Lumi’s white irises glistened with surprise, the iris and the blue edges widening momentarily as she looked at Taeral. “Are you serious?”
“She also said I should expect bad news from home, but kicked us out right afterward, leaving me on the edge of my freaking seat here,” Taeral added, angrily walking toward the first hallway. We could see the gilded doors at the end, getting bigger with each step we took. “I have to say, she’s definitely not my favorite in the cosmic pantheon.”
“We clearly have a lot to talk about,” Lumi said slowly.
We most certainly did. Most importantly, we needed to get out of here and reunite with our friends. Death had said they were waiting for us, which meant they were still alive. Perhaps the Reapers and the ghosts had pulled back once they’d noticed we weren’t there.
There was still a lot of work to be done, and the quest that Death had thrown us into needed all hands on deck and all the brilliant minds involved. While Taeral, Lumi, and I were marked by Death, the others weren’t, and I wasn’t willing to lose another soul in this fight.
Lumi
Taeral brought me up to speed before we even reached the gilded doors of the palace. Needless to say, I was astonished. I’d learned new things about the Word, and I felt a little foolish. The supreme power I’d been serving for so long had kept me in the dark concerning the truth of its own existence and relation to Death. No wonder it had dropped in occasionally to help, when it had thought I might not make it by myself inside Death’s palace on Mortis… It wanted me to find her. It wanted to be there when I did, so it could speak to Death directly.
“We need to find out where Brendel hid the three pieces of Thieron,” Taeral said.
I set my concerns about the Word aside and focused on the mission. I’d commune with my maker later, and I’d ask the right questions, this time. I was done serving an entity that wasn’t forthcoming with me. I’d tolerated a lot over the years, including the fact that it had left me stranded with the Exiled Maras and the daemons for millennia, but this… this took the cake. My patience was irreversibly deceased.
“First and foremost, we need to tell the others everything we’ve learned. Every detail, every single thing we saw in here, too,” I replied.
We stopped in front of the double doors, and Taeral took Eira and me by the hand, ready to teleport us outside. He didn’t, though, as the doors opened on their own with a sharp squeal—the sound of metal hinges moving for the first time in centuries. Beyond, the entire crew waited, on their own, at the base of the stairs.
“Thank the universe,” I heard Amelia whisper.
They rushed up the stairs and met us halfway. We hugged each other, thankful to be alive and able to explain what had happened to us in this peculiar world, on this eerie planet where Death had made herself at home.
The aggressive spirits were gone, and so were the Reapers that had hounded us before. Despite what I’d just learned from our encounter with Death, I allowed myself to breathe a sigh of relief.
“We told Viola where you were,” Amelia said. “They’re waiting for us to let them know when you’re back.”
“Before that, we all need to talk,” I replied, motioning for everyone to gather round so Taeral, Eira, and I could tell them about our brief encounter with Death and the Word.
Amelia and Raphael, Riza and Herakles, Varga and Eva, Fallon, Acantha, and Nethissis all listened quietly as we recounted our experience. They learned about Thieron and its three pieces, along with the powerful Reapers that guarded them. They understood the sibling relationship between Death and the Word, though we weren’t sure how to make sense of that. We agreed to refer to that particular cluster as “forces of the universe,” functioning on the assumption that there were others like them, as the Word had said.
They were made aware of the trouble that lay ahead, and they had to come to terms with what Eira, Taeral, and I had been sworn into, frowning at the sight of our shimmering red wrist tattoos—Death’s mark and promise that our lives wouldn’t end until we delivered Thieron back to her.
“Oh, wow, she’s a piece of work,” Raphael observed. “You do all the work, and she just flips a switch and stops the Hermessi? Again?”
“Pretty much. We were in no position to make demands, obviously.” Taeral sighed. “That’s Death for ya. All we can do is take this one surefire chance we have to stop the ritual and follow through until we succeed.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Eva said, “and it’s certainly better than what you went in with. Let’s do something about it, then.”
Varga smiled. “I’m totally on board, of course.”
“We all are,” Acantha chimed in, one arm casually resting around Nethissis’s shoulders. Nethissis nodded enthusiastically. I had to admit, I was impressed. As tired and as worn out and terrified as we all were, we’d still found the strength to keep moving, to fight until we saved ourselves and all our worlds. Maybe that’s why the Word left me on Neraka with those monsters. Maybe it wanted me to meet these incredible people and bond with them.
I had a feeling that the universe didn’t simply work in mysterious ways. That maybe we were all pieces to a grand puzzle, the forces of which functioned to bring us together at precise times and in the right places, to generate the perfect conditions needed to combat aggressive elements such as the Hermessi. It was the only thought that gave me some comfort as to why the Word had never told me about its origins and its bond to Death.
“First and foremost, we need to get out of here,” Taeral said after a brief pause. “We know what we can do with the pink waters now.”
“We can’t go back to Calliope, but we can head back to Persea, meet with our people there,” Amelia suggested.
We linked hands with Taeral, who teleported us back to the pink water cave. I welcomed the darkness and the trickling sound of the primordial fluid, taking a few moments to breathe in and calmly gather my thoughts.
Eva and Varga checked the supplies and gathered more of the Devil’s Weed, since we’d need it. Amelia reached out to Viola through Telluris and delivered the good news—well, news that was as good as it could get in this situation, anyway. The consensus was as expected. Viola would dispatch a leadership team to Persea to meet with us, while we’d take the pink water route.
As we jumped in, one after the other, and lit up in different colors as a natural reaction, I couldn’t help but think—this seemed a little too easy and a little too difficult, all at once. Death had turned it all into a mere quest for three objects. We didn’t have a location for them, but we knew we’d have three of Death’s most powerful Reapers to confront once we found Eirexis, Zetos, and Phyla. Taeral had a scythe he could make full use of, but the Hermessi were bound to come after us even harder than before. And the fate of our worlds was dependent upon finding three objects, three needles in a cosmic haystack.
This time, we all knew to stay away from the crystal eggs growing along the walls—by now, we’d learned they grew in all the pink water caves, though only Calliope’s made Daughters; the ones on Strava, beneath the Lemnos Woods, had birthed Shills, and while we weren’t sure what was growing in these, we didn’t want to wait around and find out. Then again, Calliope’s had made Shills, too, which had been sent after Ramin and Harper upon their arrival, even though Mount Agrith had been destroyed. The pink waters had been sealed off from our use, not the Hermessi’s—that had been the general consensus, and the only thing that could explain the Shills’ presence on Calliope.
We made our way to the bottom, white light opening up before us, ready to suck us into the great unknown, while our thoughts carried us all the way to Persea.
This new stage of our mission had startled us all; I could see it in their eyes as they swam toward the white light. They were all thinking the same thing, and Varga was the first to voice it.
“How the heck are we going to find those pieces before the ritual, when we don’t even know where to start looking? You know, since we can’t use the pink waters to find them... Just when I thought we’d caught a lucky, clear break with them.” He sighed.
On one hand, hope had revitalized us, now that we knew what we had to do. On the other, the gargantuan size of our mission was simply overwhelming, and all I could do was keep moving until we reached the finish line.
The pink water trembled, tickling my skin in a way that made me want to glance back. As soon as I saw them, I shouted into my water filtration mask: “The Hermessi!”
The rest of the crew, likewise equipped for this underwater trip, followed my horrified gaze. Hermessi were coming through the cave and into the water, pouring in like large drops of elemental energy. I counted at least six of them, shapeless and glowing orange, white, green, and blue, and eager to get to us.
“They must’ve followed us down here,” Fallon gasped. He was the fastest swimmer in our group and was already the first to slip through the narrowing tunnel, toward the source of the white light. “We can’t fight them. We need to get out of here.”
The temperature rose, the pink water almost burning my skin for a moment. But the primordial liquid seemed quick to remember its acceptance of pure hearts. It healed my burning skin quickly, but it didn’t seem able to hurt or push the invading Hermessi out.
They don’t have hearts…
Fallon was right. Our only way out was through the white light. We scrambled downward, frantically swimming and squeezing through the tunnel after the vampire fae, while the colored lights above us grew brighter and more menacing.
