The Eighth Sea

Chapter 21

Wren

Now that Wren actually had to use his brain, he was feeling slightly more awake. Thoughts of Hector didn't feel real anymore, and he was starting to grow numb to the pain.

Cleo led them down a long hallway, its walls lined with intricate tapestries and paintings of mythical creatures and ancient battles. Wren could have sworn that one depicted his original battle with the Kraken. The floor turned to marble tiles that sent echoes with every footstep.

As they progressed, the hallway branched into several smaller corridors, each adorned with a different theme. In one, the ceiling was painted with a sky full of stars that twinkled and shifted as though they were alive. In another, the walls were made of shimmering crystals that caught the light and cast kaleidoscopic patterns on the floor. This one was familiar to Wren—he remembered traversing these hallways and becoming entranced by the colours on the floor the first time he visited Scylla.

Unsurprisingly to Wren (and upsettingly to Pierre, who wanted to watch the stars and name a constellation "Charlotte"), they turned down the crystal hallway. The air was filled with a sweet, enchanting scent that Wren couldn't quite place. It reminded him of the purple and white flowers that grew on the plains he grew up on, but it was more ethereal, more complex.

As they ventured deeper in the ethereal crystal hallway, the group couldn't help but marvel at the dazzling patterns dancing on the floor beneath their feet. Pierre, ever the idiot, tried multiple times to scoop up a few of the crystals, only for them to dissipate into a million tiny shards that danced away, leaving behind a faint trail of glittering stardust. Wren had to admit, as horrible as Scylla was, she sure knew how to make a place look beautiful.

They reached the end of the hallway. It was a dead end. Wren was confused; this didn't happen last time.

"You tricked us, damn sphinx!" Pierre shouted, shaking his fist. "Fight me!"

"No, you idiot! Don't fight the sphinx!" Francis said, slapping Pierre.

Throughout the commotion, Wren could have sworn that he was seeing faces in the crystal projections. His mother. His best friend from the original Jolly Rancher who drowned so many years ago. Hector. When he reached out to touch it, the whole hallway morphed into a throne room, and at the end of the vast hallway Wren instinctively knew a woman awaited him, her face one which Wren instantly knew he would recognise even though it had been many years since he had last seen her.

Wren was afraid of looking up at the woman sitting on the throne. Scylla had taken everything from him, and he knew that his anger would blind him.

An audible gasp from the crew (other than Levi) finally made him look up. It was not Scylla sitting on the throne, her dark red hair floating about her head as it once did, crystal ball in hand. Her red eyes with their catlike pupils were not the ones that looked back at him.

Instead, it was Hector's eyes. Those blue eyes that Wren lost himself in at least once a day.

And it wasn't Scylla on the throne, it was Hector.

"Hector? You're Scylla?" Pierre asked, dumbstruck.

"Hector? What are you even talking about, Pierre?" Levi questioned.

Scylla? Hector? (Wren didn't know what to call the person sitting on the throne) laughed menacingly, sounding just like Hector, and Wren recoiled at the very sound. The witch gloated, "You never realised that I was with you the whole time."

"But... Hector! What have you done with him, witch?" Francis shouted, drawing their sword.

"What have I done with him? My dear Francis, I am Hector," the witch responded.