“Unfortunately, I cannot help you to the vault,” he said. “Zomuri has fortified it with protections that repel gods, because he is paranoid that we want to steal from him, as if we care about human trinkets. No offense, of course.”

“None taken,” Fairy said. “But let me understand—are you saying that the vault is in Celestae?”

“Goodness, no,” Liga said. “Zomuri wants to keep his precious treasure as far away from all of us as possible. Just like he chose to live on earth, he also buried his vault here, although in an even more remote location than the sulfur caverns that he calls home. The vault is beneath what he calls the Lake of Nightmares.”

Sora shivered. That did not sound good.

“Where is this lake?” she asked.

Liga shrugged. “I do not know for sure. Somewhere very cold, I imagine. Gods loathe the cold, so none of us would bother to go there, no matter how glorious the treasure was.”

“Naimo Ice Caves.” Sora gasped. They were glacial underground labyrinths in the southernmost part of Kichona. Both remote and bone-chillingly frigid. “I’m willing to bet that the lake is there.”

The others thought it over, listing other chilly places in Kichona. But after a few minutes, they agreed that Naimo Ice Caves was the most daunting—and the coldest—of the possibilities.

“Assuming that’s where the Lake of Nightmares is,” Broomstick said, “we still have a problem. If the vault is protected against gods and demigods, then how do we have a chance?”

The lines around Liga’s eyes creased again, as if he were barely restraining his laughter.

“What?” Broomstick said.

“We’re not important enough for the gods to worry about,” Fairy said. She turned to Liga for confirmation, although she was surprisingly unperturbed. “Isn’t that right? It’s kind of like what you were saying, that you don’t care about human trinkets.”

“It isn’t that we don’t care about humans,” Liga said. “It’s more that we don’t notice you all that often. For example, how closely have you been paying attention to those ants?” He pointed to a tree on the far side of the grove. Sora couldn’t even see the ants without a hawkeye spell, let alone expend any thought to what they were doing.

“And how worried are you about them stealing your things or ruining your plans?” Liga asked.

Daemon grumbled, but it came out more like an offended growl. “Humans aren’t ants.”

“It’s an imperfect analogy—” Liga began to explain.

“I understand,” Sora said. “There’s a lot going on in the world, as well as in Celestae, I imagine. Our human affairs are small in the grand scheme of it all. But ironically, it helps us if Zomuri didn’t put much thought into protecting his vault from humans. We should head to the ice caves as soon as possible.”

“I can’t go,” Daemon said.