“You sure?” Phi asked.
“Incoming!” Don yelled.
We looked up to see another huge rock hurtling toward us on a more direct path. I waited until I was sure of the projectile’s arc and then swam in the opposite direction as fast as I could. The ground shook fiercely when the boulder crashed into the river downstream.
“Don? Phi?” I called over my shoulder.
No response came. My throat wrenched. I called again, taking a brief glance over my shoulder at the gigante stalking ever closer with clouds skimming across its shoulders. He towered over us at a distance of nearly one hundred paces or more. His massive head eclipsed the sun, casting the entire Caldron valley into the darkness that would’ve originally served to signal the end of the War Games exercise.
Don and Phi emerged from around the second boulder, which had lodged in the middle of the river and acted like a dam. The river water rose slowly behind it.
“Phi,” Don said. “You go back and tell Pontus what we’re dealing with.”
“Pfft. I’m not leaving you!” Phi said. “I’m at your side. Always.”
“But someone needs to tell Pontus …”
“Stop arguing. You both go,” I said.
“And leave you to fight this unbeatable foe?” Don countered.
“I do have a few friends I brought with me.” I raised my hands. White and yellow energy strings encircled my fists. “Crackle and Pop.”
“Show off,” Don said. “I must get on to that throne when we get back to campus.”
“We all do,” Phi said.
“You pull the Hurler post out of the water, so it’s easier to access,” I said. “I’ll hold him off.” I sighed, and looked into the sky “C’mon, Metis. Where are you?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The water had risen high enough to make it easier for me to could climb out of the water on to the northern bank of the river. Don and Phi dove under water to retrieve the Hurler post. I tried to summon the energy around my hands. Storm clouds roiled just above my palms, but no energy formed due to my weakened state.
Don and Phi hoisted the post out of the water. I rushed to wrap my hands around the pulsing blue iron column. It vibrated beneath my palms and fingertips. A sinister, angry surge of energy shot through me. Twisting. Slashing. Pain engulfed my body. My arms trembled. My head flopped backward, and then I fell over on my side.
Don hopped out of the water and knelt beside me. “You alright? Please be all right. What in Tartarus did you just do?”
Words failed to form. Agony reigned. The enemy’s footsteps quaked the ground beneath with each step toward us. Don stripped my breastplate off to give me air. I gasped and coughed.
“Oh my Gaia! Look at your body!” Phi exclaimed. “What is that darkness creeping up your back and torso?”
Pain streaked through me again, but I couldn’t raise my head. Not yet.
Don rolled me over on my back. I winced as if he’d sliced me open with a dagger. A familiar, yet still foreign ache crept through me, spider-webbing from an epicenter point on my lower back. Where the dagger struck me at Othrys Hall. Where Campe’s stinger struck me in Tartarus.
“I can’t see,” I coughed out. “What is it?”
“Looks like Erebus ink invading your ichor blood vessels. Spreading slowly away from a point on your lower back that is radiating in a dull, murky golden-gray. What did you just do with the Hurler post? Instead of teleporting, you did what?”
“I accepted the cosmic dust powered energy from the post. Or rather siphoned it off.”
“Can you stand?”
I rose to my feet slowly, still reeling from the effects of the post’s energy surge. I peered at Don. “You said ‘Please be all right.’ So you do care about me?”
“No, I don’t,” Don responded. “I just don’t want anyone dying on my watch.”
“But you said please.”
“No I didn’t,” Don said with a straight face. “That was Phi.”
Amphitrite jabbed Don in the arm with her elbow and raised her eyebrows.
“We don’t have much time. We need to find out if Demeter, Hera, and Tia are safe. Metis needs to return safely. And you and Phi need to go get Pontus and tell him the situation. I can fend this thing off but not for long.”
“And leave you here by yourself?” Don asked. “You could barely move just a moment ago. And what if that wound gets worse?”
“I’m the only one with offensive deity powers from the throne, and I just received an infusion of energy,” I said. “Watch this.”
I stood straight, wincing from the pain in my back. Agonizing needle pricks flared on my palms and forearms. Energy strings swirled into a sphere of crackling energy around my closed fists. I sized up the monster, cocked my arm back, and hurled a ball of energized matter at the gigante.
A sparkling trail followed the rotating mass on its flight. It sounded like the sky was cracking in half and then … BOOM! Impact. Thunder rolled across the heavens. The mass crashed into the beast’s shoulder, causing it to stumble backward several steps.
“Great Gaia!” Phi said. “I gotta get me some of that deity magic.”
“All right, Zeus,” Don began. “You hold him off until we bring back reinforcements.”
I nodded. That last salvo had taken a lot out of me though. I conjured another energy mass and threw it. Direct hit. Right in the leg. The beast stumbled, dropping to one knee. The ground shook so fiercely that I fell over onto my side.
The monster stood again, ripped another chunk of earth and stone from a nearby cliff, and then raised his arm. Out of nowhere Metis in eagle form swooped into the picture, flying straight at the beast.
“Nooooo!” I screamed. My heart beat rapidly several times, and then stopped beating altogether for a moment and a half, before roaring back to life with a gigantic thud. I’d held my breath. But once I began breathing again, I couldn’t inhale enough.
She clearly sought to distract the monster. It worked. He dropped the boulder, the thud lifting me off the ground. Another energy ball amassed in my aching palm, growing ever stronger. But I couldn’t get a clean shot. Metis kept flying all around the beast, annoying him. She must have heard my thoughts, because she began to fly around the monster’s head. Faster and faster. So fast that it seemed like one solid line ringed its crown.
I took my chance. The energy in my hand straightened into a crackling javelin of sorts. Champion spear thrower that I was, I took several steps and launched my missile. My gaze trailed its flight … almost in slow motion. It struck the beast in the midsection with a thundering explosion. The monster doubled over so abruptly that the beast’s head knocked into Metis.
“Oh smite! Nooo!” My throat closed. “Metis!” I croaked out as my insides kinked and turned over. What had I done? Metis fell toward the ground, tumbling, spinning. She failed to move as I called her name again and again. And again.
Anger and ache crept across my back. With every step I took forward, the pain traveled farther up my back and around my side. I stumbled and fell to my right knee. I grabbed my lower back with my right hand. Excruciating pain exploded in a sunburst, tentacles stretching in all directions. I fell to my side and closed my eyes to summon the strength to crawl to her.
The pain reached the center of my back and wrapped around my spine. My body heat spiked. Anger roiled within. I used it as a crutch on which to stand. I took one step, and then another until I reached Metis, still in bird form. She hadn’t even been able to shift back. My mind careened back to Shapeshifting class last term where Professor Phoebe had said: “…You can shift into a living object for as long as you need to, or want to, including trees and flowers … as long as the object is living. But—” she paused, tapping the tips of her fingers together, “just remember this, when you shift into something, whether it be inanimate or beast, your composition is never as strong as the original, and thus you will be a weaker form of it. If something
happens and you die as the object you shifted to … you can’t shift back.”
Metis was doomed. My eyes stung. Pain tightened around my spine and twisted. I worked my body into odd contortions to rid myself of the parasite strangling my spine.
When I thought I could endure no more pain, my body went rigid, back arched, arms wrenched wide. My entire body pulsed with the needle pricks of energy. My temperature rose so hot so fast that my armor melted off me to the ground. The energy that vibrated just above my skin, expanded into a sphere around me. Larger and larger, it grew. I had no control.
Shade showed up in front of me. “What in Tartarus is happening to you?”
Aphro looked at me with open-mouthed horror and stepped backward.
I opened my mouth to yell, but nothing came out. I could barely mouth the words, “Help me.”
The more I stared at Metis laying helpless on the ground, the further the sphere expanded. Buzzing. Hissing. Crackling. I still couldn’t move a muscle.
The gigante hoisted another huge rock overhead. I was certain it intended to end me. With a snap of its arm, the rock hurtled toward us. I couldn’t even warn Shade or Aphro. Shade turned around just in time to jump and push Aphro out of the way.
The boulder drew closer and closer. I could do nothing so I shut my eyes and steeled myself for the impact, sure Death would claim me. Feeling nothing except the prickling, bone numbing pain of the energy current, I slowly opened my eyes. Nothing in front of me changed.
Did the rock miss me?
Don popped up in front of my face. “How did you do that?”
On the ground all around me lay the fragments of the boulder. Pebbles, really.
From high in the sky, Pontus leapt from a chariot and dropped down to the ground in grand fashion. He indented the ground upon landing.
“Who did this to you?” Pontus growled as he inspected the energy dome around me. “What are we fighting here?”
Overhead, a flying chariot whooshed by, led by two enormous lions aggressively pawing the air. The tall woman in the chariot’s basket twirled a long whip. The chariot flew directly toward the stone monster. The woman snapped her whip and struck the beast twice in the chest, causing it to stumble backward. She swerved to narrowly miss the gigante’s head then doubled back around, striking it in the neck before peeling off in an evasive maneuver.
I knew exactly who that was. Rhea.
Don explained to Pontus what I did and what happened to the boulder.
“Great Gaia!” Pontus exclaimed, looking at the rock shards on the ground. “All right, now how do you turn it off?”
I tried to speak. Nothing came out. I felt weaker and weaker and in a matter of moments the dome simply absorbed back into me and I fell to the ground. “Metis! Get up …” is all I could utter.
“Zeus!” a voice called from behind. “I’m right here.”
I turned to see Metis standing next to Hera, Tia, and Meter. Metis knelt down beside me. I sighed with such relief, it felt like misting rain was falling within me. I fell into her embrace. Metis was safe.
But then … who was the eagle that helped distract the gigante?
Basil! Smite! He’d sacrificed himself for me. For us.
Metis helped me up to a knee, cradling my face in her hands. Her oval face warmed. I wheeled around back toward the action. Rhea encircled the gigante’s legs again and again, wrapping the long whip around its ankles. The beast tried to take a step and then tumbled forward … falling in our direction.
“Run!” Metis yelled.
Everyone sprinted into the dense Thick. Metis pulled me along as fast as I could travel in my weakened state. The sound of a creaky door advanced slowly through the air. The hair on my neck stood. Dagger points prickled my skin. Wind whistled high above us. The giant’s falling was akin to the bit of time between when I’d once stubbed my toe … and when the pain throbbed.
I skipped a glance over my shoulder. The gigante’s head was right above Metis and me and falling rapidly. I shoved Metis forward into the oncoming trees, turned, conjured the last bit of energy I had, and cast it at the head.
The sky again sounded as if it tore at the seams as the energy spear traveled through the air. Then it connected with the head, cleaving it right down the middle. A massive thunder crack roared across the heavens.
Metis yelled at me, “Jump!”
I planted my foot and launched myself into the air, churning my legs and arms as I sailed. I don’t think I traveled far at all. Tree trunks and branches snapped and cracked behind me. Something hard hit the center of my back, knocking me farther forward. Then the ground shook and a gust of wind pushed through the trees, blowing them sideways, removing my friends from their feet. I winced from the blow to the back of my head.
Metis scrambled to me and rolled me over. “I love it when you do that.”
I wheezed. “Do what?” My vision blurred as consciousness waned.
“That … that lightning-y thing you do.” Her voice became muffled. She sighed and ran her teeth over her lips. “Mmmm …”
It suddenly got very dark like Helios had indeed retired the sun chariot. Or maybe it was my eyelids shutting down.
“Zeus!” Metis yelled. “Stay with me!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Barely able to breathe back in my bungalow, I rolled over on my bed so Headmistress could get a better vantage to inspect my back. The pain had subsided very little. The lower corner of my back still wrenched into a tight ball. At any moment, I thought it would simply collapse on itself like a dying star … and take the rest of me with it. And the base of my spine felt as if someone were wringing it out like a towel.
Rhea poked and prodded, kneading my muscles. I winced through the inspection. I nearly bit a hole through the clump of fabric I’d been clamping down onto.
“It doesn’t seem to be worsening,” Rhea stated. “But it truly concerns me that the Hurler trip back to campus didn’t fix whatever this is.” She looked at Don. “Poseidon tells me that it began after you tried to siphon off the post in the river, yes?”
We both nodded.
Rhea turned a concerned glance to Pontus. “Could the posts be faulty? Tainted? Tampered with—”
“No!” Pontus countered. “I checked them all myself.”
“Ouch!” I yelped as she poked at the epicenter of the agony, my lower right back.
“So this is it, huh? The source …” Rhea spoke, almost to herself. She placed the heel of her hand to my skin. “Zeus, what does it feel like to you?”
“Honestly?” I began, “it feels like cool drizzle on a hot day.”
“All right, good. Does it affect the pain?”
“Not really. Numbs it a little at the point of contact, but the pain is still there.”
“Dammit.” She balled her fists. “That was the strongest power I have. I’m out of ideas. Do you have any clue as to what led to this?” She asked aloud, knowing full well she could’ve probed my mind to retrieve the answer.
“It’s the same place where Campe stung me in Tartarus.”
“Great Gaia!” Rhea stood up. “Why didn’t you tell me that when you first got back? Campe’s venom is a neurotoxin.”
“Her breath too,” Shade said. “Even when she’s not breathing fire.”
I shook my head. “I stopped thinking about it after the wound healed when we escaped that wretched place. Probably why you weren’t able to glean it from my thoughts.”
“Zeus, stand up. Hurry,” Rhea said. “Raise your arms above your head and turn around.”
I scrunched my face as I stood but did as she asked.
From behind me, Rhea said, “I’m going to touch an arm or leg. Afterward, you tell me which I touched.”
I nodded, training my gaze on Metis, who leaned against my desk a few feet away. She covered her mouth with her hand. Her gaze was liquid, with pinched, concerned brows. Everyone else crowded the door from outside the bungalo
w so Rhea had plenty of space to work her magic.
A few moments expired. Rhea said, “Which one did I touch?”
“You went already?”
Metis gasped.
“Oh dear that’s not good,” Rhea exclaimed. “I’ll do it again … now.”
I sighed and tried my best to focus. “Leg?”
“It’s worse than I thought,” Rhea said. “You’re losing feeling in your extremities—”
“But I feel ALL the pain in my back.”
“Yes, but just now I didn’t touch your arm or your leg. I touched your shoulder blade … and you didn’t register it.”
I shot a glance at Metis. She balled her hand into a fist. Those gray eyes didn’t lie. Fear knitted her brows. A liquid thought fell and dampened her finger.
“I’ll consult with Pontus and the Cyclopes on the best course of action for Zeus, among other things pertaining to school and student safety and security,” Rhea said. “For now, however, grab some food and retire to your quarters. We have a busy day tomorrow.”
After our meal the next morning, Metis and I ambled around campus before class. I winced through several sharp jabs of pain in my back. As I massaged the area, two lanky men in white robes with gold trim and a woman with bright purple robes and a tiara speed-walked up the pathway from the massive black entry gates to our school. They knocked on the headmistress’s quarters, waited a moment, and then entered.
“That looks awfully official,” Metis said.
“Let’s camp out in this grove of trees over near the theatre.”
“How’s your back feeling?” Metis asked.
I nodded slowly. “Better. Not perfect. It may never be perfect.”
“Maybe I can help you forget. Just for a little while.”
We moved into the morning’s dense shadows and tree cover, shielded from obvious view. Metis snaked her hand around my waist from the back, dragging her nails down my torso.
I turned a guilty grin toward her and whispered, “Naughty.”
The High Court Page 8
