Chapter Twenty-Three

“What happens now that change has come?”

—HermesHarbinger.com, December 21st

As I screamed, the lights from other Stygians’ cell phones illuminated more of the darkness. And when they did, they joined in my terror—standing between us was the thing I saw back in Montana. The spiderlike humanoid peered through the shadows at us. His limbs were elongated, thin, and spindly. They bent at the joints in grotesque directions, completely inhuman in appearance. His dry lips smirked like he had a wicked secret.

“Oh my Hades, what is it?” screeched someone.

“Trivial?” another shouted.

The Trivial’s lips parted into a crooked, yellow smile. His eyes darted from one side of our group to the other. There was no knowing how many other Trivials joined him, dark as it was.

I tucked my phone back in pocket and tensed my body as I prepared to lunge at him. That effort was halted when the spiderlike beast put a hand around my wrist. He squeezed hard enough to make me yelp, but I wasn’t hot yet.

“Let go!” I howled. But I didn’t need to. The Trivial’s hand unraveled from my wrist the instant Brent latched onto his neck. In the darkness, it was difficult to see what happened next. Blood, like hot water, poured across one side of my body. The screech of an Eidolon’s death wail caused my ears to vibrate. Screaming from frightened Stygians quickly filled in on the chorus.

The spotlights from the several illuminated cell phones petered out one by one until we were all in complete darkness again. I knew what Brent was doing. He tore the Trivial apart, limb by limb.

Were there more? Was this Trivial the guy who was sent to make a threat, a sacrificial lone solider?

I felt another hand on me. Then another. More and more. These weren’t hands from my allies. They weren’t those of Scriveners or Reapers. They moved in silence. They used mind trickery to their advantage. I knew the touch of a Trivial even if they thought I was oblivious to it. The contact was cold as ice, much like an Eidolon’s, but there was no life in it. There was no soul attached to their bodies.

I fought, trying to summon enough heat to thwart them. I tried calling out for Brent. But in the darkness, full of fear and uncertainty, I just couldn’t gain my bearings. When I had entered Lethe to challenge Marin, I knew the threat. He was the target, and he didn’t make it too difficult to find him. The Trivials, on the other hand, wanted to run us through a haunted house of horrors before destroying us.

My heat began long into the struggle. My knees started to buckle as hands upon hands pulled me to the floor. Papa and Brent and Neema and all the others were likely fighting too, trying to stay upright, trying to stay alive. I heard them grunting and wailing. I heard bone on bone collisions and bodies hitting the walls of the hallway. There was a battle in this pitch blackness, one I couldn’t see but could hear.

So when I looked down to see red light pulsating off of my hands, I used them like glow-in-the-dark battle-axes. I swung one out and latched onto an arm. The heat from my touch instantly burned the victim’s flesh.

Brent let out a growl before saying, “Ollie, that’s me!”

“Shit!” I let go and found another body to grab onto.

“Ollie!” Papa cried out.

How did I grab both Papa and Brent and not the attackers?

Again, I found someone else. The person was female, judging by her yelp. A pair of red eyes glowered through the darkness, and I knew instantly who I had found.

“What’s the matter with you, Scrivener?” Neema hissed.

I didn’t understand. The enemies’ hands were pulling me to the floor. It was clear from the sounds of those around me that they were fighting to stay standing, too. I felt splats of blood against my skin, so it must’ve come from battling. How did I keep finding all of my allies and not the Trivials?
The sconces lining the hallway flickered back to life and I learned what was actually happening. The Trivial that Brent had attacked was indeed dismembered. I had gotten that right. However, there were no other Trivials around. No hands on my body. No hands on anyone else’s. The entire fight seemed to have been an illusion, trickery on the part of our enemy.

Then I saw what sent my heart soaring wildly into the back of my throat. Trivials were indeed here. They had to have been.

“Papa!” I wailed like a child. His soul stood outside of his limp, collapsed body, which was crumpled on the floor. He wasn’t bloody, and his limbs were intact. But his soul, much like Eve’s soul that fateful night, stood next to what had been his living body. He looked confused as he glanced between his corpse and me.

“Papa?” My tears were instantaneous. I could barely see his soul through them. I tried to reach for him. I tried to see if I could touch his soul to offer comfort or to hug him. “Oh God, no. Papa! How? How could this happen?”

This is how Trivials killed. They destroyed us and then left our souls in half-ferried in no-man’s land like Brent’s brother Wallie and his friends.

Everyone remained silent. They must not have known what to do. Even Brent, who knew the ins and outs of Styx, didn’t know. He stood in shock like everyone else.

I dove to Papa’s body, hopeful that there was some way I could still save him. I had saved Brent just before making my final attack on Marin. I could bring him from the brink. I would. I would not rest until I found a way.

Papa’s soul watched as I pawed at his body. I found his forearm, ripped his sleeve back, and cupped my hand over it. My fingers barely encircled half of his arm. My entire body shook between sobs and panic.

My hand turned red, but not to burn him. The power I forced into my hand was intended to heal. I didn’t know exactly what I had to do to heal. With Brent, it had just happened as if deep down, my inner soul knew what to do without receiving instructions. He’d been on the brink of death, and my hands had, almost of their own accord, tattooed a lotus healing mark on him, bringing him back. My power held its own consciousness.

Something moved through me to Papa. It was love. Pure love. It was the desire to bring him back so that he could finish what he had started. I would do this for him after everything that he had done for me. I hadn’t been able to save Mama. She went to her death willingly and in spite of my pleas. But this time, I wouldn’t let Papa go. He had to be here with me.

“Ollie.” A hand touched my shoulder. I shoved it off. Brent wouldn’t distract me.

“Papa, I’m going to save you,” I said through heaving tears. “I promise.”

Saving Papa was all that mattered now. Not saving Styx or ending the Trivials’ uprising. I would pull him back from death. I would resurrect him.

Inside, I called on Mama and Errol to help me. I called on my power.

“Ollie.”

“I can do this!” I barked at Brent.

“You…” The remainder of his comment faded into nothingness.

“Papa, come back.” My hand pumped energy and life into him. I tried. I tried so hard that it felt like my bones would shatter from the pressure. “Please!”

“You can’t do it,” Brent whispered in my ear. Only now did I realize that his chest was pressed against my back, and his arms were wrapped around my waist. “No one can. I was just on the brink when you healed me. He’s already gone.”

“Not even me,” I said with defeated resignation, like this failure was because of my shortcomings and not because such rules were unbreakable. “But the River Phlegethon?”

“It’s not here. It wouldn’t be enough anyway.” Brent’s voice was so soft and heavy. He knew the agony running through me. He must have felt me quivering from the inside out.

“No,” I sobbed.

“I’m sorry.”

“No.”

My body shook harder as grief set in.

“No!” I flung Brent off me and held on tighter to Papa’s arm.

Brent’s voice remained soothing. “He’s not coming back.”

I looked into Papa’s sagging face. The Reaper I knew was not there. Everything about him looked different. He was vacant of life, vacant of the characteristics that made him my favorite living companion all these years. A thin line of blood trickled from his neck, not pumping, but oozing slowly. I knew what that meant. His neck was severed, sliced so cleanly that his head remained, balancing preciously. I didn’t dare touch his head.

I couldn’t hold onto him now. I sat back on my heels, tears pouring rivers down my cheeks, and let his body be. I feared if I touched him again, his head would topple from his massive shoulders, an image I couldn’t bear to witness.

Instead, I met eyes with his soul that stood next to me. I somehow found my strength and rose to my feet. Even in death, Papa’s soul stood a head taller than me. He was the same Stygian I loved.

“Papa,” I whimpered. “I’m so sorry.”

It’s okay, babygirl, he said, not with his voice but with his expression. Papa no longer had a voice now that he was gone. All I could go by was the emotions in his face.

“I can’t do this without you.” I yearned to hug him. It broke the shattered pieces of my heart even more. I would never be able to put it back together again, would I?

I would have fallen to my knees in complete anguish if Brent hadn’t held me upright, his strong arms wrapped around me like a comforting blanket. Reuniting Mama and Papa was supposed to happen years from now when Papa was old and gray. I was supposed to be middle-aged and well into my Masterhood, training younger Scriveners. Styx would be back to better times with a Head Reaper everyone loved. Papa was supposed to see all of that for him and for Mama. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. It wasn’t how I wanted his story to end.

Get me to your Mama. I want to be with her now, his strained eyes said.

I heard him loud and clear. His words rooted all the way through my body. Every cell took on the promise to honor his final wish. I would find Mama here in Lethe. I would reunite them no matter the cost.

This promise I would see through. Papa would not remain in no-man’s land.

Brent’s arms no longer needed to hold me upright. I stood on my own with my shoulders squared. My tears stopped. And my heart, which felt like it had shattered into a million pieces, still beat strong against my ribs.

I would do this for Papa and Mama. I would destroy myself before I let them both down.

Brent eased away, surely feeling my power restored. He stood to my side. He waited on my response like everyone else inside this hallway of misery.

“Ferry him into my necklace,” I said to Brent, my eyes set on my foster father’s soul. Papa would join Eve and Wallie. There was still enough room for them all.

“Doesn’t he have a Reaper?” Neema asked.

“Trivials don’t wait for Reapers. These souls get forgotten, lost,” Brent said.

“That’s why we need you to ferry him into the necklace,” I added.

Brent did as I instructed. And within seconds Papa’s tall, transparent soul joined the others in the lotus pendant given to me by Mama many years ago. How strange that he’d find himself there in the very gift from his beloved wife.

I knelt by Papa’s lifeless body, careful not to move him even the slightest. I lightly put my lips to his cheek one last time. This was a good-bye I never imagined I’d face. Perhaps I thought Papa would always be there, that after losing Mama, fate wouldn’t take him, too. Perhaps I believed my power to be greater than it really was. I could save everyone, I’d wrongly thought. It was in this moment I finally realized, after losing so many people whom I loved, that I would never be enough to protect them from the inevitable.

“I love you,” I whispered to Papa. “But it’s time you and Mama reunite.”

I rose to stand tall again, brushing the remaining tears from my cheeks, to face the Stygians who witnessed my unraveling nightmare. Some looked me in the eyes. Some wiped their own tears away. Some averted their gaze as a show of respect.

“Let’s go,” I hissed and then marched forward, cutting through everyone on my way to the Heart of Lethe, where I would end this even if I died doing it.