We all recognized the click—a hidden mechanism revealing a secret door. A rectangular piece of the wall dislodged and opened inward. Vincent slipped through, then closed the secret door behind him.
With my heart racing, I rushed over there, with the others right behind me.
I stopped in front of the picture frame, then looked at Harper.
“You said you can’t see below this level, right?” I asked, my voice low. She nodded in response. “Can you see past this wall?”
She tried, then shook her head. The entire wall section was protectively coated with meranium. I took a deep breath and lifted the picture corner, like Vincent had done before me. Secret door clicked, then opened slowly. I pushed it all the way in, discovering a set of stairs leading into the basement.
There wasn’t much light coming from below, with the exception of a few flickering wall sconces at the bottom of the stairs.
We descended into the basement level and spotted Vincent chatting with one of the guards positioned in front of a room at the end of the hallway. Harper took a minute to assess the entire area, then frowned.
“It’s all meranium and carved symbols beneath the wallpaper,” she muttered, then nodded ahead. “There are multiple corridors, though.”
The main hallway had several doors on both sides. Every forty feet or so, it opened into different corridors, all lit by the same kind of amber-colored wall sconces.
“This whole level could very well be a secret maze of rooms and hallways,” I whispered.
Vincent nodded at the guard, then went inside the room, closing the door behind him. I spotted the red lens on the Correction Officer’s tunic, mounted on a slim chain.
“We need to disable him first, then check where the others might be,” Zane said. “Let me handle this.”
He stepped into the hallway and headed straight for the guard, looking left and right through every corridor as he advanced. The CO must have seen the air rippling or caught a glimpse of Zane’s red eyes, as he reached for his red lens. Zane was faster, though, and shot him with a poisoned arrow, then caught him under his arm before he could collapse and make a noise. He held the Mara up like a lifeless doll as the poison disabled his nervous system, then motioned for the rest of us to come through.
He put his index finger up to his lips. I nodded and joined him first, followed by Harper, Caspian, Pheng-Pheng, and Arrah. We caught glimpses of other COs stationed along the adjacent corridors, staring blankly at the walls in front of them. I counted about twenty of them scattered across the level.
We stood by the door, listening in. I put my ear against the keyhole. Two seconds later, my heart nearly stopped. I looked up at Harper and noticed her stunned expression. She could hear it, too.
Jax’s voice.
“Don’t worry, Draven, we’re good so far,” Jax said. “We’re organizing another search party tomorrow. No sign of the missing Maras, either.”
Something was horribly off here. We’d left Jax behind with Hansa and Dion, back at the tunnel exit. Yet it sounded like him. It sent chills down my spine and ravaged my stomach, as I tried to make sense of what was going on.
Caspian frowned, then sighed audibly. It got our attention. He was angry, pressing his lips with frustration. He knew what was in that room—I could see it in his eyes. Judging by the wide-eyed expression on Harper’s face, she realized it, too. Caspian’s blood oath prevented him from speaking.
Harper grunted, then pushed the door open.
We stormed inside and came to a screeching halt, shocked by what awaited.
It was a simple, cubic room with meranium walls, covered in swamp witch symbols. But that wasn’t the highlight of the entire scene—far from it. On the floor, in the middle of the room, was a large Druid circle, with a variety of crystals, herbs, and powders strategically positioned along the chalk drawing, which glowed white.
Right at the center was a contraption of some kind, resembling an old phone—specifically the first type ever invented, with a bell-shaped receiver and a makeshift microphone, made from a combination of metals and soft wood casing. It was positioned on a small table with shelves underneath, where a plethora of glowing, multicolored crystals were stacked, each connected to the faux phone through hundreds of black and white wires.
Every inch of that table was scribbled with swamp witch symbols. In front of it was a stool, on which Vincent sat, holding the receiver to his ear. He saw the air ripple in front of him and spoke through the microphone.
“Sure, we’ll talk again soon,” he said, in Jax’s voice.
I froze, watching as he put the receiver back on its hook and pressed a button on the faux phone’s base. He removed a small black pellet from his throat, carefully placing it on the table next to the strange contraption.
He put on his red lens with trembling fingers, then scoffed.
“Took you long enough to find this place,” he muttered in his usual voice.
My stomach dropped as I understood what was going on here. Why we hadn’t seen any sign of GASP whatsoever. How the Exiled Maras had kept our people away, even when we couldn’t reach out to them.
These bloodsucking, soul-eating bastards had been pretending to be us, somehow tapping into the Telluris spell and using that weird combination of Druid and swamp witch magic to communicate with Draven, back on Calliope. The shield kept us from reaching out to our people, but the Exiled Maras had found a way to keep our people at bay, letting them think they were talking to us.
Oh, so many questions came surging through my head, all at once, as my temperature spiked, and rage threatened to burst through me like a devastating firestorm.
This was, by far, the most despicable of all the tricks employed by the Exiled Maras to get away with their nefarious plans.
Harper
My muscles stiffened at the sight before me.
It cost us dearly, because I didn’t register Vincent’s sudden movement as he trashed the phone-like contraption with his foot. It fell apart in just one blow.
“No!” I gasped, watching the crystals shatter against the floor, chunks of wood and metal pieces scattering across, wires tangling around like spilled entrails. The Druid circle glow faded when one of the bowls of powder and herb mixture got knocked over.
Vincent snickered as he shot to his feet. He reached for the short sword mounted on his belt, but I beat him to it. He’d done enough damage already. One of my blades reached his throat before he could take his out. His fingers froze, clutching the handle.
The color drained from his cheeks.
“You bastard,” I hissed. “What’s this all about?”
Vincent smirked, checking each of us out. “How nice to see you again, Miss Hellswan. Fiona, darling, what are you doing with that oaf? You really don’t know how to choose your company, do you?”
“Said the guy who just got rejected by a Mara who’s literally paid to say yes,” Fiona shot back, gritting her teeth. She pointed at the pile of tech and magical paraphernalia on the floor. “What the hell was that? How did you make your voice sound like Jax’s? Were you talking to our Draven just now? Is this how you’ve been keeping GASP at bay?”
“Oh, sweetheart, had you only stayed by my side,” Vincent replied, a grin cutting his face from ear to ear. “I would’ve taken care of you.”
“You would’ve taken care of me?” Fiona scoffed, then nodded at Pheng-Pheng. “Let’s see you take care of yourself, first!”
Before he could even react, Pheng-Pheng darted behind him, stung him with her scorpion tail, then stepped back and came around to face him again. Vincent stilled, holding the side of his neck. Slowly but surely, his veins blackened as the venom started spreading through his body. I lowered my blade and moved away.
“I used a smaller dose,” Pheng-Pheng muttered. “It’ll take him out slower, but it will still burn and cause agonizing pain.”
“Fantastic!” Fiona quipped, then rammed her fist into his face.
Vincent dropped ont
o one knee, spitting blood, but Fiona wasn’t done. None of us intervened. She deserved this much, after his theatrics and key role in the Exiled Maras’ plots. In fact, after what we’d just discovered here, we all deserved a shot at dismembering Vincent.
Fiona grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him back up, then slammed him into the wall.
He struggled against her hold, but his limbs weakened as the venom took over. He squirmed and whimpered from the pain, breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Tell us what’s going on here, Vincent, and I’ll end it faster,” Fiona hissed. “Or I’ll just leave you here to writhe in agony until, eventually, you lose your head. I can make time to watch you die, you filthy piece of—”
“It’s a spell!” Vincent croaked.
“What kind of spell?” I asked. “I see a Druid circle and a bunch of swamp witch symbols. Explain yourself!”
Vincent moaned from the pain. “We tortured the Druids, forced a couple of spells out of them a while back, on top of what we got from the swamp witch. It’s a hijacking spell… The shield around Neraka stops communications and access. This spell, however, captures incoming signals and spells, including Telluris. It’s… It’s a combination of both types of magic.”
“What does it do?” Fiona replied, pushing him harder against the wall.
Zane stifled a grin, crossing his arms and watching the entire scene unfold. Arrah and Pheng-Pheng stood between us, with Caspian to my right. He wore a permanent frown, a muscle ticking in his jaw. As long as there was tension and frustration burning through him, I knew we’d yet to get everything we could out of Vincent.
“It picks up Telluris transmissions, among other things,” Vincent explained, panting. “Oh, it hurts so much…”
“Talk!” Fiona snapped, then drew her sword and pushed it against his throat.
Vincent started sobbing. “It’s… It’s a trick! We’ve been using it to make your people think you’re okay. Whenever GASP tries to reach out to you, we intervene. We use voice-changing charms to pretend we’re one of you, whoever Draven’s calling out to. It’s kept them at bay for a long time.”
“Why would you do that? If the shield keeps everybody out, why go to this effort?” I asked, somewhat confused. I repositioned the new puzzle pieces in my mind and tried to make sense of the full picture.
“We didn’t have the shield up when you first arrived,” Vincent croaked. “We didn’t know how long it would take to get the swamp witch to write the formulas down. And then, after it went up, we weren’t sure it would be enough to keep your people away long enough for us to play out the whole lie. We have a script we’re working with, stages of the story, to draw GASP in and get them to send a specific number of creatures to look for us. This was well planned from the very beginning, down to the last detail. This was one of the first things we put together to make sure GASP didn’t come looking for you too soon.”
Fiona, Zane, Caspian, and I looked at each other, finally understanding the complexity of the Exiled Maras’ elaborate plan to not only trap us here, but to get more of our people to come without igniting a full-scale invasion of Eritopian and GASP forces.
“Wishful thinking, friend, because you really underestimated these fine ladies,” Zane chuckled, no longer able to hold back.
Despite the pain surging through his body, Vincent found the strength to sneer at him, then noticed Arrah. “You… Arrah, right? You were a servant in our house,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes as he remembered her. “Yes, I remember you,” he added, then tried to mind-bend her. “Be a darling and get the Manticore’s tail. I need the second sting.”
Arrah smirked, crossing her arms.
Vincent didn’t see that coming, judging by his face. He was genuinely confused.
“I’m immune to your mind-bending, you sniveling dirtbag,” Arrah retorted.
“Hah!” Vincent gasped, suddenly enlightened. “I didn’t think it was true, not even when Mother said it out loud.”
Arrah frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I should’ve paid more attention to the details,” Vincent muttered. “You’ve been pretending to be mind-bent all along, haven’t you?” Arrah’s silence was his answer. “Then it’s true. My father did spawn a bastard with your mother. That wench…”
Fiona pushed the blade deeper, drawing blood. “Mind your manners, you tool.”
“What are you implying?” I asked him, then noticed the glimmer of realization in Arrah’s eyes.
“I should’ve seen it. The color of your eyes… The strong will… I’d thought my mother had mind-bent the willfulness out of you, but you’re immune. You’re half Mara, darling. You’re my half-sister.” Vincent chuckled, then coughed, the venom gradually disabling his organs.
“That… I don’t get it,” Arrah murmured.
We’d speculated about this before, but she hadn’t been keen to address it. Now, she had no choice.
“You’re immune to mind-bending, and your mother was a little too close to my father!” Vincent spat. “He wanted to get out of here, you know. I mean, we knew about his affair with your mother, but we didn’t think it would produce any offspring. He wanted to take her away, along with you, Sienna, and that idiot brother of yours. Mother made sure that never happened,” he added, then scowled at Arrah. “I wasn’t on board with watching my father die. I’ve always blamed your mother for it. Boy, did I laugh when we tossed Demios in prison and made your mother disappear.”
“You kept me around the house, thinking you could mind-bend me into submission,” Arrah replied, putting two and two together. “That’s why you were always so jovial and accommodating whenever our paths crossed. You knew what you and your mother had done, and you both enjoyed watching me toil around the house, thinking ‘look at the poor Iman girl, she has no idea what we did’… right?”
Vincent smirked.
“Well, joke’s on you, then,” Fiona replied dryly. “You’re down here with us, and rest assured, we won’t stop until you’re all dead or in chains.”
“Who came up with this… contraption?” Zane asked, crouching to pick up the broken pieces and get a better look. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I mean, I knew you people had tricks up your sleeves to keep the Eritopians out, but this… this is a whole new level of skill.”
Vincent shuddered, now losing control over his limbs altogether. His skin was paper-white, black veins streaking across like spiderwebs.
“Mother… She came up with the idea,” he replied. “She spent months torturing the swamp witch to get something out of her. After a few weeks and a couple of failed attempts, she managed to put this together,” he added, nodding at the shattered pieces on the floor. “Calliope doesn’t even know you’re all done for.”
“Put it back together,” I said. “Fix it. Make it work, and we’ll spare you.”
My heart drummed hard. If we could reach out to Draven through this spell hybrid, we could finish this even quicker than we’d anticipated. We’d still have to get Lumi out, but we’d also have people already on the way until we brought the shield down.
Vincent sneered, and I knew, deep down, what it meant.
“I can’t,” he said. “Only Mother knows how to do it.”
“Dammit.” I scoffed, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“Where are you keeping Lumi?” Fiona asked, moving on to the most important part of our mission. “We know she’s in here, but which room?”
“You’ll kill me anyway. Why should I make it easy for you?” Vincent shot back.
“We’ll make it easy for you in return,” I said, bringing both of my swords up for him to see. He sighed, then shook his head.
“Not worth it. Not if you kill me.”
Fiona exhaled sharply, then rolled her eyes. “Fine. We’ll spare you. You’ll spend the rest of your life in a cage, then.”
Vincent gave her a playful wink, then grimaced from an incoming seizure, his whole body shaking and his jaw clenching from t
he pain.
“Tick tock, Vincent,” I replied.
“Take… Take the first corridor on the left as you get out of here. Go to the end, turn right. There’s another corridor there. At the end. By the gods, this hurts too much!” Vincent managed, sweat dripping down his face. “There’s a door at the end. The frame is different from the others. It’s covered in swamp witch warding symbols. You can’t miss it; it’s guarded by two daemons and two COs.”
He started choking, gasping for air. Fiona released him. He fell to his knees, reaching out for her as she stepped back.
“Now… Help me…” he breathed.
I knew exactly what Fiona was going to say. I was thinking it, too, and, although it wasn’t in our nature, I was totally on board with it.
“You deserve to die in pain,” Fiona replied. “And I’m okay with watching until you can’t take it anymore.”
Vincent summoned the last bit of strength he had left, utterly enraged. “You liar! You filthy little liar! My mother will kill you all! If you kill me, she’ll skin you alive! She’ll flay you and have you for dinner! She’ll eat your soul and feed your entrails to the pit wolves! You’ll suffer for this! You bitch! You’ll—”
Zane grabbed him by the hair and cut his head off with one swift slash of his rapier.
We all stilled, watching his body collapse. Zane dropped his head—we watched it roll on the floor and settle in the middle of the Druid chalk circle.
“Sorry, I couldn’t take the yapping anymore,” Zane replied with a shrug. “His own mother never liked him much, actually. Rowan Roho is a despicable Lady, and she is cursed with an endless lifetime of disappointment. A rebel daughter. An incompetent son. No magic trick in the world will change the outcome for her.”
A couple of moments passed in awkward silence, until Fiona sighed, putting her swords away and crossing her arms.