“That we deserve an hour’s worth of pure celebration.” Viola sighed. “Some food, some spiced blood, some drinks, and a little bit of music.”
“But I should keep working,” Phoenix retorted, stifling a grin as he gave Viola a sideways glance. She laughed.
“You’ll get your reward in triplicate once you find Mortis and Taeral,” she said, and it was enough to get Phoenix’s focus back on the screens. I figured that the “triplicate” involved plenty of physical affection, too.
“So, what, we get to party in Luceria?” Herakles grinned.
“Catch our breaths,” Riza replied. “We get to catch our breaths.”
Yes, I thought. The clock was still ticking. The race was still on. But there was no point sitting and sulking in a room for the few hours’ worth of peace that we’d gotten. We had no way of helping Phoenix move faster. We couldn’t take other field missions, because we needed to be ready to leave for Mortis at a moment’s notice. I didn’t mind spending some time around Varga, anyway—the kind of time that didn’t involve running or fighting for our lives.
And Viola was right. We’d gotten a small win from the Volcrun caves. A small one, but a win nonetheless. We may as well eat something, drink something, relax for a few minutes, and gear up for the trip ahead. We all knew that the real crazy was just getting started.
And we’d be smack in the middle of it.
Harper
Ramin and I had been drifting for hours. A shapeless mass of fiery sparks that followed the stardust stream to… we didn’t know where it was leading, exactly, only that it took us far away from Brendel and what I imagined would be her unimaginable wrath. Ramin, a rebel Hermessi, had made it so deep inside her camp that he’d been on Yahwen. He’d seen where the Hermessi children were kept.
Of course, neither of us knew how to get there from Calliope or Neraka, since we were still lost in space. But we memorized every single galaxy and star cluster along the way, making sure we remembered the details, so later I’d check with Phoenix on an astral map and pinpoint the oldest twenty-planet system in the In-Between. It was important, because it wasn’t just where Brendel was hiding the Hermessi children. It was where she was going to complete the ritual and bring about the end of days for at least two dimensions.
Ramin had been betrayed by his own son, and I’d been there to witness the entire exchange. My heart broke for him, but I was relieved that he was out here, with me, despite the fact that the ritual Hermessi were using his son as leverage. Granted, Ledar had joined Brendel’s mission, along with a few other Hermessi children. We hadn’t seen that coming, and it did make our effort to save them a tad more difficult—but not impossible.
I was tired, emotionally speaking. Inalia had had no choice but to come after Ramin, once he was discovered. She and a bunch of other Fire Hermessi had been relentless in their chase. Fortunately, Ramin had been able to jump on the nearest thread of stardust before they could catch him—and, inevitably, discover me hidden inside.
We’d gathered a lot of knowledge from our endeavor, but we were both in serious trouble, now. Ramin couldn’t go back to Neraka. He was branded a traitor and a rebel, and the other Hermessi on his planet were bound to kill him the moment he got close enough. After all, they had Ledar to take his place, like Inalia had succeeded Brann. But we had to find a way back, nonetheless, since I needed to get back to my body as soon as possible.
Soul-walking was a rare and fickle thing, made possible by my unique relationship with Ramin, but it wasn’t without risk. The longer I stayed away from my body, the higher the risk that I wouldn’t be able to go back into it—that my physical form would die, leaving my soul stranded.
“We can’t keep going like this forever,” Ramin said after a long period of silence.
We’d moved at different speeds. Sometimes, the stardust rushed us through the cosmos, turning every single star around us into brief flashes, mere flickers in time. Ramin had the ability to remember details which I couldn’t at that velocity, and he mentally passed them on to me for future reference. At other times, we floated slowly enough for me to take it all in, to marvel at the wonders of the In-Between, many of them yet to be discovered by GASP.
Worlds on colorful planets, orbiting small or giant stars, joined by moons and asteroids in this seemingly eternal dance of cosmic objects, their rhythm dictated by gravitational mass. Maybe some, if not all, of those we’d seen so far were inhabited. Personally, I was dying to find out. We had the magic and the technology to reach this far into the In-Between. But first, we had to make sure we had a future in which to do all this. We had to defeat the Hermessi’s ritual. In order to do that, Ramin and I had to get back to Neraka, so I wouldn’t die, and… what a vicious circle this was, since Ramin couldn’t return home anymore.
“I agree. We need a place to just sit down, so to speak, and put our heads together,” I replied. This wasn’t over. Not even by a long shot. If anything, our current situation only made me want to fight the Hermessi even harder. They were supposed to be elements of nature, not gigantic, indoctrinated foes willing to wipe us all off the map because their lore dictated it. They were supposed to nurture and protect life, not squash it.
“I’m not sure I know where we are yet.” Ramin sighed. “This could be hostile territory.”
“If we’re to land somewhere here, how soon before the local Hermessi would recognize you?” I asked, trying to cook up an action plan. I’d found this whole drifting-in-space thing quite relaxing for an hour or two, but the charm had already worn off. I wanted to be back in my body, in Caspian’s arms, with the physical capacity to retaliate against Brendel and her horde of loyalists.
“They’d be quite quick to spot me, especially if there’s an alert out on my name,” Ramin explained. “It’s difficult to convey in words, but let’s just say our knowledge of one another is common. We almost instantly recognize other Hermessi, and they’re just as quick to know who we are. Our identities, our colors, our actions are recorded into the very fabric of this universe.”
“I suppose your fellow Hermessi on Neraka are stronger now than, say, Leb, Sebbi, and Acquis were on Cerix when Brann went back,” I said. “Given the increase in affected fae.”
That much we knew for sure. The more fae fell under the Hermessi’s influence, the stronger the Hermessi became—rebels and loyalists alike. “That is correct. The moment I set foot on Neraka, I’m done for.”
“What if you take me to Calliope, instead, once you figure out where we are?” I suggested, my mind whirring into motion. I wasn’t one to dwell in the despair caused by a problem. I sought the solution, always.
“That’s doable. But I won’t be able to stay for too long,” he said.
“Minutes?”
“Probably, yes. As a foreign Hermessi, I wouldn’t be immediately detected, but… I don’t know, if we’re going to stop somewhere and do something about our situation, it might as well be a place like Calliope,” Ramin conceded. “The risks will still be there, but at least you’ll have your GASP people with potential ideas on how to get you back to your body.”
A thought crossed my mind then. “Can’t we just get them to bring my body over from Neraka to Calliope?”
“I’m afraid not. There’s an invisible bond between the flesh and the soul. If you move the flesh, the soul won’t know how to come back to it. It’s a rather abstract concept, if you ask me, but that is how soul-walking works. I told you there were risks.”
“I’m not disputing that. I’m just trying to figure out a way to get me back into my body without putting you at risk,” I replied.
We passed a supersized moon that orbited around an even bigger planet—a mastodon of the In-Between, about as big as Neptune from the Earthly dimension. All the others in its system looked like tiny marbles, compared to it. For a moment, I was blinded by the sun around which they revolved. The bright white light shot through my very soul, warming me up on the inside.
“Getting one’s soul lost while soul-waking doesn’t happen often. In fact, I’ve never heard of it happening before,” Ramin said. “Which is why I’m wary of trying new things, like moving your body. I’d rather we just get you back to Neraka, one way or another, than test untried theories and make irreversible, potentially deadly mistakes.”
I certainly understood what he meant. Dying was pretty much the last thing on my to-do list, given the fresh hell we’d been forced into by the Hermessi. Most importantly, I couldn’t bring myself to perish without at least saying goodbye to Caspian and seeing him again, one last time. No, I would not die out here. No way.
Something pink and shiny caught my attention. Another stardust stream, swelling and flowing in an endless spiral. It crossed the one we’d been riding for the past four or five hours, and it went in two different directions—each farther away from where our stream was going.
“Do we have to stay on this one stream?” I asked.
He must’ve read my mind. Before he even replied, Ramin swirled us both into a round cloud of luminescent sparks and jumped off the river of pink-and-orange stardust. For a few seconds, we were victims of vacuum, once more, until we drifted right into the other stream. From then on, our speed rivaled that of light itself.
“It’s a good thing to change directions, sometimes,” he said, memorizing everything along the way and passing it down to me.
Another hour must’ve passed as we continued our journey in an unknown direction. Only, this time, the ignorance was not permanent. I soon began to see something glimmering in the distance—something I’d seen before in my travels to and from Neraka.
Twenty planets. One sun. A thread of fuchsia-colored dust swirling around it like a protective barrier. The Daughters’ celestial magic, designed to warn the Eritopians of any incoming threat, natural or otherwise.
