"Your mother," I muse. "Atropos herself, I'm guessing?"

Bass blushes, then he nods once. "I don't like to brag," he says. "So Mom and I, we agree that I'm better off staying out of the spotlight. Most people don't even know I exist."

"Yeah, no kidding," Joe says. He scratches his head. "I mean, I knew the gods had all manner of kids with each other - some seriously tangled incestuous relationships in there."

Bass shudders at the thought. "I try not to think about how toxic the fruit of Zeus' family tree must be."

I look around at the thickets as they continue to lurk around on the fringes of the circle they've made. A circle that, unless I miss my guess (and I really hope I do), is growing steadily smaller with each passing second. Please, God, don't tell me this Bass guy is just here to lure us into a trap.

Nikki and I exchange glances - I think she's noticed the same thing. "What do we do?" she mouths.

I return my gaze to Bass. "How long until we can get back on subject?" I ask. "The Church of Atropos. Who are they, and how do we stop them?"

"First things first." Bass sticks his hand under his jacket, roots around, and pulls out a small, tightly-folded piece of paper. "You need to get back to the land of the living, as they say. And in order to do that, you, my friends, are gonna need a map."

I take the map as Bass holds it out. Joe and Nikki lean over me to get a look at it as well - for which Nikki's forced to shine the light from her phone onto the paper. The moonbow above us is just too faint to illuminate this thing. "Wow," Joe says. "This map - was it drawn by a drunk monkey or twelve?"

"If it helps," Bass says tersely, "we're here." He reaches down and pokes the map with one finger, next to a large circle, which I'm guessing is the lake we're standing next to. "And you wanna get here," he adds, pointing to a spot on the other side of the paper, separated from this lake by a huge tangle of spilled spaghetti.

"That'll be fun," I say. "Now can you tell your plant friends to let us out so we can get started on this journey?"

Bass looks at his plant friends warily. "They're circling the wagons, as you might say." He pushes the map into my hands, then adds, "Let the thickets take you where you need to go."

"Where's that?" I ask, consulting the map as if I expect it to form a shape other than pasta freaking salad.

"Across the lake," Bass says quickly. "Now get out of here! The hellhounds are coming back!"

Nikki grabs my hand and leads me into the nearest clump of thicket. Oh God, this stuff is never going to get out of my hair. At least it's not carnivorous, of that I'm grateful.

As Joe gets a hold of his own chunk of thicket, I look down at the map and see that, sure enough, crossing the lake will lead us to a path we need to take. So I clear my throat and say, "Okay, uh, guys, take us across the lake, please?"

The thickets are eager to obey my orders, it seems. They lift us into the air and carry us across the water. Somewhere in the distance, I hear Bass draw a sword with a distinctive loud schwing as a new horde of hellhounds bursts onto the sand below us.

Damn. We got out just in time, didn't we?

Of course, we still know next to nothing about this damned Church of Atropos...but that's why we're going on a long journey, I guess. To find out why we're on this cockamamie mission (as Sheriff Corbin might have said) to begin with.