Before any of us could react, all the Reapers vanished. It was quiet and still once more, the spirits fading away, unseen by those of us without scythes. It was a clear sign that we were no longer considered a threat, that it was too late for anyone to stop Taeral from what he’d set out to do.
Only, even as we breathed our collective sigh of relief, I worried. What if Death didn’t like Taeral going in there? What if something were to happen to him?
“Should we go in?” I asked, glancing at the crew. “After Taeral, I mean.”
Riza sucked in a breath. “Is it wise? He went in there with Eira and Lumi for a reason.”
“You’re right,” I conceded, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that gnawed at my insides. Baethal and Wrik had left me with a troubling thought, and it refused to go away.
Gazing at the palace’s gilded doors, I found myself quivering, my temples throbbing as I pondered whether Taeral, Lumi, and Eira would need our help. I sure as hell didn’t want to go in and spoil everything for them. In the end, all we could do was mend our wounds and wait for them to come back out, alive, in one piece, and hopefully successful.
Lumi
Liquid sunshine poured through me, and a sense of tranquility kept my wildest instincts from flaring. As we stood before the four Hermessi, my chest swelled with what I assumed to be determination. Somewhere beyond those double doors, Death awaited, and the whispers pouring in my ears told me that I needed to be there, no matter what.
“We’ve come to speak to Death,” Taeral said. There was a slight tremor in his voice, which he couldn’t control, but he kept his chin up, unwavering in his resolve.
Eira was as pale as a ghost, but she, too, kept her cool. The Fire Hermessi was the first to cock his head to the side. “You made it inside,” he said. “That’s a first.”
“We don’t mean anyone any harm,” Taeral replied. “We simply seek an audience, and I can feel her beyond these doors.”
“You’re wearing Devil’s Weed.” Air scoffed. “No wonder we couldn’t sense you. That’s a neat trick to pull.”
“Will you let us pass?” I asked.
Air looked at me, and it didn’t feel like a friendly gaze, though all I could see was the burning white energy of his figure. “Had we known you were coming, we would’ve put together a welcoming committee.”
That couldn’t possibly have a positive connotation. It made me squirm, as I mentally prepared myself for a potential attack. It didn’t take a scientist to understand that these four elementals had been summoned here to guard the doors for Death. But I did wonder how Death had gotten them involved—as far as we knew, she and the Hermessi didn’t exactly get along. Then again, she was at the top of the godlike entities’ food chain, probably at least one step above the Hermessi. We were nowhere near the top, mere ants for them to squish whenever they felt like throwing a tantrum.
We were dancing with giants here, and there was always the possibility that we’d get stomped in the process. Therefore, proceeding with care was our wisest option.
“I don’t think aggression is a solution here,” I said, my tone firm. “At the risk of repeating ourselves, I feel I should reiterate that we do not wish to do any harm.”
The Hermessi, however, began to swell, their flames burning menacingly brighter in white, emerald, sapphire, and fiery orange. “You cannot pass,” the Water Hermessi replied. “You shouldn’t even be here. How foolish of you to actually believe you could change anything.”
“‘Desperate’ would be a better choice of word for our mental state right now,” Taeral muttered.
We stepped back as the Hermessi began to move toward us, but the light inside me shone whiter and more powerful than ever. My ears hummed and my skin tickled all over, as if my entire being was reacting strongly against the elementals’ approach. Now, more than ever, I felt the Word flowing through me.
“Whatever your desire, you will not take a single step forward,” the Water Hermessi said. “We won’t allow it.”
For a few seconds, I wondered if that was true. If they could actually stop us. Taeral could try and teleport us past them, after all—emphasis on “try,” since none of the rules of time and space and matter seemed to fully apply to Mortis. Recent examples included the ghosts’ ability to physically hurt us.
A low female voice vibrated through the hallway, like a steady echo. “Stand down,” she said, bringing the Hermessi to a sudden halt. “It’s time we had a talk, anyway.”
She sounded so close, yet I knew she was somewhere beyond the double screen doors. I’d heard her inside my head, rippling through the rest of my body and making my limbs tremble, ever so slightly. I exchanged a few worried and equally hopeful glances with Taeral and Eira, while the Hermessi moved back to the side, without saying another word.
Air moved his hand in a subtle motion, enough to pull the screen doors apart, revealing the next room. I found myself breathless before it—it was massive, a giant hall with tall ceilings made of a single mirror which reflected the black marble floor. This place seemed unrelated to the rest of the palace, the only binding element present in the walls, made entirely from paper screens with black wooden frames. All across the silk paper, an insanely skilled artist had managed to depict a cherry orchard in full blossom, with long-beaked birds flying from one branch to another. It seemed to go on forever, as the hall was in the shape of a perfect circle.
Smack in the middle, lazily resting in an elegant throne with mother-of-pearl inlays and gilded details, was… Death. By the stars, she was beautiful and eerie and terrifying, all at once. The images we’d seen of her didn’t do her justice. Death’s humanoid manifestation was stunning—the artists had gotten the long black hair, the red lips, and the pale skin right, but they had failed to blend them into their true harmony.
Her eyes were big and round, perfectly black and filled with stars which twinkled as we walked toward her. There was a pile of ancient scrolls in her lap, and she’d been reading through them, from the looks of it. The dress she wore was voluminous and long and fluttering, made of white silk. It stretched over parts of the throne, cascading toward the black marble floor and spreading outward like pearl-colored quicksilver. It seemed to be alive, every thread in its fabric moving gently with each breath that she took.
She watched us, half smiling, as we crossed the circular hall. I caught movement in the corner of my eye and turned to see what it was. I heard myself gasp as I saw that the painted cranes were very much alive, moving across the paper canvas as they flew from one cherry tree to another. Pink petals fell like cotton-candy snowflakes, scattered in the soft winds. The walls vibrated with a strange energy, one which set the art in motion, and it was spectacular.
“It took you a while,” Death said, her long and delicate fingers rolling a scroll back up and tying the silk ribbon around its stem. She scooped them all from her lap and tossed them to the side. They vanished in a puff of white dust as soon as they hit the black marble floor. We stopped, confused by what we’d just seen, and Death shrugged. “They’re back in storage.”
Despite her diaphanous appearance and the peculiar behavior of her silken dress, Death’s voice was deep and strong and downright bewildering. For a moment, I was under the impression that all this was merely an elaborate dream. That I was back on Calliope, wrapped up in my woolen blankets… that none of this was real. But her voice was my anchor to reality. This was happening.
Taeral inhaled sharply. “Telluris, Viola,” he whispered.
Death snapped her fingers, and Taeral grunted, a pained look settling beneath his eyebrows. “No need to let your friends know where you are or what you’re doing,” Death said, a smirk trying the corner of her mouth. “While you’re here, I would appreciate your full attention.”
I had to admit, this was scary. I had never been in this position before. I’d never thought I would ever stand in a place like this, with Death looking at me. Amazingly, I couldn’t even take my eyes off her. She was entrancing, not only through her appearance but through the titanic energy that rippled out of her in tidal waves, each of them hitting me harder as the distance between us shortened. It didn’t hurt, but it rattled me on the inside—and the Word seemed extremely reactive to it, as well, buzzing through my veins.
“I apologize,” Taeral said. “It’s just that our friends, our worlds, depend on us finding you. I simply thought they should know.”
“There’s a saying on Earth,” Death replied. “I like it a lot. It goes, ‘Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.’ Do you understand what it means?”
Taeral nodded.
“Forgive us for dropping by unannoun—” I started, but she abruptly cut me off.
“Oh, honey. You were anything but that,” she replied, clearly amused. “The Hermessi may not have felt you because of that Devil’s Weed on you, but I… I knew the moment your pretty little heads pierced the pink water.”
That was an unsettling revelation. Not that it should’ve come as a surprise, since Death was omnipresent and likely omnipotent. But still. She’d known about our presence here all along, yet she’d let us wander around, dazed and confused. She let us struggle against her Reapers and murderous ghosts and even the Hermessi she’d planted outside her door.
In that moment, I understood that the conversation we were about to have would be anything but easy and fruitful. The playful glimmer in her midnight eyes confirmed my suspicions. No matter how many eggshells we walked on around her, there was a chance we’d walk out of here empty-handed—or worse, we wouldn’t walk, but rather be carried out, our bodies lifeless and our souls swiftly sent into the next world.
