it any differently?
“You know what this all means, right?” Raphael muttered as he and the rest of the crew joined us closer to the cliff’s edge. “Varga and their team are on the way here. We literally beat them to it.”
I felt a smile testing my lips.
“Frankly, I’m still in awe of what Lumi just did. One big flashy light, and poof! Reapers be gone!” Amelia said.
Lumi chuckled. “It wasn’t just light. It was the Word. Maybe you didn’t feel it like I did, but the Reapers definitely did. They knew what entity I represented. It’s why they didn’t immediately attack us, even though they probably had every reason to. They didn’t want to incur the wrath of the Word, and, fortunately, the Word was on my side this time.”
“This time,” I sighed.
“Tae, the Word doesn’t just fix my problems. If that were the case, we never would’ve had a Ta’Zan issue. The Exiled Maras never would’ve kidnapped me. I believe that this is a special situation—this moment here, I mean. We’re on Death’s turf. And the Word is as ancient as Death. Maybe it understands, like Death did so long ago, that this whole Hermessi ritual thing is unnatural. That it shouldn’t happen. And that’s why it helped.”
“Whatever its reasons, I’m thankful it intervened,” Eira said. “It’s better than nothing, considering what we’re dealing with.”
A distant boom made us all look up. Somewhere farther north of the waterfall building, a bright light exploded in the night sky. Something pierced the atmosphere, sending a rippling shockwave across it. We felt the sudden gust of wind smack into us, as an aftereffect.
The light persisted, moving downward in a chaotic spiral. Lumi was the first to recognize it.
“That’s an interplanetary spell.”
“Varga,” I breathed, my heart swelling and crunching against my ribcage. My friends were up there, coming down, but it didn’t look like a healthy descent. Something was wrong.
“We need to get to them, now,” Lumi said, looking at me.
“I have to see where they land first,” I replied, though I hated having to say that.
But it was easier for me to teleport the crew to Varga’s exact location, once I knew what that was. For now, the light bubble just shot toward the forest. I was able to estimate a trajectory for a moment, but that quickly changed as the interplanetary spell shifted, moving toward the northeast.
“Oh, that’s going to be a rough landing,” Raphael muttered.
I wanted nothing more than to jump up and catch them. Alas, that wasn’t an option. All we could do was wait till they were close enough to the ground for me to properly estimate a landing spot. Then, I’d just zap us over there, and hopefully, our team would be reunited.
The only thing that bothered me about the spell bubble was the frantic speed with which it hurled itself toward the ground. It’s going to make quite a bang.
Amelia
Knowing that Varga’s crew was coming down at that hurling speed and that we weren’t able to do anything about it put me right on the thin, fine line between concern and despair. Even Riza was helpless inside the spell bubble—no one could teleport out of it until it dissipated, and we worried it might crash instead of landing as it normally would.
Its chaotic trajectory and increasing speed were both signs of something that had gone terribly wrong with the interplanetary spell. But we stayed on top of the cliff, watching the light bubble shift its direction again, our hands linked, ready to teleport.
“Oh, it’s not looking good,” I breathed.
“I can’t steer an interplanetary spell bubble from the outside, especially since I’m not the one who cast the spell. But I’m hoping Nethissis and Acantha can keep it under control,” Lumi said, eyes on the interplanetary spell. Viola had already notified us of Varga’s enhanced crew via Telluris. “Side note, those Reapers will find another way to come at us. Just saying it now, so we’re not surprised later.”
“You don’t think the Word was an efficient deterrent?” I asked.
“I cannot guarantee it because I don’t know how dedicated these creatures are,” she replied. “They were ready to attack us just now. Given where we turned out to be, I expect we’ll come across more than those three Reapers, anyway. I think Death really doesn’t want to talk to anyone; otherwise, we wouldn’t have had so much trouble getting to her.”
“Technically speaking, we didn’t have the actual trouble of reaching Mortis.” Raphael chuckled.
“That was just a wonderful fluke.