“Big kahuna, then,” I muttered, mostly to myself, then plastered a dry smile on my face. “Thank you. As I was saying, we’re here to talk. We mean you and your people no harm, I assure you.”
“You’re repeating yourself. Tell me something new,” Nevis replied.
Wow, he does not make it easy.
“We were brought here by the Exiled Maras under false pretenses, and—” Patrik tried to speak, but Nevis raised his hand to silence him, following it up with a freezing glare.
“Let her speak. Whatever story you wish to tell me, it sounds better coming from her,” Nevis said, then smiled at me. It got awkward, fast, but there was no turning back. If he wanted me to do the talking, that was fine by me, as long as it bought us some time.
Patrik nodded briefly, while Heron’s glare darkened on Nevis.
“Okay,” I murmured, then straightened my back and raised my chin at the prince of Dhaxanians. “We operate across galaxies, helping those who cannot help themselves. We’ve restored peace across many kingdoms, over many years. Most recently, some of our members toppled a dark Druid of Eritopia, a galaxy far from here. We settled a base there and helped them rebuild. We were called out here, to Neraka, by the Exiled Maras, but it turned out to be a ruse, a big fat lie. We’ve discovered the current state of this world, and we want to bring this alliance between daemons and Exiled Maras to an end.”
Nevis nodded slowly and motioned for me to continue.
“What’s happening on Neraka is not natural,” I said. “Innocent creatures have been suffering and dying for thousands of years, and it needs to stop. With GASP and Eritopia on our side, we have the power to rein the daemons in, and to remove the Exiled Maras from this world altogether. They’ve done enough damage, and they’re past the point of any redemption. Neraka needs peace.”
“And you’re in my palace now… why, exactly?” Nevis raised an eyebrow.
“We’d like to discuss an alliance with you,” I replied, somewhat frustrated that I had to state the obvious. “The Dhaxanians have lost plenty over the years, too, right? You guys are practically extinct. Reduced to this mountain. Missing from the pages of history altogether, while the daemons and Exiled Maras wreak havoc on the world. Are you okay with that?”
Nevis crossed his arms, pursing his lips as he mulled over my words for a while. “What do you need us for, if you have your GASP and Eritopia whatever?”
“Yeah, here’s our problem.” I sighed. “The daemons and Exiled Maras are keeping our last swamp witch hostage. They have been keeping her here for thousands of years, using her against you and the others. Most recently, they had her put up a shield to cut off all communications with the outside world. We can’t reach out to our people, and our people can’t get to us, either. We’re currently looking for her, and, once we find out where she is, we’ll need help to get her out. Most importantly, once we have her back and she brings down the shield, we’ll need support to keep the daemons and Exiled Maras at bay—long enough for us to reach out and bring our armies to Neraka to end this nonsense.”
Nevis seemed genuinely amused, but equally interested. “So you need assistance. Allies,” he concluded, and I replied with a nod. “You want the Dhaxanians to help you get your swamp witch back and keep you all safe until your armies come down here.”
“Yes,” I said. “Rest assured, we will broker peace on Neraka and help all of its people get their lives back, in a fair and democratic fashion. The Exiled Maras’ influence is unnatural. It needs to stop.”
“That we can both agree on.” Nevis smirked. “How many of you are there? I doubt it’s only you four and the mutt.”
Hundurr growled, not liking the label, but Nevis didn’t care.
“The rest of our team is most likely infiltrating Draconis as we speak,” I replied. “They’re looking for the swamp witch. We have plenty of firepower together, especially now that another fae has joined our ranks. We have a dragon, too. But we need support from the locals, for once the Exiled Maras and the daemons lose the swamp witch, they will stop at nothing to get her back. The Dhaxanians are powerful. We’ve heard great things about your kind, and, most importantly, you can bring frost and slow the daemons down. We’ve made friends with the Adlets and the Imen, and our friends are getting the Manticores involved, too, if there are any left. We need you. Your world needs you.”
“I doubt there are any Manticores left, but hey, I must applaud you kids for trying. There’s no trophy for trying, but you’ve made it this far,” Nevis said, smiling. “But it’s a good thing you’ve come here to tell me all about it.”
Relief tickled my throat, and I could almost feel myself light up as I took a deep breath. “So you’ll help us?” I asked.
Nevis gazed at me for what felt like an eternity, then chuckled softly, as if he’d heard a pretty decent joke. “No, darling, I’ll put an end to this nonsense.”
“Wait, what?” I gasped, then froze—literally.
The same frost we’d seen spreading through the plateau forest expanded from beneath Nevis. It reached our feet and swallowed us whole in a matter of seconds. We were glazed in ice, all the way up to our chins. Patrik tried chanting a spell to counteract the effect, but Nevis shook his head, and the frost covered the Druid’s mouth, leaving his nose clear, in order for him to breathe.
My heart nearly stopped, as the truth sank in. The Dhaxanians had absolutely no interest in helping us. If anything, Nevis had simply prolonged what to him was probably the inevitable. As the icy cold seeped through my layers of fur and leather, I understood that our predicament had quickly shifted from hopeful to dark, and potentially deadly.
Scarlett
You’ve got to be kidding me!” Avril cried out, struggling to move against the ice, but with no success whatsoever. “Don’t tell me you’re siding with those horned bastards!”
We couldn’t move, our bodies encased in glassy ice. Dhaxanians quietly emerged from the rectangular holes all around us—at least a thousand of them, all dressed in soft white silks, with silver protection plates covering their chests, shoulders, forearms, and calves. They were all diaphanously beautiful, with white hair and bluish eyes, their skin pearlescent and their features delicate. They carried their bows and quivers on their backs as they slid down the ice walls of the dome and surrounded us, while Nevis sat on his frozen throne.
“I made an agreement with King Shaytan a long time ago,” the prince of Dhaxanians said, though he didn’t seem too happy about it. “I keep the mountains for my people, and the daemons can do whatever they want with the rest. We don’t interfere in each other’s business. We’ve kept a low profile and stayed out of sight, and we’ve managed to replenish our population, after millennia spent burying our loved ones. We’ve reached a certain balance, and I would hate to see it go up in literal flames simply because you people were gullible enough to get yourselves trapped here by the Exiled Maras.”
The enthusiasm I’d come out with this morning fizzled away, and I was left with a burning mixture of anger and the will to survive. It flared through me, despite the sheet of ice keeping me in place.
“You’re making a big mistake, Nevis,” I replied, gritting my teeth.
Hundurr yelped as he struggled against the ice, but to no avail. Patrik tried to speak, but his lips were turning blue under the frost. My heart thumped inside my ribcage.
“I think the ones who made a big mistake are you.” Nevis smirked. “Although, in your defense, you couldn’t have known. We’ve been keeping our presence hidden from most, and the Athelathan weather is so ferocious that no Iman has dared to venture through these parts. Not that they would’ve lived to tell the tale, anyway.”
“This is wrong, on so many levels!” Avril shouted. “We’re trying to help this world, and even you!”
“Listen, as much as I’d like to sit here and listen to that sweet voice of yours, Avril, I can’t. I’m afraid I cannot break the peace treaty I worked so hard to put together with King Shaytan,” N
evis replied, with a tinge of disappointment.
He then snapped his fingers, and the floor beneath us started to shake. The Dhaxanians took a couple of steps back as the ice began to crackle around us. “What’s happening?” I breathed, staring at the cracks spreading in a circular pattern, singling us out from the rest of the Dhaxanian crowd.
“You’ll be going downstairs for a while,” Nevis said. “It’s warmer than up here, if you’re looking for a bright side to your otherwise unfortunate predicament.”
“And what’s the downside?” Heron shot back.
“None for me,” Nevis chuckled. “But quite the conundrum for you. I’ll be sending word out to Infernis. They’ll come and fetch you, and my people and I will have nothing to do with any of this.”
The floor broke into a disc beneath our frozen feet, then slowly descended into a cylindrical tunnel. Nevis and the Dhaxanians watched us go down, deep into the bowels of the Athelathan Mountains.
“Nevis, don’t!” I called out as the darkness of stone enveloped us. “You can still make things right! Don’t do something you’ll regret later!”
“I’m afraid that ship has already sailed,” Nevis’s voice came down from above.
The Dhaxanians gathered around the hole at the top, just so they could get a better view of us sinking deeper into the mountain.
It didn’t look good for us. I couldn’t free myself from the ice, and, slowly but surely, it was starting to bring my temperature down to dangerous levels—the kind that slowed my metabolism and stripped me of my supersonic speed.
Patrik and Heron were already pale, their lips blue and their teeth clattering, while Hundurr continued to whimper against his icy restraints. Avril didn’t look too good either, but she, like me, was mostly distraught, and mentally preparing for a very uncomfortable freeze.
The frost wasn’t going to kill us. The Dhaxanians surely knew that the daemons wanted us alive. If they had an alliance going, they most likely knew how precious we were to the soul-eaters, anyway.
Ugh. I was dangerously close to getting my soul eaten again.
No way. No way in hell. “No freaking way,” I muttered, shaking my head and convincing myself that this was not over. That it was not going to end like this—not for me, not for Patrik, and certainly not for everyone else in our group, Hundurr included.
“How much time do you think we have until the daemons get here?” Avril asked, her voice low and calm. Judging by the look on her face, she was on the same page as me.
“I don’t know, but—hold that thought,” I breathed, as our ice disk reached the very bottom of the tunnel with a loud thud.
The underground opened up around us, beyond a cylindrical cage with what looked like meranium bars, each carved with swamp witch symbols. We were caged and restrained with ice, in the lowest part of the Athelathan Mountains.
Four large tunnels lead in four different directions. My guess was that they were all linked to a daemon city. “Oh, crap,” I muttered. “They’re connected. The daemons will probably just come through and pick us off, one by one.”
“And the cage is charmed.” Avril frowned as she noticed the symbols.
There was no way out for us. Not from where we stood, anyway. And we’d instructed Dion and Alles to run back to the Adlets, then Ragnar Peak, if we failed to return. At least we didn’t tell Nevis about Ragnar Peak. At least Harper and the others had a chance, provided they didn’t run into much trouble in Draconis. I would’ve worried more about them, but, given our circumstances, I could only hope that they were doing better.
Chills ran down my spine, and I exhaled sharply.
“We are royally screwed,” I managed.
It was cold and dark in here, and, despite being so close to Patrik, Avril, Heron, and even Hundurr, I felt incredibly lonely in this moment. The Dhaxanians had been so quick to betray us.
Harper
Velnias took us deeper through the private prison block, farther to the east, where the prisoners in his care were being held. We kept a low profile, invisible and hiding whenever red lens daemons came out. Ramin, my eerily quiet feathered friend, didn’t move an inch inside my backpack. I occasionally checked to see if it was still alive, only to be greeted by its curious, bright eyes. It had the patience of a saint… I used my True Sight to spot them in advance, giving our team the precious extra seconds we needed to go behind one of the many meranium boxes lining the main alley.
We turned a corner to the left, following Velnias, but his arm shot out and he pushed me back. I kept the rest of my team from stumbling forward. Velnias then cursed under his breath. “Crap, they’ve added more guards tonight,” he said.
I craned my neck to the side and counted four daemons guarding one of the cells, with four more farther ahead. From what I could tell, Cells 5 and 6 had extra detail, while the rest of the smaller, shorter alley was empty. “Why?”
“Word is probably out that you and your people are looking for the Druid delegation,” Velnias replied. “This is a new measure, and no one told me about it. And that, young lady, is something I find extremely insulting. Stay here, out of sight, and don’t move until I signal you to come out.”
He stalked up to the four guards, visibly infuriated. “What are you stooges doing here?” he barked, his hands behind his back.
The daemons looked somewhat confused. “We were told to be here, sir.”
“You’re absolutely useless here! The outsiders are just back there,” Velnias shot back, pointing our way. I froze in my boots. Oh, crap. “I just saw them! Put your red lenses on and go get them!” he said, then motioned for the guards outside Cell 6. “You too! Go!”
“What the hell is happening here?” I croaked, pulling my twin swords out. My heart pounded as the daemons rushed toward us, fumbling through their tunic pockets for their red lenses.
“Don’t let them put on their lenses,” Hansa breathed, and shot out with her broadsword already drawn.
She was right: we had a good upper hand. The daemons were in such a panic to come after us that they had trouble finding their lenses—had we not been in such trouble, I would’ve laughed at them.
We came out and flanked all eight, two of whom had managed to put the lenses on. Caia and Blaze set them both on fire, then ran their swords through them. I tackled a third one, introducing him to both my blades, while Pheng-Pheng stung a fourth, then slit his throat.
Caspian, Fiona, and Jax took care of two more, then Pheng-Pheng and I took on the last two. We rushed around them, slashing our swords at them—enough to keep them distracted and with no time to reach for their red lenses.
I then caught a glimpse of Velnias leaning against the door of Cell 5, watching us with his arms crossed and a grin on his face. I will punch him. I will. Judging by his pose, however, Velnias hadn’t exactly betrayed us. This was probably some kind of test. I figured he wanted to make sure, just like the Manticore queen, that we were worth all the trouble and the risk.
Pheng-Pheng and I managed to kill the last of the daemon guards, then made our way to Velnias. My fists were itching to meet his face, still, but Hansa beat me to it. She punched Velnias hard, throwing his head to the side. Velnias grunted from the pain, then chuckled, holding his reddened jaw.
“Good grief, that is a mean left hook!” he exclaimed, then took his charmed keys out—each engraved with what looked like swamp witch symbols.
“What the hell was that for?” Hansa growled, still furious, as she put her sword away.
“It was easier to have you folks take care of them than to come up with some stupid excuse to send them away,” Velnias replied, then nodded at Blaze and Jax. “You two strapping young fellas, you should hide those bodies, unless you want a full red alert to go off as soon as someone comes by.”
Hansa groaned, rolling her eyes, then joined Blaze and Jax in the cleanup mission. Two minutes later, with the daemon corpses stashed behind Cell 9 farther down the road, they came back to Cell 5, just as Velnias twisted one of t
he keys in the lock and opened the door.
Inside were two fae—a couple, judging by how they held each other close, pale as sheets of paper and huddled in a corner. The meranium box was spacious enough for the two of them to live comfortably, but, in the long run, and especially after thousands of years, it still wasn’t enough.
The fae couple didn’t say anything, but the weary looks on their faces told me everything I needed to know—as did their faded, dark red auras, and the circles around their bluish eyes. Their bodies were weak, and they were both literally worn out. In fact, they were barely standing, and appeared to be in a tremendous amount of pain. Worst of all, they were scared of Velnias, who let a heavy sigh roll out of his chest as he closed the door behind us.
“Idris, Rayna, I see you two are still alive,” he said calmly. “I know this will come as a shock to you, but I’m not here to hurt you.” He handed them two spare red lenses and motioned for them to put them over their eyes. “You’re going to want to see this…”
The male fae, whom I identified as Idris, scoffed, his arms wrapped around Rayna’s petite torso. “That’s a new line, coming from the likes of you!”
“Idris, Rayna, he’s telling the truth,” Hansa said, stepping forward. “We’re here to help.”
The fae both stilled, then scrambled to put the lenses over their eyes. They gasped, staring at Hansa with surprise. “You’re… You’re a succubus,” Rayna breathed.
“That I am, yes,” Hansa replied with a nod and a soft smile. “I take it you haven’t seen one of us in a long time.”
“Thousands of years,” Idris said. “What are you doing here? How did you end up on Neraka?”
“Long story short, the Exiled Maras brought us here under false pretenses, and now we can’t get out until we find the swamp witch,” Hansa explained as briefly as possible, given the little time we had in this place.