“When was I ever Mr. Sunshine?”

Kiev laughed. “Technically speaking? Since Ta’Zan fixed you.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Derek replied, holding back a smile.

The fire Hermessi that guarded Yahwen didn’t notice us straightaway. But it was only a matter of time, and I was beginning to worry about Ramin. He should’ve been here by now. Derek was quick to spot my concern. After all our years together, it didn’t come as a surprise.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice low so not everyone could hear us.

“I don’t see Ramin anywhere,” I whispered, staring at the view ahead.

As if summoned, a foreign fireball came through from the upper right corner of the shuttle’s windshield. It wasn’t alone. A dozen more Hermessi had joined Ramin. “Speak of the devil,” Derek muttered, enthusiasm glimmering in his blue eyes.

The remaining rebels of different elements swirled around Ramin, who maintained a straight trajectory toward Yahwen. Naturally, the guardians reacted. In an instant, they moved away from their positions and hurled themselves at Ramin and his group, who, in turn, spread out and teased the hostiles as they came in.

“This is our chance,” Kafei said, her arms glowing up to her shoulders as she infused maximum energy into the spell bubble.

We gained speed as we flew toward the dark side of Yahwen. I kept my fingers crossed for Ramin and his friends, hoping they’d make it out of this alive. We needed them to pull a similar stunt upon our exit, as well.

Minutes later, we lost sight of them as we reached our entry point. Somewhere beyond this great planet, a battle was being waged between rebel and ritual Hermessi. Our greatest advantage here was that Brendel was most likely gone, eager to stop Taeral from getting Zetos. We’d yet to hear from them, and I was worried sick about that crew, too… but we had our own mission to complete.

The spell bubble pierced through Yahwen’s atmosphere. We shot down through the night sky. Endless forests unraveled beneath us in curled waves of black and dark green, occasionally interrupted by flowing rivers. I caught glimpses of light in the distance, and I pointed it out to Derek. “See? Over there. I think that’s our final destination.”

Derek nodded. “Let’s land this shuttle first,” he said, switching his attention to Kafei. “How are you holding up with the spell?”

“Almost… there…” she grunted. Corrine, Ibrahim, and the two jinn were sweating and breathing heavily, as Kafei drew one last ounce of energy from them.

The spell bubble hummed louder as Kafei forced it to slow down. We needed a discreet landing, and that required a tremendous amount of skill. Noticing that the jinn were struggling, along with Corrine and Ibrahim, six more witches and warlocks got up and joined them, keeping a physical connection to Kafei throughout the remainder of this journey.

Kafei took a deep breath, tilting her head back. Strings of whispered words left her lips. One last spell to help with the landing, I figured. Her murmurs echoed through the hull of the shuttle, and those of us still seated gripped one another. Turbulence shook the entire spell bubble.

We shot down at high speed, but Kafei pulled through and managed to slow it down further, just as she aimed for a small clearing ahead. The giant trees seemed to open up, eager to swallow us whole. The landing itself was bumpy, and we hit the ground hard. The spell resisted and came to a halt, darkness and trees surrounding us.

“You’re a star,” Corrine said, giving Kafei a friendly shoulder squeeze.

The others moved away from her, smiling and understandably satisfied. We’d made it. Kafei turned around to face us. “I’ll have to cloak the shuttle,” she replied.

“Whatever you need, we’re here to help,” Mona declared, getting up from her seat.

I took deep breaths, filling my lungs with Yahwen’s pure and incredibly clean air. It made my limbs tingle and my cheeks flush. We were all outside, as Kafei and Mona prepared and activated the cloaking spell for our shuttle.

We’d brought out all the supply backpacks and weapons, each of us carrying a set. The shuttle vanished, the air rippling around it until the clearing looked empty, once more. Derek checked my bag, making sure I had everything I needed. Typical of him, to worry about me whenever we were out on a field mission.

Apart from our Stravian incident, Derek and I hadn’t been out like this in a very long time. We’d raised and trained two more generations to take our place, and the third was already established as a stellar component of GASP. Even so, our administrative tasks had not gotten any easier. On the contrary. With GASP evolved into a fully-fledged interstellar federation across three universal dimensions, our hands were full.

“Okay, the shuttle is covered,” Kafei said and opened two additional bags which she’d brought along. “I prepared these for the Hermessi children. I didn’t think we’d use them, but based on what Harper told us earlier, I think we’ll definitely need them.”

Less than an hour earlier, Harper had managed to get through to us via Telluris to explain what Ledar had revealed during his prison interrogation. While it didn’t exactly shock me to hear that more than half of the Hermessi children held captive by Brendel had decided to join her ritual mission, it didn’t sit well with me, either. It made our extraction mission all the more difficult, since we were dealing with hostile prisoners.

The objective hadn’t changed in light of this new information, though. We still needed to get the children away from Yahwen, Brendel, and the In-Between. But we’d also been contemplating our method—would it change drastically? After all, we had a crew of witches, warlocks, and jinn. Aggressive children of elementals weren’t even the worst we’d ever dealt with. Our main concern was to get them out before the Hermessi got to us.

“Are you talking about the needles?” Derek asked, watching Kafei as she took out small stainless-steel rings, which she passed around so each of us had one. We’d considered the possibility of sedating the Hermessi children regardless of their allegiance, just to make sure we could get them out fast and without any hitches.

“They’re on the rings,” Kafei replied, putting one on her middle finger and turning her palm around so we could see it. The small hypodermic needle was there, mounted on the metal band. “Each ring contains up to ten doses of tranquilizer, triggered by the needle pressing deeper than two millimeters.”

“Right, right, you explained that earlier this morning,” Ibrahim said, carefully moving his hand and observing the needle glinting on his ring. “Ten rounds, you say.”

“Yes. Every time you press your hand on a Hermessi child, it releases a dose. It will allow you to knock out up to ten children at once,” Kafei replied. “We will have to move really fast, though.”

I nodded, checking out my own ring. It felt cold around my index finger. “With so many hostile Hermessi children, undoubtedly.”

Corinne sighed. “It’s still the most discreet method of getting them out.”

“Okay. We’re ready,” Kiev announced, holding his pulverizer weapon. “We should get going while we still have the night’s cover for this.”

We organized ourselves quickly. More than half of us had over twenty years of GASP experience, while the other half had completed their training less than five years ago but were exceptionally skilled in their magical fields. The jinn were incredibly fast teleporters, and the witches and warlocks were surprisingly powerful for their young age. Overall, this crew of one hundred had a healthy mix of experience and talent. Most importantly, we all got along extremely well.

Checking that our earpieces and Telluris connections worked, we made our way through the tall woods, leaving the invisible shuttle behind. We each had Devil’s Weed sprigs sewn into our suits, though it would be useless if we came face to face with the Hermessi. Kafei left a splotch of red paint on one of the trees surrounding the clearing, marking our return location. Given that we knew little to nothing about Yahwen’s terrain, we needed to be able to quickly spot this place on our way back. She’d also left a couple of ignition charms around the shuttle, which would light up if she activated them, in case we came in flying. All this served to support us in case our crew’s teleporting abilities got jammed, for whatever supernatural reason.

If it could happen to Taeral’s people, it could happen to us, too, since the Hermessi were clearly involved.

We moved at a steady pace, in pairs, with Derek and me leading the crew. We kept quiet, only communicating with one another if absolutely necessary. We couldn’t risk teleporting to the temple directly without knowing what Hermessi were there guarding the area, so we’d agreed to go on foot through the forest instead.

Once we made our first five miles, we stopped. Using our military-grade binoculars, we were able to determine that the next five miles were safe for teleportation. Ibrahim zapped us all across the woods, then again and again, five miles at a time.

The temple was now two hundred yards away, and my skin rippled with uneasiness. The closer we got, the worse I felt. My senses were heightened and on high alert. My ears caught foreign sounds. My gut rumbled with anxiety, as we were within earshot of potentially deadly enemies. We stopped here for a minute to prepare for the next stage of our mission—teleporting into the temple and taking the Hermessi children.

Tebir had spoken at length about this particular moment and how to best tackle the children. They were coming from different worlds and wildly different species, some of which we’d yet to discover ourselves. There was no time to attempt communication, especially with creatures that didn’t speak our common language and were absolutely terrified, in captivity. We’d discussed various forms of tranquilizers, though Kafei’s ring solution had prevailed as the most effective.

Glancing up, the tree crowns gave me a strip of clear night sky. Stars twinkled along threads of visible pink stardust. Probably the same stream that Ramin had used to escape with Harper, just days earlier. Lights streaked across the starry blackness. The Hermessi skirmish, live from outer space…

“How’s it looking?” Derek asked Kiev in a low whisper. Kiev had already climbed up a tree to get a better view of the temple. The forest ahead had thickened, making it nearly impossible for us to see through. On one hand, it was slightly inconvenient, but, on the other, it helped shield us from discovery by the guardian Hermessi.

Kiev looked down at us and showed us four fingers, five times, using his prosthetic arm. He used his binoculars again to survey the temple for a second count, then confirmed. Twenty Hermessi were watching over the temple. Derek sighed deeply, waiting for Kiev to get back down.

“That’s a lot,” Mona murmured.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kiev replied, slipping down the crusty bark. He wiped some of the sap from his hands and picked up his pulverizer weapon from the ground. Mona took it away and mounted it on his backpack, where straps had been sewn to keep it in place.

“You won’t need this in there,” she whispered. “We brought the pulverizers with us in case of Shills and whatever. They’re useless against the Hermessi.”

He smiled at her. “Ever the careful wife.”

“Be thankful someone cares about you this much, bucko,” Mona said with a sly smirk.

“We know what we have to do,” Derek said. “We’ve trained for this. We’ve gone over all the details. It’s time.”

Bracing myself, I hooked my arm around Derek’s. “I’m ready.”