Ant like…well, he didn’t know how people stared at someone they deemed royalty, but the Guardians stared at him with an awe and reverence that felt extraordinarily out of place. Most of the Guardians seemed to place Ant on some sort of pedestal in their minds, and while Ant wouldn’t say it out loud, for fear of Fontaine teasing him, he didn’t really like it. The Guardians seemed to all be of the belief that Ant was the second coming of the late Queen Doreus, even though he didn’t have any ‘royal’ traits. He wasn’t sophisticated. He wasn’t tall and imposing. He couldn’t communicate with anyone outside the small circle of people he regularly interacted with without coming off as weirder then he really was. The lack of friends he had certainly helped prove that last point.
Ant sighed. Moving one of his arms, Ant brought his hand down to trace one of the carvings in the shaft. There was a sort of lightningy feel in his fingertip, like when there was a bunch of static in the air, and your finger was about to feel the connection of that spurt of static. Only that spurt never came, his skin tingling in anticipation. The Velcro only happened when Ant tried to get rid of the Scepter when he didn’t want it, but the static was always there. Ant didn’t see any sort of physical reaction from the Scepter, but he felt pressure build a little in the back of his head, and he swore he felt some sort of presence in the peripheral of his vision. Twisting to look however, revealed no one else in the room. Just Ant and the Scepter. The hairs on the back of his neck raised.
Nereus talked about how the Scepter knew where it belonged. Referred to it in sentences like it were sentient, or at least somewhat sentient. Like it could make choices, and think. Ant couldn’t help but feel a spurt of inner pessimism that would make Fontaine proud when Nereus talked about that. Inanimate objects weren’t capable of being sentient. It’s why they were called inanimate. They didn’t have minds of their own.
The Scepter in front of him seemed to be doing its very best to convince him otherwise though.
Ant turned back around to look at it. After a moment of looking, and frowning, he reached forward and traced his thumb across one of the crystals inlaid in the shaft. The pressure in the sides and back of his head seemed to pulse a little. Ant sighed, slumping against the open drawer and resting his cheek against his arm as he ran his finger down the Scepter. He had complicated feelings about the Scepter. About what it could do, about its connection to him. About what destiny it forced onto his shoulders the second it first stuck to his hands. About all the things it did to him, and for him.
Ant didn’t like talking about any of it. He did his best to divert conversation anytime the Scepter and its influence came up, and he knew his family was starting to catch on. But despite their pressing, Ant didn’t want to talk about his feelings on the Scepter, and the prophecy of the Chosen One. Mostly because anytime it came up within the old man’s earshot, Nereus would start rambling and talking about the prophecy. Ant didn’t really want to hear anything about it, and not just because Nereus would ramble on and on about the prophecy without actually saying anything about what was in the prophecy itself. Ant didn’t like hearing Nereus rant about the prophecy because the rant usually ended with Nereus staring at Ant like he’d hung the stars, saying he was sure to fulfill the prophecy, and defeat the Monumentials.
A six thousand year old prophecy. Older than any of his recorded family. One that the Guardians didn’t part with much information about, beyond Ant’s role and his foretold fate with the Monumentials. A fate that Ant had never gotten any say in having.
As someone who was really into superhero movies and comics, fantasy and sci-fi stories, and filled with a love for myths and legends, Ant was actually not all that interested with the concept of being the Chosen One. Sure, as a little kid, he’d liked the idea. Insisting on being the hero in the games he’d play with his sister, back when she still liked hanging out with him. But Ant was pretty sure that was the same for every kid, because he definitely remembered plenty of fights with Fontaine about whose turn it was to save the day in their games.
But when you live a life of constant real life adventures, filled with peril and high stakes, sea monsters and pirates, mysteries to solve that no one knew were down there in the ocean, Ant supposed that the appeal of being the hero that saved the day wore off when you more or less had to actually live it. Ant had been through more shipwrecks, rescues, cave-ins, and various animal attacks than he could safely say any other kid his age had ever been in. Actually, Ant thought, it may even extend to most adults as well. Which was a thought that was starting to grow disturbing on its own, as Ant began to go through more and more due to the Scepter and the Monumentials it was built to control.
It was a weird thought, thinking about how he was better adjusted than adults in situations he shouldn’t be. That he had more experience than the adults around him in matters that he as a kid probably shouldn’t. Fontaine had muttered darkly under her breath after an excursion involving the pair of them trapped on a sinking submarine with a panicked crew that it wasn’t fair. When Ant asked what she meant she’d said that it wasn’t fair they had to be the ones looking out for themselves in these situations. That they had to be the ones telling the adults around them it was okay. Telling them what to do, and not the other way around.
It had spiraled into a debate disguised as an argument that Ant still thought about months later, the pressure from the Scepter and the title of Chosen One that came with it starting to add to the points his sister had made. He’d never thought about the long lasting implications behind their kind of childhood. About how it may have something to do with how weirdly their parents looked at them when they said they were fine after an adventure. Ant had always thought it was weird, since their parents were adults living the same lifestyle as him and his sister. But he was starting to think maybe that was the point of it all. They were adults, adjusted and responsible and aware of their limits. They were adults who’d had relatively normal childhoods.
Though Ant was starting to realize he was categorizing normal as ‘not nearly dying every other week’, because Will had been born on a boat and raised on the ocean, and Kaiko was raised on a marine reservation. His grandparents on his dads side spent their whole lives on the ocean, a level of eccentricity to the way they lived, even for Ant. His mothers parents were the children of immigrants, and dedicated their entire selves to the ocean and its preservation. Ant came from generation after generation of aquatic explorers, sea-dwellers, eccentric scholars, and many other professions from both sides of his family. He supposed he’d never had a chance when it came to having a normal childhood. Not in this family.
Fontaine had told Ant once he wouldn’t know normal if it slapped him in the face. He’d been indignant that she was wrong, of course. But now…now Ant wondered if maybe his older sister actually had some solid points about the whole thing.
Not about what was normal or not, though, Ant was starting to wonder if he even knew what the word ‘normal’ meant. But staring at the Scepter, Ant found himself beginning to scowl.
The Scepter looked like any other scepter, he supposed. Shiny. Gleaming. Inlaid with precious stones Ant didn’t recognize. Carvings of sea monsters etched into the metal, with a glorious centerpiece at its top. It was regal. Royal. The exact opposite of how Ant felt. But Ant, despite never really seeing any other royal scepters, knew for a fact that there was more to this Scepter than any other. This Scepter was inlaid with not just jewels, but the power to control the most dangerous creatures that had ever lived on the planet. And only he alone could wield that power, because some old guy six thousand years ago said so.
The Monumentials were aptly named. Mega-big. It appeared the Lemurians were very literal in how they named things, though the sheer size that the creatures had didn’t leave room for any other kind of description. Just one of them was capable of destroying the world, sending it into ruin. Just one. All it would take was just one, one Monumential awake and mad enough to wander from the deepest parts of the ocean and target any populated place, and the world would probably be done for within the month. And it was up to Ant to be the one to stop that from ever happening.
Ant’s scowl faded as he shrunk against the drawer, staring at the carvings of creatures he’d run into. Of the ones he hadn’t seen yet. Of the creatures he’d run into that weren’t on the Scepter.
The Chronicle of the Deep said that at the time Lemuria fell, there were eight Monumentials. Ant and his family had run into at least four Monumentials that weren’t in Lemuria’s and the Guardians records. How many more were there? How many new Monumentials were there that Lemuria hadn’t known about? That Ant would have to deal with, have to protect 8 billion people from, with nothing but a thousands year old glowstick to protect them with?
There was a pinch on his neck, and the lamp on his dad’s desk flickered. Ant sucked in a breath through his teeth, reaching back with his free hand to rub the spot. His fingers were cold against his skin, and twisting to look around the room again revealed no one who might have pinched him. The tips of his fingers still resting against the Scepter tingled, little hairs of sensation crawling up the bone to his knuckle as Velcro clung to his fingerprints when he moved away. The pinched spot faded away, and Ant vaguely noted how it didn’t feel like someone had pinched the outside of his skin, more like a flare in the muscle beneath it.
Ant looked at the Scepter. The gem closest to his finger, the one with the Electric Ray, glowed ever so faintly, a faint pulse traveling through the jewels up the shaft to the center piece at its head. Another pulse, almost as if in warning, and then nothing more.
Ant frowned, fingers falling down his neck and back to the edge of the drawer. “Ow.” He said pointedly, ignoring the voice eerily similar to his sister in his head telling him he was talking to a supposedly inanimate object. A supposedly inanimate object with a potential mind of its own, that effected Ant just as much as the Monumentials he was supposed to use it against.
All those side-effects. All the things Ant didn’t want to talk to his family about. Ant wondered if some of it all came down to how the Scepter didn’t just affect the Monumentials he was supposed to protect the world from, but him as well. About how things Ant didn’t realize had been unknowingly plaguing him for years became crystal clear when the Scepter started to amplify them. Things that Ant still didn’t understand but was too afraid to ask the questions to find answers for. Unsurprisingly, using the Scepter was an ordeal in and of itself.
Using the Scepter was…an experience. It was terrifying using it for the first time, but that was admittedly, probably, mostly because the first time he’d used it, he was squaring off against two of the most dangerous Monumentials out there, one of them being the actual Kraken itself. And he’d had to use it back to back. Ant knew that the whole point of the prophecy was that he put all the Monumentials to sleep. That he stop them from rampaging on the world, destroying it in the process. But putting just one of the Monumentials to sleep had felt awful, and Ant almost, no, really never wanted to go through putting more than one of them to sleep at a time again.
He didn’t really remember much of what was going on around him that day. He remembered a lot of blue light. Something akin to lightning traveling up his spine and down his arms and into his feet, somehow keeping him grounded to the swaying floor of the Aronnax. His hands felt cemented to the Scepter, the Scepter itself acting as some sort of lifeline that kept him grounded to the situation. And there was what Ant could only be described as a game of tug-of-war with one of the biggest creatures on Earth going on in his head, in his chest, somewhere deep in his body that affected both of those spots. It was the same with both Monumentials, though it had been worse with the Kraken. It was like someone had tied a rope to the inside of Ant’s body, somewhere he didn’t think there was a name for, gave the angry Monumential he was trying to put to sleep the other end, and decreed whoever pulled the other over the line won. And neither Monumential had wanted to lose.
The effort it had taken to pull the Electric Ray over the invisible line, into the realm of influence the Scepter’s magic had on it, to put it to sleep, was more than he’d thought he could handle. Putting the Kraken to sleep, painfully yanking it over the line almost immediately after using the Scepter on the Electric Ray, was almost ten times worse. The Kraken had been yanking far harder than the Electric Ray had been, and Ant didn’t know how he managed to pull it over that invisible line.
Ant didn’t know how he could do that all again. It had been hard. Unbelievably so. And Ant was supposed to do that with all of the Monumentials? At the same time? Or one after another, but all in the same day? Just the two had made him feel awful. His body had felt like rubber, there had been a ringing in his ears, something throbbed in the back of his head, pulsing in time with the faint blue in the corners of his darkening vision, and he’d passed out in under a minute.
When Ant woke up, hours later, his whole body had felt numb. Like he’d gone through a whole body workout that had lasted an entire day and a half. With some of the crazy missions that his family went on, Ant already had an idea of what that felt like. And somehow, in ten minutes, he managed to achieve that same level of bone-weary, mind-melting exhaustion. He wondered if that made him some sort of over-achiever. He wondered how awful he’d feel when he woke up from dealing with all the Monumentials. Aside from the exhaustion, Ant had felt a strange tingly sensation under his skin that he didn’t immediately notice. In fact, he only noticed it when he focused specifically on it. That sensation never went away, so Ant brushed it off as nothing.
But as other weird things starting popping up, Ant couldn’t help but pay attention to that tingling sensation even more, which just made it more prominent. Ant didn’t really know what that tingly sensation was, and he really didn’t want to think about it. Ant didn’t really know what to think about a lot of the weird stuff happening. All Ant knew was that he didn’t know if he’d be able to put all the Monumentials to sleep at once or in one day if he crashed so hard after just two. He could maybe do three if one of them wasn’t the angriest creature on the planet. And he also knew that he didn’t want to think about what may happen to him if he did manage to put all the Monumentials to sleep at once.
Because putting two Monumentials to sleep made Ant crash like a door off its hinges. Doreus had died defeating the Monumentials the last time they became a problem. There had been eight back then, and there were more now, more that showed up awake like they’d never been asleep. Using the Scepter to put all the Monumentials to sleep for six thousand years had killed Doreus, and Ant couldn’t help but wonder what that meant for him. If repeating what she’d done was what he was expected to do. If repeating whatever his six thousand years great grandmother had done would kill him too.
Ant pursed his lips, swallowing. He didn’t want to die. And he didn’t know what exactly beyond putting the Monumentials to sleep he was supposed to do. If he was supposed to try and put them to sleep for several thousand years, or forever. If there was something more that he didn’t know about that needed to be done. It’s not like the Guardians had told him. They didn’t tell him much about anything regarding the prophecy, or the Scepter. They didn’t tell him what signs to look for to know it was time to put all the Monumentials to sleep. They didn’t tell him more about the Prophecy itself, what exactly it said. And they didn’t tell him about any of the potential side-effects that Ant was now living with after bonding with the Scepter.
Ant didn’t like talking about his feelings regarding the Scepter. He didn’t like the impending sense of dread and the heavy constriction that would seize his chest every time he thought too hard about it, like he was starting to now. He didn’t like the worried looks that would overtake his families faces every time he mentioned something odd about the Scepter, something about the Monumentials. And he didn’t like talking about all the stuff that had started to happen to him ever since he first used it at the Gates.
There were a lot of things that had started to happen to Ant. He stopped feeling whiplash in the oceans currents so much anymore. Anytime that buzz in his fingertips and skin was particularly strong, or he was trying to reach out to the Scepter, any oceanic wildlife near him would wander over like he was some kind of magnet. Waking up he’d see shades of blue in the corners of his vision, and anytime he zoned out, those same blues would seep into the corners of his vision. But the biggest thing was that the Scepter itself seemed to follow Ant everywhere.
Ever since he woke up from using the Scepter for the first time, Ant had felt…something, in his body. Something that would stir in the back of his head, something that would send that false-static tingle down his skin. Every Monumential they’d run into afterwards had invoked this strange sort of hum in his body, that he didn’t necessarily hear. More rather felt, than anything else. It grew louder, or stronger, the closer he got to the Monumential, and it rang like a church bell when he used the Scepter against the Monumential. Putting a Monumential to sleep was more than just using the Scepter. Ant felt like he was fighting for his life every time he did, that invisible tug of war making his heart and the invisible thunder and lightning in his body beat hard every time the Monumential tugged him closer to that invisible line. A line Ant couldn’t see but could feel, his heart crawling up his throat and the hairs on the back of his neck raising like he was at the top of a roller coaster the closer he got.
Ant didn’t know what would happen if a Monumential won that tug-of-war. All he knew was that something in him was afraid every time it almost happened. And Ant didn’t want to find out why.
After using the Scepter, Ant started to feel like there was someone else there, too. How strong that feeling was depended, but whenever he was touching the Scepter, he could almost swear that there was someone behind him, only for no one to be there at all. Pressure would build in his head in the Scepter’s presence, like it was physically there.
Of course, that pressure wasn’t the only thing going on with his head. But it was the second to last thing Ant would ever admit to his family, for fear of being called crazy. For as long as Ant could remember, he’d been hearing something…odd. Something like an echo in the corner of his hearing, a noise he could convince himself once upon a time was just a figment of his imagination. He guessed it’d always been there, because it wasn’t until a few years ago, the day after his tenth birthday, that the noise started to become something he was consciously aware of. He remembered asking his sister if she’d ever heard anything, and her trademark response of you’re deluded stopped him from ever bringing it up again afterwards.
They hadn’t been anything understandable, at first. Then, about a year later, the inconsistent noises that sounded like they were three halls down started to become a little telligible. Or maybe a little more audible was the better term for it, because Ant couldn’t understand a word of what he was hearing.
But he was hearing something, or someone. Gibberish followed Ant everywhere, tickling the corners of his hearing like an obnoxious fly you couldn’t see, but would hear whiz past you before disappearing again. Except the fly was whispering actual gibberish, sounds Ant wasn’t even sure qualified as words. Ant could never pinpoint where the whispers were coming from, at first. There was no real fixed point that they seemed to originate from. The only real consistent thing was that the whispers followed Ant everywhere.
Some days they were quiet. Quiet enough that Ant would forget it ever happened. Other days he’d be so distracted from the whispers that he couldn’t concentrate on much of anything else. He thought he was going insane. Those days didn’t happen often at first. Not until Ant assembled the Ephymacron, and stared his first, awake Monumential in the eye. When a solid, albeit unintelligible string of words filled Ant’s ears, disappearing down into the depths after the Turtle Monumential that was once an island resort. After that they happened frequently enough Ant started to wonder if he was going insane.
After running into the Turtle Monumential, the whispers started making their way to Ant’s dreams. A sort of background noise, a conversation happening in the background of whatever was happening in Ant’s dreams. Static noise as he drifted, replacing all other noises when he zoned out or lost concentration while awake. It’d get louder the more tired or stressed he was, and Ant thought he was losing his marbles.
Ant hadn’t told his parents about the whispers at first, mainly because he didn’t really realize they were actually there until he’d assembled the Ephymacron. Until the whispers started to grow in volume, until Ant bonded with the Scepter and it started to act like a deterrent for them. Ant hadn’t realized they were there until they became too much, and the Scepter took care of them for him. Neutralized them, made them easier to ignore, siphoned them away like water down a drain.
Ant didn’t tell his parents, and he definitely didn’t tell his sister. Fontaine would cheekily make a comment about how Ant needed a shrink, which Ant couldn’t say made him feel bad because Fontaine would either shrug it off or say it was just a joke and he didn’t need to take it seriously. The way his sister responded to anything Ant said was a whole other set of problems, one that Ant didn’t want to think about right now. She never took anything he said seriously. He wished she did a little more often. He’d feel a little better knowing he could go to her about stuff.
Ant sighed, shifting against the drawer again.
Ant had started to pick out some of the words he was hearing in the words his dad and Nereus translated. Nothing substantial, and sometimes it sounded a little different, but some of the Lemurian he’d hear his dad and Nereus translate began to sound a little alike what he’d hear when he was alone or in his dreams. He’d start catching pieces of sentences in his dreams now, like he was walking through a hallway and he caught parts of a conversation had by a pair of people hanging against the wall as he passed them. He never caught the whole story, but he’d get a sentence or two.
It never made any sense. Ant could pick out words now, but they were only fragments of a much larger, and confusing puzzle. A puzzle Ant wasn’t sure he wanted to finish. The pieces he saw and experienced were daunting enough as was, and Ant was just a kid. He might act tough around his sister, or in front of his parents, but he still got scared. And the idea of seeing the big picture that the terrifying puzzle he’d been thrown into the box of made him really scared.
Ant would lie awake at night, unable to sleep. He never told his parents, because he didn’t want them to worry, especially about something that he wasn’t sure they could help him with. There was very little pattern as to why he couldn’t sleep sometimes, but it all came back to either the Monumentials or the Scepter. Sometimes he’d wake from a nightmare, an experience with a Monumential or some other giant creature they’d run into gone wrong. Sometimes he just couldn’t get the chance to fall asleep, too shell-shocked from whatever events the day had held for their family to catch a wink.
The Nektons would sometimes crash into a cuddle pile in the Moon Pool or Living Room after a real bad day, taking solace in the fact they all still had each other. Ant sometimes enjoyed those nights, relaxing and tricking himself into forgetting when his parents and sister were nearby. But some days were so bad that he couldn’t fall asleep even then. Those nights were even worse. Ant would be lying awake, surrounded by his family, thoughts about what almost went wrong and what he should have done differently running through his head while the fragmented conversations hummed up his spine and lingered outside the door like a ghost, haunting him. Ant would be paralyzed on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling or over someone’s shoulder, surrounded on all sides by his intact and breathing family. Fontaine would be snoring, his mom would have no crease in her brow, and his dad would be trying to hold them all at once, and Ant could only ever lay there, thinking about how close he came to losing them those days and wondering how much of it would have been all his fault.
Those nights were the worst because they were supposed to be the nights Ant was the most relaxed. Everyone else would be. They’d take solace in each other, quietly talking about whatever needed to be talked about. Ant could only ever seem to talk about the surface of his problems, but where as the rest of his family could just bear their hearts Ant was stuck tongue-tied about the severity of his own. He’d feel that heavy presence he could never turn fast enough to see hanging over his shoulders like a shroud, and could almost see blue in the corner of his vision. The whispers would grow every time he tried to work up the courage to talk to his parents about how he couldn’t sleep some nights, and he’d fail every time. Ant would lie awake, surrounded by his relaxing family as they slept easy knowing their loved ones were still alive, and Ant would be paralyzed on the floor. Incapable of sharing his own struggles and bound to the realm of the awake as the humming in his bones and the whispers down the hall fueled his imagination and nightmares.
It wasn’t always a nightmare though. Their families sleep schedules weren’t the best, due to living on a submarine that changed time-zones constantly. Sometimes the adrenaline of the day just didn’t wear off by the time Ant tried to go to bed, so he’d just get back up and start working on something until he was ready to sleep. And sometimes, it wasn’t a Monumential. Sometimes it was the Scepter. Sometimes its presence would be so heavy on Ant’s mind and shoulders that it felt like a weighted blanket was wrapped around his head, peeling his eyes back and leaving him staring at the ceiling wide awake. Sometimes his dreams would be filled with not conversation, but humming. And not a tune, especially like the ones his sister and mom would sing under their breath, but something more similar to a pulse. And not like the pulse of something living, but more like an energy.
Ant didn’t know how to describe it, and it was probably because he’d never had to tell anyone. How could he? How was he supposed to? Sometimes there was no pulse, sometimes it manifested in a gut feeling above all else, that something was wrong, or different. Something was happening, or should be happening.
Tonight was a night like that. Ant had lied awake, unable to sleep as his spine pulsed and his skin crawled. He’d stared at the ceiling of his room, well acquainted with the different creases in it from his nightly activities of lying awake. Something had beckoned him from nowhere, leaving him grounded but floating, and eventually Ant had enough and shuffled off to the Study to prop open the drawer containing his biggest headache and painkiller, and glare at it until it did something. And when the Scepter didn’t immediately do anything, Ant just sat there, mulishly thinking over everything and wanting nothing more than to sleep.
The Scepter. The Guardians. The Monumentials. Even Alpheus. They all hung over Ant’s head and he didn’t know what to do about any of them. He didn’t know who to talk to about them. He couldn’t talk to his parents, because he didn’t want to make them worry. He couldn’t talk to Fontaine, because she’d never take anything he said seriously. He couldn’t talk to Nereus, because while the man was nice and trying and usually very understanding, Ant didn’t want to unearth some horrible knowledge as soon as he told Nereus about what he was dealing with. What it these side-effects actually meant something awful? What if they meant Ant was changing, what if they meant he was actually perfect for the Scepter and the role of the Chosen One, further stripping him of any autonomy regarding the situation?
Ant frowned at the Scepter. He didn’t know how to feel about it, despite hating the pressure that came with being its holder. It warded off the worst of the whispers, but opened the gateway to a whole new set of nightmares. It came with an impossibly large responsibility that left Ant floundering for air, but also provided answers to questions Ant had for years.
But for all the Scepter did and didn’t help him with, it had also been the source for so much trauma. So many people had been fighting over the Scepter, and specifically the Monumentials it was used to control, long before Ant and his family even found it. Like Proteus and Alpheus.
Ant’s chest tightened and the Scepter almost lifted an inch out of its mold from how hard the Velcro clung to his fingers as he subconsciously pulled his hand away. The Scepter hadn’t even been made aware to Ant at all, and Proteus and Alpheus had both made it his problem before he even knew about the prophecy. Proteus and his need for control, his desires with Lemuria that Ant still didn’t really know the full extent of. Alpheus and his self-proclaimed intentions to solve the world by putting it under his thumb. Both of them fighting over Ant and the Ephymacron, over Lemuria and the Monumentials, over the stupid prophecy that was starting to take over Ant’s life.
Proteus had been disarmingly charming, to the point that he was almost immediately suspicious to Ant. He’d shown up out of nowhere, knowing more than he should have. It probably didn’t ring the same alarm bells in his parents heads as it had for Ant because Nereus had been the same way. Ant couldn’t remember what made them trust Proteus. He couldn’t remember if maybe Proteus had shared information that would have taken Nereus a whole day to getting around to. If maybe their last interaction with Nereus had left his parents frustrated. He knew that they were only barely getting to know Nereus at the time, the Guardians themselves only barely known to the Nektons. And only after their test with the Ephymacron piece.
Regardless, Proteus had oozed his way in. And maybe that was what had set Ant off. How quickly he inserted himself into their day. How quickly he made himself comfortable. It was only one day that Proteus had been there. He’d fallen out of their graces as quickly as he’d got into them. Ant didn’t remember how he’d done it. Didn’t remember what he’d said. Everything that had happened as soon as Proteus had gotten Ant alone was all that Ant remembered, months later.
Ant had done his best to keep his cool, but with every new trick up Proteus’s sleeve that he immediately used to isolate Ant further and further from his family cracked down on his self-control. Being taken to an isolated ice-shelf, and commanded to do something Ant didn’t even know how to do was also a little scary. Especially when he failed and Proteus got both enraged with Ant and his apparent incompetency for something he couldn’t have known how to do, and dismissive of everything Ant said in response.
Ant didn’t know what might have happened if Proteus had gotten his way that day. Ant didn’t think that Proteus would have left him there on that ice-shelf, though he didn’t think it would have been out of the goodness of his heart. Ant didn’t want to know what Proteus would have done with him if he’d taken him with him on that ship. If he’d see his family again. If he’d know that his family was okay. Would Proteus have lied to Ant, telling him they’d died? Would he have tried to isolate Ant into the perfect little Chosen One that he wanted?
Ant didn’t even know what Proteus wanted. He’d only met him a few times before Alpheus jettisoned him out of his submarine. The first two times, he’d been alone, working for himself and his own goals. Trying to find the Ephymacron and make it work himself. Trying to make Ant do it for him when it failed.
The next few times after that, Ant had only ever seen him hanging over Alpheus’s shoulder. Ant didn’t know how they met, though it sounded like they’d known each other before Ant saw them together. Which still meant Ant didn’t know how they ran back into each other. Nereus had made it sound like they hadn’t left off on a good note. But regardless of whatever history Alpheus and Proteus had with each other, Proteus was both the same and totally different with Alpheus. He’d been indignant and manipulative, just like when Ant saw him last. But he’d also been hanging to the side, letting Alpheus do everything for him. Calling himself a mentor, much to Alpheus’s frustration.
Ant supposed that maybe Proteus hadn’t really changed much after reuniting with Alpheus. He was still trying to control things, but instead of getting Ant to do things for him, he’d been trying to use Alpheus. Like some home-grown puppet, fed full of Proteus’s smooth words backed by his hyper-agression and need for control and dominance. Ant wasn’t sure what Proteus had been trying to accomplish. World domination like some cartoon super-villain? Lemuria herself, and all her secrets? The Monumentials and the Scepter needed to control them? Which in a roundabout way still led to maybe World Domination? Proteus had never really been clear on what he wanted. Or rather what his end goal was. He’d always been clear on wanting the Ephymacron and the eventual Scepter. But he’d never specified what exactly he’d wanted with them.
Ant’s stomach churned horribly, and the Scepter clung to his hands as he tried to move his hand away in realization. Nereus had implied that Proteus and Alpheus had a bit of a falling out, one that coincided with Alpheus and the rest of the Guardians. It wasn’t until after Proteus revealed his true colors that they realized Proteus had been involved with what happened with Alpheus. That he’d probably influenced Alpheus into the way he was.
Was…was Proteus going to attempt the same thing with Ant? Had he been hoping to have a do over with Ant when Alpheus initially failed? Alpheus had grown up and ran away, leaving Proteus with no one else to use as a puppet, forcing him to do things himself. Had he viewed Ant as an Alpheus 2.0, a new, fresh pawn to influence and control into the perfect puppet for whatever he’d been aiming to achieve? Was that why he went back to Alpheus? Because he failed with Ant? Or Ant failed to impress him enough? Or because Ant proved to be too much for Proteus, his bond with his family and his own stubbornness too much? Or had Proteus been trying to see what Ant was like and what he could do, see what he had to work with and what he wanted to change?
Had he…Proteus might have tried to take Ant with him on that ship that day. He wasn’t happy with Ant, and Ant wouldn’t say that he didn’t think Proteus would leave someone isolated on an ice shelf. But he’d gotten the impression that Proteus had planned to take Ant with him, and he’d certainly attempted to the second time that Ant had run into him.
Ant slumped against the drawer, now feeling sick. Proteus might have been trying to steal Ant away permanently. Kidnap him away from his family and keep him all to himself. That first day they met might have been his own sort of test, to see if Ant was worth investing in. To see if he could retry what he’d attempted with Alpheus with Ant, the next best thing. Or did Ant being the Chosen One make Alpheus the next best thing, especially since whatever Proteus had tried to attempt with Ant hadn’t worked, forcing him back to Alpheus. The thought of Proteus attempting to do that made Ant feel nauseous, especially since he didn’t know what had happened to Proteus. Where he’d gone. If he’d survived being jettisoned out of Alpheus’s submarine, if he’d slunk off to some old corner of the world, waiting and biding his time.
But Proteus had only been in Ant’s life for a short while. An awful, horrible short while, but a short while. And he hadn’t had quite the same effect on Ant that Alpheus had.
Where Proteus was evasive on what he wanted, simply demanding things with no explanation as to what he wanted them for, Alpheus had been very upfront. A little too upfront, actually. The guy did nothing but monologue every time Ant met him. Ant was convince he practiced each speech in front of a mirror every time he saw the Aronnax was near, so he was prepared for whenever he ran into Ant.
Ant buried the lower half of his face into his arm, pushing his other arm further into the drawer. The Scepter was now clinging to his fingers, and Ant was too busy thinking about Alpheus to try and will it off.
Alpheus had been awful. He was uncomfortable and disturbing and terrifying in a way the Proteus just wasn’t. He’d hijacked the Aronnax multiple times, destroyed its hull without a care for the people inside, just to get what he wanted, and he’d always left the damage with a smile on his face. He’d kidnapped Ant twice, planted spyware on the Aronnax and spied on the Nektons for weeks. He’d almost released the Kraken onto the world just so he could be the one who found Lemuria first, and then ran away when he couldn’t figure out how to close the gates he’d just opened. He’d planted a bomb on the Aronnax the first time they’d met and had tried to run away with Ant the same way Proteus had, leaving Ant’s family to almost die. Again, just like Proteus had. And that wasn’t counting all the actual laws he had to have broken into his spare time with all the hacking and stealing he’d done. All just to get what he wanted.
Alpheus was the worst of the Guardians bad habits and Proteus combined into one, unhinged person. And he’d made Ant the center of everything he did.
Fontaine had poked and prodded Ant after they first met Alpheus, insisting to know why he’d decided to call Alpheus his nemesis. Why he was making light of a psycho individual. Nothing Ant had said had been able to convince her that he hadn’t been the one to come up with all of that. Ant wasn’t even sure she actually believed him now. Being confronted by some random crazy person Ant had never met before, getting stuck on his AI run submarine, and then being told they were nemesis’s? Ant hadn’t thought he was being serious, so he’d just brushed it off as this random strangers delusions. But then Alpheus had revealed the satellite-turned-bomb and Proteus showed up out of nowhere, and Ant started to get nervous.
Ant had left with his sister, and the actual crazy person chased them down. Or more specifically he’d chased Ant down. Alpheus had chased Ant down and tried to bodily drag him trapped in the powered down Shadow Knight back to his own submarine. It had only been thanks to his sister swooping in like a Knight in swamp-green armor and sending Alpheus flying for the hills that Alpheus hadn’t actually succeeded. It didn’t stop him from being any more crazy every time they ran into him after that.
Alpheus had insisted that they were linked, time and time again, had refused to let Ant do anything remotely dangerous. If it were anyone else, Ant would have assumed they were just concerned for him. But like everything else with Alpheus, it was twisted and delusional. Ant didn’t think it was genuine care that had Alpheus insisting that he couldn’t let Ant sacrifice himself, but a terrifying obsession that seemed to ignore all logic and base common sense.
Alpheus was obsessed with Ant. Or maybe this idea of Ant that he had in his head. Alpheus insisted that they were connected every time they ran into each other. Insisted that Ant and him were linked. That Ant was the only person who could understand. He’d told Ant at the Gates that he’d thought Ant would understand him. Alpheus knew everything about Ant and Ant knew hardly anything about Alpheus. It just made him more scary.
The part about that Alpheus that just made him more unnerving and delusional was what he insisted he was trying to do. Alpheus had been determined to find Lemuria first, and find the device that controlled the Monumentials under a preconceived notion that he’d use it for good. Use it to end world hunger and war. Use it to make everyone get along. But the reasoning he’d tried to give Ant just made him sound exactly like what he was trying to stop. Insisting that with the Monumentials, he could control the outcome. He could make everyone get along his way. Alpheus wanted to threaten everyone into getting along, holding the Monumentials over their heads like a nuclear bomb.
Ant wondered if Alpheus only ever used ARIA and didn’t take on any crew because he had a need for control. Ant knew Alpheus genuinely cared for ARIA, but she also wasn’t human. Until she’d expelled him from their submarine in the Monumential Jellyfish herself, she’d never done anything that could go against what he wanted. Had never stood up to him and what he told her to do. And as Alpheus had proven time and time again with Ant, he didn’t liked people doing things he didn’t like them doing. Ant couldn’t help but wonder if that was what fueled his need to use the Monumentials to supposedly fix the world.
Ant didn’t know if Alpheus was using the excuse he’d given Ant at the Gates to justify what he really wanted. If he genuinely believed in what he was trying to accomplish. If he actually thought that he was doing something good. Or if it was all a delusion he was feeding himself to save himself from the guilt or discomfort caused by his own actions. Ant didn’t even know if Alpheus could feel guilt. He’d never seemed to regret anything he’d ever done. He’d always gone to the most extreme to get what he wanted. He’d shut down the Shadow Knight with Ant in it, with no way of knowing if he’d destroy Ant’s oxygen, just to make him stop and forcibly make him come with Alpheus. He’d done it more than once!
Alpheus had been terrifying. Ant didn’t want to admit it to his parents because of how Alpheus had been the last time they’d seen him. A devastated, broken person who just thought he’d lost the only friend he’d probably ever had, and had been trapped inside of a giant jellyfish for three months. He’d been on the brink of insanity. He’d thought he hallucinated Ant.
But Alpheus scared Ant. During their last interaction, Ant had found himself feeling horribly relieved when Alpheus said they’d never see him again. Ant had anxiously waited the next month or so for Alpheus to dramatically show up again, ignoring the lesson he should have learned. But he didn’t and Ant felt relieved about it. He didn’t tell Fontaine, because he was certain she’d lord it over his head, and he didn’t tell his parents, because he didn’t know what they would tell him. He didn’t know if they’d tell him it was okay to feel grateful he didn’t have to see Alpheus ever again, because of all that he’d done. But he didn’t know if they’d instead tell him he should acknowledge how Alpheus had been through something, and how he shouldn’t hold it against him. Ant didn’t know if they’d misinterpret what he meant. He didn’t know if they’d reassure him it was okay to not want to see Alpheus again. He didn’t know if their determination to try and be understanding towards even people they’d didn’t like might mean they’d tell him to let go of what Alpheus had done to him. So he didn’t say what he really wanted to.
Ant could go his whole life happily never seeing Alpheus ever again. Never hearing another thing about him, never having to deal with him ever again at all. Not after the kidnapping. Not after the threats against his family. Not after the obsession that fueled his nightmares and also kept him awake at night, amongst all the other things that robbed Ant of his sleep. Not after all the times Alpheus literally avoided his own problems by dumping them in Ant’s lap and leaving him to fix them. Ant felt he could argue that’s what he had done the last time they saw Alpheus. He’d gone around antagonizing Monumentials, treating them like a means to his delusional ends, poking them with a stick and trying to wake them up. And when it proved too much he left it all behind. Walked away to never deal with any of it ever again, knowing it was still a problem and knowing that the thirteen year old he’d terrorized for months was going to have to be the one to fix it all.
Logically, Ant knew Alpheus wasn’t entirely to blame for whatever was going on with the Monumentials. The Monumential Jellyfish was already awake by the time Alpheus found it. But Alpheus had already caused so many other problems regarding the Monumentials that Ant couldn’t help but feel there’s no way he wasn’t partly to blame. Even if the Guardians might have unintentionally steered him down the path he’d taken. Even if Proteus had definitely had something to do with it. In the end, it was Alpheus who had taken himself to the point he had.
Ant didn’t know if Alpheus was the way he was because of the Guardians. Because of whatever Proteus had fed to him when he tried to make him his perfect little pawn. His ideal Chosen One. Or if Alpheus had always been a little bit like that, and Proteus’s delusions had only made the pieces of Alpheus already like that worse. Ant couldn’t ask Nereus, because he knew the man felt guilt over what happened and would probably blame it all on himself, refusing to let Alpheus take responsibility for the early days. Ant couldn’t ask Alpheus, because Alpheus wouldn’t admit the truth, and Ant didn’t even want to talk to him. Ant didn’t know if he’d ever know what happened those first days, when things started to go wrong with Alpheus. All Ant knew was that regardless of whoever was responsible, whoever the blame could be pinned on, if any at all, everything Alpheus had done afterwards was all him. His actions were his own, and he’d gone so far as to cement that fact. Ignoring Proteus, demeaning Nereus, ejecting Proteus from his submarine, and opening the Gates with the Kraken behind them, albeit unknowingly.
But Alpheus had gone out of his way to make sure everyone knew that he did everything of his own volition, refusing to be the same pawn for Proteus again. Ant could understand not wanting to be under Proteus’s thumb, but everything Alpheus did in spite of that was what made it so hard for Ant to want anything more to do with him. To happily never see him again, for the rest of his life.
But Alpheus still managed to worm his way into Ant’s life. Still managed to slip control in. Ant couldn’t help but think about Alpheus every time the prophecy came up, because that stupid prophecy was what started this whole thing. The Guardians had thought Alpheus was the Chosen One, until things fell through with him, and then they turned to Ant. And with Alpheus failing, everyone including Alpheus turned to Ant and made it his problem before he even knew about the prophecy or the Guardians. Threw all their expectations on him before he even knew what they were demanding or talking about.
Ant couldn’t help but wonder what the Guardians saw in Alpheus. What about him had made them consider him as the Chosen One. Nereus had been a part of the Nekton’s for years, and his tendency to keep on eye on them from afar meant he had to know about Ant and Fontaine. So what made him ignore them in favor of Alpheus? It couldn’t have just been that Alpheus was conveniently there with the Guardians, Nereus put too much thought into anything he did for it to be that. Ant couldn’t help but wonder if there were any similarities between him and Alpheus. Ant didn’t want there to be, didn’t want Alpheus to get any gratification in being right about one thing. Ant didn’t want there to be any similarities between him and Alpheus because that just felt like giving Alpheus the ammo he needed to justify his delusional obsession with Ant. It felt like giving Alpheus the opening to come back into Ant’s life when Ant was happily moving on.
Ant didn’t want that. He didn’t want Alpheus to come back.
Ant was able to dissuade himself from that rabbit hole with the knowledge that to some degree, Alpheus and him were different. The Scepter had chosen Ant, even though Ant himself wasn’t sure how he felt about that. No matter what anyone said, even Ant himself, he was the Chosen One, and not Alpheus. It had chosen Ant over Alpheus, for better or worse. Ant wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good thing or not. Alpheus wasn’t a good person, but Ant didn’t know if he could handle the responsibilities being the Chosen One landed him with.
The Scepter reminded Ant that it was there by sending a pulsing surge up his arm and up the back of his neck, causing him to jump. There was a strong sense of reprimand in the back of his mind, like an observation, one that didn’t actually belong to him.
Ant stared down at the Scepter, eyes widening. It had never done that before. Never physically done anything to him to that degree. It had always affected everything around Ant, the electronics, the air, the Monumentials, the wildlife, but it had never done something so physically reactive like that to Ant himself.
Ant stared at the Scepter, watching the gems pulse in time with the fading line up his arm and neck, the ends of it curling into the unknown space inside Ant that was affected every time he used the Scepter against a Monumential. The pulse faded into near obscurity, still there but faint enough that if Ant weren’t actively paying attention to it, he probably wouldn’t notice it. The gems light faded away, but Ant could feel them staring at him. The eyes of all the Monumentials Doreus had to deal with stared at Ant, waiting for him to do something else that warranted a reaction.
Ant swallowed, and tried to pull his hand away. The Velcro clung hard, and Ant wasn’t sure if he was just looking for something, or if it actually happened, but he swore that the gems flickered a little in warning. He didn’t imagine the sharp tug on his hand against the metal his fingers were stuck against. Ant sucked in a breath, and the tug stilled. Ant cautiously tried to pull his hand away again, and the tug returned. It wasn’t near as fierce as it was that first time, but it was persistent nonetheless. The Scepter was tugging Ant back to itself, insistent every time he tried to pull away.
Nereus had said that day at the Gates that he wasn’t anything like Alpheus. He’d said at a later date, behind the Gates and at the edge of Lemuria with an equally pissed and terrified Kraken in front of them, that the Scepter knew where it belonged. He’d told Ant that deep down he knew where it belonged too.
Ant tried to pull away again, testily, and the Scepter tugged him back. A pulse up the gems, like a scolding Ant would expect from his mother and not a several thousand year old, maybe not entirely inanimate, royal Scepter that belonged to his late grandmother before him. A sort of lingering sensation crawled across his skin, like the Scepter was waiting for Ant to do something now. Like he was the foreign object that was confusing it, the Scepter metaphorically and literally poking Ant to gage what his reaction would be.
Ant stared down at the Scepter, something strange bubbling up in him. “Stop it.” He whispered out loud, not realizing he’d said it until the words left his mouth. The strange sensation under his skin stirred, and retreated a little bit, like the Scepter were raising its hands and giving him space. But it lingered at the ends of his hands, crawling up the edges of his wrists like its curiosity just couldn’t be squished.
Ant swallowed. The Scepter wasn’t…sentient like Ant was. It didn’t have a voice, and that wasn’t to say that being capable of speech was the requirement for sentience. But it wasn’t entirely inanimate either. It was more like there was…something there, something that could react. But as an object, it was limited in what it could do or develop. Like something akin to ARIA, or even a better version of AIMY. Something like an Artificial Intelligence, with a presence and reaction time, but not truly sentient. But then again, Ant didn’t think that was actually the right analogy. Whatever the Scepter was, it was mystifying, and it was stuck to his hands.
Ant took in a slow breath through his nose, before letting it out through his mouth. He carefully pulled his fingers off of the Scepter, like he was next to an animal that might attack at any given moment. The Scepter didn’t move. Didn’t wink. Just pulsed in time like an alien sort of breathing.
Ant tried to pull his palm off the Scepter. He thought confident thoughts. He tried to tell himself that the Scepter was his, that he was meant for it. That it was fine for it to let go of him.
The Scepter seemed to see past the thoughts he was putting out to tell he wasn’t actually thinking them, and pulled his hand back to the Scepter with that strange vwomp sound that happened every time Ant tried to abandon the Scepter.
Ant huffed in frustration, straightening up. “Come on, please. Just let go of me.” He tried prying his hand off of the Scepter, using his other hand to pull at the metal. The Scepter didn’t budge, and Ant groaned.
Ant didn’t know why the Scepter refused to let go. Why it persisted in holding on to him when he already had no choice but to wield it. Ant was the only person who could use the Scepter, and he wasn’t going to just let the world die because he didn’t want to be the Chosen One. He’d use it. But he didn’t want it.
The Scepter seemed to be annoyed with that, tightening the Velcro around his hands. Ant hissed through his teeth at the sensation, not fond of it. The Scepter didn’t retreat this time, seemingly determined to wait Ant out. It had eternity to hold on. Ant had about four hours, before his dad woke up and came to the Study. And at this point Ant wanted to go back to bed. And he wasn’t keen on spending the night with the Scepter stuck to his hands. No way was he having a sleepover with an inanimate but maybe not entirely not-alive magic Scepter.
The Scepter didn’t budge. Ant should have known it wouldn’t with his griping about it in his head. But he wanted it to let go of him! He was tired!
Ant slumped against the drawer with a groan. What was it going to take to get the Scepter to let go of him? It didn’t stick to him as bad as it had that first day as much anymore, though on occasion his thoughts and anxiety would get the best of him, and it’d latch on to him like a leech. Ant sighed, and straightened up, staring hard at the Scepter.
The Scepter was his. There was no one else alive who could use it. There was no one else alive who could use it to stop the Monumentials, whatever that meant in the long run. Ant didn’t want anyone else to be stuck with the weight that wielding the Scepter came with, even if he himself didn’t want it. His parents had raised him to help people, and that’s what Ant was going to do.
The Scepter seemed to pause for a moment. Then, the Velcro clutching his hand eased, and the Scepter dropped back into the drawer, peeling off of Ant’s palms. Ant pulled his hand away from the Scepter. It was weird how easy it could sometimes be to get the Scepter to let go, especially when it really didn’t take much to make it stick.
Nereus said the Scepter belonged to Ant, but Ant wanted to know who was in charge of determining that. The person who first made the prophecy six thousand years ago? The person who created the Scepter? The Guardians, who tirelessly carried on with Lemuria’s lost legacy, and the secrets the ocean swallowed up? The Scepter itself? Didn’t Ant get a say in it?
Ant thought about the weird things he’d been feeling for a few years now, after his tenth birthday. About how that seemed to fall in line with when Alpheus had his falling out with the Guardians, running away before any of them could sit his dramatic, psychotic fifteen year old butt down and figure out what had happened. About how maybe Ant had always been feeling those weird things, but they only got louder then. Louder and louder with each piece of Lemuria that they found all the way up to the Scepter he was currently having a stand-off with in his dad’s Study at three in the morning.
Ant pursed his lips. All those years of feeling weird things inside of his head. Hearing those whispers down the hall, that pulse up his skin and spine, the weird sensation that something was missing. Was it all the Scepter? Had it been actively a part of his life, influencing him long before the Aronnax ever even made it to the Gates? Before his sister cracked Doreus’s code and revealed the Scepter to their family for the first time in six thousand years? Had Alpheus ever felt something like that? Through the Ephymacron which he could use, or before then like Ant had?
A stern nudge on his conscious and a sharp glow from the Scepter, the jewel in the Jellyfish sharpest of all. Ant shrunk against the drawer, staring.
No. Alpheus hadn’t. Had he. He’d never been an option. Not in the way that Ant was. Maybe once upon a time he’d been touched, but now? The Scepter didn’t want anything more to do with him than Ant did.
The hairs on the back of Ant’s neck rose in tandem with the thrum up his spine. The jewels were glowing faintly, the Scepter seemingly satisfied.
The Guardians claimed that the prophecy stated that it was the youngest descendant who would inherit Doreus’s Scepter and defeat the Monumentials, whatever that meant. But Ant was now wondering if it had been the Scepter who chose that all along. If it had picked Ant six thousand years before he was ever even born, determined with its pick amongst Ant and his sister and Alpheus.
Nereus had said that some Lemurians who were strong with the arcane magic of the ocean, which was of the sorts that had been imbued into the Scepter and the Ephymacron, could have prophetic dreams. Ant had thought about that dream he’d had of the ghost captain of his couple greats grandfather, hours before the information he learned in it saved him and the other inhabitants of the submarine. He thought about the painting that Fontaine had been obsessed with, Child with Kraken or something like that. All Ant remembered was that the painting had the boy holding the Ephymacron, detailed to a t. And that the boy, save for his hairstyle and clothes, looked exactly like Ant. A painting that sources said the artist received his inspiration for from a dream. A painting that the Nektons found months before Ant faced off against the actual Kraken with the actual Ephymacron.
Ant remembered the weird statue that his grandparents had struggled to take with them from Lemuria, and how it also weirdly enough looked like him. He thought about those weird sensations, the whispers and lulling pulses that he’d feel in the corners of his mind, encased in a strange blue. Ant wondered if…if Nereus was right. If the Scepter really did belong to him, and not just because an old prophecy decreed so. But because it had chosen him so long ago and so certainly, that it had affected every Lemurian with a strong enough connection to the ocean.
Ant rubbed his eyes with his free hand, groaning. He had to be crazy. There was…there was no way…he was just deluded. He was just coming to insane conclusions about puzzling things that made little sense. It was three in the morning. Even a Nekton could suffer from exhaustion.
Ant stared down at the Scepter, dragging his hand down his face. He stared at it for a long moment, feeling the tingling up his skin and spine, the humming from deep in his body, from a place he couldn’t begin to describe. The Velcro tried to gravitate towards his fingers, inches away. Ant felt himself slip into a sort of haze, letting the exhaustion and the strange sensations from the Scepter wash over him.
Ant sat there, staring and thinking. The Scepter and all its eyes stared back at him. Waiting for something. What, Ant didn’t know.
Ant’s eyes narrowed in exhaustion and contemplation. The Monumentials were waking. Alpheus and Proteus were out there somewhere, either waiting to spring upon Ant or hiding where they’d never see anything Lemurian ever again. The Guardians were evasive about things to a point that it made Ant wonder how much they themselves actually knew. Nereus was trying, his sister was annoying and sometimes mean, and his parents were anxiously waiting with open shoulders, desperate for Ant to open up to them about anything at all.
The Monumentials were waking up. It was genuine reason for concern. The Scepter was the only thing that could stop them. How, Ant didn’t know, but he knew it was the only way. And he was the only person on a planet of eight billion people that it would accept to wield it. Ant didn’t have a choice in that regard.
But he supposed he had a choice on how to handle it. Ant didn’t want to burden his family with what he was feeling about it. He didn’t want to worry them more than he already did on the regular during their regular missions. He didn’t want them to stare at him any weirder than they already did. It made him feel like a burden.
But, Ant realized, they were his family. They’d been there with him through so much already. They’d backed him up while he’d fought the Electric Ray and the Kraken with the Scepter. He could remember them all shouting words of encouragement as his vision filled with blinding blue.
They could help. How, Ant didn’t know, and he didn’t know if he was quite ready to tell them about any of this. But they could help, maybe. The same way that, as much as he didn’t want to admit it due to the implications, the Scepter helped.
In the grand scheme of the puzzle box that Ant had been thrown into ever since that day on the docks in Greenland with Nereus, the Scepter slipped in like a puzzle piece that Ant hadn’t realized was missing. It had sharp edges, and an over the top design and color. It stood out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the puzzle, and it had its own rough spots and hurdles that were hard for Ant to deal with. But it fit into his own puzzle piece like it was meant to be there, right alongside the pieces that were his family, and it helped Ant deal with the other puzzle pieces that were thrown at him throughout this whole Lemurian business.
Ant didn’t like it. He really didn’t like it. But it was there now. And all Ant could do was move on with it, carrying it with him for the rest of however long it was going to be in his life while his family supported him and helped where they could with the weight that they didn’t know he was carrying.
The Scepter seemed to pause for a moment. Then, the Velcro loosened its grip, easing off of Ant’s hand and sliding back into its place in the drawer. Ant’s hand was free from the Scepter.
Ant slowly moved his hand away from the Scepter and its magnetic static. As he did, his anxiety’s started pouring back. The Scepter was such a huge weight to carry. Why had the Guardians gone for Alpheus first instead of Ant? Did he want them to have picked Ant first? Or did he just not want to have been forced to deal with Alpheus’s anger over not being the best fit? What was he meant to do with the Scepter? Could his family really help him with all of it? How did he even go about telling them about any of this? Could he?
The Scepter sent another faint pulse up Ant’s spine and back down into whatever part of his body it originated from. But Ant wasn’t touching it right now. He didn’t have to worry about convincing himself to accept it. He didn’t have to worry about figuring out how to tell his parents yet. He could sit in his anxiety for a few moments. Ant knew that deep down, as much as he never wanted to admit it ever out loud, that the Scepter belonged to him. Wether he liked it or not, it had chosen him.
Ant sighed, and started pulling his hands away from the Scepter and its edge entirely. It was late, or rather early. His thoughts were erratic. He was exhausted, and in desperate need of some sleep. The static zinged down his skin and sparked quietly at his fingertips, and Ant started to close the drawer. One of the gems in the Kraken, near the top, seemed to wink at Ant when the drawer was nearly closed. Ant hesitated for a moment, before firmly shutting the drawer. The lock clicked in place, and a heavy sense of foreboding loom hung in the air. Ant didn’t know if it was the weight of his place in the world, of the Scepter hanging over his shoulders like a noose he had no chance of escaping. If it was the weight of all the things he’d never spoken out loud. If it was just his own paranoia.
Ant turned and left it all in the Study, walking down the hall back to his bedroom. He didn’t look back at the Scepter, but he could feel the eyes of all the Monumentials on it and the ones who’d never gotten the chance to join them staring him down as he left. Ant pushed all thoughts of magic, the Monumentials, Alpheus, worrying his family, and the Scepter, out of his mind. Somehow, the hum in his spine seemed to ebb into something that felt pleased. Ant wasn’t sure if it was the sleep-deprivation making him think that, but his resolution to not think of it anymore held firm.
Ant walked down the hall to his bedroom, and climbed back into bed. After laying awake for a few moments, his eyes started to slip shut. Blue crept into his vision as usual, and this time the pulsing hum wasn’t so distracting as he slept.