by Laynie Bynum
“Do something!” Dryas screamed. He kicked me against the shin, and I fell forward, the pain in my arm quadrupling.
I snapped my fingers right before my arm broke, and time rewound. My body jerked back up in its original position, and Dryas moved backward until right before he managed to grab hold of my arm.
The rewind stopped, time snapping back into place. I rolled to the left immediately, out of his grip.
Dryas started at me, surprised. Confusion was written all over his features. “What the…”
Before he could finish the sentence, I smashed my fist into his face, channeling all my strength.
He flinched, but he seemed more confused by the time warp that had just happened than taken aback by me being able to hit him.
He squared his jaw and set his eyes on me, the dangerous look of a predator right before they jumped their prey. He moved his right fist, but I ducked, at the exact same moment when his left fist collided with my ribs.
Stars danced in front of my eyes and I wobbled a bit, struggling to stay on my feet. He hit me again, at the exact same spot, and the world exploded in agony.
I snapped the fingers on my other hand. Dryas pulled his arm back for the third hit, this time with his left fist, which was about to collide with my face. While time slowed down for him, I ducked underneath, away from his attack, moved his right arm so it would instead pulverize his nose, and positioned his left arm to splinter his ribs upon impact.
Rotating out of harm’s way, I snapped my fingers again, and time jumped back to its normal pace.
Dryas’ right hand hit him straight in the nose, while the other collided with his ribs.
He moaned in pain, blood gushing out of his nose. His skin turned paler with the second. I wasn’t sure if it was from pain or something else.
Before he could make another move, I stomped my foot into his shin, the same move he had done on me earlier. I may not be a good fighter, but I was a quick learner.
He fell forward onto his knee, gaping at me. “What did you… what did you do?” he stammered, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
“Did you have enough? Can we call it quits now?” I panted, sweat dripping down my forehead and from my back. The two hits into my ribs had probably cracked something, because the world was still a burning field of pain, and all I wanted to do was head to an infirmary, if this place even had one, and faint on a bed.
“No,” Dryas grumbled. In a second, he was up again, too fast for me to react. He grabbed me by the waist, lifted me half a meter above the ground, and then slammed me on to the surface.
I screamed, pain washing over me like a flood. Breathing became near impossible, everything was hot, soaring anguish.
Snapping my fingers, time rewound until right before Dryas grabbed me, and this time, I was ready, kicking him in the chest before he could finish his move.
“But you were… you were on the floor.” Dryas held on to his chest, struggling to breathe, like I had seconds ago, in the other timeline, now forever erased except in Dryas’ memory.
The way my powers worked, the other timeline still existed in the minds of those who had lived through it; it simply hadn’t happened yet. Like a movie you are watching, everything rewound, but for Dryas, one second ago, I had been lying on the floor in agony, and the other, he was trying to reach me moments before hurling me to the ground. Time got warped, it was no longer one-dimensional.
The MMCA agents were confused by it at first, too. The first five or six times Mica and I had tried to escape their clutches, the time warping had confused them to the point where they could barely function.
Dryas didn’t take long to recover from my latest kick. He reached for my arm, but I created a portal and jumped through it, reappearing on the other side of the Arena.
The son of Ares blinked at me in surprise. He no longer made any attempt to move. Instead, he stayed frozen to the spot, looking at the distance between us as if it simply wasn’t possible.
“What… what are you?”
“Are you ready to call it quits yet?” I yelled over to him. “If the fight is over, then we can talk.”
“And let you win?” The same dark cloud I had witnessed on his features during lunch, crossed over Dryas’ features again. “Didn’t think so.”
He charged at me, like a bull at a red cloth, but stopped a few meters in front of me. Narrowing his eyes at me, he launched his next attack.
Like dancers, we dodged, hit, smashed each other. I rewound time, or slowed it down, and then the dance began again. Close-combat, Dryas getting more shots in that I could, but when the damage was too significant, I turned it back.
My back was drenched in sweat, and I felt exhaustion rolling over me. Never before had I used my powers this often in a row, and I wondered if perhaps at one moment, they would simply stop working, my energy deflated.
Dryas kicked my legs from under me, and I fell to the floor. I tried to snap my fingers, but barely had the energy to move anymore.
The warrior too, seemed exhausted. He dragged himself on top of me, pinning me down to the ground.
“Surrender.” He spat out the word like a curse. Cuts and bruises were covering his face, and I imagined I didn’t look much better. I hadn’t been able to turn back time for every hit I received, and I certainly felt as if my whole body was black and blue.
“You surrender,” I said, struggling to get each word out. “I kicked your butt.”
A crooked smile appeared on Dryas’ features. He lifted his hand—for a moment, I thought he was going to give me the final punch across the face, that would no doubt make me keel over, but instead, he brushed the hair away from his face, and then put his hand back down on the floor, next to my neck.
“Let’s call it even,” he said as he rolled off me, and on to the floor right next to me.
The left side of my body touched his right side, but I was too drained to move. I probably wouldn’t be able to move for at least a week. My legs and arms felt hollow.
We both did nothing but breathe in deeply for at least five minutes. The first few breaths made my lungs burn, but after a while, the sensation slowed down, and I felt slightly better. Slightly.
“You can manipulate time?” was the first question Dryas asked when he had recovered enough. He rolled on his side, looking at me.
I nodded, still not able to form any words.
“Go back in time, go forward in time, slow time down? Make it go faster too?”
Again, I nodded my head.
“How far back can you go?”
“Not too far.” Each word was a struggle. I tasted blood on my lip. If an enemy army had bombarded me, I would probably still be in better shape. “Bad things happen.”
“If you go too far back?”
“Yes.” I didn’t want to elaborate, and luckily, Dryas didn’t press for more answers on that topic.
“It gives you a good edge in a fight,” Dryas admitted. “It’s… unpredictable.” To my surprise, he gave me a crooked smile. “All this time, and no one’s ever beaten me in the Arena, or even made it to a break-even. Then you come along, looking all puny and with arms like twigs, and I think this is going to be a piece of cake…”
“What…” I leaned on my elbows, sitting up a little. “What did you think my powers were, when you invited me to fight you?”
“No idea. From the looks of you, I thought you were one of the children of Athena—all brain, no muscle—or that pesky offspring of Apollo or the muses. But when you started talking, I thought maybe I was wrong, that you were something different…” Dryas regarded me with a new-found respect. “Turns out I was right.”
“Do you think… I’m one of you? A child of Ares?” The hope in my tone was almost sickening. How desperate was I to belong with someone, anyone, that I would rather belong with the likes of Dryas and his half-siblings, then be all on my own?
“Honestly, I don’t know. You have the fighting spirit, but your powers are very different. No
ne of us have any powers remotely similar to what you can do.” Dryas shrugged his shoulders.
I groaned and leaned my head back on the ground. The lava was still sputtering only a few meters away. The red glow of the Asphodel Meadows no longer seemed so threatening, but it didn’t offer comfort either. Who was I kidding? I had zero affinity with the god of war, zero desire to fight except when threatened or forced to. I didn’t belong with Dryas and his half-siblings either.
“Why do they call it the Meadows anyway?” I asked, trying to change the subject. The pain I felt at, once again, being no step further to uncovering who I really was, or to finding my real home, was more poignant than any of the physical pain I had endured thus far.
“If you go beyond the Arena, it’s a dark, dank and sunless place,” Dryas said. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard; I’ve never actually ventured beyond, and I don’t recommend it either. Getting lost in Hades is just about the worst fate imaginable. Beyond the Arena, the spirits of the dead weep and wail in an ash-filled meadow, and flit about like shadows or dreams.”
“Yikes. I did hear a few wails when we began fighting…” I listened to the silence, occasionally pierced by a disembodied cry. “I didn’t pay attention to it during our fight but that’s pretty eerie.”
“It is,” Dryas agreed. “I think it was originally called the ash-filled meadow, but the reference to the asphodel was a translation error that occurred over time.”
“Yeah, it certainly doesn’t seem flowery here. And the ash is from the lava?” I guessed.
Dryas shrugged. “I presume so. Like a volcano.”
It was strange how, ever since we stopped fighting, we had managed to hold a mostly civil conversation. Dryas seemed to realize this at the same time I did, because he flinched at the exact same time I did.
Dryas got up, and then offered me a hand. I took his outstretched hand, and he pulled me up as if I was as light as a feather.
“You’re a decent fighter,” he admitted surly, “but with your powers, you could become an excellent fighter. All you need is training.”
I stared at my feet, not sure what to say.
“In the Arena, in one-on-one combat, your powers will probably give you the upper hand, but in the Trials, when everyone is fighting everyone, you won’t have the same advantage. You can’t fight ten opponents relying on your powers alone,” Dryas continued. “You barely have any muscles in those scrawny arms.”
“Hey, no need to offend me.” I inspected my arms—granted, they were a little thin, but I didn’t need Mr. Big and Strong here to point that out.
“I’m just trying to be honest.” Dryas moved in front of me, barely leaving more than five inches between us. “I don’t think you’re a child of the god of war, but I do think your powers could be a real asset to our team. I want you on our team.”
My mouth dropped to the floor. “You… want me on your team?” I could scarcely believe my ears.
It wasn’t the same as finding out where I really belonged, but compared to Keres, the leader of Mica’s little gang who had flat-out kicked me out because I didn’t belong with them, or Charon who was convinced the demi-gods of the underworld always worked solo, it was better than I could have hoped for, and I certainly hadn’t expected it from Dryas.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
I smiled from ear to ear. “I’m in.”
“But there’s one caveat,” Dryas said. “You need to train, just like the rest of us. We’re pretty strict about it. I may pretend that we’re winning the Trials by a long shot, but it’s not always like that, and we need every advantage we can get. Especially since there’s probably going to be a shuffle in the factions coming up.”
“What shuffle?”
“I don’t have more details yet,” he said quickly. “What’s important is that you get training, like everyone else. Then you can get to know the others, you can learn to work with us as a team, which is very important during the Trials. Can you commit to that? We didn’t become winners by sitting around all day doing nothing.”
At this point, I would’ve agreed to fly to the moon and back if that was what it took. A place to belong. To find myself. Even if it wasn’t my real family, it was better than nothing, especially after Mica had basically admitted she would ditch me for her new family, if push came to shove.
At the same time, though, the words of Orpheus haunted me. How the factions shouldn’t be divided but united. Now I was joining the strongest faction, another asset for them to use to dominate the others…
But didn’t the great philosophers of the world always say that change came from the inside out?
“So, what do you say, time jumper?” Dryas asked while he extended a hand toward me. “Do we have a deal?”
I looked at his bloodied face, his left eye slowly turning black, his torn lip and the bruise on his right cheek, and then lowered my gaze to his hand.
Change starts from the inside out. If I joined Dryas’ faction, and convinced him—and hopefully Amphion too, since he was one of the biggest issues, according to Orpheus—to work together with the other teams instead of thwarting each other, then it might be enough to start a revolution.
“Yes,” I said as I shook Dryas’ hand, hoping that I hadn’t just made a deal with the devil.
Chapter Eight
Dryas and I left the Arena through the gaping, flaming mouth of the skull. I was half-leaning on Dryas, who had his arm around me to support me. At least he looked worse for wear as well, limping with his right leg. The flames didn’t scorch us, and I didn’t even feel the heat. Seconds later, we were standing back in the hallway of the prison, staring at that blank, ordinary-looking door leading straight to the underworld.
“Are you okay?” Mica rushed toward me. “You’ve been in there for over an hour!”
I smiled at her, tasting blood in my mouth. “Peachy.”
The guard who had warned me not to step into the Arena, looked slightly impressed. “At least he looks pretty bad too.”
“Give me your arm,” the other guard, a no-nonsense type, ordered. Before I could move, he snatched my arm and put the band back on. The other guard, the talkative one, did the same to Dryas.
“Now, I suggest you go straight to the infirmary,” the talkative guard said. “You look like you both got crushed by a steamroller.”
“At least we had a breakeven,” I told Mica.
She looked as pale as Bram Stoker’s Dracula himself. “You… had a tie?”
“Yep.” I stepped toward her and instantly groaned, the ache reverberating through my entire body.
“Better go to the infirmary first,” Dryas said.
“Okay. You don’t have to come,” I told Mica. “I’ll see you back in our cell.”
Her expression was unreadable, maybe because of the pain flooding over me in waves, but her lips were a thin line, her skin matching the color of porcelain.
I couldn’t say anything else, because Dryas was already dragging me along in the direction of the infirmary. “I take it…” I breathed in deep. “… That you have to come here often?”
“Quite,” Dryas replied. He had slung my right arm over his shoulder and supported me around the waist with his left arm. He certainly recovered faster than I did, but maybe that was due to practice. “After the Trials, half of us are brought in there. Thankfully, we have some pretty good healers. Apollo has healing powers, and some of his children inherited those.”
After turning the corner into another hallway, I spotted the sign of a snake on a staff: the infirmary. We stumbled into the room, and immediately a MMCA nurse, and another inmate with a red-and-white cap on, rushed toward us. I supposed the cap indicated they were healers, and therefore had special privileges.
“What in the gods’ names happened?” the girl asked. She wore one of the coolest hairdos I had ever seen: her hair was short, a mix of bright red and grey, and one side of it was shaven, while the other was longer. Her left ear had eight piercings, and she also
had a nose stud.
She walked straight toward me, inspecting my face.
“We had a fight in the Arena.” Dryas helped ease me down on one of the doctor’s chairs in the infirmary.
I grimaced from pain but tried not to yelp.
“You look horrible too,” the girl said. “But she gets treatment first.”
“Fine, I’ll just wait here.” Dryas sat down on a regular chair next to mine. “Where’s the other healer?”
“Working on your friend, Amphion,” the girl said evenly. “Looks like he and Eris got into another one of their arguments.”
The girl addressed me now. “My name is Ava. I’m here to heal you, but it’s going to hurt like hell first. You have two broken ribs, and that’s just the damage I can see right now. I hope you’re tough.”
“Tough as nails, that one,” Dryas said while smiling at me.
Our fight had brought us closer, and although I still considered him an arrogant jerk, I didn’t mind that much now. There was a vulnerable side to him too; scars from the past that had made him the person he was today.
“Are you ready?” Ava asked me while ignoring him. She looked me straight into the eyes. “Dryas, hold her in place.”
I gulped. Was it going to be that bad? Taking a deep breath, I nodded at Ava that I was ready and clammed my teeth on top of each other, preparing for the pain.
A second later, I screamed and writhed, slinging my arms in every direction I could in order to break free.
Ava’s hands hovered over my body, her face a mask of concentration, with tiny dots of sweat clinging to her forehead. But the power oozing from her hands into my body, resetting my broken ribs, fast-healing my bruises, was even more agonizing than my ordeal in the Arena itself.
Finally, it was over, and I collapsed onto the chair, every ounce of energy drained from my body. I could sleep for a hundred years, like Sleeping Beauty from the fairytale.
“Your turn now,” Ava said as she turned to Dryas. “And I don’t want to see you again until after the Trials, got it?
“It’s not like I enjoy coming here.” Dryas gritted his teeth and balled his hands into fists. While Ava worked her magic on him, the knuckles of his hands turned stark white, but he didn’t make another sound.
