When Tavras came to the cave, he lingered at the entrance and swung around. “Where is Arius?”

“He left already,” Val said in opening her bleary eyes.

Despite her saying so, Tavras ventured into the cave on his guard. Once he had made it to Val, his stance relaxed as he crouched down in front of her. “Are you alright?” his soft, low voice asked.

She nodded along. Foofy sat right at her side, and her arms draped around him. That Dobie made everything okay.

“What did Arius do this time?”

“I don’t even know,” she said because she had no idea how to express what had just happened. If she went back to sleep on the serpent snapping turtle, Val would think that she had simply experienced a fever dream—like how the night had started for her. “Arius just wanted to keep pushing the issue.”

“He always has been a persistent bastard,” Tavras mused. “Let’s get you and Foofy out of here. We need to prepare. Arius will come after you again unless we send him a more extreme message.”

Unsure if she liked that glint in his eyes, Val accepted Tavras’s hand regardless. He pulled her up with the ease and strength of a god.

Standing, Val looked up to him with a knitted brow. “Arius did say that he would see me again….” Naturally, she did not have the mind to see him again. “What do you suggest we do?”

Tavras’s eyes pinched up in a smile. “I have quite the thing in mind. Would you like to help?”

A content smile crossed Val’s own lips. “Alright.”

“In that case, I am summoning Charybdis to this area of the sea!”

Since the first rays of dawn had arrived across the glimmering waves, Val and Tavras had begun plotting at once.

“When Charybdis gets here, I will have him waiting off the coast of the Bibashie Reef.” From where the two of them stood on a risen piece of sand, Tavras pointed off to the open ocean. “I will ask you to lure Arius to where Charybdis will lie in wait. You are the bait, and together, we are going to force him down its maw.”

Swallowing hard, Val tried to recall what happened to the fallen heroes of legend who disappeared down the whirlpool that Charybdis created with its mouth. It had been just that; they vanished.

A twinge of worry swept through her for what little consideration that she had for Arius. None of those lost heroes had been a god of his caliber, yet Val could not help but feel concerned. “This isn’t going to kill Arius, will it?”

A curt laugh came from Tavras, his chin lifted to the sky. “If I wanted to, sure. I have dreamed about all the ways that Arius could possibly die for decades now, and this is my favorite idea! Killing him at this point would be a waste, though. I don’t want to screw up all of Evalaite’s plans.”

Sighing lightly, Val was glad for that much though she hated what Evalaite had done to him. “Good. I don’t actually want you to hurt him.”

“I’ll only threaten him, so don’t you worry your silly, little head over him.”

The flow of ocean waters changed, making Charybdis’s presence evident once it had arrived. Aware of the unnatural change in their surroundings, Foofy took to barking in that general direction.

A slow whirlpool revolved around in a vast perimeter. Those currents would be nothing compared to the vortex that would ensue once its open maw breached the surface.

All of the hairs on Val’s arms stood on end. The back of her neck tingled with the excitement in the air. Now, they had nothing to do but wait for Arius to come back. The next time that he tried something, Tavras would make it so that he would not dare to pursue Val again.

As such, Tavras supervised her, never to let her out of his sight until they saw their plan through. This worked out without any special effort, as Val resumed training under his guidance or lack thereof.

“Look at what I can do!” Val called.

Her aura had melded in a similar way as when she employed Forcefield, but instead of a shield, she had made a disk of shimmering, white light that hovered beneath her feet. Val crouched atop her disk and made it spin around and around so that the whole ocean passed by her in a blur.

“Whee,” she said, barely able to catch the colors of Tavras and Foofy on the sandbar when she faced them for a split second. Then, she spun round again and saw them rush by.

“You are making me dizzier than if I looked at the whirlpool going down Charybdis’s maw,” Tavras remarked.

“Me too!” Feeling incredibly dizzy, Val curled her fingers around the disk’s edge so that she did not fall off.

A jolt came from her feet with a spray of water. Val’s aura shield was shattered, sending her upward with the geyser and back down into the sea with a splash. Her head bobbed up, one arm wiping the wet hair out of her eyes. “Hey, what was that for?”

“Arius could come at any moment, and you’re goofing off. Focus on your training, at least!”

With a huff, Val swam to the point where she could walk back into the shallow water. “Fine. In my opinion, that was pretty productive, testing out my powers like that.”

Tavras rolled his eyes and did not validate her with more of a reply. He opted to speak on the more important topic of their plan, instead. “About what I said with looking into Charybdis’s maw—don’t do that.”

“Why not?” Fully intrigued, Val wanted to know what was so special about Charybdis’s open jaws aside from the whirlpool that it could create.

“People of weak will are drawn to its throat, unable to resist the temptation of their own demise.”

“Hey,” Val said with hands on her hips, “I’m not weak willed.”

An unamused glare shot from the corner of Tavras’s eyes. “Arius’s will is also too weak, I suspect, if that makes you feel any better.”

That did. Val gulped hard, trying to imagine what would soon happen over the currently quiet, peaceful swirl of ocean waves. “When we force Arius down Charybdis’s mouth, what will happen to him exactly?”

Simply, Tavras said, “He will be transported to Leviathan’s Cradle. I will follow him there and have a friendly chat with him. You’ll wait out here until we’re done. After that little conversation, Arius goes bye-bye, never to bother us again.”

With a little wave of his fingers, Tavras crouched down to Foofy’s level. “He’ll have his tail between his legs, isn’t that right?”

She blinked a few times in astonishment, not having expected for Tavras to engage with Foofy on a familiar level ever.

The Dobie blinked too.

“Why are you being so friendly to Foofy all of a sudden?”

“This dog was a traitor last time,” Tavras snapped. “We need to make sure that we have him on our side. Can you keep your dog traitor in line?”

“What?” Actually, Val had no idea what he was talking about. “Arius told me that Foofy tried to put up a fight last night, did he not?”

“Ask your dog.” Tavras squinted to give Foofy a stink eye, but beyond that, he did not elaborate for Val.

A puzzled frown pulled down her lips, but Val shrugged it off.

“It is crucial that you do not get transported to Leviathan’s Cradle,” Tavras warned. “Arius has a hardy enough constitution that I expect him to be able to survive for a few hours in Leviathan’s Cradle. You would die the moment that you entered.”

She became more self-conscious of her dry lips and tried to lick at them. “Is Leviathan’s Cradle that inhospitable of an environment?”

“I stayed with Leviathan in its Cradle for who knows how long when I first became a god.” He shrugged to parallel his nonchalant remark. “Other gods do not have a favorable relationship with the ocean like me.”

Val gaped at him with nothing more to say to that.

Back to practicing with her aura she went, Tavras engaging her with an assault of water. They sparred, and the day passed.

The sunlight aged, inspiring the ball of fire to sink over the horizon and bleed its colors across the ocean before them. Those circling waters that signified Charybdis’s occupation stayed ever present.

Val cast her gaze out to the shadowy direction of land that was the Bibashie Reef. “When is Arius going to come back?” Her tone of voice sounded almost downcast, odd how she could miss him at all, in any regard.

Huffing, Tavras said, “He’s most likely waiting until I sleep next. Either that, or he went on land to find some monsters to fight until he has generated enough power to face me head on. Either way, he’ll be a nuisance when he comes back.” Leaning back on both hands, Tavras tipped his head back and let his hair dangle into the surf near where he sat.

Whether or not Arius would come, the day had ended and they needed sleep. For a while, Val was the only one who lay down across the sand and waited for sleep to come. Tossing and having the grainy particles itch across the other side of her body, she sighed hard.

“Tavras?”

“Yes, kiddo?”

“Are you going to sleep tonight, ever?”

“I suppose so.”

Val found herself restless as she tried to sleep in Tavras’s presence. Always, he had gone out to sea or had stayed in a separate room; he had never slept around her. Even last night, he had reclined on the other side of the serpent snapping turtle’s shell out of view.

Once he had bowed his head and closed his eyes, she already found it easier to relax.

“Foofy is our guard dog, so you can feel free to sleep. Sit,” she said, followed by, “Stay.”

The Dobie’s dark eyes scanned over the darker ocean until the next day when Arius returned.