I nodded energetically. “I’ll be with you soon, I promise.”

“Whenever you’re ready to acknowledge me, bucko, I’m here,” the Soul Crusher cut in.

I turned around, my blood running cold. I’d been so overwhelmed, so tightly wrapped up in what we’d just overcome, that I had completely forgotten about him. He stood before us, his bare feet digging into the soft sand… and what a sight he was.

Such a strange creature, yet that smirk on his eerily beautiful face made all the sense in the world. He looked exactly like he sounded. Calculated. Complicated. Otherworldly and ever so slightly insane.

“I owe you the beating of a lifetime,” Raphael said to him.

The Soul Crusher raised a hand to silence him. “That can wait, I’m sure.”

“You’re free,” Lumi replied. “We have Zetos.”

“You’re not out of the woods yet,” the Soul Crusher said.

Riza scoffed. “But I guess we have our powers back.”

The Soul Crusher laughed. “They were never gone in the first place.”

“Wait, what?!” I asked, and it only made him even more amused.

“Part of my power allows me to reach into your brains and switch off certain bits of your consciousness. Specifically, the parts that allow you to tap into your abilities. I admit, I was a tad selective in which buttons to press, but it all made for a wonderful show,” the Soul Crusher replied.

“You mean to tell me I had my magic all along?” Lumi growled.

“Well, yes! I’m not that powerful to mess with the Word!” he chuckled. “I can, however, sever your access to it. Not physically, but mentally. All it takes is the right suggestion, and your body will listen. It’s why Amelia couldn’t heal. Why Taeral and Riza couldn’t teleport. Why none of you could do what you normally could. Consider it a supernatural mind game, if you will.”

“You’ll pay for this,” I said.

He laughed again. “Get in line. Also, chill. I doubt I can pull it off again now that I’m no longer bound to Zetos. It gave me most of the juice for such elaborate scenarios.”

I didn’t know whether to be glad or wary about this. Such an ability would’ve come in handy against the enemy—then again, I doubted the Hermessi had brains he’d be able to tap into.

The distant booms we’d heard in his rooms were much louder now. Significantly closer and more terrifying, as the world had gone ahead without us. We were the ones with a lot of catching up to do here.

“Brendel is out there, and you know she’s not going to let you teleport anytime soon,” the Soul Crusher replied.

He was right. I felt the fire burning bright inside me once more, but my body refused to disintegrate and leap across layers of physical matter. I was stuck, in a way, and that came with frightening implications. The booms we’d been hearing were the result of a skirmish between the Widow Maker and the hostile Hermessi. I then remembered something the Soul Crusher had mentioned earlier.

“You said there were Reapers out there,” I said. “Not just the Widow Maker, I assume.”

“Fortunately, you have more than one ally in these waters, but it won’t be enough to save you from Brendel’s wrath,” the Soul Crusher said.

“Tae, we need to see what’s going on out there,” Amelia said.

Eira nodded. “The Widow Maker might need us.”

“The entire world needs us right now,” Herakles shot back.

“But if we can’t teleport, we’re pretty much stuck here, aren’t we? Might as well go up there and see what we can do to lift Brendel’s blockage on our ability to zap away,” Riza interjected.

The Soul Crusher rubbed his hands together. “Oh, goody. I haven’t been topside in a long, long, long time. Can’t wait to see what’s out there!”

I slipped Zetos and Eirexis into my thigh strap without putting them together. I wasn’t sure it was even possible—not without Phyla to complete the set, anyway. It was getting a little crowded, but it was still manageable. Besides, we had to get out as fast as we could first. Riza was right. We just needed to find a way to disable whatever Brendel was using to stop us from teleporting. Maybe Fallon and Kabbah could help again—they had to be here, chasing Brendel, fighting these assholes and stopping them from breaching the coral room. They’d done it before, as Kabbah had become dedicated to throwing wrenches in Brendel’s wheels wherever she went. Cerix had been just the beginning.

Our unlikely allies had given us the window we’d needed to get Zetos. The least we could do was get ourselves out of this mess and move on to the next stage. First, however, we had to try and help the Widow Maker.

I swam upward, wiggling through the swirling coral tunnel. “Come on,” I said. “It’s time to piss Brendel off some more.”

Raphael chuckled. “Wait till she sees you got Zetos. That’ll grind her gears a bit.”

“And then some,” Amelia chimed in.

We made our way to the top of the coral mound, my heart pounding, nervously battling the confines of my ribcage. We’d gotten Zetos, yes… but there was still the question of getting it out of here. As long as Brendel and her Hermessi were so close to us, we were still in danger.

Our mission, our salvation, still hung by a thread.

“Hold up, I’m coming, too!” the Soul Crusher cried out, like a kid left behind on a school trip. In a way, he was not as menacing as before. Now, that we could see him, he didn’t scare us anymore. In fact, I found his graceful figure compelling, the complete opposite of the calculated cruelty he’d displayed back inside the puzzle, hidden from sight.

“You had better make yourself useful,” Herakles retorted.

“It depends on how fun it looks,” the Soul Crusher said.

How had we come to this? We’d come across the strangest characters since we’d learned about Death’s existence as a standalone entity. These Reapers were like nothing we’d ever met before. Their nature, their characters… they baffled me. The older they were, the crazier they seemed to behave.

The Widow Maker was all brute force and zero social skills. A mean SOB when poked and prodded. The Soul Crusher was a functioning psychopath with a flair for the dramatic and a penchant for potentially deadly puzzles. I shuddered to think what Phyla’s protector would be like.

Until then, however, we needed to secure our escape. There was no point in wondering what retrieving Phyla would be like if we couldn’t get ourselves out of here. As I poked my head through the top opening of the coral mound, an underwater hell unraveled before my very eyes.

Streaks of colored energy wrestled against not one but two Reapers. I recognized Fallon-Kabbah slightly farther away, battling… Brendel. It chilled me to the bone to see her here. I knew she’d be present, but facing her had yet to lose its terrible thrill. The Widow Maker was aided by someone I couldn’t see well from this angle, but whoever he was, I owed him my gratitude. He’d helped keep us safe down here.

Well, relatively safe. In the cold clutches of the Soul Crusher. Herakles had made a point, though. That long-haired, galaxy-eyed jackass had better make himself useful in what’s about to go down.

Amelia

We were careful upon emerging from the coral mound. No sudden movements, nothing to distract the Hermessi, and Brendel, in particular. Lumi, Nethissis, and Riza had magic at the ready, but we still needed to formulate a plan.

“You know, we could try to swim away,” Herakles suggested. “Go back down to the bottom, get our witches here to make a tunnel or something, and get far enough from Brendel for Riza or Taeral to be able to teleport us again.”

“Sounds wicked, but you know Brendel would see it coming a mile away,” Taeral replied. “No, I think we need a different angle here. We could spread out and distract them. Eira is in water here. It’s her element. She can do something significant with it.”

The only reason Eira had brought a breathing mask in the first place was so she could talk to us through the comms system embedded in the device. Talking underwater was rather difficult otherwise. The girl could breathe down here, effortlessly, as the daughter of a Water Hermessi.

“I know what to do,” Eira said. “But you must all be ready to leave, with or without me. I can find you later, okay?”

Taeral shook his head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Just stand back and let me do this,” she replied. “Something happened to me down in that puzzle. The knowledge I’ve inherited from my father… I think it’s waking up. I have an idea.”