The safe house materialized around them like a half-remembered dream. Tink hit the floor on their hands and knees, retching. The second teleportation had been worse than the first. Jax had pushed harder, moved faster, carried more people across a greater distance. The strain showed on everyone's faces. Alexander was pale as paper. Lindsay's Man-eating Croc had retreated into dormancy, too drained to maintain its form. Even Jacky looked unsteady, her spiked bat hanging loose in her grip.
Only Jax seemed unaffected, though Tink noticed the tremor in his hands as he released his hold on the team.
"Everyone accounted for?" Kali's voice cut through the disorientation.
A chorus of groans and muttered affirmatives.
"Good." Kali turned to Joseph, who still held Jinx suspended in his chains. The fox daemon hung limply, her mahna almost completely drained, her eyes glazed with exhaustion. "Put her down. Gently. We need her conscious."
Joseph lowered Jinx to the floor but kept the chains wrapped tight. The daemon stirred, blinking slowly, her gaze focusing on the faces surrounding her.
"Back to your little hideout," Jinx murmured. "How cozy. I don't suppose you'd consider letting me go? Professional courtesy between enemies?"
"No." Kali crouched in front of her, the daemonic chainsaw resting across her knees. "You're going to give us exact coordinates. Latitude. Longitude. Depth. Everything Jax needs to reach the Oubliette."
Jinx's laugh was weak but genuine. "And why would I do that? You're going to kill me anyway."
"Maybe... Maybe not." Kali's eyes were cold. "But there are worse things than death, little fox. I've been doing this a long time. I know how to make a daemon suffer in ways you can't imagine. Ways that make your magji shard shattering look like a mercy."
"Kali." Alexander's voice was uncertain. "Maybe..."
"Stay out of this." Kali didn't look away from Jinx. "This daemon helped seal Zoey. Helped plan the attack on Luminaurora. Helped build an army that's killed dozens of our people." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I'm not feeling particularly merciful."
Jinx studied Kali's face for a long moment. Whatever she saw there made her ears flatten against her skull.
"Fine," the fox daemon said quietly. "I'll give you what you want. But it won't matter. Your teleporter will die the moment he arrives. The pressure at that depth..."
"Let me worry about that." Jax stepped forward, his scarred face set with determination. "Just tell me where to go."
The coordinates were precise. 11.3493° N, 142.1996° E. Opponent's Deep. The deepest known point in the planet's oceans. 10,935 meters below the surface, where the pressure exceeded 1,000 atmospheres and the temperature hovered just above freezing. No human had ever reached that depth unprotected. No human ever could.
"You understand what you're asking," Lindsay said, her voice tight. "The moment you materialize, your body will experience pressure equivalent to fifty jumbo jets stacked on top of you. Your lungs will collapse. Your blood vessels will rupture. Your..."
"I know." Jax's voice was patient. "I've thought about this. Planned for it, even." He met her eyes. "Luna and I talked about scenarios like this. Situations where teleportation could go places no one else could reach, but at a cost." He smiled slightly. "She always said I was too willing to throw myself into danger. Guess she was right."
"There has to be another way," Tink insisted. "Some kind of protection spell. A barrier. Something to..."
"There isn't time." Jax shook his head. "Poison will realize what happened soon. She'll come for us, for Jinx, for revenge. We need that Oubliette before she has a chance to regroup." He looked around the room, meeting each pair of eyes in turn. "This is why I'm here. This is what I can do that none of you can. Let me do it."
Silence fell over the safe house. Tink wanted to argue, wanted to scream that this wasn't fair, that they couldn't just let him die. But the words wouldn't come. Because Jax was right. There was no other way.
"How will you find it?" Joseph asked quietly. "The trench is vast. The Oubliette is small. Even if you survive the initial teleportation..."
"I won't be searching." Jax pulled something from his pocket, a small crystal that pulsed with faint light. "Tracking tool. Keyed to daemonic artifacts. Luna gave it to me before I left." He held it up, and the crystal's glow intensified slightly, pointing toward where Jinx lay bound on the floor. "It can sense the Oubliette's signature. Once I'm close enough, it'll guide me right to it."
"And getting back?" Kali's voice was rough.
"Teleportation doesn't care about pressure or depth. The moment I have the Oubliette, I jump back here." Jax's smile was thin. "The damage will already be done by then, but I should have enough time to complete the return trip. After that..." He shrugged. "After that, it's in your hands."
Tink felt tears burning in their eyes. This man, this stranger who had joined their mission barely days ago, was about to die for someone he'd never met. For Zoey. For hope.
"Thank you," Tink whispered. "I don't… I can't…"
Jax reached out and ruffled Tink's hair, a surprisingly gentle gesture from such a large man. "Your owner saved a lot of people, from what I hear. Fought for folks who couldn't fight for themselves. That's worth dying for." His green eyes were warm. "You make sure she knows that when she wakes up, yeah? Tell her Jax from the Wanderers says hi."
Tink nodded, unable to speak. Jax straightened, rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck. The air around him began to shimmer as he gathered his mahna.
"Coordinates locked," he muttered to himself. "Eleven kilometers straight down. Grab the box. Jump back." He took a deep breath. "Simple."
"Jax." Kali's voice stopped him. The A-Grade magjistar stood rigid, her expression unreadable. "Luna's going to give me an earful for letting you do this."
"Probably." Jax grinned. "Tell her I'm sorry. And tell her…" He paused, something flickering across his face. "Tell her she was right about the sunset thing. She'll know what it means."
Kali nodded once. Jax closed his eyes. The world twisted around him. And he was gone.
…
Eleven kilometers below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, reality screamed.
Jax materialized in darkness so absolute that his eyes couldn't process it. There was no light here. No sound except the roar of pressure against his eardrums. No sensation except pain. Immediate, overwhelming, catastrophic pain as his body began to collapse in on itself. His lungs compressed to a fraction of their normal size. His blood vessels ruptured in cascading waves. His bones creaked and groaned under forces they were never designed to withstand.
He had seconds. Maybe less. The tracking crystal in his hand flared brilliant white, cutting through the darkness like a blade. There, twenty meters to his left, resting on the ocean floor amid a scatter of sediment and deep-sea detritus. A small black box that seemed to swallow the crystal's light. The Oubliette.
Jax moved. His body screamed in protest, muscles tearing, joints dislocating, but he forced himself forward through sheer will. The pressure was crushing him from every direction, flattening him, destroying him piece by piece. Ten meters. Blood filled his mouth. His vision was going dark around the edges, not from lack of light, but from his brain beginning to shut down.
Five meters. His hand closed around the Oubliette. It was warm. Even here, in the coldest depths of the ocean, the artifact radiated heat like a living thing. Jax smiled through bloody teeth. Got you. He reached for his mahna, for the familiar twist of space that would carry him home. The teleportation formed around him, sluggish, fighting against the damage to his body and mind, but forming nonetheless. The world twisted.
…
The safe house erupted into chaos as Jax reappeared. He materialized in the center of the room, collapsed on his knees, the Oubliette clutched to his chest like a drowning man holding a lifeline. His body was… wrong. Twisted. Compressed in ways that human anatomy was never meant to compress. Blood poured from his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth. His skin had taken on a mottled purple-black coloring where vessels had burst beneath the surface.
"JAX!" Tink screamed, rushing forward.
"Got it," Jax whispered, his voice a wet gurgle. He held up the Oubliette with shaking hands. "Got… her…"
Kali caught the artifact as Jax's strength finally gave out. The teleporter collapsed sideways, his breathing shallow and ragged, his eyes unfocused.
"Healer!" Alexander shouted. "We need a healer!"
"There's no healing this." Lindsay's voice was hollow. She knelt beside Jax, her hands hovering uselessly over his ruined body. "The damage is too extensive. His organs are… everything is…"
"Hey." Jax's voice was barely audible. Tink crouched beside him, tears streaming down their face. "Hey, little fairie. Don't… don't cry. This is… this is good. This is…"
"You did it," Tink sobbed. "You brought her back. You..."
"Tell Luna…" Jax's hand found Tink's, his grip weak but present. "Tell her… sunset… and that I… I…" His hand went limp. His chest stopped moving. Jax, second-in-command of the Wanderers, was gone.
______________________________________________
Poison felt the disturbance the moment she entered her compound. Something was wrong. The air felt different. Her guards were mobilizing, streaming toward the upper floors with weapons drawn and spells ready.
"Tell me what's going on," she snapped at the nearest human soldier.
"Intruders, ma'am. They breached your quarters approximately twenty minutes ago. By the time we responded, they were already gone."
"Gone where?"
"Unknown. They had a teleporter."
Poison's blood ran cold. She sprinted through the corridors, her weakened body screaming in protest. The fight with Reeves had drained her more than she wanted to admit. She needed rest, needed time to recover, needed… Her quarters were destroyed. The reinforced door lay in shredded pieces. Inside, her belongings had been ransacked, searched, violated by enemy hands.
But that wasn't what made her stop breathing. Jinx was gone. The small white fox who had been her most loyal companion, her portal network coordinator, her friend. She was nowhere to be found. And if they had Jinx… Poison's hand flew to her communication crystal. "Webb! The Oubliette! Check on the Oubliette NOW!"
A pause. Then Webb's voice, confused and uncertain: "Ma'am, the Oubliette is at the bottom of the Pariana Depths. There's no way anyone could..."
"CHECK IT!"
Another pause, longer this time. Poison could hear Webb coordinating with their scouts, their trackers, the daemons who monitored the artifact's location through bound magji. When his voice returned, it was hollow with disbelief.
"It's gone. The tracking signature… it just vanished. About five minutes ago. Ma'am, I don't understand how..."
Poison crushed the crystal in her fist. They had it. Somehow, impossibly, those magjistars had reached the bottom of the ocean and retrieved the one thing she had been certain was beyond anyone's grasp. Zoey Winters was no longer contained. Or rather, she was still contained, but now she was in enemy hands. Hands that would do everything in their power to free her. Poison stood in the ruins of her quarters, her body exhausted, her mahna depleted, her carefully constructed plans crumbling around her.
"Jinx," she whispered. "What did they do to you?"
There was no answer. There never would be. Poison turned and walked out of the room, her emerald eyes burning with cold fury. If they wanted a war, she would give them one.