Note: 2nd chapter of our double release day!

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN

A New Mystery Unfolds, Part 2

“Hold on... there’s a fourth sub-level?” Sam asked warily.

“And a fifth, from what I remember,” Superion added. “Could you imagine if any of those monsters got out?”

“Crow-Man and I took care of the fourth sub-level’s inmates, and nothing can come out of the fifth sub-level once they’re thrown into it,” Bethany explained to assuage the apprehension in the room.

“Why did you meet with the Trickster?” Thunder asked.

Crow-Man’s response was a single word. “Chimera.”

Everyone visibly stiffened at the mention of the clandestine organization of evil-doers.

“That’s how he got me here.” Crow-Man’s scowl deepened. “But the intel we received… you should hear it for yourselves.”

Bethany and Crow-Man exchanged glances before she picked up the remote on her desk and pointed it at the flat screen that dominated the room’s right-side wall.

The screen came to life and showed the gathering a recording of a small room that was barely lit by the light lining the corners of its ceiling. There were three people in the room; Crow-Man, Bethany, and a gaunt-looking man with wild eyes and a straightjacket over his prison uniform.

“He grew his hair,” Sam noticed.

The last time Sam saw the Trickster the villain was lean and bald and very dangerous. The Trickster on the screen looked sick though. His clothes hung off him like they were a size or two too big. Dark circles wrapped around his eyes. Short, wavy, pumpkin-colored hair had grown out of a head that had once been as bald as a bowling ball.

“You’ve grown hair,” came Crow-Man’s voice from the TV’s speakers.

“Like it?” TV Trickster’s voice was raspier than Sam remembered. “Might grow a mullet while I’m here in this fancy room they’ve got me in. At least until I decide to leave.”

The Crow-Man on TV verbally threatened the Trickster while the villain cackled in response. It was, as Sam had observed back at the Met, their usual foreplay.

“This Trickster guy’s insane, right?” Ice Brand asked.

“Must be,” Miracle Girl agreed. “Taunting Crow-Man… Crazy~~y.”

“Have you heard from our little healer?” TV Trickster’s question caused Sam’s fingers to tighten on his chair’s armrest. “I hear he’s had a spot of trouble recently… murderous cats and vengeful dogs and ancient dragons. He-he-he… sounds positively fun!”

Sam raised an eyebrow at the screen while Thunder leaned toward him.

“He knows about our mission…” she whispered.

This should have been impossible as very few people knew what the crew of the Argo VII had been up to this past month. Not even Superion, who was looking at his cousin with renewed interest, knew the details of how she’d been cured of the Blight. The Trickster couldn’t have known about this without a source from the outside.

“Yes,” Bethany agreed as she paused the recording. “We don’t know how, but the Trickster was updated on yours and Herculean’s activities.”

Sam’s brow creased. “H-how? W-why?”

“We don’t know,” Bethany admitted. “As for the why—”

“You beat him,” Crow-Man stated. “Now he’s got his sights set on returning the favor.”

“Which would be impossible since he’s still locked up, right?” Superion confirmed.

“Keep watching,” Crow-Man suggested.

There was more banter on the screen; mostly the Trickster mocking his visitors to the point that Crow-Man picked him up by the scruff of his collar and then slammed the villain against the room’s back wall.

“Crow!” TV Bethany yelled in warning while the Trickster cackled in Crow-Man’s face. “So quick to violence. It’s a wonder that people think you’re a hero.”

“No games, Trickster,” TV Crow-Man growled. “Why did you call me here?”

“I told you… I wanted to… chat,” TV Trickster managed to say despite Crow-Man’s tight hold on his throat.

“What do we have to chat about?” TV Crow-Man pressed.

Despite the deep frown on his face, the Crow-Man on the screen visibly slackened his grip on the villain.

TV Trickster coughed, coughed, and then coughed some more before saying, “…I’ve got a prophecy for you, Crow.”

“You’re not a seer,” TV Crow-Man growled.

“One does not need to be a seer to receive divine revelation every once in a while.” TV Trickster cackled. But the laughter was short, and everyone watching the screen saw the sudden change in the villain’s demeanor. “Don’t you want to hear it?”

TV Crow-Man’s grunt was his only response—to which Ice Brand commented, “the sound recording in that cell is amazing. I can hear everything very clearly…”

“Weird thing to focus on, Jin Oppa,” Miracle Girl said before she shushed him.

He lacked Farsight’s flare for mysticism, but the ghostly voice they heard on screen left little doubt in their minds. This was a real prophecy.

“The curse of pride will surely rise, to slay the gods and darken skies,” TV Trickster rhymed ominously. “Calamity comes to the land of the dead, while the world above meets misery and dread.”

Bethany paused the recording and an ominous silence filled the air of the chief’s office. It was a silence that Miracle Girl eventually shattered when she asked, “Anyone here know what that psycho’s talking about?”

Sam recalled an old saying he’d once heard at Saturday temple; Of all the twisted emotions that gave birth to fearsome horrors, pride was surely the mightiest of all.

He didn’t need to say it out loud though. He could tell from their expressions that everyone was thinking the same thing.

But what kind of pride could slay the gods? Sam wondered, to which Chiron answered, What do you think, kid?

Sam sighed. “It’s another elder giant… isn’t it?”

All eyes turned on him.

“That makes sense,” Thunder agreed. “We’ve faced two of them so far, although these were only shadow versions of the real thing… But if this prophecy is about an actual elder giant rising from—”

“The land of the dead?” Ice Brand supplied.

Thunder’s expression darkened when she turned to face Sam. “Do you think it’s connected to the package Medea stole from us?”

Sam had felt the power of the Golden Fleece firsthand as it had temporarily turned him into an omega-level healer so he could cure Thunder of the Blight. If there was a relic capable of bringing one of the Gigantes back from the land of the dead then the fleece was certainly a top contender.

“We need to get in touch with Farsight and the others. See if they’ve tracked the, um, package yet,” Sam answered, although he was hesitant to say any more with so many ears listening in.

“Well, looks like these two have a secret they don’t want us to hear,” Miracle Girl commented after another moment of dead air, prompting Ice Brand to elbow her in the arm. “You need to learn to be more tactful, MG.”

“Just saying,” Miracle Girl winked at Sam.

“Can’t we just ask the Trickster about his prophecy some more?” Superion asked. “I haven’t tangled with him myself, but from what Crow-Man’s told me about him, this villain doesn’t strike me as someone who’d lie when the truth is so…”

“Bat shit crazy?” Miracle Girl supplied.

“That’s the word I’d use for this.” Bethany glanced in Sam’s direction. “In any case, we’ll need an expert to verify this prophecy’s authenticity.”

“Farsight should know,” Sam agreed. “But I still don’t get why the Fates would bless the Trickster with a prophecy?”

“Who says it’s his?” Thunder argued. “He could just be repeating words he’d heard from someone else.”

“Which leads us to our other problem.” Bethany unpaused the recording. “Here’s proof that the Trickster wasn’t working alone…”

The room in the video shook, and that’s when the recording cut out.

“I remember that quake,” Ice Brand said.

“Jin Oppa and I were assisting with a prison transfer on the third sub-level when shit went down,” Miracle Girl explained.

“Keep watching.” Bethany pressed a button on her remote and activated a second video recording. “This is where it gets really interesting.”

The new recording showed off a round hall quite similar to the one Sam and Thunder had fallen into after Barbelle’s explosion. However, while the administrator’s floor had polished stone walls and a parquet floor, this other hall was made entirely of craggy obsidian rock with veins of lava showing along the walls.

“This is the elevator hall of the fourth sub-level,” Bethany explained. “It’s where we keep the criminally insane… along with some gifted who’d been cursed by the gods.”

Miracle Girl whistled. “Wow, a whole floor for freaks just like the Trickster. Sounds fun.”

“MG,” Ice Brand scolded.

On the screen, Bethany and Crow-Man—with an unconscious Trickster hoisted over his shoulder—faced off against a villain Sam recognized from a news alert he’d seen a year ago. The one where Superion had nearly been killed by the alpha-level villain, “Bloodfyre!”

All their gazes snapped toward Superion whose narrowed eyes fixed on the pale-skinned, white-haired woman in the loose red robe with ends that dragged against the floor. The video cut out again while Bloodfyre slashed at Crow-Man with the red saber she carried.

“You didn’t stop her,” Superion assumed.

“I’m not you,” Crow-Man replied flatly.

“Sorry.” Superion’s hand rose to his chest while an expression of imagined pain flitted across his face. “I couldn’t stop her completely either.”

“So, Bloodfyre took the Trickster from you?” Thunder guessed.

“We got away from her at first, but there were too many villains on the third sub-level and she caught up to us in the end,” Bethany answered. “She took the Trickster and escaped before we could catch them.”

“The red pillar we saw from the transport… that was Bloodfyre’s doing,” Thunder realized.

“A red pillar?” Superion’s brow creased. “Oh, you’re talking about her ‘Bloody Tree’ aren’t you?”

“Bloody Tree?” Sam repeated.

“That’s what she calls this thing she creates when she reshapes a huge amount of blood into these giant red veins that look like the roots of a tree,” Superion explained.

“And there was a lot of blood spilled in the Crucible around that time,” Ice Brand noted.

“But why would she take the Trickster?” Sam’s fingers tightened on the armrest of his seat once more. “What does she want from him?”

“We don’t know,” Crow-Man answered. “But you and I are going to find out.”

As if on cue, a new mission notification popped up in front of Sam.

NEW MISSION: RECAPTURE THE CRUCIBLE’S ESCAPED CONVICTS.

Below this one was a second pop-up that puzzled Sam until he realized what it implied.

CONVICTS CAPTURED: [0/37]

Sam had several missions on his docket already—rescuing Serena, reclaiming the Golden Fleece, finding the Trident of Atlantis, and his secret fourth labor—but this new mission was quite troubling considering the number flashing in front of his face.

“Um, just wondering here, but the Trickster isn’t the only prisoner who got away, was he?” Sam asked.

Warden Bethan confirmed his fears with another press of a button. Several photographs appeared on the screen. They were all mugshots of villains who wore the same white jumpsuit as the inmates of the Crucible.

“You’re right. The Trickster wasn’t the only one…” Bethany’s gaze moved from one hero’s face to another. She caught Sam’s eyes last. “We don’t know how the rest of them got out, but in total, thirty-seven maximum-security prisoners escaped the Crucible.”