Elementals 4: The Portal to Kerberos

by Michelle Madow

  Danielle stepped forward, still holding tightly onto the sword. “Repeat the terms of the deal,” she commanded. “To ensure that your oath is legitimate.” She raised the sword, ready to swing it at the nearest dragon. “If you don’t, then I’ll demonstrate that this is the Golden Sword of Athena by slicing your friend here in half. Since you’ve already threatened to kill us, I have nothing to lose if I take him and anyone else I can slice apart down with us, do I?”

  “Stand down.” The leader narrowed his eyes at Danielle, but she remained where she stood. “If this is the Golden Sword of Athena, then I promise on the primordial deities Nyx and Erebus that I and my three companions with me here now will fly you to the top of the mountain, wait for you while you complete your task up there, and then fly you back down to the portal.”

  “And not attack us once we’re back at the portal,” Chris added. “You’ll allow us safely through and will mention to no one that you ever saw us. And you also need to specify that you’ll take us to each location exactly when we’re ready to go there, and no later.”

  I looked at him, my eyes wide. Not because I was shocked that he was requiring so much from the dragons, but because I was impressed that he was being so detailed in the wording of the agreement. Since the day I met him, I knew that Chris was a good-hearted person, but I hadn’t thought of him as particularly smart. Perhaps I’d been too quick to judge.

  “What?” Chris smiled at me sheepishly, and he shrugged. “It’s what Kate would ask of them if she were here with us now.”

  “True.” My eyes watered at the mention of Kate. But I blinked back my tears and turned back to the dragons, not wanting to show them any weakness. “Do you accept our deal?”

  The leader pursed his lips, and my heart pounded with fear that he would say no.

  “We accept,” he finally said, and he repeated the oath with the inclusion of Chris’s additions. “You’re quite a demanding group of mortals, aren’t you?”

  “We’re offering you the Golden Sword of Athena,” I reminded him. “All we’re requesting is a fair trade.”

  “And if this sword isn’t actually the Golden Sword, then I don’t think we have to spell it out for you again what we’ll do to you for your earlier deception, do we?” He raised an eyebrow, and I wondered how stupid he thought we were. Apparently very.

  I was beginning to hate dragons more than I had when I’d seen them flying Ethan and Blake to the top of the mountain.

  “Let me guess,” Chris said, sounding surprisingly cheery. “You’ll kill us?”

  “Yes,” the female hissed. “At least one of you catches on quickly.”

  “You won’t be killing any of us.” Danielle lowered the sword and held it out to the leader. “Because this is the Golden Sword of Athena. See for yourself.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The dragon took the sword and weighed it in his hand, studying it carefully. He held it at multiple angles, examining every inch from the tip to the handle. His expression was blank and impossible to read.

  I could barely breathe as I watched him, terrified that he would declare the sword fake and attack us simply for the sake of it.

  Eventually, he held up his other hand, extended his claws, and sliced the sword through the longest one. The nail dropped to the ground. The three other dragons all sucked in deep breaths, staring at the fallen nail. None of them moved. Then the leader kneeled down, scooped up a handful of dirt, and placed the nail inside. He poured the dirt over the nail, burying it.

  Once it was fully covered, he stood back up and looked at us. “Only the Golden Sword of Athena can slice through a dragon’s claw,” he said. “You are correct. This is the Golden Sword.”

  “And now it’s ours.” The female reached for it greedily, but he held it closer, not handing it to her. She frowned and took a step away from him, saying nothing.

  “Yes, it’s yours.” Danielle backed up to join Chris and me, looking wistfully at the sword. “And since you agreed to our terms, you’ll shift back into your dragon forms and fly us up the mountain now.”

  “Mortals.” The other male in the group sneered—the one who hadn’t spoken up until now. “Are you truly so naïve? The Olympians can’t step foot in this realm, the Titans are trapped at the top of the mountain, and the primordial deities stopped caring about what happened to those of us here long ago. In Kerberos, we have no gods. Oaths mean nothing here.”

  He shifted into dragon form, took a deep breath, and released a blaze of fire from his nostrils. If Blake were here—and if we could access our powers here—he would hold out his hands and shield us from the fire. But Blake wasn’t here, and our powers were inaccessible while we weren’t on Earth.

  So I screamed and turned away, holding my arms up in front of my head as I prepared for the flames to consume me.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The fire didn’t come. The heat was so close that I could feel it on my skin—and then, it was gone.

  Was I dead? I’d expected to feel pain—to feel the agonizing torture of those final moments when I burned to death. But there was nothing.

  Was dragon fire so powerful that death was instantaneous?

  I lowered my arms and opened my eyes, facing the dragons. The three of them in human form were still there, but the one who had shifted back into dragon form and tried to kill us was gone. The only evidence that he’d been there at all were the two large footprints on the ground where he’d stood.

  The other female in the group—who I guessed was his mate—screamed and searched the area where he’d been standing, her arms flailing around the empty space. “Where is he?” she yelled, her eyes ablaze. “What did you do to him?”

  Erebus stepped forward, his gaze dark and unwavering. “Your leader swore an oath to the gods, and the three of you agreed. Your companion broke that oath. Therefore, he has been pulverized.”

  “The gods deserted us long ago,” the female spat. “What do you know of oaths, mortal?”

  “I know more than you realize, dragon.” He spoke the name of her breed as if it were an insult. “And I know that you cannot deny what you saw with your own eyes. You made an oath to the primordial deities Nyx and Erebus. The moment your mate betrayed that oath, he disappeared into darkness itself. Do you wish to test the gods further? Or will you be true to your word and honor your promise?”

  She dropped her hands to her sides, fear flashing in her eyes. “If we do as we promised, will my mate be returned?” she asked.

  “I cannot say for sure,” Erebus said. “But after what you just witnessed, do you really want to test what will happen if you refuse?”

  I half-expected her to shift forms and breathe flames at us, so she could join her mate. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and stepped back behind her leader.

  “You speak confidently for a mortal,” she said, studying Erebus suspiciously.

  “I have seen much for my years.” His expression betrayed nothing. “You’ve sworn an oath to the gods, and while they may have ignored Kerberos in the past, they are paying attention now. Try anything else, and you will experience their wrath.”

  The female opened her mouth as if she was going to say more, but her leader interrupted before she could speak.

  “The gods are clearly watching out for you,” he said to us, holding his hand out to the female in a signal for her to be quiet. “We will not test them again. When do you wish us to fly you to the top of the mountain?”

  “We leave now,” I said, and he nodded, shifting back to dragon form. He still held the Golden Sword with his front claw.

  The other two dragons shifted forms as well. They stretched their wings and raised their necks to the sky, ready to take flight. Then they lowered themselves to the ground—I assumed they wanted us to hop onto their backs.

  “Nicole—you ride on the back of the leader,” Erebus instructed. “Chris will ride his mate. Danielle and I will be together on the other female.” He didn’t wait for us to agree—instead, he s
trolled over to the female, lifted Danielle onto her back, and jumped up to join her.

  I hopped onto the back of the leader, and Chris did the same on his mate. Chris winced slightly when putting pressure on his arm, but I looked away, pretending not to notice. There was nothing I could do for him now. The most I could do was to make sure we finished our mission as quickly as possible so we could get back to Earth where I could heal him.

  I situated myself on the dragon’s back, holding onto the ridges on his neck. He stood up, and the ground grew further away from me, making my stomach feel like it was rising into my throat. What if I fell off? I’d ridden horses before, but a dragon? I didn’t even think that dragons existed before entering Kerberos.

  It was finally sinking in that we would be flying. High above the ground, with nothing strapping me in to keep me safe. I swallowed, feeling like I was about to be sick. I didn’t want to do this. But I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it if I wanted to reach Blake.

  So I bent my legs at the knees, using my thigh muscles to put pressure on the dragon’s sides to keep my balance, as I would while riding a horse. His scales were sharp and rough, digging into my bare skin.

  “Don’t let me fall, okay?” I whispered to him, tightening my grip so much that my knuckles turned white.

  He didn’t reply, instead spreading his wings and running toward the cliff.

  The wind rushed past my face and through my hair, and I screamed as he jumped off the ledge and soared up into the amber sky.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Nothing could have prepared me for what it felt like to ride the back of a flying dragon. Seeing the ground so far away—the trees, the animals, the river—as if they were a toy model instead of the real world, was something I’d experienced before on an airplane. But without the window separating me from the world, without being strapped into a chair or safety net of any kind—it was so terrifying that my head spun and my heart pounded so fast that I felt like it was about to beat right out of my chest. I held onto the dragon with every bit of strength I could muster, keeping my eyes up and praying it would end soon.

  We flew higher and higher until we were above the clouds, the amber sun shining down on us so strongly that it scorched my already burned skin. We circled the mountain, which as Erebus told us, was now a straight wall to the top.

  Eventually, the cliff reached a plateau, although I couldn’t see far due to the trees near the edge. The dragons landed close to the edge, lowering their wings and settling onto the ground so we could hop off their backs. It was a huge relief to be on solid land. My hands tingled from holding onto my dragon so tightly, and I flexed them to get my blood flowing, finally able to feel my fingers again.

  My dragon shifted back into human form, and the other two dragons followed his lead. “The Titans are imprisoned in the center of the plateau,” he told us. “That is where the others of my kind likely took your friends. We will not go there, as our deal was to bring you to the top of the mountain, which we have done. We will wait for you here and fly you down to the portal once you’ve returned.”

  “Thank you,” I said, checking my arrows to make sure I hadn’t lost any of them during the flight. With only two used arrows and one crystal arrow left, I couldn't afford for anything to happen to them. To my relief, they were all in place.

  Danielle eyed up the Golden Sword in the leader’s hand. “I don’t know what we’ll be facing at the center of the mountain, but we’ll likely need all of the weapons we can get,” she said. “Is there any chance that we can borrow the sword? We’ll return it to you the moment we’re back.”

  “We made a deal.” The dragon held the sword closer to his side. “This sword is mine now. You will have to manage without it.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I told Danielle. “I still have one crystal arrow, and two regular arrows.”

  “And I have a knife,” Chris added. “We all have our knives. Don’t forget about those.”

  “Wonderful.” Danielle sighed and looked longingly at the Golden Sword. “How well are the Titans imprisoned again?”

  “They’re frozen in a lake,” Erebus told us. “It’s the lake that begins the River of Dreams—the water in it is powerful enough to block their magic.”

  The female dragon whose mate he’d pulverized raised an eyebrow at him. “The top of the mountain is rarely visited,” she said. “How do you know all of this information?”

  “I have my ways,” he said, and then he turned and led us into the forest, not allowing the dragons to ask any more questions.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  We walked through the forest, the air growing colder and colder until I had to wrap my arms around myself to keep from shivering. The trees went from full and green to brown and bare, as if within an hour we’d traveled from summer to winter. Instead of leaves, icicles hung from the branches. It would have felt like a winter wonderland if it hadn’t been for an eerie emptiness that filled the forest, the coldness a sharp warning of danger that penetrated my bones.

  Eventually, the forest ended, and we stepped into a clearing with a lake in the center. In the middle of the lake, twelve creatures as large as giants were frozen from the waist down. As still and as pale as corpses, most of them had their eyes closed, but a few stared out into the forest, their gazes empty and hollow. The ice had entrapped them. But lines spider webbed along the outside edge of the lake—cracks. The cracks weren’t close to the center yet, but it looked like in time, they would make it there.

  I froze where I stood, not wanting to alert the creatures to our presence.

  “The twelve first generation Titans,” Erebus explained, keeping his voice low. “As I already mentioned, they’ve been frozen in the lake since they were forced into Kerberos. Their powers are blocked, and after so many years of torture, they’ve lost themselves to their own minds. They won’t know you’re here unless you step foot onto the lake.”

  “It’s cracking,” Danielle mentioned what I’d already observed. “What happens when the cracks reach the Titans? Will they get their powers back? Will they be freed?”

  “The cracks starting forming on the night of the Olympian Comet,” Erebus told us. “There’s no saying when they’ll reach the center, but my guess is the summer solstice. Once that happens, the Titans will be able to escape their imprisonment, and the portal will be fully open, so they’ll be able to go back through to Earth.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Chris said, gripping the handle of his knife. “Well—maybe they’ll escape the lake, but we’ll close the portal first.”

  “Yes,” Danielle agreed. “Although it would be nice if we actually knew how we’re supposed to close the portal.” She glanced sideways at Erebus, not so subtly hinting that she wanted him to tell us.

  “I’m not telling you now,” he said. “You’re not ready yet. It would only distract you from the task you came here to complete.”

  “Erebus is right,” I said. “We have to focus on doing what we came here to do—getting back Blake and Medusa’s head. Once we’re back on Earth, then we’ll turn Typhon to stone and figure out how to seal the portal. Since we can’t seal the portal until we’re back, it doesn’t do us any good to worry about it now.”

  Danielle nodded, although she didn’t look convinced.

  Then I heard something from off in the distance—clapping. I turned to look where it was coming from, and saw Ethan standing on the top of a hill, in front of a small cabin. He smirked as he stared down at us, and continued to clap, finally stopping once he had our full attention.

  “I didn’t think you would have the guts to follow me into Kerberos,” he said, his voice booming across the clearing. “Looks like you proved me wrong.”

  Two people I didn’t recognize emerged from the cabin to stand on both sides of him—a man and a woman. From their bright red hair and lack of clothing, I assumed they were dragons. Likely the same two dragons that flew him and Blake to the top of the mountain.

  I s
teadied my bow at the sight of them, the crystal arrow strung through and ready to shoot. These weren’t the same dragons who had made a deal with us—they owed us nothing. There was no reason to think they wouldn’t attack on the spot. And without them having sworn an oath to Erebus, the god wouldn’t be able to stop them like he’d done to the dragon who had gone back on his word in the Jungle.

  “Helios instructed these two dragons of his to protect me,” Ethan explained, motioning to the dragons by his sides. “We knew you’d followed us through the portal the moment one of Apollo’s crystal arrows shot past us on our flight up here. I figured you would try to reach the top of the mountain, so I’ve been waiting for you, just in case you made it this far. I doubted you would.” He paused to study us, a manic smile crossing his face. “But I’m happy you did,” he continued. “Because there’s something inside that I’ve been dying to show you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Moving faster than a human could comprehend, I replaced the crystal arrow with a used arrow and shot it through the heart of the male dragon. Then I grabbed the second used arrow, strung it through my bow, and shot it through the heart of the female.

  They both fell to the ground—dead.

  Ethan glared at me, his hands tightening by his sides. “What was that for?” he asked, glancing at the slayed dragons. “After the sacrifice I made when I got here, Helios would have forgiven you all for killing his immortal cow on his island. Now that you killed two of his dragons… I can’t imagine that truce will still stand.”

  “What are you talking about?” I pointed my remaining arrow—the crystal one—at Ethan’s heart. “And where’s Blake?”

  Blake would have come running to us the moment he heard our voices, so I could only guess that he was being kept somewhere else. And since Ethan was the only one who might know where that place was, I had to keep him alive.

  For now.

  But despite everything I’d said back in the cave about wanting Ethan dead, now that I knew about the endless dark torture that would await him in the underworld of Kerberos, I wasn’t sure that I could do it. Because Ethan was still one of us—a demigod. Before his sister had died, he’d helped us fight in Greece. He’d risked his life for us. I couldn’t just forget about that as if it had never happened at all.