“If we get hurt in the process, Eirexis will heal us,” I replied.
“I couldn’t take that away from you, unfortunately. You’ve already claimed it,” the Soul Crusher grumbled, making me grin. “But you should still be careful. The traps aren’t the same. Some might still surprise you.”
“There’s no time,” Herakles said. “Forget this fool, and let’s get crackin’!”
The Soul Crusher had a point. The rules about Eirexis stood, even in this invented reality. I had claimed Eirexis. If I dropped it by accident, I would lose it. I’d given it to Raphael, though. This probably had something to do with certain conditions. I’d willingly loaned it to Raphael, if I were to be technically correct. I hadn’t relinquished it. Therefore, these rules had loopholes in them, and that would help me in the future, for sure—my instinct had yet to fail me on this.
Of course, I would’ve appreciated more clarifications from Death herself, but, for the time being, I had to make do with this. I slipped Eirexis back in its straps on my thigh and glanced at the crew. Lumi was still smiling, her gaze fixed on me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re wondering how Eirexis works,” she said, and I nodded slowly. “Don’t get bogged down in too many questions. We function as a group. You claimed Eirexis, but as part of this team. I don’t think you can lose your claim over it if you pass it around. I wondered about it while we were pulling Amelia and Raphael out of that stupid shaft. We’ve been so busy trying to rescue and help each other, we didn’t have time to think about certain things, especially about Eirexis.”
“It makes sense,” Nethissis murmured, gazing at Eirexis. “It’s part of us, for now, until it’s reunited with Death. Any one of us could carry it, I think. But only you can actually use it, Taeral.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
We spread out to cover all four walls. As soon as I pressed two levers at once, the others did the same. One after the other, the clangs and the clicks of internal mechanisms rolled out in layers, and we didn’t stop until all the marked levers were pressed.
We gathered back in the middle of the room, keeping close to one another. We waited to see which traps would be set off, carefully listening to the increasing plethora of metallic moans and glassy shrieks that emerged from the walls. There had been a hidden logic to this crazy gambit, I realized—pressing all the levers at once could also overload the entire system that the Soul Crusher had put together.
“Lumi, you are one of the smartest witches I have ever come across,” I declared.
She sighed. “You give me too much credit.”
“Is it just me, or did we overload the Soul Crusher’s precious puzzle machine?” Amelia asked, looking around. None of the traps seemed to have been triggered. Wheels kept spinning, cogs kept turning… but nothing happened.
A monstrous groan erupted above. The ceiling pulled back like a massive sheet of metal and lightbulbs. Water came down in tons, gushing and spreading violently throughout the room. I heard Herakles’s yelp as he was the first to get swept away, quickly followed by Eva and the rest of the crew, myself included.
The image before me tilted and spun, the cold water tampering with my internal temperature. The water level rose at an alarmingly fast rate, and we were all thoroughly confused, trying to keep our heads above the foaming water.
“What the hell?!” Amelia croaked.
“None of them got us out!” Raphael said, trying to swim toward her.
The current was powerful, and more water came through. The liquid was in perpetual motion, creating a rough whirlpool in the center of the room. I pointed up. “Maybe that’s our way out!”
As if summoned to prove me wrong, the ceiling slid back into place, but with a series of small circular openings along the middle. The water was pushed through them with jet-like pressure, while the room was once again sealed. There was no way out.
Lumi gasped, glowering at the ceiling.
“What now?!” Eira asked, looking at me for guidance. She didn’t have her Water abilities anymore, and panic was clearly threatening to grip her, judging by the terrified look on her face. I couldn’t blame her. I felt the same, if not worse.
If this was a test of our characters, like the Soul Crusher had said, what would this particular moment prove? Our intelligent ability to drown in a sealed room? The water level continued to rise, leaving only a couple of feet to the ceiling. We had to find a way out of here, and we had to do it fast. I doubted Eirexis would be able to resurrect any of my crew if they drowned. Setting aside my thoughts about whether Widow Maker knew of Eirexis’s healing properties or not, I took a deep breath and held it in.
I went underwater and glanced around, while the rest of the crew managed to spread out. Raphael and Herakles were busy banging on the ceiling. I, on the other hand, figured it wouldn’t help. The answer was somewhere down here, maybe among the levers we’d initially marked as neutral, not connected to any mechanisms.
It was odd how this sudden drowning had been the one trap to be set off. Had the Soul Crusher stopped the others, leaving only this one just to push us to our limits—or our deaths, perhaps? I wouldn’t know until I had him in front of me, to ask him myself. Until then, I needed to make sure we all survived.
A peculiar glow caught my attention. Eirexis was reacting to something, still strapped to my leg. Its symbols shone white, but their intensity fluctuated as I swam through the water. My brain kicked its gears into motion. The pattern was there. I could see it, deep in the fabric of the universe itself.
I took Eirexis out and pointed it around. It glowed most brightly in front of a particular lever. One of the neutral ones, completely unremarkable. I would’ve never noticed it myself as being different in any way, because it wasn’t. It looked like the others, pulled halfway down, without any special markings. Yet it was the one that Eirexis was signaling as… special. It had to be. Eirexis had yet to disappoint. It had excelled at surprising me in the best of ways.
I slipped Thieron’s handle back into the strap on my thigh and made my way toward the lever. Above, Raphael and Herakles had stopped trying to force their way past the ceiling. The water had reached it, and there was no air left to breathe.
Soon enough, we’d all drown—but only three of us would survive.
With not a second left to waste, I reached the lever and pulled it all the way down. My Hail Mary. My last shot at saving us all.
Seconds passed as we all held our breaths and stared at each other.
Seconds that felt like ages. Long and torturous ages.
Movement from below startled me. I looked down and stilled, floating in the water, as the floor was pulled away, much like the ceiling before it.
All the water came down, and we were sucked along with the aqueous mass.
The drop was steep but relatively short. I heard grunts and splashes. My body hit another floor. Every bone and muscle in it ached, but I was able to breathe again. Wheezing and coughing, I saw the rest of my crew down here, with me, equally baffled but thankful to be alive. The water spread to the sides into blackness.
Walls rose, stone brick by stone brick. Without giving it much thought, I scrambled back up and made a run for it. The walls came up too fast. I ended up slapping the one I’d hoped to move past… It was too late.
“I know I say this a lot, but what the hell?” Herakles managed, still flat on the new floor.
Confusion soared as we all tried to make sense of what had just happened. “I got us out of the room,” I said. “Yet here we are.”
“This is weird and annoying and everything that is wrong with this world!” Amelia snarled.
I helped Eira up first, then Lumi and Nethissis. Above us, a ceiling had formed, also covered in white lights. Once more, we were sealed inside a room, from what I could tell. But this one was different.
