They looked at us, measuring each member of our team from head to toe, their gazes settling on Vesta. A thought occurred to me as I compared their features to hers, and Rayna’s trembling lower lip and broken gasp confirmed my suspicions.
“Idris,” Rayna managed, pointing at Vesta. “It’s her… Our little Zara!”
“Whoa,” Vesta replied, her jaw dropping. “Wh-What’s happening? Who’s Zara?”
My gaze darted between them several times, just to make sure. Pale blue drowned out the dark red in the fae’s auras—a soft shade of genuine hope. After all the years they’d spent apart, their daughter had made her way back to them. Rayna was the first to burst into tears, swiftly followed by Idris.
“Vesta, they’re… I think we just found your parents,” I murmured.
Harper
Vesta was stunned, her eyes wide and her heartbeat erratic, as she tried to process what was going on. Looking at her and her parents, I saw plenty of common features: Idris and Rayna both had pale blond hair; Rayna had sky-blue eyes, while Idris’s were a wild, crude green, and Vesta had somehow gotten something in between, like the best of both.
“Zara. You… I thought we’d lost you,” Rayna sobbed, unable to take her eyes off Vesta.
“You don’t remember us?” Idris frowned, visibly confused.
Vesta shook her head slowly. “I don’t remember anything from before five years ago, when my tribe fished me out of the ocean,” she replied with a shrug. I couldn’t help but analyze her emotions, enticed by the aura of deep red discreetly glowing around her. “And my name is Vesta.”
“Oh, darling, it’s not. We named you Zara,” Rayna said, then put her arms out.
Vesta looked at me and Hansa for a few seconds, as if looking for guidance. She’d known a very different life for the past five years, and, given her amnesia, it had been the only life for her. I could only imagine what was going through her head at this point—the longing for truth, the confusion, and the revelation. Up until we’d met in the gorge, Vesta hadn’t even known what she was. Of course, she’d been well aware of the fact that she wasn’t an ordinary Iman, but with no other fae around to tell her, Vesta had spent years feeling different.
“Can I please hold you?” Rayna asked, her hands shaking with raw emotion.
Vesta nodded, and both Idris and Rayna came around and flanked her in a long embrace. Both fae parents cried, murmuring words of love in her hair, as Vesta gradually adjusted to the feeling of… her parents.
“So how does a fae get lost on Neraka?” Velnias asked, his arms crossed. He watched the entire scene with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.
“We escaped here once,” Idris explained, “about twenty years ago. We caught a pattern in the changing of the guards. There was a small window of opportunity with a weaker daemon, and we took it. We managed to get out, and we went far to the southeast, about two hundred miles from the Valley of Screams.”
“Once we realized there was no way out for us, we decided that having a baby wasn’t a good option, even after we escaped Draconis. But Zara happened, and our lives were never the same again.” Rayna smiled at Vesta. “We lived well for a while,” she added, stroking her daughter’s hair. “But the daemons caught up with us eventually. They ambushed us one night, and Zara got hurt. She fell off the cliff where we’d settled, and we were captured.”
“We didn’t think she’d made it,” Idris said, glowing with love and relief.
“The Imen called me Vesta,” the young fae replied.
“It’s a beautiful name,” Rayna said softly, and kissed her forehead. “I’ll call you Vesta, if you want, if it makes you feel more comfortable. I’m sorry, darling, I can only imagine how confused you must be.”
Vesta thought about it for a second, then nodded. “I like Vesta. It’s who I’ve been since I woke up in the Imen’s camp.”
It felt so good to see a family reunited like this. With everything that we’d been through, with all the obstacles laid out before us, watching Vesta as she got her life, her identity back, was like a beacon of hope. It fueled my own motivations about this place. Just a little over a week in, and we were already tearing down the farce that the daemons and Exiled Maras had put together.
Vesta was lucky to have been raised by the Imen—she knew the land and its people well enough to help us. Unknowingly reuniting her with her parents was the least we could do.
“How did you manage to sneak into Draconis?” Idris then asked, checking us all out. “It’s virtually impenetrable and inescapable.”
“Well, we’re persistent,” Hansa replied, then pressed her lips into a thin line. “And we had no other choice, given our current circumstances...”
“I am so sorry that you got dragged into this,” Idris sighed, while Rayna kept hugging Vesta. With every minute that went by, I could see Vesta warming up more and more to the mother she hadn’t thought she still had.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” I replied. “We’re sorry we didn’t bring more firepower with us. But we actually believed the Exiled Maras to be reformed and living in peace, not… all of this,” I muttered, motioning to everything around me.
“You two have been here for how long, exactly?” Hansa asked, her gaze wandering across the meranium walls, which were loaded with a flurry of swamp witch symbols.
“We’ve lost track, but I think we’re close to eight thousand years. Maybe more,” Rayna said.
Holy crap. “That is a very long time,” I breathed.
It broke my heart. Rayna and Idris were visibly weakened, weighing probably half as much as most other fae I’d met, or less. Their skin was pale beyond the acceptable health limits, their beautiful eyes sunken into the dark abyss of their orbits.
Bluish veins rushed along their bruised wrists, and the shadows beneath their cheeks were dismally dark. But what really caught my eye were the small, reddish bruises on the sides of their necks. A single perforated wound persisted on each, as if systematically reopened over a set period of time.
Remembering what I’d learned from the daemon customs I’d seen so far, and Fiona’s account from the Azure Heights prison invasion, those neck wounds were daemon bite marks—specifically made for soul consumption.
The daemons had been feeding on this fae couple for thousands of years. With the daemon and Exiled Mara populations increasing, the demand for “soul food” had gone up. My team and I were the first batch of an experimental replenishment of their “soul food” supply. If they succeeded in keeping us here, and feeding off us the same way they did with Idris, Rayna, and the other surviving delegation members, we weren’t the only ones screwed.
The longer we allowed this feeding pattern to continue, the worse it was for everyone involved—including the still-free Imen, the nearly extinct Manticores, the Adlets, the Dhaxanians, and every other living creature that still called Neraka home.
This has to stop.
Fiona
I don’t remember the dates during which the Druid delegation was on Neraka,” Caia muttered, frowning as she tried to go over what she’d read in the Druid archives the night before our deployment.
“But it’s something between eight and ten thousand years, for sure,” Harper replied. “The Exiled Maras came here well over ten millennia ago. And the delegation itself crash-landed not long after that.”
“Either way, as fae, we have very long lives ahead, still,” Idris said.
“Provided we get you guys out of here,” Harper said. “You two look like you can barely stand, at this point.”
“They’ve been feeding off our souls for as long as we’ve been here,” Rayna replied, tearing up again. “Once a month, one of the Seven Princes comes in here and leisurely consumes our very beings.”
“You’re much stronger supernaturals, by nature,” Harper said. “You have a higher resistance to this practice, but I doubt you’ll last another century if they keep draining you like this.”
“It’s why they came to us, after a
ll,” I sighed. “Their current so-called food supply is withering away. They need more of the fae and Mara caliber, and other strong species, as well, to continue this feeding frenzy.”
Vesta exhaled, with one arm still wrapped around her mother’s shoulder. “We need to get them out of here,” she said.
“Not today, I’m afraid,” Velnias replied, shaking his head.
“What do you mean? They’re dying here!” Vesta retorted, getting angrier with every second that went by. It didn’t faze the daemon, though. Velnias’s cruel realism hit us all in the gut.
“Not while Cayn is in Draconis,” he said. “No one gets out until Cayn leaves. He should be out in a day or two, tops. In the meantime, all I can do is help you people explore the prison, speak to delegation members, and help you find out where they’re keeping the witch. If we break anyone out now, the entire city will be in an uproar, and the last thing you want is King Shaytan’s undivided attention.”
A few moments went by in an almost deafening silence. As much as we all hated to admit it, Velnias was right. Making a move now was counterproductive, given how eager the First Prince was to please his father. With Cayn still in town, our options were limited. Technically speaking, we could try to be cowboys and bust everyone out, but the effort would amount to nothing without the swamp witch’s location.
Most importantly, if we did help the others escape right away, it could severely diminish our chances of finding the swamp witch in the first place. “Velnias has a point,” I muttered, not bothering to hide my displeasure at having to say it out loud. “If we try breaking anyone out right now, the daemons might get extra paranoid and move the swamp witch elsewhere. I think, for the next couple of days, at least, that we need to be careful and discreet, while we explore this place and work out a feasible plan to get everybody to freedom and safety.”
I felt just as miserable knowing I’d left Zane behind for the same reason. He’d helped me, despite our somewhat rocky introduction. He’d helped us all, and I had to leave him behind, for the time being. But, like I’d told Vesta, too, I knew where to find him. And I was definitely coming back for him—preferably sooner, not later. There was something brewing between us, the kind of magnetism I’d never experienced before, and I wanted to see where it could take me. I basically had the hots for a daemon, but, given my current circumstances, that really wasn’t the craziest thing in my life.
“But I’ve only just found my parents,” Vesta said, her voice trembling. I felt sorry for her, but it was in her best interests, too.
“At least you know where they are,” I offered. “And, provided no one else knows you’re related, the daemons won’t try to use your parents against us. Against you, specifically. Let’s focus on the main task right now. Let’s keep our eyes on the grand prize. We need to find out where the swamp witch is being held. Once we know that, we can plan accordingly and get everyone out safely, not just the witch.”
Vesta nodded slowly, then gave her parents an apologetic look. They both hugged her, and Idris gently squeezed her shoulder in a reassuring manner. “Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “They’re right, actually. We are safer here, for the time being, than out there. And now that we know you’re alive and fighting so hard, we’ll hold out and wait for you to come back for us. We have all the faith in you.”
“We don’t know where they’re holding the swamp witch, though,” Rayna sighed. “We know she’s still alive, but after our first escape, the daemons have been pretty careful about their conversations in our presence.”
“They figured out that, if we could escape once, we could do it again. So they didn’t want us to have access to any sensitive information, not even rumors,” Idris added.
“That is true,” Velnias confirmed. “We have protocols in place for creatures like Idris and Rayna. My guards are instructed to keep their mouths shut at all times. I know Rayna here loves to engage in… meaningful conversation.”
Velnias chuckled, and Rayna shook her head in response. “I still can’t believe you’re a pacifist. You deserve to be drawn and quartered for the way you’ve tormented us until now.”
We all looked at Velnias, our frowns making him visibly uncomfortable. He shrugged. “Don’t look at me,” he replied. “I’m only playing my part. I’m one of the very few pacifists that are higher up on the daemon food chain. It’s thanks to creatures like me that the resistance has grown over the past few years. Unfortunately, yes, I’ve had to do some terrible things to maintain my image, but it’s precisely this authenticity that has kept the suspicions at bay. It’s why I was able to bring these people here, today.”
As cruel as that sounded, Velnias was right. Despite his somewhat sociopathic behavior, his motivations as a pacifist were deeply rooted in his being—otherwise we would’ve found ourselves inside charmed meranium boxes, as well.
“So, what now, then?” Vesta asked. “We keep touring the prison?”
“The Druids from the delegation might have a better idea as to where they could be holding the swamp witch,” Idris replied. “I haven’t seen a Druid in ages, but they’re strong creatures, like us. At least two of them should still be alive, as they were still young and fresh out of the Grand Temple on Persea at the time.”
“Oh, they’re definitely still alive. I’m in charge of one, actually.” Velnias smirked. “I suggest you bid your farewells now, so we can go see what he’s up to. Once you get the information you need, you can draw up a plan to get everyone out of here. And, of course, I’ll help you implement it.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank you, Velnias,” Rayna replied.
Vesta hugged and kissed her parents one last time as the rest of us made our way back to the door.
“I’ll see you again soon, I promise,” Vesta said to Idris and Rayna.
“I know you will, honey,” Idris replied, smiling softly.
I checked my invisibility spell supply, concluding that I had enough for two more uses. Velnias followed my gaze, then smirked at the sight of the shimmering paste in its belt satchel. “I hope you’ve got enough to last you till you get out.”
“We obviously came prepared,” I replied, raising an eyebrow.
“Velnias, then you go out first, and make sure the coast is clear,” Hansa said, scowling at him.
“Absolutely.” Velnias chuckled, then opened the door and checked the dead-end alley before he confirmed it was clear. “Let’s go.”
One by one, we got out, with Vesta last. She once again promised her parents that she would see them again soon enough.
“Just be careful,” I heard Rayna say, just as we stepped outside, and Velnias locked the cell door with his charmed keys.
“Now, let’s go find ourselves a Druid.” Velnias grinned, then guided us to the next meranium box.
As much as I tried to keep a clear head, I couldn’t help but let hope blossom in the back of my head—the hope that the Druid in Cell 6 had all the answers we needed. It felt as though the more time we spent on Neraka, the more difficult and complicated everything got.
We needed a break, and I wholeheartedly wanted it to be in the form of the Druid next door.
Harper
With no guards left on that block, we had easy access to Cell 6.
“The next guard change is in two hours,” Velnias said, looking for the right key on the chain. Once he found it, he unlocked the door and motioned us to go in. “We should be fine until then. Just be ready to hide, no matter what.”
As soon as we set foot inside the meranium box, I was hit by a faint feeling of hopelessness. The walls were all scribbled in swamp witch symbols, but I could see some had been scraped off in the lower corners—not easy to notice at first glance.
A Druid sat at the foot of the bed. Velnias gave him a red lens, then motioned for him to put it on. The Druid frowned but looked up through the lens. He stilled, gazing at us with a mixture of fear and confusion.
He’d arrived to Neraka as a young explorer—
and the thousands of years he’d spent here had certainly left a mark. His long hair had streaks of white, and his salt-and-pepper beard further outlined the signs of aging: thin expression lines, dark rings around his wary, sad brown eyes, and sucked-in cheeks.
He did look slightly better than the fae couple, considering that he, too, was a “soul snack” for daemon royalty.
“Laughlan, my friend, you’re looking better,” Velnias said, closing the door behind him.
“What are you doing here? And who are they?” Laughlan replied, nodding at us. Despite his apparent abrasiveness, he was extremely curious about us. For someone who’d spent thousands of years in a box, Laughlan didn’t immediately come across as hopeless, just physically drained.
“We’re here to help,” Hansa said. “Velnias is assisting us.”
“We’re from Calliope,” Jax added. “We’re part of an interstellar effort to restore peace and balance throughout the galaxies. We didn’t expect to be here, but, well, here we are.”
Laughlan’s forehead smoothed. He seemed incredulous. “You’ve come to rescue me? Us?”
“Sort of. Just not yet.” Jax sighed. “We were lured here by the Exiled Maras, but we managed to escape. However, we can’t get off the planet, and we can’t get help, either. Not until we find the swamp witch. We were hoping you could help us with that.”
It hit me then that Laughlan’s flat and doubtful reaction wasn’t a defense mechanism, but rather the result of genuine hopelessness. He teared up as he carefully looked us over. A faint gasp escaped his throat when he realized that we were, in fact, standing here.
“I haven’t seen Eritopians in thousands of years. I didn’t think I would ever see one again,” Laughlan breathed, coming to terms with the reality of our presence. He then scowled at Velnias. “And you! After all the torture and torment, you’re a pacifist?”