by Lola StVil
“That’s actually pretty clever,” Pest puts in.
I glare at him, and he shrugs.
“What? It is. Atlas, you are pretty confident that good will always win over bad and Arken knows he’s fighting a losing battle breaking your spirit. He wants to shake things up a bit, make you question everything. He can’t win the physical battle, so now he’s using psychological torment. Because if he can make you question love, he can make you question everything. He’s managed to find the one thing that could actually break you both because this is one thing you can’t be certain you’ll win.”
“So you think Atlas believes in love and I don’t? And that will shake her? You think I don’t love her enough?” Kane snaps.
Pest shakes his head.
“No. I think you love her more than anything. But I also think that deep down, you’re waiting for her to wake up and see your true colors and leave you.”
“What?” I demand. “How can you even—”
Pest cuts me off.
“I’m not saying you will do that, Atlas. For the record, I don’t think you will. But Kane thinks it. And Arken will use that doubt to weaken your bond until you let your guard down so he can win this thing.”
The anger seems to leave Kane in a rush and his shoulders slump.
“Pest’s right,” he says.
“You think I don’t love you? After everything, you still think I don’t love you?” I snap, feeling a rush of pain flood me at his words.
“I guess I still think you’re going to wake up one day and see me for who I really am and realize that you deserve better,” he admits.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I snap. “Kane, I know you and—”
“It’s working already,” Regal says, cutting me off in the middle of my sentence.
“What?” Kane and I snap at him in unison.
“I said it’s working already. We’ve barely heard the mission, and already Arken is in both of your heads, playing with your doubt, but instead of doubting each other you’re doubting yourselves.”
He’s right. It hasn’t taken even ten minutes for us to be dissecting our relationship and questioning our love. Kane turns to face me, and he takes my hands in his.
“It doesn’t matter though,” Kane says. “No matter what happens, I love you, Atlas, and I’ll be there right by your side for as long as you want me there. Arken might be able to make me question things, but he can never, ever make me leave you.”
“It’s not that simple, I’m afraid,” Pest says.
“Why? Surely that proves Kane feels true love for Atlas. If he still thinks she could never love him the way he loves her, yet he stays by her side anyway, surely that’s a testament to true love,” Saudia puts in.
“That’s not how a true love test works,” Pest says. “Of course you have to love each other and be willing to move heaven and earth for the other person, but you also have to be secure in your relationship. You both have to believe that what you have is true love. And if it’s one-sided, it’s not true love.”
Kane looks down at our clasped hands.
“Kane, I’ve seen into the darkest parts of you. I’ve experienced your worst moments, and I’ve seen the atrocities you’re capable of committing. And I love you in spite of those things. If you love me as much as I love you, then I need you to trust me on that. And if you can do that, we can pass Arken’s stupid test and show him that nothing can come between us,” I say.
He looks up and meets my eye, and he smiles at me.
“For you, I can do that. Fuck Arken and his twisted mind games. Let’s show him again that love will always win over hate,” he says.
He wants to believe that. He really does, I can see it in his eyes. I just hope he can really truly believe it deep down in his soul.
“So I guess we’re going to Antarctica then,” Regal says, going to stand up. “I’ll go and collect my healing mixtures.”
“Wait. There’s something else you need to know before you go running off there,” Pest says.
I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach. Why is nothing in this world ever simple? I turn to face Pest as he drops the next bombshell on us.
“Before you reach the apple, you’ll have to cross the Valley of the Damned,” he says. “You won’t be able to teleport directly to the object, and there’s only one way in.”
Kane sighs.
“For once can’t we just have something to find that we can teleport in to, grab, and teleport back out,” he says.
“As little as I think of Arken, I think he’s a bit too clever to make it that easy,” Regal says.
“Yeah, it would be more suspicious if it was too easy,” Langston agrees.
“I know. I was just thinking out loud,” Kane says. “Carry on, Pest. What horrors will we face in the valley?”
“The curse that hangs over the apple is strong. After all, it’s not dark magic per se, it’s the intention in this case rather than the magic itself that is dark. It still has a strong pull, and it attracts dark creatures. I haven’t been able to find a whole lot of information on it, to be honest. Let’s just say no one with any sense goes there, and the apple just isn’t something that attracts the average person.
“Humans avoid the place because of the subzero temperatures and the complete lack of reason for going there, and if any of them get too close, the sinister feel of the land soon pushes them back.”
“So the place is crawling with all kinds of hell creatures?” I say, resigning myself to the fact that we’re in for a battering.
“Actually no,” Pest says. “I mean stay alert; there might be things there that we don’t know about. But the Winter Demon keeps most of them away. Even the hell creatures know better than to cross his path.”
“Wait, you mean the Winter Demon as in the legend? The one who freezes you?” Perry interjects.
“It’s no legend,” Pest says. “The Winter Demon is very real and is actually much worse than all of the legends imply. In the legends, the Winter Demon only goes after those who are bad. It’s more of a folktale than a legend. Parents use it to keep their kids in line—tidy your room, or the Winter Demon will come for you. That kind of thing. In reality, the Winter Demon will take down anybody or anything that crosses his path. He likes solitude, and he doesn’t relish the idea of having visitors. And of course, there’s the fact that Aphrodite charged him with guarding the apple once she found out about Eris’s curse. She didn’t want anyone else to experience the cursed object, and she wanted to get one up on Eris.”
“And let me guess—we can’t just kill him,” I say.
“Exactly,” Pest says. “He’s almost impossible to kill, but you might find a way I suppose. But to kill him would wreak almost as much havoc on the world as Arken would. The Winter Demon is so cold he maintains the temperatures of the region. If he is killed, then the temperature would fly up, and the whole ecosystem would be thrown out of whack.”
“You mean this hell creature is in charge of climate control?” Perry says.
“Not intentionally, but he plays an important part in it. You kill him, and everything heats up. Within days, the world would be below water, and everyone would die. It would be like a couple of hundred years of global warming happening overnight.”
“Okay. So he’s highly dangerous, and he’ll kill us as soon as he looks at us, but we can’t kill him. What gives, Pest?” Kane says irritably.
“There is one thing you can do. The Winter Demon, for all of his power, has one weakness. He is deaf. So if you can blind him, you can pass by him. He has a defense to guard against such a fate though—his eyes are on the inside of his body. The only way to blind him is to use a Phoenix feather to make a mixture. Once you have the mixture, you must find a way to get him to swallow it without getting frozen or outright killed, and without killing him. The mixture will only blind him temporarily, but it should buy you enough time to sneak past him.”
“I want to say Phoenixes are extinct,
but I know you wouldn’t have gone through all of that just to tell us we can’t get a feather,” Langston says.
Her voice is low, and it sounds more like a warning than a question. The team is learning that Pest likes to talk and explain things with dramatic flair—even things that are completely unhelpful at times. Judging by Langston’s tone, if that’s what he’s done here, then he’s going to have a very big problem on his hands.
“You’re correct on both counts,” Pest says. “They are extinct, but I know of a very old witch who lived when they did. And she still makes the odd mixture that uses Phoenix feathers, which leads me to believe she has some left.”
“Great,” I say. “Is she a friend of yours then? Will you ask her to help us?”
Pest snorts down his nose.
“That witch is no friend of mine. Bethan is the most evil witch to ever walk this planet, and convincing her to help you might actually be harder than getting past the Winter Demon.”
A quick call to Sadie meant we knew Bethan’s location. Unlike most of the people and things we have to track down, Bethan makes no attempt to hide. Her house is on a busy street in Venice. We stand outside.
The outside of Bethan’s house is painted a muted pastel pink color. Not what I was expecting from an evil witch, but then nothing seems to ever be what I expect anymore. Her windows are covered with dark wooden shutters which stand open right now.
The house is situated on a canal near a bridge. The occasional gondola floats lazily past. I wrinkle my nose as we stand looking at the house. Considering Venice is meant to be a place for romance, the smell coming from the stagnant water in the canal is anything but romantic. The water has a dirty look to it, green slime floating on its surface, and the smell is like week-old vegetables and dirty diapers.
“Hey, Kane. Watch out; you don’t want to fall in the canal. We wouldn’t want you drowning or anything. You know, because it looks pretty deep,” Perry jokes. “You might freak out if it’s deeper than your waist.”
“I’ll be careful,” Kane says, throwing Perry a look.
I look at him questioningly, and he just shakes his head. “Later,” he mouths to me. I guess this joke is something else I missed when I was taken.
“Right, let’s do this,” I say.
I walk up to Bethan’s door and ring the bell. I hear the echo of its chimes ringing through the house, and then I hear footsteps approaching the door. It opens, and a woman stands there. She is a bit taller than me, and to look at her, she is completely unimposing.
She has blonde hair that sits on her shoulders in a sensible bob. She wears denim shorts and a white vest top. Her skin is smooth and tan. In short, she’s the opposite of what I expected a wicked witch to look like, and I wonder for a moment if Sadie gave me the wrong address.
“Hi. Umm, I’m looking for Bethan,” I say as the woman smiles questioningly at me.
“You’ve found her, Atlas. Why don’t you all come in,” she says.
She turns and glides away from the door. And yes, she actually glides, her feet a couple of inches above the floor. I glance at Kane, and he shrugs.
“Well, are you coming or not?” Bethan asks before she disappears through a door leading off the beige colored hallway.
I shrug and step inside. The team follows. I walk along the light and airy hallway and follow Bethan into the room she entered. There’s nothing to suggest she isn’t just a normal woman. The room is decorated in a subtle yellow color, and the hardwood flooring is dominated by a huge, fluffy black rug.
Bethan sits in a cream leather armchair. She nods at the couch opposite her. I perch on one end, Kane beside me, and Langston on the other side of him. Saudia sits on the arm beside Langston, and Regal takes the arm by me.
“I’ll just stand then, shall I?” Perry grumbles.
Bethan rolls her eyes. She waves her hand, and a crackling sound comes from the empty space beside the couch. I watch, in shock, as a chair that matches her own appears out of thin air.
“Happy now?” she says to Perry.
He nods mutely and sits down. I wish I could do that. Shut him up sometimes, I mean, not make chairs appear out of thin air, although that could be good too.
“So Atlas, what makes you think I am the one you seek?” Bethan asks pleasantly.
Her manner and everything about her is making it hard to believe she’s evil, but Pest and Sadie both made it clear she’s one of the most malevolent witches. Sadie wasn’t even going to send us here until Pest pointed out the other option was us facing the Winter Demon without the mixture we’d need. She relented then, so I guess that puts Bethan somewhere between the Winter Demon and everything else evil in the world on the scale of good vs. evil.
“How do you know my name?” I ask her.
She laughs gently, a musical sound that is infectious, and I feel myself smiling.
“I know more than you think,” she replies mysteriously.
Except why we’re here.
“We need a Phoenix feather,” I say. “And we were told you might be able to help us with one.”
Bethan considers my words and smiles.
“I might be able to do that yes. But first I must know what you plan on doing with it. They’re very dangerous things in the wrong hands.”
I look up and catch Regal’s eye. He looks every bit as confused as I feel. Bethan seems—dare I even think it?—nice. Has she turned over a new leaf? She certainly seems to have. Why would she care what I was planning on doing with the Phoenix feather if she’s evil? Surely she’d be happy to hand it over to someone who was planning to do something destructive with it if that were the case.
I’m still wary enough of her to think that lying is probably a bad idea. She knew my name, and I wonder how much else she knows about why we’re here. This could all be a test to see if I am going to be honest with her. I really have no choice but to trust her with the truth.
“You expect us to believe you know Atlas’s name and not another thing about why we’re here?” Saudia snaps before I can answer.
Bethan smiles her pleasant smile again and turns to Saudia.
“Atlas is the last Seeker. Anyone who knows anything in this world knows her name. I’m sorry if I misled you, but it’s always fun to have people think you know more than they do. It puts them on the back foot, and I enjoy that. Plus, it makes them more likely to be honest.”
She turns back to me.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. But obviously I won’t be able to help you if you don’t answer my questions.”
“Fine,” I say. “You know who I am, so you know I’m tasked with collecting objects.”
Bethan nods. “Yes, but a Phoenix feather isn’t the sort of thing I would expect you to be tasked with finding. It seems almost too easy.”
“We need the feather to make a mixture that will temporarily blind the Winter Demon so we can pass him safely,” I say.
“So, Arken wants the Golden Apple of Discord. Interesting. Why would he want such a thing? For you to be able to deliver it you’d have to break the curse, or you’d die. So it would have no power. Why would Arken want a powerless object?”
I don’t answer. I’m not ready to give that much information away. I shrug.
“I have no idea what goes through Arken’s head,” I say.
It’s true in a sense. I have no idea what motivates anyone to behave the way he does.
“My guess would be he knows that whoever you’re with…”
She stops and nods towards Kane.
“I’m guessing him…is just a silly crush. He thinks this will kill you and end the game. So I must ask you, just out of curiosity—Why do you even want the feather? You’ll be heading for certain death if you fail, sure, but this way, it’s not just death. It’s eternal torture.”
“I’m confident we can pass the test,” I say levelly.
“Interesting,” Bethan says.
She pauses for a moment and then her fa
ce changes.
“You have all of the answers, Seeker. Except for one. Why do you think I will help you? Why do you think someone with my reputation, and I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about me, would want to stop the world from being turned over to chaos and destruction?”
I haven’t heard any of the stories, but the reactions of Pest and Sadie were enough. And now, I see I was wrong when I thought maybe Bethan wasn’t so bad. I try to think of what I can say to make her help us.
“You have it pretty good here, don’t you?” I say. “Living in a beautiful city, coming and going as you please. Confident in your power. Confident you are powerful enough to play with people’s lives and threaten them.”
Bethan raises an eyebrow, and I feel Kane tense up a little beside me as I goad Bethan.
“Now think what will happen if I don’t get the apple. Arken will win the game and chaos will rule. I know you think you’re pretty dangerous, and right now, you are. But imagine a world infested with fire, hell creatures, demons. Do you think they will fear you as the humans do? Do you think they will come to you for help and make sick deals with you like we do now? Because I’m guessing they won’t. You’ll go from being feared, from being powerful, to being just another twisted little creature desperate not to be noticed and harmed. You’ll go from being feared to being laughed at. You’ll be at the bottom of the food chain, and you’ll live in fear. You’ll become what you hate: a powerless, sniveling wreck who can’t do anything except follow their leader. But you’re a clever lady. You know all of that. That’s why I think you’ll help us.”
I’m pretty sure I’ve gone too far. I can feel Bethan’s piercing glare as much as I can see it. It’s like she’s looking into my very soul. I am tensed and ready for a fight when Bethan throws her head back and laughs.
