Brendel was at a point where desperation was kicking in, and that was when unpredictability could reshape the entire battle. A wounded animal was dangerous. Even though she was a Hermessi, her behavior could still resemble that of an injured beast. With my father’s life in her fiery hands, it limited my options—and Pyrr’s, too.

The hostile Hermessi kept coming down, dozens landing around us, their flames bright and colorful as they rose and walked toward us. The elemental circle closed and tightened around my group, and I knew we only had seconds left to get something out of Pyrr.

“What are you doing?” one of the visiting Hermessi asked. “Take them down, already. If we have to interfere, you know what Brendel will do to your son.”

Pyrr didn’t answer, but I felt the temperature rise. The winds intensified once more, and the clouds above expanded and darkened everything. For every word that the Fire Hermessi of the Fire Star did not say, his allies spoke more through their actions.

“Tae, we really need to go,” Eira said to me.

“Link hands,” I muttered.

We did, and I tried to get us out, but something stopped us. This wasn’t the first time. We’d had this issue before, and it had been Brendel. This felt different, however. It didn’t feel like a blockage caused by a single, much more powerful Hermessi, but rather the collective effort of multiple elementals.

“Oh, I think they’ve learned something new since Cerix,” Riza replied, horror imprinted on her face.

“They’re blocking us again,” I said. “And I don’t know how they’re doing it.”

“Our power grows a little more with every fae that falls under our influence,” Pyrr explained. “With every day that goes by, we learn to do new things we couldn’t even imagine before.”

One of the visiting Water Hermessi stepped forward. “Enough, Pyrr. You’re clearly hesitant, but we are not.”

Lumi and Nethissis’s hands lit up white. Herakles was the first to notice. “Guys, it’s about to get bad… really, really bad.”

The Widow Maker took out his scythe, and it was the first time we were all seeing it. Unlike the one I’d gotten from Yamani, the Widow Maker’s was huge, with a thick, short handle and a massive blade that rivaled Raphael in size.

“Where has he kept that thing until now?!” the Perfect croaked, unable to take his eyes off it. “It’s not like it fits in a pocket!”

“It manifests when I need it,” the Widow Maker replied dryly. “One of the perks of my age.”

A moment later, we were under attack. The Earth Hermessi struck first, sticking their green fire hands into the ground. Thousands of spikes shot up to pierce us at once, and Lumi and Nethissis retaliated with multiple energy pulses.

The air rippled outward, fracturing the spikes as they reached toward us. I only had Yamani’s scythe to work with, but I knew it was enough to at least cut some of the Hermessi. Raphael and Eira used their elemental powers—the Perfect had fire, and the Hermessi child of Acquis had water. Neither skimped on their resources.

Raphael cast fireballs around in a frenzied flurry, enough to confuse the incoming Fire Hermessi and to keep them busy, if only for a few seconds. Eira drew water from the clouds above and brought down thick columns of water against the Fire Hermessi.

Nethissis and Lumi were focused on engaging the Earth Hermessi, while Amelia, Riza, Herakles, Eva, and Varga did their best to handle the Air and Water attacks. Everything fathomable by the mind of an elemental was cast against us. Fires that could turn flesh to ashes in a matter of seconds, held back only by our meranium alloy shields. Shards of ice that could slice through us with deadly ease, stopped by our blades and by the pulverizer pellets. The Stravian weapons didn’t work against the Hermessi themselves, but they could still disintegrate the materials used to kill us.

I held my pulverizer weapon in one hand and Yamani’s scythe in the other. I fired five or six rounds, then used the scythe to slash at the incoming Fire Hermessi. Pyrr didn’t get involved, and that gave me a sense of hope. However, I was too busy defending myself and my crew to also try to get him on our side.

Time moved faster—or we did. I wasn’t sure. But it all unfolded in vivid and rapid flashes. The Widow Maker vanished and reappeared in different positions around our crew, casting attack spells I’d never seen before and cutting through multiple Hermessi with his enormous scythe. The latter seemed much more efficient, as it temporarily disabled the elementals’ humanoid form, in a fashion similar to what I’d seen from Kabbah and his insane green fire beams back on Cerix.

“Pyrr, you can’t let them do this,” I said and dodged a cluster of fireballs aimed at my head. More came at me, but I fired more pulverizer pellets—to my dismay, they didn’t work against the flames, but they went past and managed to destroy the rapidly growing spiky vines that were reaching toward Herakles and the others around him.

“My son’s life is more important,” the Fire Hermessi said. “As long as Sherus is at Brendel’s mercy, I cannot help you.”

“But you’re not attacking us, either,” Eva hissed. “That’s got to say something!”

I swerved to the right and slashed at a Water Hermessi’s blue flame figure. The scythe went right through his chest, and, for just a moment, the flames around the blade turned to water. Droplets splashed across my face as I moved back and tried to get closer to Pyrr.

All around me, the fighting became more violent. I heard Amelia cry out in pain. I caught a glimpse of Riza joining Herakles, Eva, and Varga as they fired their pulverizer weapons. Lumi and Nethissis were quickly getting tired, and the Widow Maker was hard at work and hurling curse words left and right.

“Now would be a great time to do something,” he snapped, though I couldn’t figure out who he was talking to. The entire crew was engaged in combat, and blood had been drawn from most of them, already.

“Pyrr, you can stop this,” I said to the patron Hermessi of my planet. “You can stop this. You’re more powerful than all of the outside Hermessi because this is your land, your home.”

He didn’t say anything. The Water Hermessi shook the cut I’d left in him off, regaining his full figure, and came after me again. He cast ice shards as big as my legs at me. I fired a couple of pulverizer shots, then cut down the third one before it could pierce through my shoulder.

With swift movements, I slipped the scythe back in its thigh holster and reloaded my weapon, which had been redesigned since the Strava incident to hold up to ten pulverizer cartridges. My hands were shaking, but I managed to slip the pellets into their allocated space. I nearly dropped the tenth as the Water Hermessi lunged at me.

Pyrr’s fiery arms swung down and forced him to stop. They didn’t have eyes, but I could tell that they were staring at each other with hostility. My heart skipped a beat. Was this it? Had Pyrr finally made up his mind?

I finished loading my weapon and took my scythe out again. A thin sheet of sweat covered my face and seeped into my suit collar. The cotton blend beneath absorbed as much as it could, but it was getting too hot in the middle of this Hermessi frenzy.

Herakles came down with a pained yelp, holding his thigh. A deep gash cut across, revealing the sliced muscle. Riza gasped and cast all the magic she had at the incoming Hermessi—energy pulses, fireballs, and violent bursts of sparks that did nothing more than slow the hostiles down for a few seconds.

Pyrr and I were on our own, here. I made a judgment call. I took a calculated risk and decided to tell him something I would’ve kept to myself and my crew. It was my Hail Mary, my last attempt to persuade him to help us. More Hermessi were coming, and, soon enough, we’d be overwhelmed and unable to teleport away from trouble, unless Pyrr lifted whatever restriction he’d put on our ability to escape. Even the Widow Maker had a hard time with all the elementals coming at him at once.

“We have a crew headed for Yahwen as we speak,” I whispered to Pyrr. “We’re going to get all the Hermessi children back and keep them in a safe place.”

Pyrr seemed to still. Even his fire dimmed for a moment. “That’s where she’s holding my son.”

It made sense, since my father was a Hermessi child. I figured Derek and Sofia would get the surprise of their lifetime once they got there and found him. Brendel had taken him where she’d thought we wouldn’t be able to access. How badly she’d underestimated GASP would someday make a fine chapter in the history books, for sure.

“We’re getting him out, then, too. We have a solid mission for this. We’ll make it,” I said. “We know it’s what the rebels need to get back into the game, to keep fighting Brendel. On top of that, you have to understand that none of us ever had the intention of leaving my father behind. We’ll all do everything we can to save him, but… come on, Pyrr. Is this really what you want the future to be like?” I added, motioning around me. “Hermessi stomping around the place and deciding that your world, with all its creatures, isn’t good enough? Do you really think this is where they’ll stop? That they won’t do it again in a few million years?”

Pyrr lowered his flaming head. Internally, I heard myself praying to the universe itself. Please… Just let him help. Please. We need this.

Something slammed into me from behind. My back burned as I wound up on the ground, my head and my limbs pinned. Screams tore through the group, and I heard my name more than once slipping from the lips of my friends.

A familiar, spine-tingling growl made my breath vanish. Hot and foul-smelling air tickled the side of my face. I managed to look up. Six pairs of eyes growing on the same deformed head watched me, the eyelids flicking shut occasionally. A Shill. A Shill had pounced on me, and I had no idea what would happen next.

Sure, Death had made it so that I wouldn’t die. But that didn’t exempt me from any excruciating pain, I figured. I’m about to find out.

Taeral

I felt its claws digging into my skin, having pierced the thick material of my combat suit. They were like sharp knives, going deep into my shoulder and calf muscles. I grunted from the pain, horror gripping me by the throat and tightening its grip. I couldn’t breathe anymore, heat coursing through me.

My hands burned. My instincts kicked in. Fire exploded from within. The Shill screamed as the blaze swallowed it whole. A second later, I was free and aching. A pulverizer pellet was shot, disintegrating the fiend before my fire could consume it. There were other Shills around here, summoned from the pink waters.

“What the hell, Pyrr?!” I asked, picking myself and my weapons off the ground.

“I made those long before you arrived here,” the Fire Hermessi replied. “It seems like they caught up with you.”

It was too much for any of us to handle. Nethissis could barely stand. Lumi was running out of physical strength to keep launching her swamp witch magic attacks. Herakles, Varga, and Eva were on the ground, though still conscious. Riza and the Widow Maker did the best they could with their ability to cast attack spells. Unlike Riza, the Widow Maker wasn’t restrained by Pyrr’s teleporting blockage as a Reaper unbound by the physical world, so he could even zap around and deliver more significant blows to the enemies. Eira and Raphael were worn out, gasping and sweating.

But there were too many hostile elements here. The Shills were just the top of the pile, easier to handle with pulverizer weapons. The earth itself came at us with swirling roots that aimed to constrict and suffocate like giant snakes, and spikes that were big and sharp enough to tear through us with remarkable ease. The Hermessi had their weapons, and we were only a handful resisting them. Unless I or Riza teleported us out of here, we were all screwed.

Maybe Eira, Lumi, and I would be able to go on, somehow, banking on our inability to die. But what would that say about me, if I didn’t do everything within and beyond my power to protect my entire crew, to make sure we all made it past the finish line, victoriously?