crystal eggs growing along the walls—by now, we’d learned they grew in all the pink water caves, though only Calliope’s made Daughters; the ones on Strava, beneath the Lemnos Woods, had birthed Shills, and while we weren’t sure what was growing in these, we didn’t want to wait around and find out. Then again, Calliope’s had made Shills, too, which had been sent after Ramin and Harper upon their arrival, even though Mount Agrith had been destroyed. The pink waters had been sealed off from our use, not the Hermessi’s—that had been the general consensus, and the only thing that could explain the Shills’ presence on Calliope.
We made our way to the bottom, white light opening up before us, ready to suck us into the great unknown, while our thoughts carried us all the way to Persea.
This new stage of our mission had startled us all; I could see it in their eyes as they swam toward the white light. They were all thinking the same thing, and Varga was the first to voice it.
“How the heck are we going to find those pieces before the ritual, when we don’t even know where to start looking? You know, since we can’t use the pink waters to find them... Just when I thought we’d caught a lucky, clear break with them.” He sighed.
On one hand, hope had revitalized us, now that we knew what we had to do. On the other, the gargantuan size of our mission was simply overwhelming, and all I could do was keep moving until we reached the finish line.
The pink water trembled, tickling my skin in a way that made me want to glance back. As soon as I saw them, I shouted into my water filtration mask: “The Hermessi!”
The rest of the crew, likewise equipped for this underwater trip, followed my horrified gaze. Hermessi were coming through the cave and into the water, pouring in like large drops of elemental energy. I counted at least six of them, shapeless and glowing orange, white, green, and blue, and eager to get to us.
“They must’ve followed us down here,” Fallon gasped. He was the fastest swimmer in our group and was already the first to slip through the narrowing tunnel, toward the source of the white light. “We can’t fight them. We need to get out of here.”
The temperature rose, the pink water almost burning my skin for a moment. But the primordial liquid seemed quick to remember its acceptance of pure hearts. It healed my burning skin quickly, but it didn’t seem able to hurt or push the invading Hermessi out.
They don’t have hearts…
Fallon was right. Our only way out was through the white light. We scrambled downward, frantically swimming and squeezing through the tunnel after the vampire fae, while the colored lights above us grew brighter and more menacing.
I’d worried about this being a little too easy for all the wrong reasons. Serves me right. Death wouldn’t allow Taeral, Eira, or me to die, but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of our crew. We were in this together, and, as my heart swelled, pumped with fear and unexpected bursts of adrenaline, I reminded myself that we all had to survive.
No matter what.
Amelia
“We can’t go to Persea now,” I said as we pushed our way through the white, endless space.
We lingered in it, floating slowly as we moved our limbs, trying to make it out to the other side. Fortunately, the comms devices in our breathing masks still worked. “What do you suggest?” Taeral asked.
Behind us, the Hermessi—eight of them, now—spilled into the pristine vacuum. Like us, they were subject to the absence of physics in this place, but they were bound to reach us sooner or later. We were hanging by the tiniest of threads, and we knew it.
Persea’s pink water hole opened up about a hundred yards in front of us, and we kept moving, as best as we could, desperate to reach it. The Hermessi back at Death’s palace must have warned the others about us. Death had mentioned it might happen, and clearly, it had. Those creeps must have also given them our location, since they’d been so quick to come after us, even with the Devil’s Weed on our bodies.
We all hurtled to a soft stop as more Hermessi came out from Persea.
“Not only that, but they heard us!” Taeral croaked, his eyes bulging as he watched more elementals pouring in from what should’ve been our way out.