Behind us, the ocean lapped lazily at the shore, the horizon swallowed by absolute darkness. Myst pointed to it. “You see that?”
“See what?” I asked.
“The horizon.”
“No.”
She scoffed. “It doesn’t exist. This place is an anomaly. It feeds on the energy of those who inhabit it. It’s a dimensional pocket, but it’s anchored onto nothing. Normally, such pockets have to be tied to a realm—that of the living, that of the Reapers, or even ours. I remember hearing about a Reaper who could open them up.”
“The Soul Crusher,” I mumbled.
“This one, however, is absolutely rogue,” Myst replied. “I don’t know who commands it, but I know my sister, Hrista, is here. I haven’t found her yet.”
“But how did she get here? How are Berserkers here too?” I asked, absently drawing circles in the sand between us. For a moment, I completely forgot about the others—not that I could blame them. They were quiet, feeding on every word that came out of Myst’s mouth.
“I don’t know how Hrista got here. I followed Brandon through a tear between Purgatory and this place, though I have yet to find my way back. The Berserkers move freely between here and Purgatory. I’m not sure about all of them, but I have seen at least twenty here, working with the so-called HQ, the authority of this place. I don’t know what they’re planning or what their endgame is… I just know it’s strange.”
Jericho clicked his teeth. “Haldor said something about Hammer. How he’s got Hammer, and Brandon is screwed.”
Myst’s eyes faded to white for a moment. I assumed it was a powerful emotion manifesting. It further piqued my interest and stifled the flames of my earlier distress. “The bastards… I’m afraid the Berserkers aren’t always to be trusted. Including Brandon. He could help you one day, then turn against you the next. Especially here. I’ve yet to find a Berserker I could work with to find my way back into Purgatory. Brandon means well, most of the time, but if the others have Hammer, he’s forced to comply with most of their requests. I reckon he’s still hardheaded enough to defy them once in a while, like he did earlier… But only Brandon can tell you the details of his presence here. It’s not my place.”
“So, he really can’t be trusted,” Astra sighed. She sounded almost disappointed.
“I’d advise against it. Then again, I’m not to be trusted, either. We don’t share the same goal. We come from different dimensions. We can work better together temporarily, but I would not consider you allies, and you shouldn’t consider me an ally, either.”
Myst was trying to distance herself, and I wondered why. I doubted she would tell me herself, but perhaps time would make things clearer. Soph raised the question that had been lingering on our lips since we’d been forced to leave our friends behind in the Port cells.
“How do we get Isabelle and the others out? How do we find them again?” she asked.
Myst thought about it for a moment, then slowly got up and dusted the sand from her legs. “I’m not sure yet, but I will go out and try to see for myself. I suggest you find another safe place. I doubt this will be good for much longer. It is wide open. The dragon clones do regular flights overhead.”
“We were told to head to the Black Heights,” I said.
“Yes, that’s a good idea. Here,” She dislodged one of the golden disks on her belt and gave it to me. As soon as our hands touched, an electrical current coursed through me. It jolted her, too, as I heard her suck in a breath. “I’ll find you with this, wherever you go.”
“Thanks, I guess?”
“I must leave now. Many questions remain unanswered. I’m afraid I will be of no good to you until I get what I need from this place,” Myst said, raising her chin with nobility and pride.
“Where will you go?” Viola replied, clearly fascinated by the Valkyrie.
“I will try to find out where they took your friends.”
With that, she vanished into thin air, white sparkles left in her wake. They faded quickly, and the beach suddenly felt empty and cold without Myst’s presence. There was something about her that demanded my full attention. I knew a little bit more now, but it wasn’t enough. I needed more.
The upside to what we’d just survived was that we’d gained an ally of sorts. She’d asked us not to think of her as one, but still… she was helping. In my book, that made her an ally. Most importantly, she would find out about Isabelle, Voss, and Chantal. They were out there, helpless and sedated and held against their will, and none of us knew how long we had before the clones started to consider them liabilities instead of assets.
We’d crossed an important threshold. A point of no return. We knew too much to go back to The Shade now, if given the chance. We didn’t know enough to ensure a victory, or even a proper resolution. But we had Richard back. And Viola. It was better than nothing. It was better than our status twenty-four hours ago, for sure.
“We’ll just have to keep pushing,” Astra said, likely thinking the same thing.
Yes. We’d keep pushing. We wouldn’t stop until we got what we came here for. It sounded easy enough, though the practical side of things was slightly more complicated. It didn’t make our objective impossible, however, and we weren’t the type to quit easily. With Myst as a sort of guiding light, I found hope in this strange place.
Tristan
By the morning of our third day on Dain, Unending and I had hatched a plan. The trial itself wasn’t impossible to complete, but it wouldn’t be easy, either. We’d learned the truth, and we understood why Shezin had to be killed. Anunit earned herself a couple of brownie points in that sense, though I still didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. I doubted I ever would.
But to catch Shezin, we needed to be sly and unscrupulous. First, the bastard had sealed himself inside the temple. We had no way of getting to him on our own, and Death couldn’t be brought here since that would trigger Anunit’s alarms. We had too much riding on the Reaper already, and so much left to learn. No, we had a better way. All it took was a night spent proving to some of the Dainians in the city that there was virtually no difference between Unending and Shezin.
I worried about the priestesses. Shezin was bound to be furious, since one of them had basically led us to discover his evil deeds. They’d supported him for too long, however. They’d been complacent and accepting. Any of them could’ve found a way to weaken him. Maybe. Or maybe I was being too hard on them. They were genuinely terrified during yesterday’s breakfast when their sister broke rank. Maybe they’d tried to stop him, and Shezin had done something horrible to one of them. Or all of them. They all seemed young. I imagined they would’ve been of mixed ages. Perhaps he’d wiped out their predecessors. I shook my head, anchoring myself back into reality as the plan began to take shape.
Unending and I had settled in one of the squares on the east side of the city. Over the course of about eighteen hours, Embry had brought as many Dainians as she could get to believe her—upon learning the truth, the girl had been furious, now understanding that her brother had been killed solely to satisfy the boredom of a vicious psychopath. It wasn’t hard to get other grieving parents on board, or at least curious enough to want to see it for themselves.