The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 19
Pressing Business
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“Neutralize the banestone before it is too late!” yelled Hermes. “You’re making the situation even worse.”
Since I could sense the disturbance the banestone had created, I shifted it back from anti-nyv to nyv and then let it dissipate. But reality seemed no more stable than it was before.
However, both the Telchines and the Keres paused their struggle against each other and stared at me.
“We must learn how he did that,” said Lycus. “I have never before seen such a thing.”
“He is ours,” said one of the Keres in a tone that left no room for negotiation. But none of the Keres made a move toward me. They seemed to be waiting to see what the Telchines would do next. I couldn’t help taking advantage of their hesitation.
“Look at me closely,” I said, trying and failing to make my voice sound confident. “Am I really dying?”
“You should be,” she said. Her eyes stared at me even more intensely. “Yet you are not. What unnatural magic is this?”
Hermes, who had no doubt figured out the point I was about to make, borrowed my mouth again. “It is not unnatural. It is one of nature’s purest powers, concentrated in a different way. Though his injuries would ordinarily have proved mortal, they will not in this case. Thus, he doesn’t belong to you.”
“Is not the imminent break in the natural order proof that he does belong to us, that keeping him from us is wrong?” asked the Ker.
“No, that damage was done by you and the Telchines fighting over him,” replied Hermes. “If you yield, it is possible disaster can be averted.”
“Begone, hags!” said Damnameneus. “You have heard the truth—he is not yours!”
“That is for us to determine, not you,” she said in a voice that could have frozen fire. “I will confer with my sisters.”
The three death spirits flew some distance away, probably so that the Telchines couldn’t eavesdrop. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear them, either. I dared not use magic to amplify my hearing for fear that might bias them against me if they detected it.
“Assuming the Keres release him, that doesn’t make him yours,” said Hermes.
“We are in Tartarus’s realm and have Tartarus’s permission,” said Sclemis. “He is ours.”
The Telchine started to surround us with water, leaving us in an air bubble at the center. I used the power of the stone to turn his water into air as fast as I could.
Scelmis’s eyes widened. “You have even more tricks? That will only make us want you more. Brothers, assist me.”
All three Telchines working together could create water faster than I could convert it to something else. The watery sphere surrounding us grew deeper and thicker. It also began to solidify, even though it wasn’t turning into ice.
“Can I use a banestone now?” I asked Hermes.
He gave me the mental equivalent of a headshake. “The fact that the battle is no longer going on helps, but this area is still too unstable to risk another dose of anti-magic. We must find another way to escape the Telchines.”
“In his present condition, he doesn’t belong to us,” said the Ker leader. “But we will be back if his situation worsens.”
I felt oddly disappointed that they had given up so easily, even though they were doing what I wanted them to do. They flew away without waiting for a response from the Telchines, who all looked quite pleased with themselves. Maybe there was a way that I could wipe those smiles off their scaled faces, though.
I sensed that the time freeze holding Zeus and the others in place had nearly exhausted the power that created it. I allowed the lumen naturae to flow out of me, surprising the Telchines and warming the area in which time remained frozen.
Tartarus attempted to stop me by interposing his darkness between me and the frozen Olympians. The Telchines darkened their water, hindering my effort still further. I couldn’t brighten the light even more without risking my own life—again. I was straining the capacity of the Philosopher’s Stone as it was.
“Stop this madness,” said Lycus. “You cannot defeat us.”
“No,” I said, not sure whether they could hear me or not. “But they can.”
What little light had gotten through to the freeze had strained its nearly exhausted magic just enough. I felt its imminent collapse only a second before the Telchines did. With a sound like glass shattering, the spell broke.
I couldn’t see as much as I would have liked through the darkened waters, but I saw the lightning flashes as Zeus attacked the Telchines. I felt the ground shake as Poseidon joined the fray. I felt both life and death magics flare as Hades, Demeter, and Persephone charged into the battle. I felt the commanding power of Hera. I saw another flash, much more subdued than lightning, as Hestia deployed her hearth fire. In the background, I could hear the Hecatancheires lumbering into battle. I could also sense Hecate gathering her magic for some powerful spell.
Darkness twisted convulsively as Tartarus sought to reinforce the magic of the Telchines. If not for him, they would have been quickly defeated. With his help, they might be able to withstand the Olympians for some time. However, they had no magic to spare to keep me contained. It didn’t take long for Hermes and me to break free of our watery prison, which collapsed and flowed away from us in all directions.
But after pulling so hard on the energy of the stone, I found my physical strength declining as I moved closer to death.
“You need to stay out of the fight,” said Hermes. “I think I can push that spear out, and you can finally heal.”
But staying out of the fight wasn’t going to be that easy. The moment I was free of the Telchine water trap, I felt Tartarus’s darkness pressing down on me. Hermes fought back, but he wasn’t strong enough to counter Tartarus.
The only reason I didn’t get crushed was that Tartarus had to split his power in too many directions. Trying to defend the Telchines while simultaneously trying to crush the Olympians was too much even for one of the eldest powers. He could make me uncomfortable and force the stone to exert itself harder to avoid further damage, but he couldn’t smash me to a pulp as he might have liked.
Still, I hated having to be a bystander in a critical battle, especially one that might be close. The Telchines were even more versatile casters than Hermes and Hecate. They flung all four kinds of elemental magic at the Olympians and showed a mastery of shadow more refined than that of Tartarus, though he was still the champion for brute strength.
Surrounded by so much confusion, Hermes and I were both taken by surprise when Damnameneus appeared suddenly behind us.
“If we can’t have you, we will at least have your secret,” he whispered to us as his left hand became immaterial, and he thrust it into my body.
Hermes did his best to oppose this violation, but though he was a highly skilled spell-caster, Damnameneus had the raw power to beat back his defenses.
I tried to divert power from the Philosopher’s Stone to block him, but it sensed how fragile my body was and, for the first time, refused my request. For whatever reason, it didn’t see the Telchine’s hand in my body as a particular threat. Or perhaps it considered my damaged body to be the greater threat at the moment.
I was sure that the stone was the very thing Damnameneus was after. I was taken completely off-guard when it was not the stone he gripped. It was the soul of Hermes instead.
Hermes wasn’t as well anchored as he would have been in his own body. Damnameneus tore him out of mine with a single tug. I felt the sudden absence of the Olympian almost as keenly as if the Telchine had ripped out one of my internal organs. But my emotional distress was far worse than my physical trauma. Hermes had been inside me long enough that his removal by force left me feeling empty and alone.
The worst part was that I didn’t know what fate the Telchines had planned for him. What tortures might they try to inflict on him to force my secrets from his lips?
That wasn’t even my worst fear. Separated from both his body and the bulk of his magic before, Hermes had faded. Would he start fading again now? Could he diminish into nothingness? And would the Telchines even care if he did?
Damnameneus disappeared as soon as he had Hermes. How he managed to do that so completely when he was still so close to me, I wasn’t sure. Suddenly, I couldn’t even sense his magic or the soul of Hermes.
I tried to use the part of Hermes’s psychopomp abilities still lodged within me to track his soul, but I was so weakened physically that I was overwhelmed by a migraine almost immediately. The stone, so heavily taxed and with its power split in so many directions, was unable to strengthen my fortitude in the way that it usually could.
I looked toward where the other Telchines were, only to see them vanish into the darkness. They weren’t just out of sight. They were literally gone without a trace, as if the shadows controlled by their father had swallowed them out and sucked them away to someplace far removed from here.
The Olympians looked as if they were preparing to pursue, though how they could do that now, I had no idea. But Persephone noticed me and came rushing to my side.
“Zeus,” I whispered, still fighting my headache. “Tell him the Telchines have the soul of Hermes.”
She looked hesitant to leave me with a spear sticking out of my chest.
“I’ll survive,” I told her. “Tell Zeus now.”
Once she did what I asked, Zeus and the others were upon me in seconds.
“Explain what happened,” said Zeus, his brow furrowed with worry. I told him every detail I could think of.
“Hades, can you locate his soul?” asked Zeus.
“With enough time, probably yes,” said Hades. “But we must stop the titans from conquering Olympus first. Who knows what damage they will do if they remain unchecked?”
“We will find my son first,” said Zeus in a voice like thunder. “Who knows what Telchines could do with his soul?”
“A valid point,” said Hecate in a tone gentler than I had ever heard her use. “But I do not believe they can do anything quickly. Versatile as their magic is, I doubt they have any power over souls. The Titans, on the other hand, might be wreaking havoc even now.”
“I will not leave Hermes in the possession of the Telchines,” said Zeus, his voice hard as rock. “But you are right, Hecate. The Titans must not be allowed to destroy all that we have built. We must deal with them first.”
“We may not be able to deal with either,” said Demeter. “Look!”
It took me a moment to realize what she was pointing at. But then I noticed that the walls were literally closing in on us.
Needless to say, they were far more than ordinary stone. Tartarus’s grip on them made them nearly as hard as adamant. Faced with such a threat, the Olympians stood ominously still. They looked too much the way they had when trapped in the power of Chronos. My heart skipped beats as if it wished to become as still as they were.
Tartarus could trap them, even crush them, but probably not kill them. But I, even protected by the Philosopher’s Stone, had no hope of surviving when the rapidly advancing rock walls collided.
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