Taeral
This was the third room we had to go through, and I was beginning to think we’d never get out of this thing in time to actually complete Death’s mission. Well, it was our mission, too, since we were saving our worlds. The fate of our worlds hung in the balance, and we were still struggling through the Soul Crusher’s puzzles.
Worst of all, Raphael was exhausted after what he’d just pulled to get us out of the second room. The rest of the crew was mentally and physically worn out, as well—there was only so much we could replenish through our healing methods, Eirexis included. If the brain was tired, it quickly translated into the body’s functions, as well, and those freezing particles that had slowed us down weren’t helping.
“What’s this one about?” Herakles asked, raising his voice. The question wasn’t aimed at us.
“Why, it’s the same as before. Find your way out,” the Soul Crusher replied.
“Helpful as always,” Raphael muttered, still on his back, resting, with Amelia by his side. “I’m going to sleep for an entire century when this is over.”
“Provided we save our worlds first; otherwise, you’ll be sleeping forever,” Lumi said. She shook her arms and legs, as if warming up for a gym session. “I think—emphasis on ‘think’—that those freezing particles are wearing off.”
Riza nodded, moving her arms and testing the theory. “You might be right. I’m not feeling as sluggish as before.”
“It’s probably because we’re out of the room, thus no longer within the particles’ reach,” Eva replied. She touched Varga’s shoulder, giving him a soft smile. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh, absolutely peachy. Thrilled to have another puzzle room to waste valuable time in.”
Nethissis chuckled bitterly. “You heard the old Reaper. Time flows slightly differently in here.”
“Hey, who are you calling old?” the Soul Crusher moaned. “Also, time flows slightly differently, sure, but it doesn’t give you forever to sort this out, and, by the stars, you people are taking forever.”
I let a deep sigh out. With it, a lot of tension seemed to dissolve, too. As if it had been piling up in the pit of my stomach, concentrating and contracting to the point where it had become difficult to breathe. One long exhale, and poof. It was gone. It didn’t improve our situation in any way, obviously, but it did help clear my head a little, and I analyzed this room carefully.
It wasn’t as big as the previous one, but its hexagonal shape was intriguing. The walls were smooth and shiny, and light beams were embedded into the ceiling. No doors or levers were visible. No tiles on the floor—just a long arrow pointing to one of the walls. It had been painted on the polished stone.
“I don’t think that arrow is randomly placed here, like this,” I said, my voice low.
The Soul Crusher laughed. “Found the genius in your crew. Sorry, Amelia.”
“Up yours,” Amelia shot back. Raphael pulled himself up and off the floor. She stayed by his side, watching him carefully, making sure he was okay.
Eira walked up to me, and a muted joy expanded in my chest. I’d been so stressed out over this puzzle, so desperate to keep the others safe, that I’d nearly forgotten how good she made me feel whenever we were close. “There might be something about that wall,” she said to me. “Maybe a hidden door?”
“I like where this is going,” the Soul Crusher cut in. “Have you two considered courtship? There’s definitely chemistry.”
“For the love of all that’s good and holy in this world, will you just shut the hell up?!” Eira snapped, pinching the narrow bridge of her nose. “Unless you’ve got something useful to say, just leave us be.”
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.
