The Exorcist Doctor

The novelty of the Drowned Parish didn’t wear off. The deeper they went, the more apparent it was that they were walking through the beating heart of Wraithpier itself. Fishmongers occupied alcoves and operated them as stores in the enormous cathedral-market. Merchants sold their wares from balconies hanging over the central canal. Wooden staircases twisted around stone pillars built decades before half the ward even existed, while rope bridges crossed overhead between galleries crowded with spectators, traders, gamblers, and fishermen. Everywhere one could turn to look, old religion was buried beneath pure commerce. The building no longer belonged to any god. It belonged to the fish.

And more fish.

And then more fish.

The crowds never thinned. If anything, they became denser the further in they walked. Thousands of people flowed through the market like a living current, weaving around stalls, crossing bridges, boarding canal boats, and crowding around impromptu competitions wherever they appeared. Poor luck for those with sensitive ears. The air was filled with shouting, haggling, laughing, cheering, and tons of cursing. The entire place felt lawless, and it was essentially lawless—so naturally, all eight of them found different things to stare at and entertain themselves with as they walked.

Evelyn and Liorin were immediately drawn toward the fishing contests scattered throughout the market. Every few hundred meters, another crowd seemed to be gathered around a stretch of canal while competitors battled some monstrous creature beneath the water. The competitions were less sporting events and more like public executions where nobody was sure whether the fish or the fisherman would die first. Men strained against rods taller than themselves while spectators screamed advice from the sidelines. Some fishermen cursed the fish, while some threatened them with fileting knives. One particularly red-faced competitor threatened to seduce the fish's mother after he dragged it onto land, and hearing that got the teens to stare at them even more excitedly.

"I think fishman here are all very angry,” Liorin said, watching two drunken fishermen arm wrestled atop barrels while crowds placed bets on the outcome.

“They’re even angrier than old men in Blightmarch when ya tell them to drink water with their medicine, and not wash it down with alcohol,” Evelyn replied, watching another man nearly get pulled into the canal.

Meanwhile, Vivi and Jin found themselves increasingly distracted by the market stalls themselves. ‘Ordinary’ fish still existed, of course, but in the many hundreds and thousands of overflowing fish tanks where sellers showed off their wares on sale, ordinary fish were outnumbered by fever dreams. Most of the fish being sold possessed multiple heads and translucent scales so their organs could be seen. Others had clusters of insectile lugs protruding from their gills. One particular fishmonger even displayed a beast so long that it occupied five connected tanks, its serpentine body coiling through each tank while portions of it rose above the water.

Every few minutes, Vivi would slow to stare at an impossible fish, often looking uncertain whether she should be fascinated or disturbed. Even Jin appeared interested in the sheer variety of fish being sold, and the man was never interested in anything but pottery, decent architecture, and killing Myrmurs, so if only the fishmongers knew how grateful they should be to have their fish acknowledged by him.

Maeve, too, couldn’t help but stare at the fish tanks as they walked past them.

“What’s wrong with them?” she murmured, clutching her briefcase in both hands before her so she wouldn’t bump it into anyone. “Why do none of them look normal. They’re nothing like the fish people sell in Vharnveil.”

That made Gael laugh. "That's because all the fish in Vharnveil come from Wraithpier, and Wraithpier only sends the boring fish up.” He tapped his cane against the planks beneath their feet while continuing to walk. “And by boring, I mean the clean ones, the pretty ones, and the ‘normal’ ones. Apparently, nobody up there wants to eat a fish with six eyes. Why is that, anyways? Don’t you wanna eat a fish with six eyes?”

Maeve ignored him and looked around again at the surrounding stalls. “So all of these weird-looking fish…”

"Are the ones the locals like to eat. Vharnveil eats the pretty ones Wraithpier doesn’t like to eat, and vice versa, Wraithpier eats the ugly ones Vharnveil doesn’t like to eat. Win-win, right?”

With that, he grinned and started pointing his cane at a few nearby tanks.

"See that ugly bastard with three heads over there? That one’s called a blackfin sea bass. Miss Alba uses those in her blackfin noodle broth,” he said. “And that one with the spiky tails goes into her signature deepwater stew, while that big one with cicada wings on the back goes into her ultra-roast broth. She sources all of her fish straight from the Drowned Parish.”

Maeve stared at each fish as he identified it. Unfortunately, now that she knew what she was looking at, she looked like she wasn’t entirely sure whether she appreciated the knowledge of what she’d been eating all this time.

Gradually, however, the atmosphere around them began to shift. The market remained crowded, and the cheering remained equally loud, but Cara and Fergal—who’d kept their eyes on the lookout this entire time—shot out their arms abruptly to stop the rest of them from progressing.

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Without drawing attention to himself, Fergal scanned the upper galleries and balconies surrounding the canal.

"... They’re here.”

The rest of them paused. Gael, too, had to search around for a second—but then five colorful fishing lines suddenly arced by overhead, sailing from the second-floor gallery before splashing into the canal to their left.

While a small crowd started forming around the area—and everyone but the eight of them hurried away from standing directly under the fishing lines—Gael craned his head back and looked up.

Right behind the railings of the second floor sat a collection of men, all lounging in chairs made of driftwood, ropes, fishing nets, and whatever other material they managed to scrounge together. The five of them looked utterly relaxed despite the attention they were already getting from their colorful fishing lines, but that much didn’t surprise Gael. They were Fishermen, with a big capital F. What distinguished them from any other fisherman in Wraithpier were their hats. One resembled the skull of an enormous anglerfish. Another appeared to be constructed from several eel species stitched together into a single grotesque trophy. Others incorporated fins, scales, bones, hooks, preserved eyes, and things even Gael couldn't immediately identify, but their hats all had one consistent trait: they were way too big to be sitting on any human head, and yet they were there, perfectly balanced.

The Fishermen may lack the theatrical grandeur of the Three-Faces and the overwhelming military presence of the Steelborn, but what they didn’t have, they made up for with infamy and admiration among their people. After all, they were only the best anglers in… probably the entire world.

So while people started betting, chatting, and setting up crates and barrels around the ground floor to spectate this round of fishing, Gael grinned and waved up at the five hatted men.

“Oi! Up there! The five of you!” he shouted. “The name’s Gael Halloway, Blightmarch man! I’m here to talk business on behalf of the Heartcord Clinic!”

… For several moments, nothing happened.

The five Fishermen remained seated, making tiny movements with their wrists and sending subtle vibrations through their fishing lines. Their rods twitched, and the hooks below shifted. Then four out of five colored lines snapped taut at once—red, green, yellow, black—and the crowd around Gael exploded into cheers.

Four of the five Fishermen immediately shot up from their chairs. The one with the anglerfish for a hat laughed aloud. The one with the multi-eel hat uncorked a bottle and took a long drink while wrestling his catch. The one whose hat was woven out of nets and fishing hooks rested his rod against his shoulder and turned around, dragging his entire body back for more leverage, while the one whose hat had a whole pinkish-blue jellyfish plopped on top whipped his head, snapping his jellyfish tendrils onto the rod so they could give him a better grip.

Gael sighed. Without waiting for a response, he reached into his coat and produced a piece of parchment, unrolling it to reveal a giant drawing of the Breeder. It naturally drew the attention of a few nearby spectators, but more people were focused on the wrangling than the wanted poster.

“Our Saint’s Hands have actually tried to contact you for help before, but you never responded, so I’m here to talk in person,” he began, ignoring them ignoring him as he shook his drawing of the Breeder. “This guy’s off his rockers. He used to work in Bleakhearth, kidnapping locals from the cardinal wards and turning them into artificial Myrmur Hosts by planting the parasites inside them. Six months ago, we tried to capture him, but we fucked up. Now we’ve got pretty reliable info that he’s here in the north, having resumed his operations, so I’m here with a business proposal. Wanna hear it?”

The crowd’s cheers grew louder as the four Fishermen started putting their backs into the wrangling, now straining and groaning against their rods. Gael took that as a ‘yes’.

“If the Fishermen of Wraithpier work with the Saint’s Hands on locating this fuck-face, I’ll treat all of the artificial Myrmur Hosts and remove their parasites,” he said. “The Heartcord Clinic has the means to do so. Anyone you’ve lost, misplaced, or given up on can be saved. After that, we’ll offer the same thing we offered to the Three-Faces and the Steelborn: medicine, pharmaceuticals, treatment, and other health-related supplies. In return, we’ll even buy lots of fish from you. Miss Alba’s planning on expanding her noodle shops outside of Blightmarch, so she’s gonna need a lot of reliable suppliers. What do you say? Give me a ‘hell yeah’ if you wanna get healthy!”

The four Fishermen roared. The crowd roared with them. For one glorious moment, Gael thought negotiations were proceeding remarkably well—and then three gigantic shapes erupted from the canal behind him with explosions of deep blue water.

Two of them were almost fully translucent, revealing their mess of bones within, while the last one was a double-headed rockfish, each head biting a different lure. The crowd backed away at once to make space for them on land—and even Maeve, Fergal, and Jin dashed back, taking the other four with them—but Gael remained where he was, unsheathing his bladed cane with a metallic hiss.

Oh well.

Before the three soaring giants could chomp his head off, he took a step towards the Fishermen, stabbed behind him, and punctured four vulnerable nerve clusters behind each fish’s heads.

A moment later, all three giants collapsed behind him, completely paralyzed and dead.

The crowd wasn’t quiet for long. Almost instantly, dozens of people rushed forward with fileting knives, and the giant fish quickly vanished beneath swarms of eager hands. Men hoisted entire fins onto their shoulders while others began carving sections away, simply glad they were able to partake in such colossal catches so early in the morning.

But above, the four standing Fishermen were unmoving. Their faces remained hidden beneath the enormous brims of their hats. Gael couldn’t tell what they were thinking at all. Whether they were confused, irritated, or simply pissed off, there was just no way to tell.

So he grinned as he always did, sheathing his blade in the meanwhile.

“What?” he said. “Don’t know what ‘hell yeah’ means?”

Before any of the four could respond, though, the fifth fishing line—the blue line—suddenly snapped taut.

And the Fisherman with the hat made entirely out of white salt blocks finally stood up, grunting as he tightened his grip on his fishing rod.

“... Nah,” the Fisherman grumbled. “Sounds like a hassle.”