I couldn’t see through the darkness where their voices came from, but I could hear them shuffling and moving against the floor, their bones cracking as they turned and stretched.
“Nothing broken,” Amelia said.
My hand tickled, thrilled to feel Eirexis in its grip. The last thing I needed was to lose one piece of Thieron while looking for the other. That would’ve been the epitome of slapstick irony. One by one, the rest of the crew signaled that they were okay, though I couldn’t even make out their silhouettes. Eira’s voice soothed and alarmed me at once.
“Tae, look over there,” she said, likely pointing somewhere.
Had I gone blind? The panic was quick to freeze in my joints and make my skin feel the wrath of a thousand needles. “Where?” I asked.
“Probably behind you, since you can’t see it now,” she replied.
“What? It doesn’t make any…” My voice trailed off as I turned around and saw it. Zetos.
It didn’t glow. It had no shine. And despite the pitch-black darkness, I could see it. Its arched blade reminded me of the moon’s curve. The metal was a peculiar off-white, with the faintest shimmer along the sharp edge.
There was a hole in the middle of the blade, halfway between the tip and the base. I figured that’s where Phyla had to go. Relief washed over me in honey-sweet waves as I ignored the weirdness of this entire vision, the difficulty of our moment in this strange abyss. We’d found it. Zetos. We’d finally found it.
“Congratulations, kids,” the Soul Crusher said. His voice sounded closer than ever. Compact and concentrated, as if he stood just inches away from me. “You finally… finally did it.”
“Bet you hate us right now,” Varga grumbled.
“Why would I?”
“We beat your puzzle,” Amelia replied.
“True. But you’re also setting me free, after I don’t even know how many millions of years,” the Soul Crusher said, and I could almost feel him smiling. I knew he crouched by my side, because I could feel him closer. “Now, Taeral, touch it. Claim it. And it’s yours.”
I reached out without a single shred of hesitation. Yes, it was mine, dammit. I’d earned it!
My fingers touched the blade, and a sea of white exploded from it, casting its light over everything. Warmth hugged me like a thousand plush blankets, and I caught a glimpse of two galaxies hidden between pale eyelids… the eyes of the Soul Crusher, smiling.
“It’s only going to get harder from here,” I heard him say.
But what did I care? The white light swallowed me whole, and my consciousness simmered away into a distant dream of my Fire Star. My parents and I, standing on the balcony, overlooking our beautiful land with its rolling hills and reddish dusk sky… All of it coming apart. Disintegrating.
Why did I experience such relief and numbness while my whole world burned? It didn’t make sense. And it didn’t matter, either. Blacking out had never felt so sweet.
Taeral
The rush of oxygen through my throat made me open my eyes.
Water. So much water…
I panicked, suddenly concerned I might drown. But I had my breathing mask back on. I was okay! And I wasn’t alone. The entire crew was here, though they were equally befuddled. Everything had been reset to the moment from which we’d been torn to solve the Soul Crusher’s puzzle. Amelia and Raphael… Eva and Varga… Lumi and Nethissis… Riza and Herakles… and Eira. All of us, back in the coral room, now white and glistening like a massive sculpture made of pearls and diamonds.
Our pulverizer weapons were back, too, affixed to our backpacks. I’d likely find the ammo inside, where I’d last seen it. It was as if everything had been reset.
Light danced through the dome-shaped chamber, breaking into trillions of color shards midway through the water. Our equipment was intact. Our weapons. My hands were… full. Glancing down, I saw them. Eirexis in my right hand. Zetos in my left.
“You did it,” Eira said, her voice delightfully tickling my ears.
My soul was enhanced, in a way. A connection I’d thought lost stirred in my heart. “Telluris Nuriya! Mom, are you there?” I called out.
“Taeral! Oh, Taeral, my baby!” Her voice echoed in my head. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”
“Mom! So good to hear your voice,” I replied, a broad grin stretching beneath my breathing mask. “I got it. I got Zetos!”
She gasped and squealed with pure, unadulterated joy. “Come back to me, honey. Come back now!”
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.”
