The Immortal Game

by Talia Rothschild

  “I believe so,” Kostas said. “Let’s backtrack farther along this path, feeling for hidden openings. I think I can work us back around to where we were.”

  With no better options, the group split—Iyana, Braxtus, and Demitri trailing their hands along one side of the tunnel, Galene and Kostas along the other. Iyana’s fingers slid along the smooth stone, ungiving as she swam back through the shafts where Kostas directed them.

  Just as she debated suggesting they turn around again, Galene’s hand vanished into a wall. Without much discussion, they went through.

  The shafts here looked exactly the same as the ones they’d just been traversing. Iyana swallowed her disappointment and resumed testing the walls.

  They found several more hidden shafts and passed through most of them, trusting Kostas’s decisions. It was unsettling, traveling through seemingly solid stone.

  “I’m looking for a specific shaft,” he explained. “It takes a sharp left, then splits into three directions. If we find it I can lead us back to the start of the maze.”

  “How are we supposed to find it?” Braxtus pressed his fists over his eyes. “We’ve been moving through walls that we hadn’t before. We could be in completely different tunnels now.”

  Iyana silently agreed with him.

  “I’ve been doing it deliberately,” Kostas assured him. “I have a good idea where we are. We’re moving back toward the entrance.”

  A muscle in Demitri’s jaw twitched. “We’re supposed to just trust your sense of direction? Does being God of Games somehow enhance that?”

  “Keeping things straight is definitely an attribute of a good game player.” Galene leapt to his defense. “Have some trust in someone other than yourself for once, Demitri.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

  Kostas cut off Galene’s answer. “She means we all have different strengths, and smashing people with swords isn’t currently the most useful one.”

  Iyana saw Demitri’s temper flare and caught his arm. “Demitri—” He shook her off.

  “Well, your strength was supposed to be with water, right?” He turned on Galene. “We’re underwater, and you’ve been useless for the last three days.”

  She growled.

  “She saved us from Charybdis, Demitri…,” Iyana moaned.

  “I’m hungry,” Braxtus muttered.

  “We’re all hungry!” Demitri and Galene fired back together.

  Braxtus threw his hands up. “I’m just saying we’re running low on time, too—” The others began arguing on top of each other.

  A surge of anger and frustration rose in Iyana as her friends bickered. We don’t need this right now. She turned and swam several feet away for some space.

  She paused. A short distance down the shaft on her right, it made a clear, deliberate cut to the left.

  Maybe this is the one Kostas was talking about. The one that splits into three.

  She glanced around at her friends, whose frustrations were mounting in volume. She wouldn’t go far; just enough to see if this was it. It was easy enough to come back.

  She kicked into the passageway.

  The tunnels were all so similar it was hard to tell, but she thought this one looked familiar. The walls seemed to open up, giving her a little more space as she traveled. Confidence growing, she allowed herself a smile as she turned the corner.

  Then came to a stop, heart sinking. This shaft split not three times, but four.

  Tartarus take you, Daedalus. Your trickery is going to get us killed. She turned around and froze.

  A dead end.

  “It’s just an illusion,” she reassured herself, ignoring her pounding heart. “I came through this way.” Swimming forward, she stretched a hand in front of her.

  It pressed into solid stone.

  Her stomach twisted into a knot. She hit it again. And again.

  Panic rose higher with every strike on the barrier. Her throat constricted—her breathing grew shallow. She threw herself to the right, ramming her shoulder into the other wall, then launched off it to cross to the opposite side, crashing into that, too. Why did I ever leave my friends? I might never see them again! I might die here!

  The thought was terrifying enough to unstick her throat. “Demitri! Galene!” She automatically reached for her wind to carry her voice, but nothing responded. The first sob escaped her. Would they even hear her underwater, through a wall? She struck her fist against the wall again. “Help, please help!”

  She cast an anguished look over her shoulder at the branch-off of four passageways, but immediately discarded that thought. If she moved from where she was, she most certainly would never find her friends again. Maybe, just maybe, the wall would disappear after some time. Maybe all the walls rotated from being an illusion to solid to nonexistent … but in that case they’d never find their way out. The thought made Iyana’s head spin, and another sob burst from her lips.

  No one had seen her slip away. They would have no idea which direction she’d gone. Still, on the off chance they would hear her, she called again and again between her sobs.

  “Demitri! Please help. Please.” Her words trailed into whispers, and she clamped her arms around herself. Her tears mingled with the water around her.

  Why did I ever think I could do this alone?

  “Iyana!”

  Her head snapped up at the muffled cry.

  “Iyana, where are you?”

  Hope seared through her chest. She threw herself against the wall and pounded again, terrified she’d lose this opportunity. “Braxtus!” Her voice cracked with the force of her cry. “Braxtus, I’m here! Can you hear me?”

  “Iyana!” This time it was Galene’s voice, and her heart took flight. She was close, very close. Muffled by the wall, but definitely there. “Hang on, we’ll find a way to you! Keep shouting!”

  “I’m here! Can you get through? Oh, thank Gaia—I’m right here!” She continued smacking the wall.

  “We might be able to get to her if we go down this shaft!” She heard Kostas’s urgent voice.

  The panic resurfaced. “Don’t leave me!”

  “We’re not going to leave you! Iyana, do you understand me? We’re coming for you!” This was Demitri.

  “Yes, yes, I trust you!”

  “Iyana, keep shouting!” Braxtus’s voice suddenly seemed to come from the right wall. She moved over to it.

  “I’m here! Can you hear me? Braxtus, don’t lose the others, either!”

  “Shout louder!” His voice came from even farther down the wall.

  “Braxtus!” she bellowed. “I’m not kidding, don’t lose them—”

  But suddenly he came barreling through the wall, into one of the four shafts ahead of her. He looked around frantically, brown eyes wide with alarm, and an enormous flood of relief crashed over Iyana. She launched herself at him. “Braxtus!”

  He caught her in a hug, shaking. Still hysterical, she sobbed into his shoulder, letting his warmth flood through her. He just held her, seemingly unable to speak.

  “Braxtus?” Galene’s voice was strained and still muffled by the wall. “Get back out here now!”

  Holding Iyana all the tighter, Braxtus pulled her back through the illusion.

  “Iyana!” Demitri grabbed her shoulder. Reluctantly, she let her arms slide free of Braxtus, turning to Demitri. But before she could embrace him, he gripped her upper arms and held her back, fury alight in his eyes.

  “How dare you scare me like that?”

  Iyana squeezed her eyes shut, still shaky. “I’m sorry. I thought this was … and the wall…” She trailed off, not bothering to make her story clearer. Nothing had been worth that risk.

  “You constantly getting into trouble makes everything so much harder. First the taraxippi, then the sirens, now this!” His hands tightened around her arms, and she gasped.

  “Demitri!” Galene growled.

  Demitri ignored her, eyes burning into Iyana’s. “You cannot
handle these things alone. This is why I came, Iyana!”

  Something in her chest crumpled. “I’m sorry. I know, I’m sorry, Demitri—”

  “What are you doing?” Braxtus knocked one of Demitri’s arms away from Iyana, and she jumped, looking at him. Oh no. This will only escalate things. She raised her hands to pacify Demitri, but he ignored her, turning slowly to Braxtus.

  Galene took Iyana’s shoulders and pulled her away from the two gods. They both tensed for a fight.

  “She was terrified!” Braxtus seethed.

  “Well, since you seemed to have covered the comfort part already, I thought I’d get to the root of the problem.” Demitri’s eyes flashed his warning. Iyana’s heart thundered.

  “The problem?” Braxtus swelled in outrage. “So Iyana’s a burden?”

  “I never said that.”

  “That’s how you act.”

  Demitri pushed off the wall, getting in Braxtus’s face. “Everything I do is to protect the goddess I love. What are you trying to do here? Prove yourself a hero?” Demitri cocked his head, blue eyes scorching. “You’re a little late—Iyana didn’t see anything in you. She chose me.”

  Heat rushed through Iyana, a mixture of humiliation, guilt, and shock.

  Braxtus went white with rage, hands balling into fists. “Furies take you, Demitri.”

  “Hey, let it go!” Kostas gripped Braxtus’s arm. Braxtus snarled, trying to yank free, but Kostas gave him a rough shake. “I said let it go!”

  Demitri’s hand shot out and grasped Braxtus’s tunic. “You need to back off, Braxtus.”

  Braxtus glared wordlessly at Demitri, refusing to look in Iyana’s direction.

  Iyana still trembled, but she pulled out of Galene’s grip, swimming between the two. “Demitri,” she murmured, placing a hand on his chest. “It’s all right.”

  His eyes slid to hers, and he released Braxtus’s tunic. Snorting, he put his arm around her, pulling her close as he turned his back on Braxtus. She didn’t dare look behind her, but heard Braxtus swim to put some distance between them.

  23

  KOSTAS

  The rest of the day was just as miserable. Hunger gnawed at Kostas’s insides, the chill prevailed, and his head spun with thoughts. What made it all worse, though, were the angry and depressed emotions of everyone else pressing on him. It was an effort to push it all aside and focus on the labyrinth.

  The map he’d been forming in his head had been ripped to shreds with his new understanding of walls materializing. Slowly, he began piecing potential new maps together, but there were too many possibilities and variables for him to have any surety. The only consistent thing about the labyrinth was its inconsistency. Illusions continually existed in places that contradicted everything he remembered. No matter which direction they went, the shafts looked the same—as if the entire labyrinth flipped around to confuse them.

  The puzzle was maddening, and he had no leads. Rather than attempt to lead the group back to the beginning, he began studying everything about where they wandered, trying to lock down the rules of the walls.

  “‘The only way out is the least likely route,’” he muttered to himself, running fingers through his hair absently. “What are we missing?” No one responded, used to him talking to himself.

  They swam in silence, emotions tight like a bow string. Auras were all dark grays and blues, the only accents flashes of red. When the anger flared, Kostas’s headache grew worse.

  He watched from the corner of his eye as Galene swam with her arm around Iyana, comforting her. Guilt, confusion, and sorrow seeped from Iyana. Galene was compassionate and sensitive, but anger flared in her, too, just as it did in Braxtus and Demitri.

  He rubbed his temple and turned his thoughts back to the riddle, back to everything they’d tried and all the things they hadn’t.

  “What if we mark the passages we travel down?” he suggested.

  The others thought it was a brilliant plan, and so Demitri drew his hunting knife and chiseled into the smooth stone wall. Just a small nick in the perfect structure was all he could manage. He did it about four times before the labyrinth seemed to catch on. Fear snuck back into the group as every single passage they turned into already had that nick, that tiny flaw; passages they most certainly had never been down, as well as passages they hadn’t seen since they’d first entered.

  “I don’t understand this!” Kostas exclaimed, unable to contain his anger for a moment. “Honestly, I think it has a brain.”

  “We all feel the same way. We don’t need it constantly dredged up,” Demitri said.

  “Kostas,” Galene muttered, “it’s been about a week since we entered the sea. What if Anyss catches up?”

  Kostas rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. We just need to keep going.”

  Galene tugged the end of her braid, distracting him slightly. Her expression was thoughtful, her aura clearer than it had been all day.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked as Demitri struck onward, Braxtus and Iyana following.

  “‘The only way out is the least likely route,’” she recited. “We’re in a labyrinth at the bottom of the sea. Where would we go to be in a worse place than where we already are?”

  Kostas met her eyes, feeling as if their minds were working together. The least likely route, he thought. So, somewhere we wouldn’t want to go, yes, but somewhere we wouldn’t think of going, either. Something clicked and his eyes settled on the floor. Deeper.

  “Galene, you’re amazing,” he breathed.

  “What did I do?” she asked, amusement and hope coloring her aura.

  He just smiled at her and dove.

  “Hey,” Braxtus called back, “what are you doing?”

  Kostas didn’t answer, mind racing. “The walls are illusions,” he told Galene as he reached the floor. “We’ve been trying routes that we’d normally stay away from—places that make us afraid, but it hasn’t been enough.”

  Galene gasped and he looked to see her eyes light up. She’d come to the same conclusion. Kostas reached down. His fingers met more cold stone. He frowned.

  “Not all the walls are illusions,” Galene said. She kicked her feet up, then began swimming forward, testing out the floor as she went. Kostas turned and went the other way, toward their group.

  “Galene, don’t go too far!” Iyana shouted.

  “What are you doing?” Braxtus demanded.

  Neither of them replied. The stone stayed solid, and he was about to rethink their idea when one of his hands vanished through the floor.

  His heart leapt. “Look!”

  Galene was by his side in an instant, staring down at where his hand had been. She looked at him, eyes shining.

  The others crowded around him.

  “‘The only way out is the least likely route.’” Demitri shook his head. “We were swimming, so we hardly ever touched the floor.”

  “An illusion.” Braxtus rubbed his beard in disbelief. “Another illusion.”

  Kostas was rather disappointed in himself for taking so long to think of it. “It’s the last place we’d think to travel in a labyrinth at the bottom of the Aegean Sea.”

  “You’re a genius.” Galene grinned, grabbing his arm.

  A smile sprang onto his face.

  “Do you really think this is it?” Iyana breathed. “I mean, it won’t just be another tangle of passages and dead ends?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Demitri looked around once, then without further hesitation, dove past Kostas and Galene through the floor.

  Hope seared through Kostas’s chest. He was the first to follow.

  The tunnel was pitch-black, smaller, and slimy. It was no labyrinth.

  Kostas let out a breath, thrilled to be clear of the chilling, sinister maze. He stretched his hands out and touched the slippery, round walls of the tunnel on either side.

  He heard a groan behind him and looked to see Braxtus’s aura orange with nerves, quickly mounting to panic. Kostas offere
d a pat on the shoulder.

  “We’re making progress. We’ll be out of here in no time.”

  His words didn’t seem to help much, but Braxtus wrestled his fear to a dull amber aura.

  “All right, let’s go.” Demitri took off through the tunnel in the lead, and Kostas looked back to make sure the others followed. They used the close walls to push and kick off, propelling themselves forward.

  The tunnel wound around, twisting until Kostas had no sense of which direction they were facing. Soon, though, the tunnel took to a steady incline.

  “I feel the open sea!” Galene called. “Hurry, we’re close!”

  They kicked faster. The tunnel became steeper until they swam almost straight up a vertical shaft.

  There was a soft thwack, and Kostas knew Demitri had surfaced into vegetation. “We made it!” Demitri called, sounding delighted.

  Kostas shot up toward a gentle light, launching out of the tunnel and tangling in long, silky seaweed. He turned to offer a hand to help Galene out, eyes drifting to the new scene around them.

  They had emerged beneath a giant dome of coral. Sunlight peeked through small holes everywhere, shining in rainbow hues, and colorful fish weaved in and out of the beautiful living shelter. Anyone traveling above the coral would have no idea of the space below, and no way to enter if they did.

  Braxtus breathed relief, pushing past to kick out of the plants. Almost immediately, though, Kostas felt his discomfort resurge. “Still trapped.”

  Iyana followed, laughing as Demitri grabbed her hand and towed her along.

  Galene started ripping up some seaweed. “I am so hungry.”

  Kostas joined her, smiling as she caught his eye. “We’re going to make it.”

  She just stuffed some of the seaweed in her mouth and started chewing. He laughed, thoroughly enjoying watching the happiness spread from her face to her aura.

  Braxtus made his way over, sighing deeply as he settled beside them. Galene handed him some seaweed, which he took without the slightest complaint, wolfing it down. The three of them sat in silence as they chewed, eating their fill.

  Kostas watched them both.