As they dragged the other man- Balbinus, I thought his name was- into the circle, I readied my hands on the blade. I steadied my breathing. I had one chance. It wasn’t like I was going to wait for Apis.

I tried not to pay too much attention to the screaming. It sent chills down my spine. When I had been told scary stories of ghost possession as a child, it had always been about corpses filled by ghosts- not about living people.

I couldn’t help but wonder about Camilla’s soul. Was it still trapped in there? Just watching her body be run by a ghost?

I shuddered, thinking of how Andrena’s power had run through my fingers. No. Absolutely not.

Maybe I was imagining it, but I thought the sword cooled a little further under my hands. Another scream in the clearing beyond. I stared at the space underneath the tentacles, trying to memorize my path. It was hard to see the space through the ghosts.

Cut your way through. Steal the tear. Steal Apis.

I didn’t really have a plan after that. I took a deep breath. Maybe I could-

The world went white. I ran. A few seconds after I started running, I remembered why I didn’t run anymore. My lungs burned. I was already heaving hard. I was built for cooking good food, not athletics.

I pushed through, gripping the sword tightly. Don’t let them take you, Elysia. You didn’t make it this far to get beaten by ghosts!

When I finally blinked to see the world starting to coalesce into a green haze instead of a brilliant, blinding white, I was close enough to the stone tentacles to touch them. I’d just barely passed behind the axe woman. I glanced over my shoulder, an uncontrolled gesture.

She was still staring into her shimmering green circle. Her teeth reflected the bright lights in a strange grin.

Must be something in the water. Just not right, the way she acts.

I ducked underneath the statue of Teuthida and kept a tight grip on the sword, closing my eyes for a brief few seconds to try and adjust to the darkness before opening them again. In the dimness, I saw everything in shades of green that filtered in from the flickers of magic outside. I could still make out some vague shapes; embers glowing in a fire that must have been extinguished recently. A few pieces of rope still draped around a stone tentacle. A pile of furs (who brought furs all this way? Only a group of northerners).

There. In the corner. I stepped forward, rummaging through as I heard more shouting. Underneath the top plate was nothing. Underneath the gauntlets? I threw more armor pieces to the side, feeling my heart race. I had to find the Tear before Apis-

Someone spoke from behind me. I ignored them, grabbing another piece of armor. As I threw the gauntlet aside, it rattled.

I stopped. The other gauntlet hadn’t rattled like that.

“If you’re in there, please, come out. She’ll be less cruel that way,” said a man’s voice. I didn’t recognize it, although I recognized the sound of footsteps getting closer. I fumbled with the gauntlet, shaking it like a jar with one olive left.

There. It fell into my hand like a blessing. A single, perfect Tear of Andrena. My Tear, you thief!

I tucked it into my pocket, then reached for my sword. It was against my waist. I risked a glance over my shoulder. It was the brother of the axe woman, stepping inside. “Please,” he said. “I don’t want to do this.”

“Then don’t,” I said, unsheathing the sword and turning around in what I wanted to be one motion. In practice, I unbalanced myself a little. If I survive this, I’m doing so much practice with this sword.

“Oh,” he said. He was half-tranluscent in the darkness of the tent. His eyes were the most reflective part, though, glimmering off of the dying embers of the fire. “You’re-”

Before he could finish, I swiped out with the blade. I didn’t trust my aim. Instead, I went for the fire, swiping embers out and up towards him. Most of them clattered to the ground uselessly, but I saw him stumble back, hand up towards his eyes and crying out in pain. Before he could do anything else, I shoved him to the side and stormed out, Abyssal Blade pointed outwards.

The axe woman was nowhere to be found at first. I glanced around wildly. If she’d already taken Apis-

“They went up!”

Vita! I turned, nearly unbalancing myself with the sword again from moving too quickly. She was waving at me, popping out from behind a column. “He escaped! I don’t know how!” She pointed up. “You have to climb!”

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“But the other-”

She was already throwing it to me. I dropped the sword in panic, reaching forward to grab it. For a split second, it was as if the diamond was suspended in air, a perfect droplet. Then it thudded into my hand, and I grabbed it tightly. “Get through!” she said. “I’ll find another way. Teuthida always blesses her loyal followers.”

Well, I didn’t know if I believed that, but I wasn’t going to wait around and question it. I fumbled for the sword and shoved it back in the sheath, turning for the nearest tentacle. It was time to climb.

Two armslengths up, and I started to slide back down. My arms were aching. Across from me, I could see the ghost possessing Camilla making good progress. I couldn’t see the one in Balbinius at all, and the axe woman was long gone. I pushed myself up and grabbed tighter onto the stone.

My arms began to ache. As I started to come around Teuthida’s ‘knees’, where it began to flatten out, I began to see where people were positioned. Duran was straddling a shoulder, knife out and stabbing the air aimlessly. No one was coming even close. Apis was clinging to Teuthida’s torso and trying to edge away from the axe woman, who was stepping along the splayed “knees” of the tentacles as if they weren’t steeply sloped and made of slippery stone.

Balbinus was perched on one of Teuthida’s elbows, chin perched in hand, looking for all the world like he was bored. Camilla was sitting on top of Teuthida’s head and holding a large serrated knife. I shuddered. She hadn’t carried that when I’d met her.

I scrabbled up, trying to grab a hold and make it up the final slope. My hands were starting to ache. I was beginning to weaken. I started to slip down.

Above me, Apis finally edged around to my side of the statue and stopped running away long enough to reach down. “I thought you were already up here!”

I grabbed his hand tightly, scrabbling up the stone. “No,” I muttered. “You want the sword?”

He stared at me. I took that as a no. “You’re doing the tears, then.”

“What?”

“Two jobs, sword or tears.” I unfastened the little pocket I’d been keeping the tears in and thumped it into his hand. He pressed himself further against the torso. “You don’t have a ghost in you, do you?” His eyes weren’t the same glazed green as Balbinus and Camilla. He shook his head, then looked down at the pouch. His hand closed over it.

In front of me, the axe woman hopped from one tentacle to the next, swiping at me with a knife. She must have left her dagger underneath us. I kicked at her, but nearly unbalanced myself and had to cling to the statue. It was a long way down.

“One gem for every hand,” I said. “Good luck. I’ll distract her.”

When I next looked back for Apis, he was gone around the side of the statue. Which was good, because the axe woman was trying to stab me in the throat. I grabbed her tunic and pulled in, mostly because I didn’t want to accidentally throw myself over the side with too much enthusiastic shoving.

It ended up with both of us staring at each other, a little too up close and personal. I didn’t even have my sword out. Her knife was pressed against my ribs. As she began to move it, I shoved her back.

She stumbled, but didn’t fall. What was she, half cat?

As she lifted her knife, twirling it (now that was just insulting, as if I was a bad enough opponent that she could waste time knife twirling) I pulled out my sword and just started swinging it.

For a moment, I saw her eyes widen in surprise. Then she actually had to duck.

As it turned out, a big sword was pretty good in a fight with a small knife. All I had to do was keep it moving. As she came forward, I kept it going. Constant, unpredictable motion. I never hit her, but she was so busy dodging that I was able to keep her busy.

To my left, there was a thunk. Teuthida’s hand lowered. One down.

When she tried to leave her tentacle, I stopped her then, too. The reach was large enough that she couldn’t get out of my space. Another thunk. Two tentacles down. I risked a glance over. Only two left- one with Balbinus on it, one unguarded.

Then she stepped forward, and I realized the problem with a large weapon.

When the axe woman’s hand reached up and grabbed my wrist, I had no way to do anything about it. She leaned in, said something in the Northern language that was probably very intimidating, and then pulled out her knife. She pressed it at my ribs.

I tipped the sword over and hit her over the head with the flat of the blade. She furrowed her brow and said something further in the Northern dialect. The blade pressed further into my cloak.

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said. “Yes, you’ll stab me. That’s not new. You just tried to kill me. I’m going to keep fighting.”

I thumped her over the head with the flat of the blade. Her nose was definitely scrunched now. There was another thunk above us. We both turned to check which one it was. The unguarded tentacle.

I was the one to react first. I yanked my hand out of her slightly softened grip and used the pommel to hit her in the neck. There was sort of a shocked choking noise, then she half-stepped back as she pulled the dagger up to stab me.

It was probably a perfect technique- the movement looked smooth to me, at least. Unfortunately for her, we were standing on uneven ground. I watched her eyes widen as she brought the dagger up. She stiffened for a moment, then twisted midair to try and grab a tentacle- very catlike, I thought again- before falling to the ground.

I didn’t stick around to watch her. I had other problems. I held tight to the torso of the statue as I inched around to aim my sword at Balbinus. Well, his body, at least.

“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” I said. My blade didn’t quite reach towards him, but it was suitably intimidating.

When he didn’t respond, I paused. “You speak our language?”

“I do,” he said. “I’m waiting to hear about the hard way.”

“I can stab you.”

“Go on, then.”

“What?”

He was slouched back, lazy. He yawned as he looked at me. “You think I like that woman? Use that sword, if you please. Just not anywhere important if you like this body.”

When I didn’t move, he held out a hand. I frowned. After a hesitant moment, I slipped the blade across his fingers. Gently- just enough to bleed.

The blood ran spectral green, then red. After the first few blinks, Balbinus’s eyes looked back at me. His real eyes. “Elysia?”

I held out a hand. I could see Apis making his slow way down the arm, trying to put the final tear in place. “Get down from there. I’ll explain later.”