I walked over to the wall in question, inwardly pleased to hear silence from the Soul Crusher. I was also impressed with how Eira dealt with her own limits. Given her mostly quiet and pensive nature, I’d rarely seen her react like this. There was fire inside her, the kind that inspired me to want to know more about her—to explore her character, to understand what made her tick. There was enormous complexity hidden behind those blue eyes, well beyond her Hermessi child nature. She’d grown a lot since we’d first met. Then again, fate tended to do that to people by tossing them into insane situations such as this one. Eira was holding up well, given the circumstances.
Running my hands along the wall, I searched for anything that might suggest a door or a hidden mechanism. But nothing emerged. It was just stone, cold but fine to the touch. I glanced back at the crew and shook my head. “If there’s a door here, I don’t think we can open it like this,” I said.
“There has to be another way,” Riza replied, looking at the other walls, then the floor with its painted arrow. I walked back to it, and Riza’s eyes grew wide as she watched me. Her attention seemed fixed on my leg.
Glancing down, I noticed why. Eirexis was glowing, its light increasing its intensity as I reached the arrow. Taking it out of its straps, I pointed it at the floor. The carved symbols shone white, and I looked at the crew for a moment.
“I think Eirexis has more than one use,” I said, and pressed one end against the arrow, which instantly reacted, its color changing from a soft white to a bright and incandescent green. A flurry of clicking sounds erupted from the wall I’d just touched.
We all turned around to see what was going on. The wall separated itself from the room as an individual stone rectangle, pulled back and slid to the side, revealing another room. We rushed into it and found ourselves slightly discouraged. It was identical to the previous one, hexagonal, with an arrow painted white on the floor—this time, however, the arrow pointed slightly to the right, at another wall. Behind us, the hidden door clicked shut, and there was nothing we could do about it. Whatever had opened it in the first place, it was hidden, unseen by the naked eye.
“Well, there’s no point in going back, is there?” Herakles said, eyeing the door-wall suspiciously. He gave me a questioning look. “Now what? Keep playing with arrows and hidden doors?”
“I don’t think we have any other option,” I said, and touched the painted arrow with Eirexis, expecting a similar result. Indeed, the wall it pointed to clicked multiple times and pulled back, revealing another exit.
We followed it, only to be taken into a third hexagonal room. The floor arrow pointed to yet another wall—this time, to the left, at a ninety-degree angle. I heard myself groan with frustration.
“One can’t help but wonder whether this is actually leading somewhere.” Varga sighed.
No one in the crew seemed enthusiastic about this. Not that I could blame them. It was already looking like a futile chase of our own tails, hopping from one weird room to the next. How long would this take? Where would it eventually lead?
“What is the Soul Crusher trying to test about us this time?” Lumi asked, as if reading my mind. “Our patience, perhaps?”
Nethissis scoffed. “Yeah, we lost that a while back, thanks to him.”
“Let’s try again,” I said, and touched the arrow with Eirexis again. It glowed, followed by now-familiar clicks and the wall to our left pulling back and sliding open.
It went on like this for a while, and we lost track of how many rooms we’d been through. It soon occurred to Amelia to mark one of the walls with chalk, prompting curious looks from the rest of the crew. She shrugged, drawing another cross. “I want to see if we’re going through the same rooms,” she said. “Or, even worse, if they’re different. In which case, I have to wonder… how friggin’ big is this interdimensional space he’s built for us?”
We kept going after that, looking for any marks that Amelia had left behind. None were in sight, and that meant we were moving through different rooms. It worried me, because there was still no exit in view. We could wander around for days on end, if we kept at it like this.
“We should stop for a moment,” Herakles suggested, hands on his hips as he scowled at the umpteenth arrow in the umpteenth room. “Maybe consider changing our strategy here. We can’t keep doing the same thing, over and over, and expect different results. You know what that would mean, right?”
Raphael grinned. “That we’ve lost our minds?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Herakles was right. We needed to take a break. To think things through. To analyze what we’d done so far and find another way to get ourselves out of here.
“I think we’re lost,” Eira said.
Truer words had never been spoken, according to the sinking feeling that had taken over my gut. We could keep doing this forever. The end result would be the same. We were stuck in a maze of hexagonal rooms, and the only thing Eirexis could do for us was activate the painted arrows and open the walls to which they pointed.
We’d gone through so many hidden doors already. Where would this lead? Or would it even lead anywhere? Would we end up going through rooms we’d already explored and marked, later down the line? Would we finally get out of here?
Whatever the answer, Herakles had made a good and reasonable point. We had to try something different. But what?
Sofia
Gennen Fein had surprised us in more than one way. Not only was he a former GASP agent in possession of a red garnet lens, he was also a Hermessi child. The unexpected, jumbo-sized wrench that had suddenly thrown itself into our operation.
“Stop!” he shouted, drawing the Fire Hermessi’s attention from outside the temple.
“We need to move fast,” Derek said out loud. The Hermessi children next to us jumped back, gasping, as they couldn’t understand what was going on. “Semper Telluris. All hands on deck here!”
In a split second, the whole crew teleported inside the temple, each of them invisible and wearing red garnet lenses. They spread out quickly and jabbed the first round of Hermessi children with hypodermic needles before they could even realize what was going on.
Corrine and Ibrahim reached Sherus and teleported him out of here.
The guardian Fire Hermessi stopped in the temple’s doorways, and something strange happened. Lights went on, flames rushing across the ceiling and revealing all the elemental children, including Gennen, who set his sights on us. Using his Earth ability, he summoned the vines to strip away from the window and rush toward us like famished snakes.
Whisper’s eyes grew wide, looking right at me. “Holy hell!”
It only took a moment for us to realize that we weren’t invisible anymore. I took the red lens off to confirm, feeling my knees weaken as I understood how royally screwed we all were.
“This was a bad decision for you,” one of the Fire Hermessi said.
Corrine appeared in front of him, casting a solid energy shield that blocked the door entirely. Ibrahim, Mona, and a couple of other witches did the same at all the other entrances. “You need to hurry!” Corrine shouted. “I don’t know how long we can hold them back!”
The Fire Hermessi unleashed their blazing wrath against the shields, making our witches grunt and sweat as they struggled to resist. There was no time now, and Gennen was literally gunning for us. The vines came at me, but Whisper and his friends destroyed them with their elemental powers, and Derek rushed across the temple and knocked Gennen out before he could do more damage.
He swiftly returned to me, and I shifted my attention to Whisper and his group.
“We can help you, take you to safety,” I said to them. “Please don’t make it harder on us.”
“By all means, get us out of here!” Whisper blurted, his eyes beaming with renewed enthusiasm.
The jinni in our initial group instructed them to link hands and teleported them out of here. The other jinn and witches and warlocks continued sedating and removing the Hermessi children in groups of ten—spending, on average, a little over a minute per cluster.
Some of the Hermessi children went willingly, but most put up a fight, forcing our crew to sting them and take them down first. They zapped them out of the temple, while the Fire Hermessi roared and rammed their fiery shoulders into the energy shields and the stone walls, desperately looking for a way in.
One by one, the hostile children were subdued and removed, leaving our group with just a handful of compliant Hermessi heirs. Ibrahim reached us as Corrine, Mona, and the other witches prepared to dash out. The last of the jinn in the temple teleported the remaining children, while Derek, Kiev, Claudia, Yuri, Ibrahim, and I moved closer to Corrine.
“Dammit, they are powerful,” she croaked, dropping to one knee.
The Fire Hermessi she was fiercely holding back took another swing at the energy shield, finally causing it to crack across like broken glass. Ibrahim wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back. I gripped his shoulder while keeping physical contact with Mona and the rest of our group.
“Semper Telluris! Everybody out!” I shouted, making sure the entire crew heard me, both in and outside the temple.
My heart thudded as we vanished, reappearing outside our hidden shuttle, in the forest clearing we’d left behind. Corrine nearly collapsed, but Ibrahim was quick to give her a tonic drink that replenished her within seconds.
“That was fantastic,” Kafei said, handing out tonic vials to all the crew members who’d helped with the energy shields, including Mona, who had an arm around Kiev’s shoulders and a hard time standing on her own. “You all moved so fast!”
“The perks of being a jinni,” Samira replied with a sly smirk.
“Or a witch.” Mona chuckled and gulped down an entire tonic vial. Her skin shimmered as the potion worked its way through her body.
They’d all teleported quickly, across a vast distance, multiple times in an extremely short period. It had taken its toll on their bodies, but they’d pulled through. Looking around, I couldn’t stop myself from experiencing the purest form of relief.
