“You dare eavesdrop?” Ninelithe demanded of Cove.

“What were you doing?” Cove questioned back, outraged in my place.

My fingers burned as I brushed them against the still-hot earrings. My blood boiled as what they’d tried to do sunk into my veins. Unlike the simple light brushing of the minds I’d done with the Agarthinas, Persephoenix and Ninelithe had attempted to force their way into the inner reaches of my mind and my magic. My earrings had prevented such a thing from occurring, but they had tried.

“We noticed it when he reached out to inspect the world around him. His magic is wrong.” Ninelithe stated confidently as if it erased the stain of their attempt. My teeth ground together.

“That doesn’t give you the right to–”

I shot up from where I’d been sitting, startling Cove, who’d been standing behind me. “Enough.” I bit out, tired of them speaking over me as if I wasn’t there. “Humans,” I all but hissed, letting the collected irritation and anger spill from my lips in a fury, “are not dumb animals. I find it difficult to believe a society so advanced as yours needs to constantly lord its supposed superiority above our heads unless you aren’t as advanced as you pretend to be. We’ve certainly seen enough.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering to connect Agartha to the human world, and I don’t particularly care. But you do, and unless you want us to report the blatant violations of basic rights and proclaim to the rest of the world that you aren’t as powerful as you act, I suggest you explain what you mean and what your seers have seen right now.” My voice echoed through the closed chamber, deep and commanding.

Persephoenix and Ninelithe’s faces tightened, their muscles coiling like a snake ready to strike. I struck first with an educated guess. “Oh, please,” I scoffed, throwing a little taste of their own medicine in their faces. “We both know Cove is far more powerful than you.”

My foot slammed down on the platform, drawing everyone’s attention to the recently completed portal Cove and I were standing on. “Besides, we could be out and about with that information you’ve been so desperate to cover before you could strike.”

I thought I heard a whispered ‘holy shit’ from behind me, but I couldn’t be sure.

The heated anger sang in my veins, and I elatedly watched Perspehoenix and Ninelithe wither under my threats. When curiously investigating earlier, I’d noticed the lack of depth to their presence. My earrings had burned when they’d tag-teamed me, but at a far cooler temperature than Jacob’s attempt. It stood to reason that the heat level correlated to power spent, meaning the oh-so-powerful Agarthians together were much weaker than Jacob. As Jacob was weaker than Cove, it meant Cove’s strength was truly incomprehensible even to Agarthians.

Ninelithe’s tongue tasted the air. “Human threats won’t work on us.”

I gave them the point, noticing they weren’t making a move to stop us. “I suppose you’re right.”

“We–”

“They ‘won’t work’ because they already did,” I continued. Persephoenix and Ninelithe visibly seethed, their anger and indignation boiling out and spilling over the already tense room.

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Ninelithe hissed like an angry cat and turned to speak with Persephoenix in Agarthian.

Cove, who’d moved up next to me, said smugly, “He’s doing a sufficient job threatening you for such an ‘insignificant speck of power.’”

They glared poison at him. His grin was unaffected.

“Very well,” Persephoenix said, the words cutting out as though we held a dagger to her throat. I shifted my weight to one leg, waiting. Neither Cove, Ranch, Ani, nor I left the platform, ready to make our escape if need be.

“As my husband said, we noticed something off with your magic when you reached out earlier.”

“What do you mean by ‘off’?” I asked.

She shrugged. “That’s what we were trying to determine earlier. If you would just let us–”

“Not happening,” I said. If I wouldn’t take them off for Jacob and Cove, I certainly wouldn’t take them off for the less trustworthy Agarthians.

“There was an undercurrent of something else,” Ninelithe added when Persephoenix didn’t elaborate.

“What does that mean?”

“We don’t know.”

“What did your mages see?” Cove wondered.

Ninelithe and Persephoenix unwound slightly at the question. So, this was familiar territory.

“Conflicting things,” Persephoenix admitted. “A great darkness has been interfering with our predictions for a while now.”

I recalled the great, hungry darkness devouring the stars from my almost-forgotten vision.

“The distant future is always more clouded.”

Cove nodded his understanding, confirming to me that what they said was likely true.

She closed her eyes as if the pictures were playing out on her eyelids. “In one, darkness swallows everything. Others of fire, of the ocean, and of fading stars. Our seers are still attempting to dicern the meaning of any additional details.”

Ninelithe picked up where she’d dropped off. “Only one other time in history have our seers visions been clouded by such a great darkness.”

I knew what he was going to say next, and my muscles tensed in anticipation.

“25 years ago, when an entire universe was lost to human machinations. For thousands of years, we’ve been working on the preservation of extinct species. Our leader feels guilty for allowing humans to cause such destruction, and we decided we couldn’t, in good conscience, allow humans to roam free any longer.”

I scoffed, and Cove echoed the sentiment behind me.

Persephoenix picked up the thread of conversation, “Jacob’s invitation, so soon after Z’eus began having such thoughts, only proved to us that this is the necessary path. And then, the two envoys he happened to send were spaciotemporal mages, whose rare presences are represented in the mental realm by an ocean and a flame. An opportunity to hopefully discover the connection between you and our visions had fallen into our lap.”

“So you think we’re connected to your visions? What does that even mean?” Cove asked, his voice laced with skepticism.

“We don’t know. Only that they–you–are key to the future.”

My anger burned brighter. What a ridiculous setup. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Ninelithe confirmed.

Neither Cove nor I believed him, but we were out of our depth. We couldn't interrogate them further with no guesses as to what further items they were hiding.

“Right. Well, we’re done here,” Cove said, “and I don’t know about Hayden, but I’m tired.”

Now that he mentioned it, I could feel the exhaustion clinging to my frame, weighing on my limbs. If I’d been alone, using the portal to escape would have been impossible.

“So you’re going to lead us back to our rooms, let us rest, and we’ll use this portal to be out of your hair tomorrow.”

Ninelithe and Persephoenix hefted open the doors, and Cove and I walked through, carrying Ranch and Ani in our arms as we tried not to side-eye them, nervous that our questioning had pushed beyond their boundaries. Once we were in the hallway, we politely paused, giving Ninelithe and Persephoenix time to shut the doors and swing down a massive, heavy bar across them, another layer to prevent access to Agartha from unwanted visitors.