It didn’t take long for the townspeople to turn on us.

“You! You can save us!” one of the Cerixian women said.

“You’re the Hermessi child! Give us our fire back!” another screeched, as if Inalia had stolen fire away from them and was refusing to give it back. As if all this was somehow her fault.

Eira’s earlier assessment was now more of a joke than anything else. “So, that’s it for the scared but mellow crowd, I suppose,” I muttered, shooting her a sideways glance.

“Hey, I didn’t consider the raving lunatic cult members pitching in,” Eira said.

Soon enough, all the townspeople began to move toward us. And I knew this new hot mess had the Hermessi’s names written all over it. The cultists stood, calm as the crowd flowed closer. All I could see were furious glares and narrowed eyes. We were the criminals in this picture. Not the cultists, whose actions had already claimed innocent lives. The Hermessi death cults were hell-bent on destroying the entire planet, but they weren’t the bad guys here. We were. For shielding Inalia. For trying to find another way to protect her.

“Whenever you’re ready, Tae,” Raphael said, gripping my hand.

The people lunged at us, a sea of Cerixians suddenly turned into rabid fanatics, eager—no, desperate to get their hands on Inalia. We didn’t have another second to spare. I zapped us out before they could reach us.

A couple of seconds later, the darkness dissipated. The world reappeared, the contours of Agapos’s eastern entrance emerging, as I felt the solid ground beneath my feet, once more. We were back where we’d first started, and it was only a matter of time before the locals found us again. The whole town was in an uproar. We could hear them shouting, their boots rumbling through the streets.

“Where to next, Eira?” I asked, trying to settle my ragged breathing. All this teleporting was weighing me down. Soon enough, I’d have to pass the “transport” reins on to Riza, at least for a while. Inalia was shaking. I held her hand, unwilling to let her go until we fixed this. The more time we spent out here, the more determined I became to find a solution that would allow her to live—the one closest to any form of success was the mass evacuation, and that was Lumi’s territory.

Leaving it all in her hands wasn’t an option, though. It would’ve made me feel helpless. Finding the original library, however, was another avenue for me to follow. So, with that in mind, I persistently stared at Eira while she got her bearings.

That whole Cerixian mob moment had taken its toll on each of us.

“The next town over,” she said. “Farther to the west. Mykos. I know a guy there who might be able to help us. Emphasis on ‘might,’ mind you!”

“And you’re telling us this just now because…”

“Because I only remembered him now!” Eira replied, her brow furrowed. There was fear and anguish in her ocean-blue eyes. I was dangerously close to forgetting how deeply troubling all this was for her, too, not just for Inalia. Breathing deeply, I made a mental note to take it easy on Eira. She was part of the crew, now.

“Okay,” I said, softening the tone of my voice. “We’re all on edge here. I’m sorry. Mykos, you say.”

Her gaze warmed a little, just enough to tell me she didn’t take my abrasiveness personally. “Cellos is his name. He lives in the slums on the south side of Mykos. I can take you there. I’ve been to his place a couple of times since he retired.”

“Oh, Cellos! Bald, rotund, and full of giggles Cellos!” Inalia quipped, smiling. “Makes the best pie in the Samotarcis Domain.”

Eira chuckled. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Let’s go, then,” I replied gently. I looked at the others in our crew, pointing somewhere behind them. “We’ll move south around Agapos now, toward the west exit. From there, I figure Riza can zap us to Mykos.”

“Yes, I can,” Riza said. “Save your strength.”

We didn’t waste another second. Like shadows, we darted around the once-peaceful town of Agapos, while its disturbed and panicking citizens trickled through the inner streets, looking for us. Varga used his True Sight every other minute, just to make sure we didn’t get anywhere near them. When we reached the western gate, the rumbles had begun to fade inside Agapos.

“Think they’re getting tired?” Eva asked.

Varga’s eyes glimmered gold as he gave the town one last once-over. “Pretty much. They’re spread too thin. But the cultists are headed west, now. They’ll be here soon.”

“No time to waste, then,” Riza replied, her sights set on the western horizon. “Mykos is that one over there, right, Eira?”

“Yes. We’ll need to be careful. Especially if the Hermessi death cults are playing this Inalia card.”

“She’s right,” I said. “Chances are the Hermessi got even more ahead of us on this one. They were effective enough to find us in Agapos. They could do the same or worse in Mykos and everywhere else we go.”

Raphael nodded. “The elements are still distantly present and watching through air, earth, and water. It’s how they always find us.”

“They’re mobilizing the cults, too. This was the first time I heard them speak,” Amelia replied. “That was entirely unexpected.”

“The stakes are high, I suppose,” I added. “My guess is it would be more convenient for the three Hermessi if they didn’t have to find another planet to settle on, given their efforts to complete this doomsday ritual.”

“So, what, they’ll pull out all the stops to get me to sacrifice myself?” Inalia asked, her tone clipped.

I nodded slowly. “It explains the cultists’ intervention just now.”

She cursed under her breath, but Riza was having none of this. “Okay, enough of that. Let’s find those damn Brothers and that stupid-ass library already!”

Once we all linked hands again, Riza took us to Mykos. Traveling with Riza was a slightly different experience, I realized. Much smoother than my teleportation. I figured it had something to do with her genetic package. I was half jinni and half fae. Riza was a full jinni. It stood to reason that her abilities would flow to a superior level. Granted, I had perfect command over my powers, but it was an interesting observation—something I’d not noticed before.

“Welcome to Mykos,” Riza grumbled.

Like the other settlements we’d seen before, Mykos was a simple place. Most of its buildings were square and made of large, gray stone blocks. They were all cylindrical with conical roofs made of a sturdy black wood. Frozen snow covered most of them. There were fountains at every street corner, but the water had begun to freeze, choking the nozzles. People had to blow hot air over them and chip away at the frost to get it to flow again.

The effects of Brann’s death were more than visible.

“We need to head down this road,” Eira said, nodding at an ascending alley to our right. It was paved with wide, rectangular stone slabs, snaking its way between the round buildings. “The slums are at the far end.”

“Guys, I think we have a problem,” Herakles said, gawking at a group of Hermessi cultists fifty yards to our left. They were busy putting up large pieces of paper on the buildings’ outer walls—dozens in a row, from what I could tell.

We moved out of sight and waited for them to move on. As they went down the road and vanished behind a corner, we rushed over to see what they’d put up. Once we reached the posters, I felt my breath get cut off.

“Son of a—” Inalia stopped herself just in time, covering her mouth, her eyes close to popping out as she recognized herself.

The cultists had already begun putting up posters with Inalia’s portrait, accurately drawn in black ink, along with her name, height, and other visual markers that would help people recognize her faster—red hair, brown eyes, “might glow orange if angered or scared.”

“Oh, wow…” Amelia gasped, her eyebrows reaching new heights. “They’re not playing around anymore.”

“I think it’s the cultists. They don’t want to leave Cerix, so they’re plastering Inalia’s face all over, hoping to get the Cerixians riled up to the point where they’ll hunt her for them,” Raphael replied.

“It’s unlike me to say such things, but can we please just take a couple of hours, find all the damn cultists, and kill them? Please? Pretty please?!” Inalia snapped, her skin taking on a glowing orange hue.

Herakles couldn’t stop himself from chuckling. “At least they got the glowy part right.” His grin faded as quickly as it came on when Inalia shot him a most fiery look. He switched to mission-mode in an instant. “We need to get moving.”

We made our way up the alley that Eira had shown us. The farther we got from the Hermessi’s followers, the better. Mykos was relatively quiet, despite the emperor’s recent announcement. We kept Inalia in the middle of our hooded group, so no one would spot her. Some people tried to watch us from inside their homes, but most of the windows were frosted and difficult to see clearly through.

The Cerixians we did come across seemed sullen and sad. But they were too busy keeping themselves and their children warm. This time around, we hadn’t had a big mouth to point us out in a crowd, so we were relatively safe from any angry mobs—provided, of course, that we hid Inalia well.

We passed by several clear windows, and I caught glimpses of Cerixian mothers huddling with their kids beneath layers of blankets and furs, while the fathers stuffed pieces of cloth between the walls and the window frames to further insulate the rooms. At street corners, the younger Cerixians got busy scraping the ice off the fountain nozzles so they could fill buckets with water, which were then passed around to the nearby households. Opposite from them, across the junctions, merchants had brought out wooden mobile stalls loaded with furs and woolen blankets, which they handed out. Their smiles were hopeful, but their hearts had to hurt.

I hated to see a world reduced to this. And it wasn’t even the worst they were going to face. Resolving the fire issue was only going to buy them a little more time before the Hermessi completed their ritual and unleashed the end of the world upon them. A horrendous thought crossed my mind: what if we just let the whole of Cerix freeze, thus sparing them a worse fate later?

I immediately chastised myself for even thinking about it. It implied admitting an impending defeat, and it was well beneath me. We’d helped activate these elemental bastards. We owed it to ourselves and those around us to do our best to stifle their efforts to destroy entire worlds. Cerix didn’t deserve to freeze to death, and it certainly didn’t deserve to be destroyed later, either.

“So, who is this Cellos guy?” Raphael asked Eira. “You said he was in the Armed Forces?”

“Yes. He was a senior officer in my garrison, back in Silvergate,” Eira replied as we advanced up the narrowing street. “Good fellow. Inalia remembers him well, and so does the rest of my unit. Cellos and Trap were our instructors during the initial training modules, and they led us through the first years of service, as well. Cellos has seen a riot or two.”

“And he’s living in the… slums, now,” Raphael said.

“His choice.” Eira sighed. “An Armed Forces officer gets a pretty good retirement bundle. Plenty of gold and, in some cases, land, too. Cellos sold his and donated the profits to multiple orphanages across Samotarcis. He wanted to live here, where he came from. He wanted to live out the rest of his days surrounded by his people, close to the streets he used to wander through as a child.”

The deeper we got into this part of Mykos, the darker and more isolated it seemed to get. Looking up, I noticed more shutters being pulled. The upper levels were usually slightly warmer than the bottom, but that was no longer the case, so the Cerixians had to cover all the windows in their homes. Fewer and fewer people were out, and a sense of danger seemed to linger in the atmosphere.

“There’s a high concentration of criminals in these parts,” Eira added, glancing around. “Of course, given this fire issue, I bet most of them are hiding under thick blankets right about now. No one’s in the mood to steal or extort people when the planet is this close to freezing.”

“It’s awfully quiet,” Inalia murmured.

“They’re scared,” Eira replied. “During the summer, all the windows are open. And all the undesirables are out, looking for someone to prey on. I have to admit, this is the most tranquil version of Mykos I’ve ever seen… We’re here.”

She stopped in front of a massive wooden door with a small latch at eye level, made of black iron. She knocked thrice, then paused and knocked thrice more. I figured it was her way of letting Cellos know who’d come to visit.

A few seconds went by. I nervously looked over my shoulder. Inalia might’ve found the silence interesting, maybe even calming, but I didn’t like it. Too much of it reminded me of the calm before a storm—and the last thing we needed was more turmoil. We’d had enough agitation already to last us a lifetime.

The door swung open, and a portly Cerixian showed up in the frame. He was just as Inalia had described him: bald and full of warmth, his amber eyes measuring Eira from head to toe. The glimmer of recognition turned into a broad and welcoming smile. He’d wrapped himself up in a couple of thick black furs, and steam rolled out from his lips as he spoke.

“Out of all the people I expected to knock on my door today… Eira Dorres, what a joy to see you again!” Cellos said, then hugged her a little too tight, forcing a slight cough out of her.

“Long time,” she managed as she politely wiggled herself free of his embrace. Only then did he notice the rest of us. His smile faded when he saw Inalia.

“Oh, dear,” Cellos mumbled.

“Please, Cellos, before you do anything, can you just hear us out?” Eira asked, trying to get ahead of the situation. She didn’t need to know that Herakles and Raphael were already ready to shove Cellos back in the house and silence him, if necessary—though it was hard to ignore two well-built tall guys flanking the doorway.

Cellos blinked several times, then sighed. “You’re in so much trouble, little one,” he said to Inalia.

“I know. We need your help.”

He glanced up and down the street, then stepped back, motioning for us to come in. “Come on. You don’t want to be out for too long in these parts.”

One by one, we entered Cellos’s home. He locked the door behind us, then welcomed us into the large living space that opened in front, a circular lounge area with soft sofas and colorful cushions. Dozens of blankets were thrown around, each of them meant to keep him warm. The fireplace looked sad and abandoned, filled with fresh wood begging to be lit.

For a brief moment, I had a sense of peace. Perhaps this was our lucky break.

Then again, I didn’t dare get my hopes up just yet. I’d gotten burned before.