“Oh, that’s what you meant by ‘trouble,’” Raphael said, eyeing the masked Cerixians, whose weapons were firmly aimed at us. He made it sound as if they were nothing more than a handful of bugs—the kind that disrupted a picnic. Of course, he was doing it on purpose.

“Who are you?” one of the Cerixians asked.

He sounded like the leader, his tone firm, while the others occasionally looked at him, as if seeking his approval. I slowly took a step forward, my hands up in a defensive pose. “We come in peace,” I said. “We have something for you, assuming you’re the Brothers of the Shadow. We wish you no harm.”

“Assumptions could get you killed in this neck of the woods, but let’s say you found the Brothers of the Shadow—or, better yet, they found you,” he replied. “What do you have for us?”

“I’m going to reach into my bag and take something out. It’s not a weapon,” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s a message from Emperor Tulla.”

Somehow, his name put them all even harder on edge. I stilled, not willing to risk it. I could easily just teleport myself and whack half of them before they got a chance to do anything, but we needed to do this the right way, if we were to get them to take us to the library. Plus, the emperor was offering them a chance at peace. We had to help him achieve that—I saw it as our way of paying him back for his decision to give Inalia these twenty-four hours to work with.

“You’re part of the Armed Forces?” the leader asked, narrowing his eyes at me. “I can’t see much under those cloaks.”

I shook my head. “No, we’re from another world.”

“Bane, these are the outsiders,” another Cerixian muttered. “The ones who came in a light bubble... landed in Silvergate.”

“That’s correct,” I said. “Listen, there’s no time to play the I-don’t-trust-you game here. Believe me when I tell you that we really do come in peace. You’d definitely know, otherwise.”

The leader, Bane, chuckled. “Overconfidence irks me.”

“Okay, maybe a little demonstration might help,” I replied, and looked at Varga. “Care to change a mind or two?”

The Cerixians were clearly confused, some exchanging curious glances between them. Varga set his sights on one, syphoning off him to the point where it made his head hurt. It scared the whole group, and Bane pointed his crossbow at Varga.

“Stop it now, or I kill you.”

“You can’t,” Raphael replied. However, Varga did loosen his hold on the guy. Two of his crew flanked him, helping him stand upright. “We’re not that easy to kill.”

“What do you want?” Bane asked, clearly alarmed and most likely aware that he was in over his head, this time.

“I told you. We have something for you,” I said.

“Yeah, from the emperor. I heard that,” he snapped. “But why? You must want something!”

“Can I reach into my bag?” I asked.

He nodded, so I took the pardon scroll out and carefully tossed it his way. He caught it with one hand, his moves smooth. Good reflexes, I thought. Then again, they lived out here, in the famed Lemnos Woods, where anything could kill them. They had to stay sharp at all times.

Bane tore off the wax seal and briefly read through the scroll. He glanced up at me. “Is he serious?”

I nodded. “As you must’ve noticed, these are dire times.”

“Yeah, the world is basically ending,” Bane said. “Something tells me he or his cronies are responsible, anyway.”

“Actually, no,” Inalia interjected. “It’s the Hermessi. Their skirmishes have caused the death of one of their own. Surely, you heard the emperor’s message.”

“I heard it. Doesn’t mean I’m buying it,” Bane replied.

“You should,” Eira chimed in.

“I was there. I saw it happen,” Inalia added. “This is real. It’s happening. And you have the original library documents, including some pretty important documentation on the Hermessi. There could be something in there that could help us either reverse the process or strike a bargain with the Hermessi.”

Bane said nothing for a moment, during which time he measured Inalia from head to toe. I had a feeling he recognized her.

“Or, we could just turn you in to the people, so you can do what you have to do, Inalia.”

Yup. He recognized her. Dammit.

“There are still other options on the table,” I said. “She doesn’t have to—”

“You know what?” Inalia cut me off, her eyes fixed on Bane. “I am so damn tired of people deciding my life for me. I’ve had enough. You don’t get to tell me what I’m going to do. Kill me, if you want, but don’t expect me to be intimidated or even worried about this. Right now, everything I’m doing is to save all your asses! I could just pack up and leave. Instead, I’m here, freezing my ass off in the middle of nowhere, trying to reason with you people!”

That seemed to tamp Bane down a bit. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell from the way their frames softened that Inalia had gotten to them. The chances of them getting violent against us had dropped significantly.

“Besides, that’s not how it works. You can’t just hand me over to a bunch of desperate people and expect something to happen. Becoming the new Fire Hermessi would require my consent. That much I know about the whole process. Right now, that’s not something I’m willing to do.”

“You have hope,” Bane replied.

“And about sixteen hours left to find another way to save Cerix,” Inalia said. “Which is why we’re here. We need your help.”

“I take it the emperor told you about the library,” Bane said.

“Think about it this way. Help us, and, if we succeed, you’ll get your chance to sit down with the emperor and the authorities. Maybe even reach an agreement. Don’t help us, and you won’t even have the opportunity to tell the emperor to go screw himself, if that’s what you really want. Either way, you have more to gain from working with us than you do by forcing us to take what we want, instead of asking for it nicely,” I said.

Bane thought about it for a moment. “I’d love to flip him off, that’s true.”

“We’re just trying to save Inalia’s life,” Eira replied. “The Hermessi are out of control. They don’t care if Cerix lives or dies. We do.”

“What if you don’t find what you need in the library?” Bane asked. He motioned to the others to lower their weapons. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful we didn’t have to do things the hard way. Even in these circumstances, GASP agents had to do their best to resolve things in a diplomatic manner. Violence should never be an option.

“We’re also considering a mass evacuation,” I said. “Provided we can pull it off. They’re handling the calculations and logistics back at the palace as we speak. If that doesn’t work…”

“I won’t let my people die,” Inalia finished my sentence for me, her voice weak and shaky. It hurt me, deep down, to even think about that scenario.

“No matter how we save Cerix and/or its people, you’ll have a chance to do something none of your predecessors could,” Amelia intervened. “You could very well end the conflict between the Brothers of the Shadow and the Cerixian Empire.”

This wasn’t the first time I felt pride in how our team came together to make a case in front of complete strangers, and it wasn’t going to be the last. I could easily see how the Brothers were beginning to loosen up in front of us. It proved that logic and reason could always be a GASP agent’s first option prior to engaging in combat. I intended to one day apply the same principles in ruling the Fire Star, as well—provided we got out of this mess alive, so there would be a Fire Star waiting for me to go back to.

“To be fair, I didn’t think Emperor Tulla would ever admit to anyone that his dynasty lost the library to us,” Bane grumbled, and put his bow back in its leather holster on his back. He took his mask off, revealing his face. The black paint helped cover some of his individual features, but I could still make out the sharp lines of his jaw and the deep-set eyes. “Follow me.”

He and his band of brothers took us deeper into the Lemnos Woods. The darker it got, the more hisses and growls emerged from the forest’s hidden underbelly. Predators prowled in this area, heavier than in the outer territory we’d left behind. The trees were bigger, too. Thicker, with heavier branches and rich leaves. All black, of course. Black and cold, as the temperature dropped another degree. Steam rolled out from my nostrils whenever I exhaled.

“How long have you all lived here?” I asked Bane.

“For as long as I can remember. Like my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather before me.”

“You’re all descendants of the first Brothers of the Shadow, aren’t you?” Amelia replied.

“More or less. Some of our younger warriors come from nearby towns. A few traveled thousands of miles to be with us. Like Ronin, over there,” Bane said, pointing at the Cerixian who had been on the receiving end of Varga’s aggressive syphoning. Ronin was still understandably sour about that particular episode.

“So this isn’t the whole crew, then,” Raphael concluded, prompting Bane and the others to chuckle.

“Not at all. There are hundreds of us. Most settled in the cities, ready for action when the Brotherhood calls. The rest of us… well, we like the Lemnos Woods. We’re the most wanted. The known criminals. We’re better off in the shadows here, where we belong.”

After what felt like an hour’s worth of trekking through the deepest and darkest parts of the Lemnos Woods, we reached a conglomerate of black rocks clustered together, with sharp tips and jagged edges. Right in the middle, I could see a crevice. The Brothers went in first, while Bane stayed back for a moment, checking our surroundings. His pupils dilated, his ears twitched, and his nostrils flared, as he used his senses to make sure we hadn’t been followed here by anyone. They may have been living too deep in the woods for people to come after them, but still, I did appreciate the extra precautions. It explained how the group had lasted for so long.

“You live in caves, then,” Herakles said, watching as the last Brother went in.

Bane gave him a brief nod. “It’s something we can protect or abandon, if push comes to shove. There are thousands of tunnels running underneath the domain. All over Cerix, for that matter,” he replied, before going inside. We followed, quiet and observant of the tunnel system that unraveled before us. “They were once used to transport explosives, weapons, food, and medical supplies from one front to another, during the wars.”

“I understand Cerix has seen its fair share of those,” Riza said.

The passages were wide enough to let three people move easily throughout. They narrowed at junctions with other tunnels, and they could be easily destroyed if needed—a fae could effortlessly bring the whole thing down on a two-mile radius.

“The Hundred-Year War, the Clarinsian Conflict, the War of the Roses…” Bane replied, offering a few examples. Judging by the tone of his voice, there were more.

Amelia chuckled. “Interesting. Where I come from, there was a War of the Roses, as well.”

“Was it bloody enough to claim the lives of tens of thousands?” Bane asked.

“And then some.”

“Ours killed hundreds of thousands. There was also the Brookys War, between Hadeen and Samotarcis,” Eira added. “The Magnis Skirmish, the Sea Wars… We had about three of those, between different domains—”

“Yeah, yeah, Cerix has had a few rough patches,” Bane cut her off, knowing, like the rest of us, where she was going with this. “Don’t give me the whole empire-means-peace crap.”

“But it does! We haven’t had a war in hundreds of years,” Eira retorted.

“There are thousands of Cerixians suffering. Many of them dying,” Bane replied. “The empire is a dream, a utopia. It’ll never work. The kingdoms will never truly renounce their sovereignty, and when the time comes, they’ll rise up and take back what’s theirs.”

Aware that this conversation could easily descend into conflict, I stepped in. “So, where are you taking us, exactly?”

“To the library,” Bane said. “Our camp is that way,” he added, pointing to a tunnel to our left. I could hear the boots of his Brothers thudding through it. “We’re going down there.”

We made a sharp right turn and descended through a narrower tunnel. Light cables stretched along the ceiling in every single passage, casting their faint, warm glow across the underground maze.

“How is lighting here possible? It’s artificial, isn’t it?” Amelia asked.

“We tapped into Lemnos City’s lighting system,” Bane explained. “It’s only a few miles north of the woods. It took us a few months to pull all the conduit cables, but here we are. Light is crucial in these parts, especially since most animals hunt at night. Some have wandered into the tunnels but didn’t venture too deep. Light means trouble. Granted, since the Fire Hermessi died, the cables have been a lot weaker.”

“Does anyone else find it bitterly ironic that the Cerixians managed to invent artificial lighting, yet still rely on natural fire for their planet to exist?” Raphael asked. “No? Just me? Okay then.”

“Fire is fire, no matter how you use it,” Amelia replied. “It’s the base of any heat source, natural or artificial. In the end, without that base, nothing works as it should.”

“Well, fire seems like our potential downfall.” Bane sighed. “We didn’t ask for any of this.”

“Neither did I,” Inalia grumbled.

“Whoa…” Amelia’s voice trailed off as she stopped right next to Bane.

An enormous chamber opened up in front of us. The floor was flat and oval shaped with black walls rising into a domed ceiling. Other tunnels originated from this place, and Bane pointed to them.

“There’s a total of sixty rooms. Each about the same size as this one. They’re sealed and isolated to keep the manuscripts and papers dry. It’s all part of the library,” he said.

“Oh wow,” Amelia murmured, already gawking at the countless piles of books, manuscripts, and scrolls. They’d all been organized, from what I could see, with large pieces of paper mounted on top of each pile—the Cerixian equivalents of fiction and non-fiction, I presumed. Genres, themes, and so on.

There were thousands in this room, alone. Bane seemed pretty proud.

“We do a pretty good job of preserving and curating them,” he said.

We spread out, browsing the literary sections. Inalia and Eira were looking for the Hermessi-related materials, moving from one pile to the next quicker than the rest of us. From the looks of it, we had our work cut out for us. There was a lot of material to go through.

“How many books are in here?” Raphael asked, his eyes wide as he surveyed the room.

“Millions,” Bane replied dryly. “I know. Lots to read if we ever get bored.”

“Where’s the Hermessi section?” I inquired, eager to get started.

“The third room from that tunnel,” Bane said, pointing at the first door to our left. “You can’t miss it. Most of the manuscripts have the Hermessi’s sigils on them. You know, the basics. Water, fire, earth, and air.”

Inalia turned to face me. She’d lit up like the sun. Her skin had a peculiar glimmer, as if her excitement translated into literal fire burning underneath. She was thrilled, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, blame her.

“This could be it,” she whispered to me.

I nodded slowly. “Let’s hope so.”

“Take whatever you read with a grain of salt,” Bane instructed us. “Most of the Hermessi-related writings are legends. Ancient lore, written by strangers or verbally passed down from one generation to another, until a scholar decided to gather them all in a compendium or two.”

“Be that as it may, there’s a grain of truth in every tale,” Eira said, giving Inalia an encouraging smile. I wasn’t sure she meant it. Part of me felt like she was only trying to comfort Inalia, to make it easier on her. Give her a small thread of hope to hold on to.

Whatever her reason, it didn’t matter. It worked.

Inalia was the first to dart through the tunnel, straight into the third chamber. We had a lot to go through, and very little time left to do it. By morning, Inalia’s fate would be decided, one way or another, and all I could do was hope that these Hermessi archives did in fact hold the key to her salvation.