Herakles grunted. “Ugh. That jerk doesn’t have to swim like the rest of us. I don’t think he needs to breathe, either. I bet we’ll find him down there, smirking beneath his gimp suit.”
“How do you know he smirks?” Raphael chuckled.
“Dang it, you know he does! That arrogance needs to come out somehow; otherwise, he’ll swell up like a balloon and explode,” Herakles retorted.
It got darker and colder as we descended deeper. Mountains of coral formations rose all around us, waves of orange and red that rippled across the ocean floor. We made our way down one of the ridges, occasionally startling banks of fish that depended on their camouflage resembling the corals to survive.
They scattered in what struck me as some kind of organized panic, their bright red and orange scales shimmering as they moved upward. Phosphorescent plants and creatures dominated the bottom of the ocean—not that we needed any additional light to guide us. Eirexis itself was a powerful beacon at this point.
“Over there,” Eira said, pointing ahead as we reached the bottom. White sand stretched endlessly beneath our feet, and clouds of red and yellow jellyfish hovered here and there. As if reacting to music only they could hear, they danced their way up, their tendrils twitching rhythmically as they pushed through the water.
Following Eira’s gaze, I could see what had caught her attention. A mound rose from the white sand, approximately fifty feet away. Next to it, someone stood upright, unbothered by the physics of liquids. “The Widow Maker,” I murmured. “He found it.”
“How is he just standing there?” Amelia asked.
“I told you,” Herakles replied. “Reaper, not from this dimension, not necessarily subject to our physical rules.”
“That’s actually pretty cool,” Raphael said.
We swam toward him, aided by Lumi’s bursts of telekinetic energy that pushed us closer to the mound. As we reached it, I realized it wasn’t just an ordinary pile of dirt. No, it was a cluster of dark purple corals, and it was the size of a cathedral’s dome, big enough to hide all sorts of incredible secrets.
“Can you see through it?” I asked Varga.
The corals’ arms stretched in a wavy, circular pattern. I wasn’t sure there was a way in, but that had never stopped us from making one if we had to. Shimmers traveled along the mineral-like surface of each of the corals, as if they’d been sculpted from precious gemstones.
“No,” Varga replied. “My True Sight can’t get past the corals.”
“Not surprised.” The Widow Maker’s voice echoed in our heads. “Zetos is protected from all.”
“Dammit, get out of my head!” Herakles snarled.
“Then you won’t be able to hear me,” the Widow Maker said, matter-of-factly.
Eva laughed. “I think that was the point.”
Looking up, I couldn’t see anything headed our way. No strange lights. Nothing to make my skin tingle. For the first time, I felt as though we might have a decent extraction mission on our hands. Maybe Pyrr and the others had pulled through, and then some.
“Okay, what do you think?” I asked the Widow Maker. “You got to this thing before us. You’ve already implied that Zetos is here.”
The Widow Maker nodded. “I can feel the Soul Crusher’s presence.”
“You guys really went all out on those names, huh?” Varga muttered.
“What did I tell you earlier?” the Widow Maker shot back, and Varga joined him in unison. “Perks of being my age.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Varga added. “We get it. You’re old and cool.”
I swam around the mound, looking for a way in. The others spread out, doing the same thing at different heights up and down the domed coral.
“I don’t know how to get you in, if that’s what you want me to tell you,” the Widow Maker said. I saw him below, his boots in the white sand, as he looked up at me. I made my way back down, grasping the coral fingers to pull myself along the dome’s surface.
“If it’s in there, then we can get to it, somehow,” I replied.
I crossed paths with Eira, who shook her head. “Nothing at this level. Maybe head for the top?”
“You should know, though. If I can feel the Soul Crusher, he can feel me too,” the Widow Maker added. “He knows we’re here. He’s likely waiting for us.”
“Can’t you just zap yourself in there?” Nethissis asked him, pointing at the purple coral.
“Don’t you think I would’ve, if I could?” he retorted and shifted his focus to me, cocking his head to the side. “Seriously, are you all redundant like this, or is it just the deep pressure getting to you?”
Despite our supernatural origins, we could all feel the ocean weighing down on us. There wasn’t any magic to fix that. But it was manageable. I swam upward, following the coral dome’s shape, until I found the top. My nerves were stretched, a little too ready to snap. The thought of the Soul Crusher waiting for us made me anxious.
The Widow Maker had subjected us to absolute hell back on Cerix. What was the Soul Crusher ready to do in order to protect Zetos and relinquish it only to those whom he deemed worthy? What kind of torture or sacrifice would we have to subject ourselves to, in order to get the second piece of Thieron?
Reaching the top, I sucked in an icy breath. A burst of bubbles left my breathing device, and my gaze fixed on a small, circular opening in the purple coral mass. “I think I found something,” I said. Soon enough, the rest of the crew joined me, while the Widow Maker stayed down at the bottom.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Why not come up here and see?” Herakles replied dryly.
A second later, the Widow Maker stood on top of the coral dome, inches away from the small opening, towering over us. “Like this, you mean?”
“I hate you,” Herakles grumbled, and Riza gave him a soft nudge, as if beckoning him to play nice. There was obvious tension between the Widow Maker and Herakles, but not enough to spoil our quest here, fortunately. We were all too focused and determined. It dawned on me, then, that maybe the Widow Maker was still testing us, somehow. Maybe his jabs and sarcasm were meant to poke and prod us until he found our limits, even though his task had already ended.
“I can fit through,” I said. “It’s wide enough.”
“We’ll follow,” Lumi replied firmly.
