Kai was crouched at the corner of a pitch dark cellar. He kept banging the back of his head to a wall behind, trying to analyze the situation. Just a day before, he was a kid whose arrival was celebrated. Now, he was a prisoner whose name was in the most wanted criminals' list. He sighed looking into the ceiling, which reminded him of how much he was scared of tight and suffocating places, he felt like the sky was falling on him.

'Kai, can you hear me?' A feminine voice whispered into his ears, as if the cold waves were carrying her voice only to deliver it secretly to him alone, 'shh...don't talk. Just think of what you want to say, I can almost hear it.'

'Oh my god! Not again.'

'Okay. I'm going to take that as a yes.' Her voice reiterated inside his skull.

'Sheila? Is that you?'

'Yup. Just me. I am a jelly mermaid and a priestess, remember?'

'Unbelievable.'

'Just zip it, alright? Now get your lazy fin up and wade towards the door,' she ushered him to break out of the cell with her telepathic psychic communication. 'Use your claws to break the lock.'

'I am not sure about this. You are inviting another trouble,' he thought, but went over at the door to examine the lock anyways. A ball sized lock was chained to his door, it felt old and rusted.

'Trouble is my middle name. Do you want to be free or not?' Her angry tone was apparent with the amount of intensity she was filling into her words.

'Yeah?!' Kai's chitinous leg scratched his head, 'but...'

'Good. Now, chuck that 'but' aside and break yourself from the cellar and come help me.' Sheila urged him. He carefully picked the rusted lock and bit his lip in nervousness. 'On my mark,' she commanded him trying not to ruin the plan, 'now!'
His strong claws pressed and crunched the metallic lock on her cue, but nothing happened.

'Stop! There's a peacekeeper.'

He suddenly left the lock alone, gasped and retreated back into the darkness. The peacekeeper stood for a second to peek into his cellar, owing to a sudden noise of movement he had witnessed from the side. He shrugged and left the place after a while.

Kai reappeared into the light. 'Phew! That was close.'

'Kai, what are you waiting for? Do it now.'

He instantly picked the lock with one claw and tried to break it with another. 'Can you please keep quiet for a minute?'

'I can't.'

'Aye aye, your highness.' Kai rolled his eyes and broke the lock with one strong clunk. 'Can I proceed? Is anybody out there?'

'Nope. To your left.'

'Alright,' he carefully tiptoed, keeping an eye on both the sides of the hallway. 'Where to?' He stopped waiting for her next command.

Sheila's voice gasped inside his head, sending waves of shiver down his spine, 'Hide. Did you leave the cellar open? Now we are doomed!'

He turned around without a second thought and rushed to return back to his cellar. 'I told you, it wasn't a good idea.' As soon as he saw a open door on his way back, one of his claws reflexively grabbed a bar and swung it behind him, catapulting himself inside. He buried himself in the blanket of darkness, with a pair of watchful eyes, his heart literally trying to break out of his rib cage.

A peacekeeper swam slowly across the hallway, whistling and lost in his thoughts. He played​ with his spear rotating it, balancing it on his fingertips as if he was a leading soldier in a parade.

Kai's pupils dilated suddenly to their full extent, as the spear from the soldier's hand slipped to tumble and fall. 'No no no.' Kai shook his head, as the silence fell across the hallway, with a sense of foreboding.

The peacekeeper caught the spear before it touched the ground, where the broken rusted clock was lying. "Needs practice." He muttered to himself and took off from the place.

'Phew!' Kai let a low sigh rumble through his chest, as he un-glued himself from the wall behind.

'That was close.' Sheila's soft sigh was laced in all of her words, 'Take a turn to the left and hurry up,' she informed him of the clear zone.

'Alright.' Kai peeked out of the cellar, half hopped and swam across the hallway, steadily checking on his back once in a while, as if he was being chased by a shark. He staggered to control his inertia before he took a left turn swiftly as instructed, 'right or left next?'

'Right.'

'On it.'

'Fourth room, women's section,' she shared the location of her cellar with him through a mind talk.

'One. Two. Three. Four.' He mentally counted all the cellars in the lane. As soon as he found a fourth one, he held the bars of it and peeked inside. "Sheila!"

A pair of cat eyes shone through the darkness like twinkling twin stars. Kai squeezed his eyes to get a better glimpse at them. As much as he remembered, Sheila certainly didn't have cat eyes. A groan coming from the darkness in front of him confirmed that it wasn't Sheila for sure.

He gasped and flinched away from the door only to stumble and fall on the ground, as a black and white striped person with wriggly tentacles materialized from the darkness. He had a red ball stuck on his nose. His terrifying expression suddenly changed to an eerie smile, as his red tinted lips widened from ear to ear.
"I am the Wonderpusss of wonderlanddd. I am a clown, or should I say- the best clown, as people like to call it? And you must be Kai." The clown began to put a show for him. His eight, striped, tentacles started juggling a dozen of colourful balls, once in a while changing the pattern of juggling from 'circles' to '8', as if it was a piece of cake.

"Uhhh...how do you know me?"

"Everybody knows the propheccccyy, don't they?"

'Kai, I am here.' Sheila stuck her hand in between the metallic bars of a cellar in the opposite line as she mentally instilled her thoughts into him. 'Can you see me?'

Kai scurried to find her and once when he saw her hand sticking out and waving at him, he leapt forward like a grasshopper from the ground. He broke the lock carefully without creating any loud chink. But, the creak while opening the door echoed across the hallway. Sheila cringed her face and clenched her fists as she tiptoed out of the cellar.

"Hurry." Kai grabbed her hand and started, but he had to immediately stop as he didn't know which way to go. Sheila showed her finger towards the same way he had come earlier.

"When it dawns at dusk,
a gathering of stingers, claws and tusk,
shall hunt the phoenix down,
for she isn't​ fair a queen for the crown." Wonderpus jumped from bar to bar of his cellar, chanting the song, his eerie face peeking and grinning at both of them as they swam past him.

Sheila frowned at him and stopped just a little ahead of the aisle. She swam back to his cellar, "is that the prophecy you are singing?"

"Yesss."

"Alright," she shook her head, despising her foolish hopes and started off, but the clown wrapped a tentancle around her wrist. It started to blend in with her skin tone in a perfect camouflage.
"Let me go." She tried to free herself and Kai joined in with her, just in time, "please."

"Take me with you."

"You are asking too much, that's not possible." Sheila hushed, her face squeezing at the tightening grip of his tentacle. Her hand seemed to have a heart of it's own, as the blood started pooling in her fingers to pulse.

"I know the next part of the prophecy, ask your high priestess if she knowsss?" The clown grinned baring his tobacco stained teeth. "She doesn't. No one does, except the witch herself."

"And. Why is that?" Kai forcefully unwrapped his tentacle and staggered to find balance holding Sheila in his arms once he undid the tentacle. "Let's go."

"I was the double agent. Why do you think I ended up here?"

Both of them stopped to look behind at him. Kai gulped, 'I don't think we can trust him. We had had enough of that seagull before.' His thought travelled across the water only to whisper into her ears. Sheila was not yet used to these magical abilities she had received through this novel body, but she was trying her best to adjust.

'Let's give him a chance. May be he can help us, I have not heard the second part of the prophecy yet from anybody, not even from the high priestess,' projecting her opinion into Kai's head, Sheila squirted over towards the clown, her skirt like mane ballooned to give her enough strength, before she darted ahead.

"Promise that you won't betray us," saying that Kai looked straight into his bizarre eyes, as if he was giving a warning and raised an eyebrow of question mark.

"That's quite a promise. If that's what costs my freedom, I am absolutely in."

"Fine."

Kai slid the lock up along a bar of Wonderpus's cellar, he clenched his teeth at the dubiety of his decision. He sucked in a big breath and clunk opened the lock in a single go. The clown wiggled and plopped easily out of the dark room, even before the door was fully open.

"Go. Go. Go." Sheila hurried and took the lead as she could sense the presence of any oncoming threat before the opposite party could.

***********************************

WC- 1650

*Fun fact:-
Did you know Wonderpus is real? It's a subspecies of octopus found only around Philippines. No two Wonderpusses have the similar striped pattern on their body, it's like their fingerprint. :P