Thea

“Um, doctor, I think you may have misunderstood,” Bryce said. I felt like I probably needed to add something, but I was way too busy laughing.

Sami and Softie were still back at the resort. But Bryce rushed to end our vacation the moment Doc let us know she had finished with Esme’s new body.

It had been a fun few days, and it was nice to see Bryce finally enjoying something that wasn’t related to research, but it also felt good to be back aboard our ship without having to worry about eight extra people.

“Is something amiss?” Doc asked. “I thought I had triple checked all of my calculations prior to initiating the generative procedure, and all signals are coming back green in my post checks.”

“It’s not that anything is necessarily wrong…” Bryce trailed off.

“You gave her a dick Doc,” I laughed. “Esme’s new body is male.”

“I… No, that cannot be,” Doc look down at the data-pad she was holding. “I triple checked everything.”

“Lorie said you had difficulty telling the difference,” I said. “Maybe you just forgot?”

“Surely, I wouldn’t forget something like this,” she continued scrolling through her data-pad, as if that was going to un-dickify my sister. Eventually, she gave up with a sigh. “Well, no matter. It’s a simple procedure to correct.”

“Now wait a second, Doc. There’s no reason to waste a perfectly good opportunity here.”

“Thea.” Bryce glared at me. “This isn’t the sort of thing we should be messing with for a cheap joke.”

“Hey Bryce, remember that time when Esme teleported across the planes to almost murder you? Because I do, and I think we deserve a little payback. Besides, our good doctor friend just said it’s easy to fix and who knows, Esme might like being a man. Who are we to stop her from experimenting.?”

“It would require more anesthetic if the soul is already present.” Doc shrugged. “But it would also allow the subject to present any cosmetic preferences beyond the strictly functional.”

“And you can perform this procedure here? On the ship?” Bryce asked.

“It would take around twelve hours using the bio-pod. Which is longer than a proper medical facility, but not by much.”

“Fine, but if anybody asks, I had nothing to do with this,” Bryce conceded. “It’s probably best to get her into a body as soon as possible, anyway.”

“Works for me. I wouldn’t want you taking credit for my prank, anyway.” I smiled. “Besides, she might like it. So, what’s next?”

“Well, first we need to move the body to the observation room,” Bryce explained. “I’ve prepared a binding circle in there that should prevent Esme from doing anything before we can explain the situation.”

“Want me to take a look at it to make sure you got it right?” I asked.

“If you wouldn’t mind.” Bryce shrugged. “I’m pretty confident that I got it right, but this isn’t the sort of thing you turn down a second opinion on.”

I turned towards the doctor. “Could you grab Esme’s new body? Bryce has stringy nerd arms and the height difference makes it complicated for me to do it.”

“Stringy nerd arms?” Bryce crossed her nerd arms indignantly.

“They’re cute,” I said, and she rolled her eyes.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Doc smiled. “Just lead the way.”

We led Doc to the observation room, where she placed the soulless body down in the center of the room. Bryce had moved a mattress and some basic furniture into a large, binding circle. It looked like she was preparing for the worst-case scenario, where Esme would be stuck in here for a long time.

I got to work checking out the circle right away. Normally, Bryce wouldn’t rely on me for these sorts of complicated spells, but binding circles were different. What they did and how they did it were basically just written out in plain language. Most people couldn’t read it, but I could and that made it easy to find mistakes.

Of course, that would imply that there were mistakes to find, and I didn’t see any. Which was to be expected with a circle Bryce had created. She was a complete perfectionist when it came to this sort of thing.

“The phrasing is a bit archaic. But otherwise, it’s perfect.”

“Will it hold her?” Bryce asked.

“Yeah, there shouldn’t be any issues.” I shrugged. “At least, not with the circle.”

“Alright, are you ready, doctor?”

“I am. Simply place the stone in contact with the body, and the rest is up to Esme.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “Does that mean she could’ve jumped into any of us at any time?”

“Not likely.” Doc shook her head. “In theory, it’s possible. But it would require her to overpower whoever was already in possession of the body, which wouldn’t be easy in her current state.”

“That sounds unpleasant,” Bryce said as she approached with the soul stone. She was being extra careful not to let it touch her while she set it down. “Now we just wait?”

“Now we just wait,” Doc confirmed. “There’s no way to know how long it’ll—”

Esme lurched up, launching the now-empty stone to shatter across the room, as she inhaled deeply. She looked around the room with glazed over eyes, blinking several times as if trying to clear her vision.

“What happened?” Esme asked.

“Hey babe, how’re you feeling?” I was standing just outside the binding circle.

“Thea?” She squinted at me before rubbing her eyes. “Is that you?”

“You have resurrection sickness,” Doc explained. “You’re likely experiencing disorientation, and it may take some time for your vision to be restored fully.”

“I… Resurrection sickness? How did I die?”

“That may have been a tiny bit my fault,” I said. “You tried to kill Bryce, and I stopped you… with a sword.”

“You stabbed me?” The look on Esme’s face suddenly turned from confusion to one of recognition. “I remember now! I came to rescue you, and then you stabbed me! What the fuck Thea?”

“I didn’t need rescuing.” I crossed my arms. “You showed up in the middle of an important mission, killed two friendly wolf people and then tried to murder my girlfriend. So, I stabbed you. It was a perfectly reasonable response.”

“I killed werewolves?” She asked.

“And tried to kill my girlfriend. She’s fine, by the way.”

“Girlfriend? Thea, you’re dating the woman who summoned you?” Esme gave me a gentle, concerned look. “You have to know how that looks.”

“Bryce didn’t summon me,” I explained. “It was just some rando who wanted me to do something stupid. So, I killed her to save Bryce, and then we made a pact to let me stick around. The girlfriend part came later.”

“You mean to tell me that you could have returned at any point?”

“Sorta? But that would have meant dealing with Malvoch or Vurdex or any other demon who got pissed when I was caught cheating.”

“They caught you cheating?” Esme looked surprised, which surprised me. I figured it would have been pretty big news in Hades. A lot of people saw Vurdex confront me in the casino, and that was the sort of thing that got around.

“There’s obviously a lot of miscommunication here,” Bryce interjected. “It might be best if you start from the beginning, Thea, then Esme can explain what’s been going on in the hells.”

“I mean, I already told you most of it.” I shrugged. “Our plan was working. I set up the perfect hand and bet big, which made Malvoch bet the elixir. But he cheated. So, I panicked and cheated harder.”

“You’re sure he didn't just get lucky?” Esme asked.

“Yeah, I'm sure. But I couldn’t exactly call him out without admitting what I was doing.”

“How exactly were you cheating?” Bryce asked.

“A magician never tells her secrets.” I grinned back at her.

“She uses a barely visible illusion to mark the cards,” Esme explained, like a jerk. “It’s subtle enough that nobody notices her casting, and it’s basically invisible. I can’t even tell and I know what to look for.”

“They don’t account for that sort of thing?”

“We bought an herbal concoction from a witch that blocked the magical sensors,” Esme said. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was more than enough to stop them from picking up the minor illusion spell. Besides, Thea is pretty unassuming, or she used to be. Now, she’s leaking enough power to make one of the princes blush.”

“With the herbs going, I just needed to mark the cards as they came up and throw out false tells while I made bad bets. It was a good plan.”

“Except for the part where it didn’t work,” Bryce smirked. As if her plans always worked.

“But it did work, because I got the elixir.” I stuck my tongue out at her.

“You actually got it?” Esme seemed to perk up.

“Of course I did. You have met me before, right? I’m awesome.”

“What elixir?” Bryce asked.

“More like lucky,” Esme shook her head. “It’s an elixir of lesser immortality. Which can stop a mortal from aging.”

“Or if you give it to an immortal,” I added. “Then it can cure any illness or disease.”

“And you have an immortal you need to cure of something?” Bryce asked, and Esme shot me a look over the question.

“It’s okay, we can trust her,” I said, before explaining. “It’s Lilith’s daughter, and before you ask, no. We don’t know who the father is, and she refuses to tell me, no matter how many times I ask.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s asleep and won’t wake up,” Esme answered. “We don’t know what’s wrong exactly, but we don’t need to know for the elixir to work.”

“Seems fair,” Bryce said. “So, what happened next?” She had clearly switched into her information gathering mode, which meant she was planning something.

“A short interrogation from an angry lich, followed by loud accusations from angry demons, and then I was summoned to the mortal plane before I could explain myself. After that, I killed the summoner and fucked an elf.” I smiled at Bryce and she just rolled her eyes before turning back to Esme.

“How much of that matches what you knew?” She asked.

“I mean, Thea has always had a thing for elves,” Esme shrugged. “I think it’s the ears.” We both laughed as Bryce blushed and had to stop herself from covering her exposed ear.

I had convinced her to put her hair half-up in braids a while back, which helped to frame her face and put what few piercings she had on full display. It was one of my better ideas.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Bryce glared.

“No, it’s not, but who are you exactly?” Esme asked, but continued before I could answer. “Thea vouched for you, but her judgement is clearly being impaired. You’ve pumped so much mana into the girl that she’s about to explode, and she just let you do that to her. It’s not healthy, and Thea knows it, but she’s so mana drunk that she doesn’t care.”

“Thea, is that true?” Bryce asked.

“I don’t know, maybe?” I half-answered. “It’s not like it matters. I need to keep you safe, and after I saw Ithnaa fighting in Elysia… Bryce, I was completely outmatched and now she’s sleeping on the ship. So what if I feel a little bloated? It’s a small price to pay if it means I can protect everybody.” I felt Bryce attempt to lower the amount of mana coming from the pact, but I immediately rejected the request. “I’m sorry, Bryce, but if I’m not powerful enough to deter people like Ithnaa, then there’s nothing stopping them from killing us.”

“You can’t protect any of us if you’re dead,” Bryce pleaded. “Please Thea, we need to lower the mana until we know how much is safe. Just give me some time to figure it out.”

“It’s probably not going to kill me, but fine,” I conceded. “Only because you let us go to the resort, and I expect you to make this up to me.” I sent the request to go back down to twenty percent, and Bryce accepted it with a smile.

“Deal.”

The mana started draining, and I felt better immediately. I was worried about the loss of power, but I had been feeling really bloated over the last couple of weeks. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but it hadn’t gone away or gotten better, which was probably worth being at least a little concerned over. I definitely would’ve brought it up to Bryce if it had gone on for too much longer. Probably.

“Now, will you tell us your side of the story?” Bryce asked.

“Okay, fine,” Esme said. “I was waiting outside the casino while Thea was inside. When she didn’t come back, I got worried and carefully went in to investigate. I asked around and turned up a million different theories. Some people said Vurdex killed you, other people said you teleported away, but one man was sitting near enough that he saw the whole thing.”

“But he didn’t mention that he caught Thea cheating?” Bryce asked.

“No, he just said there was a disagreement,” Esme explained. “We had a plan in case the magical sensors went off, and I just assumed that was what happened. But once I realized you were summoned somewhere, I started researching who could have known your name.”

“She didn’t know my name,” I interrupted. “She just fucked up while trying to summon Lilith.”

“Did she have a death wish? Why in the hells was she trying to summon Lilith?”

“Knowledge of the lower planes is hard to come by,” Bryce answered. “Ava probably didn’t know many other names, and besides, she needed somebody powerful to accomplish what she wanted.”

“Are all mortals that stupid?”

“Mostly.” I shrugged. “Did anybody turn up who could have known my name?”

“A few of your siblings, but not much beyond that. I actually managed to track down Suriel and was talking to him when I got Bryce’s message.”

“No way,” I beamed. “How is he?” I hadn’t talked to Suriel since right before dad died. He was one of the few people who actually bothered to visit me after I fell.

“He’s… doing well enough.” The way she said that made it seem like he wasn’t doing well at all.

“I’ll have to visit him next time I’m in Hades.”

“He’s not in Hades, not anymore.” Esme frowned.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, ladies,” Doctor Phaylex interrupted. “But it seems as though the conversation has moved beyond confirming Miss Esme’s temperament. And if you’d still like me to perform the procedure, then I’d like to get it underway so that I can join my team on the planet’s surface.”

“What procedure might that be?” Esme asked.

“There was a minor mishap when creating your new body,” Bryce explained. “Nothing major, and certainly not anything permanent.”

Esme looked down at herself for the first time since she was resurrected. “Thea, what the fuck?”