Hurry.
When we stepped inside, Pele welcomed us gladly and led us to the center, where moonlight from the ceiling came down and settled over her.
"All right. First I'll explain how we break the seal."
It was a matter of carving life itself away, and still she was perfectly at ease, as if the business belonged to someone else. Bitter. A pity. But I did not let it show. Clumsy sympathy would only have slighted her.
Hong Yumin and Dan Miryu kept their usual bearing. Mi Soryeong wore a sad smile. Dan Chuyeon was barely holding a sigh in check, and San-gun sat neatly in his tiger form.
"To release the seal, the four of us just have to move as one and punch a hole—me, the Child of Nature, the Child of Heaven, and Life's Guardian."
To make it easy to follow, Pele sent the ground surging up, and a solid wall rose before us.
"Think of this wall as the seal. We're going to open a hole straight through the middle."
She drove an opening into the center. It gaped clear through to the far side, and still the wall did not fall.
"Once there's a hole, the rest is easy. A seal is precision work. Trouble in a single place, and the whole of it starts to shake."
Pele lifted her fist to the hole and drove it in with everything she had. Thud.Crack. Fractures spidered out from the center. The wall shuddered, and dirt flew.
"A gap is all it takes. Breaking it isn't hard—we don't even have to break it. It'll come down on its own, like a sandcastle."
Crrrk. The moment she drew her fist back, the cracks spread like a contagion. Drought split the wall; front and back caved in, and then the whole of it came crashing down. What had been a wall became rock beneath our feet. The ground shifted and swallowed the stone, and the floor was clean again, as if it had never been fouled.
"Well? Simple, isn't it?"
Pele clapped and smiled, radiant, certain that no plan could be more perfect.
Hong Yumin raised a hand.
"Mm. Go on."
"Pele. As you know, the seal that binds you is solid."
She could not see it, but she felt the seal occupying the whole of this space—hard, smooth, like a skin of iron.
"I know. A seal that will not so much as tremble, no matter how much divine power you pour into it."
Pele agreed. The memory of the nights she had spent trying to break the thing, whatever it was made of, still set her teeth on edge.
"But the power of Life has already weakened it a great deal. Enough that I can speak like this, and use my strength."
She jerked her chin toward me.
"If the Child of Man had not come, I never would have woken at all."
"That is what I question."
Hong Yumin looked at me.
"You said you woke because you sensed danger from that one. But is this seal truly the sort of thing that would let you wake over nothing more than danger?"
"……Hmm."
This was an object that had sealed a god and stolen even her self. No one had touched the seal. No special condition had been met. And she had woken from his mere existence? It did not make sense.
"He may be Chaos walking the world and making a fool of it, but that and the seal are separate matters. I believe some device must be at work."
Pele pressed her fingers to her brow.
"……Nnngh. You have a point. Of course it's suspicious. But no matter how I turn it over, I woke because I felt threatened by the Child of Man."
"How great a threat?"
"Survival."
The look she turned on me left me awkward in my own skin.
"It felt as if something terrible would happen if I didn't wake right then. The seal, all the rest of it—none of that mattered."
Pele shivered, as if the moment had come back to her.
"Ugh. Unpleasant just to think about. That revulsion, the first time I saw him……."
"Pele……."
I looked at her with a shade of reproach. Talk about me like that, and what did that make me? The eyes on me were cold. Dan Miryu shook his head.
"What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything."
"……Mmm."
He didn't believe me. It was unfair.
"What talent would I even have for a thing like that? If I did, the seal would already be open."
"……You are not wrong."
Those were not the eyes of a man who thought I was right. I wished he would put the suspicion away.
"Say something in my defense, would you?"
Pele shrugged.
"Or maybe the condition for my waking is simply that someone comes to the ruins. He'd just be a special case."
"It must be exactly that."
I seized on it at once.
"I am a virtuous phantom thief, and an ordinary one. I am a danger to no one. Isn't that so?!"
I looked around. Surely they could not deny me this.
"A bumper crop of bullshit."
Hong Yumin picked at her ear as if she had heard something unfit for it.
"Ahahaha……."
Mi Soryeong looked away.
"Uh……."
"Krrng. Krrng."
San-gun lifted a forepaw and blocked Dan Chuyeon's view, growling as if to say a person ought not look at such a thing.
"What are we to do about the seal?"
Dan Miryu ignored me.
"Why!"
"Shut your mouth and go squat in that corner."
Hong Yumin smacked the back of my head and pointed. I went to the corner and hunched down. Pele spared me a brief look of pity, then took it back.
"Well, what matters is that I woke, isn't it? If I hadn't, we never would have met."
At last their eyes left me. Yes—a little support.
"More importantly, let's focus on breaking the seal."
"Understood."
Hong Yumin nodded.
"You mean to break the seal by concentrating power. Is that right?"
"Right. If the three of you regulate Life and lend that strength to me, there's nothing we can't break."
"But does it truly demand we pay with your life?"
Hong Yumin was uneasy. Pele was Hawaii itself. The more she was wounded, the further Hawaii would collapse—and they meant to shave away her life? There was no telling what horror might follow.
"Please reconsider. I am in favor of concentrating our power. That price alone, I cannot accept."
Pele smiled at the kindness of their worry for her. Every eye was sincere.
How had only children like these gathered? Qualities to rival Maui, that peerless hero. A few of them still kept a darkness, yes—but that darkness would ripen them and make them adults.
"There is nothing to reconsider. It's already decided."
"And yet—!"
"You know we don't have the strength. To undo this seal, half measures won't do."
Instinct whispered. It was now or never. Miss this moment, and there would be no next. The seal seemed, somehow, to be offering a chance, and she could not refuse a chance set so plainly before her eyes.
"Think of it the other way. A price of that size is what it takes to undo the seal."
Hong Yumin opened her mouth, then closed it. A right path existed, and still Pele had made her own resolve out of regard for their circumstances. Was it truly right to tell her she must not?
"……It is an honor to have met you."
Hong Yumin bowed her head. It was the greatest respect she could offer a god.
Pele rubbed her nose.
"Enough with the honor. Let's begin."
She explained how they would match one another.
"Life stands in front of me. The two of you stand behind and make the formation. Then you concentrate your power on me."
"That's all?"
Dan Chuyeon tilted his head. It did not look as difficult as he had expected.
"Yeah. Easier than the work we do every day. Holding on will be the hard part."
"Holding on?"
Hong Yumin took up the words.
"The powers will collide. The aftermath will reach us."
"……That will be rough."
"It will. Even I cannot say what is going to happen."
A little practice followed, and a little adjustment. When they judged they had it well enough in hand, they gathered and formed up.
"I will begin."
Dan Miryu opened the necklace. Infinite power spread its wings. Pele rose into the air.
Rrrrrumble. The cavern shuddered—worse than when the Saintess had thrashed in her madness.
"Be careful. It may come down."
Once the unsealing began, she would not be able to mind their surroundings. If they were unlucky, they might be buried alive on this very spot, beyond anyone's help.
"Do not worry. If trouble comes, I will get you out."
I thumped the small of my crouched back and went to stand beside Mi Soryeong and San-gun.
"I'm counting on you."
"Just leave it to me."
Reassured, Pele closed her eyes.
A storm roared. A transparent membrane, invisible until that moment, appeared with terrible clarity around the goddess and bound her tight as a mummy. It faded and sharpened, again and again. It was not hard to guess that this was the seal, trembling.
Dan Miryu drew a breath and guided Life. Lines stretched out from it and joined Hong Yumin and Dan Chuyeon.
"Kh—!"
"Do not try to control it. Our part is to send the power on to Pele."
"Yes!"
Life gathered at the center of the three. The light, wavering and unstable, soon stood rigid, then surged upward as a pillar. The pillar of Life shot past Pele and punched through the ceiling itself.
KRAAANG! The cavern gave way. It could not hold.
"KRAAAAAH!!!"
The Heavenly Tiger roared. The grandeur of heaven burst from him and wrapped the whole cavern; swarms of white light gathered in every corner, and the collapse stopped.
"Krrrrrr……."
San-gun groaned. His claws came out and dug into the floor. A stopgap. Even his stand had a limit, and they had to finish inside it.
"Focus! Fall here, and you die!"
"Yes!"
"Hold on a little longer!"
The three poured sweat. They would not last long over there, either.
"You have to see it through."
The goddess inside the pillar did not answer. She was still, as if deep in quiet meditation—and yet the shock of this moment was coming from her.
Thump. Thump. A heartbeat. It was not a sound born of Pele. It came from below. Thunder rolled.
"This is……?"
Mi Soryeong's face went white. The floor split, and something boiled and bubbled up through the cracks.
"Magma."
San-gun's barrier held it down, but this was the fire of nature.
If they failed—
Rrrrrumble!!!Kwaa. Kwaa. The volcano erupted.