"Keep them restrained," Elrim ordered Squish firmly, eying the ruffians now caught by them. His shadow grew, circling behind him as he stood there, darker shadows becoming blinking eyes that watched them. Caught in the gelatinous cube, they weren't getting out any time soon. He stood in front of them quietly, watching as they twisted and bucked. 

"You're too late!" One of them spat out the words, venom on every bite. 

Elrim's attention remained the same, his expression as unreadable as it had been when the fighting first stopped. Instead of prompting, he waited. He only turned his head when Quill moved away from them, stepping towards their camp. 

"Is that so?" Elrim taunted, watching as one of them smirked, the cocky look in their eye met with cold indifference. He could hear Quill moving behind him, shifting around their camp, stepping a little further along the outskirts, steps muffled as it reverberated off of stones.

"Hey, we have a situation," Quill called out from near their camp, peering behind a rock that they had used as protection against the elements. Bloody, charred remains from their ritual barely hidden from view, at the center, an old humanoid skull. If it wasn't for the fact that one of their books wason the ground in the center, burnt up in a pool of darkened blood, he wouldn't have recognized the ritual. Whenever they had performed it, they hadn't gone this in depth. Emmery had never made a sacrifice either. He'd said that there wasn't a need. 

“What is it?” Athena asked, though she didn’t wait for an answer before rounding the large rock herself, and stopped short at what she saw. Her ears twisted back and her nose wrinkled, perturbed by the stench of blood and smoke, as well as the skull in the middle of… whatever this was. “...what the hell is it?” She repeated. “Some kind of… bloody sacrificial something?” Huh. This sort of thing was entirely new to her – but her sister, Artemis, would probably know what it was.

Too bad Artemis wasn’t there with them for this expedition.

Pallas and Helios remained near their audacious captives while Apollo loped over to his sister. Neither the thieves’ nor Athena’s words boded well. A single glance was all it took for him to toss his head, ears pinned back to his skull. “A ritual – for what?” He spun back around to face the thieves once more, and pawed the ground beneath his hooves. “What did you do?”

But it was too late.

The circle began to glow for just a moment before it practically exploded outwards, surrounding the skull and enveloping it in an ominous red light that briefly obscured it from view. The glowing ball of fire lifted into the air before it coalesced into the eye sockets of an enormous skull, lighting its face with two red-hot coals of fire. “Shit,” Athena shouted, staggering back from the thing before them as her sword swung itself free of its sheath at her side and hovered in front of her, poised and ready to attack. “Here it comes!”

"It's the Skull!" Quill shouted back, reaching for his cleaver as he pulled it from its scabbard. "It's going to be a tough fight, but we've fought it before and won!" It was the only encouragement that he could give as he settled next to Walter, the blade already in his beak. They'd fought this and won twice before. Could they win this for a third time? They kept getting stronger, but when was it going to be that they were pushing their luck too far?

"Don't let it corrupt you with its magic, and keep your head about you. You'll be fine," Elrim answered calmly, shadows growing around him as he heard the muffled screams behind him as Squish constricted around the ruffians, growing in size as it moved. They'd be enveloped before long, and Elrim didn't have any remorse to give them. They'd made their bed, and now they could lay in it.