"Fifty-three years, seven months, sixteen days." His voice sounded like stone grinding. "I've been counting every second, planning your death."
"Impossible!" Lyra shrieked. "Those containers are designed to hold any supernatural being!"
"Designed by someone who never pissed off a pregnant Pleiades with divine babies and serious anger management issues," I finished, moving toward Moira's container.
My magic infiltrated the jars as I passed them. One by one, the captives dropped free. Sarah helped them while Kieran fought the creatures. When I reached the Scottish witch, I met her eyes through the preservation fluid. Determination burned back at me. My magic was rippling out and undoing Lyra’s spells without much prodding from me. The babies were helping it along.
As Moira’s container opened, she tumbled out, gasping. The entire chamber shook then with Lyra's rage. More cracks appeared, trying to swallow us into whatever lay beneath.
"Thank you." Moira's Scottish accent was thick, and her eyes brimmed with fury as silver lightning crackled around her weathered hands. "What do you need me to do?" She was ready to blow something up.
"Can you coordinate a group protection spell?" I asked. "I don't think our host is done playing games. And I need to free the rest, then find a way out of here."
"Aye, I can manage that. Some things you never forget." Her magic burst out of her in a rush that blew my hair back.
That's when Lyra really lost her shit. The air crackled as she tore gaping wounds in the dimensional fabric. Abominations poured through. They were armored beetles the size of motorcycles. They skittered down the walls. Their black carapaces dripped acidic slime that sizzled where it hit stone. Multi-headed serpents thick as telephone poles followed. Each fanged maw snapped independently while forked tongues tasted the air for prey.
But her fury made her careless. The dimensional rifts she'd ripped open to summon backup disrupted the containment spells. Preservation chambers began splitting like rotten fruit.Fluid gushed across the floor as captive after captive spilled free. Instead of being weakened by their torture and imprisonment, they emerged with murder in their eyes.
Twin phoenixes from New Orleans moved like deadly dancers. Their supernatural speed made them blur as they systematically destroyed every piece of monitoring equipment I hadn’t even noticed until then. A were-bear named Dmitri retained enough strength to start ripping support beams from walls. A pixie called Zara flitted between newly freed prisoners, checking on the fragile ones before joining the battle.
The freed supernatural beings formed a protective circle around me without being asked. Their coordination spoke to bonds forged through shared suffering. But we were still outnumbered. And Lyra wasn't done escalating.
"If I can't have your children's power," she screamed, her voice now coming from directly behind us, "then no one leaves alive!"
I turned to see her in person for the first time. She was a woman caught between human and something else entirely. Her skin shifted between flesh and opalescent shimmer of stolen starlight, never settling on either. The crown on her head pulsed with captured power that was one of the few items she still had fueling her. She looked like a broken doll someone had tried to fix with mismatched parts.
"You cannot have them!" She railed as more creatures poured in.
Watching her and looking for a way out, I noticed the wall behind Lyra glowing with contained power. "There." I pointed toward the area. "There's power behind there. I need someone to punch through the stone!"
Dmitri and Kieran exchanged a look that promised violence, then charged together. Dragon claws and were-bear strength made short work of ancient stone. A chamber filled with artifactswas on the other side. The relics made my entire being sing with recognition.
Seven objects sat in positions of honor. There was a crystal pendant pulsing with starlight. A silver bracelet inscribed with star charts. A mirror showing constellations. A compass, a book, a ring, and a dagger.
"My collection," Lyra gasped as she raced toward us.
"My heritage," I breathed, feeling the Pleiades artifacts calling to me. I might not have been born a Pleiades, but Hattie made me one. I could use them where Lyra couldn’t. "You stole pieces of a legacy that isn’t yours and never will be."
I smashed a display case, ignoring Lyra's scream of rage. The moment my fingers touched the starlight pendant, power flooded through me. It was like coming home after a lifetime of exile. These were more than just magical objects. They were fragments of the original Seven Sisters' power. They had been scattered across Earth when they were forced from Olympus.
One by one, I claimed the artifacts. My strength multiplied with each recovered piece. The babies practically purred as ancient power recognized kinship with their divine nature. Instinct told me that I could use the power in them to get us back home.
"Those fragments are mine. They will make the original Seven merge with me!" Lyra screamed, raising her hands as power poured from her stolen artifacts. She gestured with both hands, and the chamber began collapsing inward. Not just the walls. The entire dimensional space was folding in on itself.
"If I can't ascend to godhood, then we'll all die here together!"
"We’re getting out of here," I called out over everything tearing apart around us. "When I give the signal, everyone grab onto someone else. We're going home on the express route."
"How?" Moira shouted back as her lightning spells held back a wave of creatures.
"I’m going to hack into Lyra’s portal. She was gracious enough to provide me with the power to pull it off," I laughed like a loon because the irony was just so perfect.
I drove the moonlight blade straight into the chamber floor with every ounce of strength I had. It pierced through dimensional barriers like tissue paper. The hole allowed me to feel everything. Aidon's frantic searching nearly broke my heart. Hades' barely contained rage wasn’t surprising. My heart warmed when I felt how our entire extended family was mobilizing to find me.
"No!" Lyra's final scream shook the collapsing realm. "This is MY domain! My power! My?—"
"Your mistake," I interrupted, channeling every scrap of Pleiades heritage into opening her bridge between dimensions. The starlight pendant blazed like a small sun. That was all it took for the realm to disintegrate around us. Instead of being crushed, we rode the dimensional wave like surfers on a tsunami of pure magical energy. Sixty-seven freed prisoners, one very pregnant witch carrying three divine babies, and enough recovered heritage to power a small city.
