“How do we start?” I asked the King of Heroes.

“We gather our forces.” Achilles said. “Repeat after me: Achilles summons you.”

“Repeat after me: Achilles summons you.” Pollixa, Krassas, Fish and I said in forced unison, our lungs and vocal cords and tongues working without our will guiding them. My face felt funny and my voice ragged. Pollixa was coughing like she had smoked a strong tobacco strain for the first time and Krassas was spitting up blood. Fish’s eyes were wide open and his expression was otherwise frighteningly blank other than a period twitch of his facial muscles.

All around us, the Blurs were repeating the same six words in hollow voices that lacked emotion or much strength at all. All together though, even the weakest voices combined into something that was much louder and much more impressive than the sum of its parts. The King of Heroes’s words were being transmitted by word of mouth, the strange nature of how he spoke it demanding obedience and lending something of that same unearthly authority to anyone who said the words he had given them. I guessed that if he had just said, “Achilles summons you,” the message would have only been heard within earshot, but with the first part it was spreading like a wildfire in a ring around us.

“How far will it go?” Pollixa asked Achilles.

“All of the Fields of Asphodel,” he said. “Each soul will speak it once when they’ve heard it and it will expand in a radius. Now, we only have to wait for enough of the Brights serving or allied with me to hear and then travel here. In the meantime, we’ll need to prepare you. What’s her combat experience?”

“I, uh, I’ve never fought before.” Pollixa said sheepishly.

“You will have to stay then.” Achilles replied. “There’s no point in having someone without use on an important mission.”

“What if someone doesn’t remember learning to fight?” I said carefully. “Hypothetically, I mean.”

“They would remember after getting knocked around a bit. The soul will dredge up memories to protect itself.” He said.

I sighed. Looks like I was going to have to reveal something I did not really want to.

“She knows how to hold her own.” I said. “She was a Bronze Imperator trained and graduated from the Apollonian Scholarium.”

Pollixa whipped her head around, her red hair sent lashing. “What? How do you know that?”

“That’ll work.” The King of Heroes said.

“How do you know that?” She repeated, scowling at me. “Did you know me?”

“Yes.” I said.

“Who was I? How did you know me? What killed me??” She said, grabbing my arm.

Fish stood up and drew close at surprising quickness, growling. There was nothing childlike or petulant or whimsical about him. Nothing silly or amusing. His eyes were as empty and hungry as a shark’s. Pollixa let go of my arm like she had been burned, but Fish kept watching her with a predator’s eyes. He took a step forward and I had to stick an arm out to stop him from going on a warpath and feasting on my teammate.

“Stop.” I ordered him, but the hunger stayed in him, and he pushed his chest against my arm.

“Stop!” I said again, this time trying to evoke some of the natural authority Achilles had but to no avail. The King of Heroes, for his part, was watching the unfolding events with curiosity while Krassas was backing away as far as he could without actually leaving.

I tried the last thing I could think of. “Please.”

The dark, ravenous look left Fish’s eyes and he returned to normal, though he looked more tired and worn out.

“Hungry, Adrias. Hungry.” He said pitifully to me.

“Fascinating.” Achilles said. “Remarkable, really. I’ve never seen a Leechling act to protect anyone before. Most would just feed on whoever was closest to them at the time, even if it was their own child.”

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That was disturbing.

“Fish, we’re going to get you something to eat soon and then you’ll be full for a long time.” I said.

“Promise?” He said hopefully.

“I promise.” I swore. I looked to Pollixa. I needed her onboard with this, to keep her close to me so I could make sure she got out of here with me and to have someone I could trust with me, but I also felt she did deserve the truth, even if it made her angry at me.

“We complete this job and break into Elysium, I’ll tell you everything about who you were and how I knew you.” I said. “That’s a promise as good as the one I gave Fish to feed him, and I’ll keep both of them.”

“Okay.” She said with some hesitance.

“What’s next,” I asked the King of Heroes.

“We need to get you armed, if you’re able to handle it.” Achilles said.

Something about how he said it stuck out to me, but it was Pollixa who was the one to ask it for me.

“Adrias says I had combat experience.” Pollixa said. “And he clearly does.”

“That’s not what he’s talking about.” Krassas Claudion said with bitterness, coming back closer after it became apparent Fish was not going to outright vampiric on the rest of them.

Krassas continued. “The King is referring to-“

“-Ghostforging.” Achilles said, stretching out a hand behind him and his throne of fused souls of Blurs disintegrating into mist that streamed over to him and condensed and solidified into a bright white spear.

I examined it eagerly. “Wicked.” I whispered with excitement.

“Wicked indeed.” Krassas muttered, clearly meaning an entirely different connotation and meaning of the word “wicked” than I was.

“What’s so bad about it? Why wouldn’t we be able to handle it?” Pollixa said.

“They hurt. They weep though they do not understand why.” Fish said, though he didn’t seem particularly bothered by this.

“Ghostforging is the process of forming a spiritual connection between yourself and two or more very weakened Blurs and forcing them together to fuse and compress them into something denser and with more weight on both a physical and metaphysical level. They are the only weapons we of the Fields can make that hold any real ability to harm the Infernal Beasts and monsters that guard and control Hades’s subterranean realm. Like anything to do with gaining power, it comes with a cost.” Achilles said.

“The process of being Ghostforged is painful for the Blurs and in order to make something useful you need a lot of them.” Krassas said with distaste. “And they are in pain whenever they are commanded to change shape. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, you need more than two or three.”

“Thirteen is best, I’ve found.” Achilles said calmly. “Too little and its like a wet noodle and much more than that number makes it brittle. Something about the symbolic nature of it being one off from the holy number of twelve, a deviation, a corruption, makes it suitable for this.”

“I think…” Pollixa said. “I think I could do it, I mean, they’re like less than animals, right? They don’t really have much going on up in their heads.”

“You have to feel their pain when you make the weapons or tools.” Krassas said. “it’s easy to imagine being callous and stoic until you feel their pain as your own.”

“Oh.” Pollixa said.

“Few Brights manage to complete a successful Ghostforging.” The King of Heroes said. “I wasn’t really expecting the girl or the Leechling to do it, and I know Claudion is too cowardly.”

“But you want me to do it.” I said.

“Yes. We’ll be working by stealth and as such many of our warpack won’t need them early on and we can kill Infernal Beasts with weapons and redistribute them to the barehanded, but some of us needed to readily armed. You have the skill to wield it, as a Silver and a Heraklion, and I can tell you have the… temperament.” Achilles said.

“How do I do it?” I said.

“Reach into a Blur’s chest and grip where their heart would be, should be, and try to pull it out.” He commanded me.

I went over to one and sent my right hand grasping into its misty chest and pulled, a glowing white illusion of a heart appearing in my hand at the same time that the rest of its body was collapsing into grey dust, leaving only the glowing organ behind. That was not bad at all. The Blur didn’t seem to have experienced any discomfort whatsoever, I only sensed the slowness of its thoughts and its confusion at its very existence. I went to another and pulled out a second heart with my left hand.

“Now press them together.” Achilles told me.

I did so and swore like a Sailor, gritting my teeth. The two Blurs had started howling and weeping, which I felt keenly as if I was a third heart combined with the other two as well, but clearly the others were hearing the sounds just as I was even if they couldn’t feel it like I could.

Krassas was looking away and Pollixa was shocked at the sound. Achilles was stoic and unmoved.

I kept going, one after another, trying to keep it in my mind that I had to do this, that I had to get back to the realm of mortals at any cost. Finally, at the thirteenth soul added, a bright white sword much like a Keenblade was fully constructed in my hand.

“Well done.” Achilles congratulated me, though it didn’t feel like something to celebrate.

Pollixa looked sick and Krassas looked disgusted.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any Fulvion blood in addition to the Heraklions?” Krassas said. “Psychopaths, all of them.”

I kept my expression neutral at that comment.

“It would be well to be both a good man and a great man at the same time.” Achilles noted. “But you and I both know that isn’t always true, Adrias.”

“No. It isn’t,” I said. I examined my sword. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

“I promise I’ll free you all when I escape and then you can be released of this place.” I told them, my third promise of the day. They seemed to quiet a bit after that, though it might have been my imagination. I’d keep it all the same, whether they understood it or not.